Group Story: Trailer Park Demos

by thom and s_tec

It was the Summer of 1989 and a zit-faced Canadian teen named Thom had just sold his 8-bit Nintendo system to earn money for the purchase an Amiga 500. Originally bought to play games, this new 16-bit dream machine inadvertently became a passport into the wonderful world of demos.

Star fields, sine bobs, and copper bars made a lasting impression on young Thom, and he soon became an ardent follower of the demoscene. Unfortunately, the source of demo culture lay hidden thousands of kilometres away, and he felt very alone in his appreciation of demos.

His Canadian schoolmates were entirely unaware of the demoscene, and any effort to create a local demogroup was always met with complete disinterest. Poor Thom soon believed the scene would never be anything more than a spectator sport for himself, and creative efforts were focused elsewhere.

Fast forward to Summer 2004. Thom found himself getting a job outside of the Big City. Moving to a small town meant starting from scratch: New friends needed to be made and new hobbies needed to be discovered.

Fortunately for our hero, no less than a week after departing from city life, Farbrausch released their Werkkzeug demotool to the public. The timing was perfect as Pilgrimage 2004 - North America's only active demoparty - was fast approaching.

Working completely alone and without relevant experience, Thom finished his first demo in eight weeks flat, although admittedly it was more concept than anything else. Before entering the demo at Pilgrimage, two remaining details needed sorting out: A handle and a group name. Thom dropped the capital “T” becoming thom, and the name Trailer Park Demos was conceived as homage to "Trailer Park Boys", a popular Canadian TV series.

But thom was not the only solo demo enthusiast heading to Salt Lake City. A young coder from California, who had discovered the demoscene only two years earlier, was also making plans for Pilgrimage 2004.

The coder in question, originally known as swansontec, learned about demos through the Text Mode Demo Compo 5. Thinking it looked like fun, he decided to create a text mode demo of his own despite knowing very little about the demoscene. To get a feel for what he should make, swansontec watched demo after demo and immediately fell in love with the scene.

Following TMDC5, swansontec change his handle to the more compact s_tec, and then emailed random people on ojiuce.net in an attempt to start a new demogroup. One scener, Polaris, responded with an invitation to join the Northern Dragons. This looked like a good option since nobody else was interested in starting a new group. As a Northern Dragon, s_tec wrote several demos, entered TMDC6, and had many other fine adventures.

However, after a year and a half with the dragons, s_tec grew restