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CONFUSING SOLUTION
==================
Bagder (then used the nick D$85), Kjer and Zagor founded 'Confusing
Solution' 1987 and released 4 demos using that name.
At the Triad/Fairlight party in Huddinge xmas 1987 we got into the
"scene" for real for the first time and we got to know the dudes in
Thundercats.
Super Swap Sweden
=================
When attending a miniparty arranged by the Thundercats in March 1988
we got an offer to join the group called Super Swap Sweden (SSS)
(from its leader, Natas) which we did without too much discussions. We created and released 7
demos under that name.
HORIZON
=======
During the summer 1988 we joined forces with our good friends the
Thundercats and formed Horizon. We had a lot of members then. Even an
Amiga-section. Later that same year, the most active guys of the group
'kicked out' a large amount of the members that didn't didn't do demo
stuff (programming/design/music) or was too inactive. After that
"cleanup" we were some 6 guys left (Bagder, Zagor, Kjer, Mastermind, Sir
Gawain and Gaston) and 64-only. NOTE that the guys that since then called
themselves Horizon on Amiga were guys kicked out from our group, but remained
using _our_ name (without our knowledge).
At the party in Alvesta in November 1988 we found out the real programming
skill of the guys in in "Microsystems Digitial Technology", and later that
year during a miniparty at our place in Huddinge we convinced them to join us
(Boogaloo, Exilon and Rush). We won that competition in Alvesta '88, though the
guys from MDT have always claimed (and still does) that the votes for Fairlight
in the competition should get on their count since Viper/FLT did a lot of
promotion for their demo and thus the MDTers claim people voted for FLT
believing it was FLT's demo (and FLT + MDT > HZ though HZ > MDT).
Sir Gawain and Gaston started to lose interest and faded away slowly from the
activities of the group after that party.
In 1990 we asked our good friends Pernod and Judge (members of Fairlight at
the time) if they wanted to join us since we thought they were both cool and
splendid demo-makers and that Horizon as a pure demo-group (which Fairlight
certainly wasn't) would improve with them. They didn't hesitate much and
joined. As Pernod has put it: "This was a part of HZ strategy: if you can't
beat them, let them join us!!!" (Do note that Horizon was never beaten by
Fairlight in any demo competion!) :-)
Although not entirely wrong, we would never even had thought of asking anyone
to join us if they weren't cool and relaxed people that matched and shared the
same view of life and demo business as we did. We did it all for fun and for
pleasure. Another important paragraph in the un-told law of Horizon was to
only have members that were true friends and GOOD demo-makers.
In mid-1992, Pernod and Boogaloo went to Samsö, Denmark to win our last demo
competition, and so we did, mostly thanks to the genius Exilon (he was always
before his time, for example he made a full-screen X- and Y- D011-scroller in
1988. He also made a demo part with seven sprites in the sideborders, with
chars on the screen, in the same demo of course). Exilon and Boogaloo made a
part with real-time filled 3d graphics on the 64 and that was why we won.
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(This does not include people that came from Thundercats and SSS that were
kicked out or left a few months after Horizon was formed.)
We did release products together. No releases were specificly made for or by
certain members, but all were encouraged and asked to participate. Therefore,
we don't have any logged information regarding who did code or make parts in
specific demos.
(nicks in alphabetical order)
Bagder
Coder and lousy designer. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Left the C64-
business around 91-92. Works as a software engineer at Frontec. Programs
FrexxEd on amiga.
Boogaloo
Coder, musician. Joined Horizon around christmas 1988, hasn't quit the C64
business yet. Works as a software engineer at Frontec. Known as a sample and
hardware (like his 256K creation) freak!
Exilon
Coder. Joined Horizon around christmas 1988, hasn't quit the C64 business yet!
Brilliant coder with no sense at all for music or graphics. Known to lack
the knowledge of what is reggae and what is disco music!
Gaston
Coder. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Stopped coding around 88-89,
never officially quit or got kicked.
Judge
Coder. Joined Horizon 1990 when asked, came from Fairlight then. Known for
having lots of brilliant half-done routines that never made it to a demo!
Kjer
Coder. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Left the C64-business sometimes
during 1992. His designing abilities are so terribly bad he could scare
anyone off by showing us his colour/logo/font selections! Programs
FrexxEd on amiga. Works with Customer Support at NetCom.
Natas
Organizer, swapper. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Left after a few
months (some time after the Enköping party autumn 1988). Known for his weird
real name and his beard!
Mastermind
Coder. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Has he ever quit C64ing? ;)
Known to never save his programs until they are complete. Made him suffer
really hard from power problems at parties and similar!
Pernod
Coder and designer. Joined Horizon 1990 when asked, came from Fairlight then.
Known for weird samples and demo names... also a funny accent! Prime snake
fighter together with Mastermind! ;)
Rush
Coder. Joined Horizon around christmas 1988. Slowly faded away after the
'Dolly Party' demo in 1989. Never officially quit or got kicked.
Sir Gawain
Coder. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Stopped coding around 88-89,
never officially quit or got kicked.
Zagor
Coder and musician. Got into Horizon from the beginning. Left the C64-
business around 91-92. Works as a software engineer at Frontec.
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| | | |/ _ \ '_ ` _ \ / _ \ | || '_ \ / _` |/ _ \ \/ /
| |_| | __/ | | | | | (_) | | || | | | (_| | __/> <
|____/ \___|_| |_| |_|\___/ |___|_| |_|\__,_|\___/_/\_\
Listed is the file name we have used to store the demo on non-C64 systems,
the file size of the archive in bytes and the date (in YY-MM-DD format) of the
release.
Confusing Solution 'ConSol' (1987-1988)
====================================================
Animax.lha 37400 87-12-19
Animax. The first demo ever we made. Released at the Triad/Fairlight party in
Kvarnbergsskolan, Huddinge, right after christmas 1987.
RunningDemo.lha 37967 88-01-24
Running Demo. Our 2nd demo, 7 parts. The last part contains 4711 different
running sprites from different games, moving across the screen and that's
the reason for the name.
OhShit.lha 46731 88-03-09
Oh Shit! 12 parts(!)
HellNo.lha 38642 88-03-20
Hell No! Released at the Thundercats mini-party in Uppsala, where we joined
SSS. 6 parts. (We won the small demo competition we had there with it.)
Super Swap Sweden (Spring 1988)
===================================================
WorldRecord.lha 46462 88-03-23
World Record Scrolltext. The longest scroll text ever written that far. 69248
characters, no loading or extra memory.
ItsMoving.lha 45698 88-04-07
It's Movin'. Released at the Silents party in Alvesta. The first demo we made
where we used our "classical" amimated space shuttle. 9 parts. Came on the 2nd
place in the competition.
Contribution.lha 44426 88-05-14
Contribution. Released at the Agile/Rebels party in Tyresö. 6 parts. Winner
of the competition.
PumpItUp.lha 24355 88-05-20
Pump It Up. A very simple music&grafix-demo by Sanke and Levithan. 2 parts.
LameDemo.lha 47301 88-05-24
Lame Demo. A demo where the not so very good routines and ideas got room.
Lots of parts were made at the above mentioned Tyresö-party! 7 parts.
ECI.lha 11145 88-06-19
ECI Demo. The first show of 'Extended Colours with Interlace', the technique
to get up to 120 different colours on the C64. Released by SSS and Thundercats
together at a meeting in Bergshamra.
WhyThink.lha 45988 88-06-19
Why Think? The last SSS demo, released at the meeting in Bergshamra.
Horizon (1988-)
==============================================
LetsDisco.lha 301001 88-09-14
Let's Disco! Released soon after our party in Enkoping. 14 files, 40 parts!
Split.lha 20164 88-10-10
Split. Cooperation demo, Triad and Horizon. Half the screen each, Raster $10
to $9B for Triad, $9C to $FF for Horizon!
LoveThisNow.lha 167167 88-11-06
Love This Now. Our contribution to and winner in the demo competition at the
3rd Alvesta party. 6 files, 19 parts.
Bonanza.lha 48348 88-11-06
Bonanza. MDT's contribution to the above mentioned party. They joined Horizon
not too long thereafter. 2nd place in the competition.
Beatable.lha 22679 88-12-12
Beatable. Our contribution to Triangle's competition "Demo of the Year".
2 parts of which the 2nd part continues by itself. Wait and see! 2nd place
in the competition.
BountyHunter.lha 163250 89-01-05
Bounty Hunter. Released at a mini meeting at Badger's and Zagor's place.
5 files, 19 parts.
LookingGood.lha 117455 89-04-03
Looking Good. Released at Ikari's scandalous party in Slagelse. The
competition jury consisted of members from Ikari and Ikari won the compo.
5 files, 11 parts. Our demo was disqualified.
DollyParty.lha missing (Easter '89)
Dolly Party. Released at our party in Eskilstuna. We won the demo competition
with this one. 5 files, 12 parts.
SnakeOrDie.lha 104016 90-04-16
Snake or Die! Released at our big party in Vårby. 5 files, 7 parts.
Competition winner.
ALOOS.lha 135728 90-10-03
A load of old shit. Lots of old routines that had got left over. 7 files, 9
parts.
BilTandborste.lha 53207 91-01-03
Biltandborste. Among other things, a *BIIG* FLI-picture scrolling in all
directions and a filled vector cube. Released at our mini party in Huddinge
Gymnasium. 3 parts.
Xprtelligence.lha 34773 92-03-06
Xpertelligence. 2 parts. Released at a party in Denmark, came on 4th place
in the competition.
TLTractorIII.lha 59641 93-12-02
The Last Tractor III. Horizon's last C64 demo. Filled vector, glenz-vector,
pixelized vectors and more. Won the demo competition in Samsö, Denmark.
Non-demos
============================================
TheWinner.lha 5049 88-12-16
The Winner. Breakout-game in 24 lines basic! Kjer won the swedish magazine
DMZ's programming competition with it.
KjersSinballs.lha 8144 88-05-30
Kjer's Sin-balls. Kjer's hyperadvanced sineball programmer. None but him
could understand it ;)
SSSinus40.lha 10482 88-05-30
Bagder sine-curve-creator. At least as advanced and hard to use! ;)
> - some memorable stories
During spring 1988 when Kjer was sitting and coding on the Agile/Rebels party
and Zagor, unaware of the fact that the demo part was Kjer's - thinking that he
and Bagder were sitting and watching demos, aproached and said "You should
make a demo part like that!"... (The demo part was a big picture flying around
on the screen and in all borders.)
During an intensive hacker meeting, Boogaloo and Bagder sat working with their
music routine, and thought they just discovered that their sound effects were
dependent on the raster timing. Since the player routine and the editing
routine were different, this made the sounds different and quite struck by this
sad discovery they made some very depressed sounds why Exilon turns around and
says "can't you just edit and new redicolous drum - or whatever it is?"...
The party we attended to in Trondheim, Norway, (198?) where we sat in shorts
only in the big and crowded party room and still we were sweating rivers.
All those funny mails we received from fans, admirers and swappers. All in all
we must have received thousands of them. Many were serious and well meaning,
but a lot were also really REALLY lame and written in ways that made us laugh
hysterically.
Very memorable is the "Hacker Mon" we made. A "regular swedish" to "hacker
swedish" automatic translater. Enter the plain swedish sentense and you got
the translated one back. Other programs in the series was "Lyrix Mon" an auto-
matic song lyrics text writer. Insanely crazy. Danish Mon made the machine
speak the english phrase entered in (semi-) danish. I don't think this ever got
the popularity among our danish friends that we thought it would! =)
Snake fighting. Mastermind introduced the concept to the group and Boogaloo
spread the usage among us. Whips by rubbersnakes are painful, and many are
those who found that out. Some was captured on video, some not. Many were the
games and different sports at parties that involved the snakes.
The Nintento caps. Boogaloo worked at a Toy Store in Gothenbourg for a while
and after that we all wore Nintendo caps all the time.
The Horizon dress (white, sweatshirt and jogging style pants with
' of Horizon' prints on). Kjer and Boogaloo had a little glitch in the
communication and 'Mr Boogaloo' was printed on one dress even though B claims
he specifically asked for the Mr to be removed. K claims the exact opposite! ;)
> - scanned pictures in any known file format (preferably GIF or JPEG), or
> even photographs by snail mail (If you want me to return them, then tell
> me in advance)
Attached ones are included.
Daniel - Bagder
Bjorn - Zagor
Kjell - Kjer
> - anything you are proud (or ashamed) of concerning the scene activity of
> your group
Proud of
========
Horizon being in the top of the charts for years, with a large number of
individual programmers being in the top of the coder charts. The cool,
friendly and relaxed atmosphere we had in the group. We were a bunch of
friends having very fun together.
I'm also proud of the fact that we organized the biggest parties of the
computer scene of that time, several times we made the largest party ever.
Ashamed of
==========
That I never pushed us far enough to complete the games we made. It would
have enabled us to gain some money from the C64 programming.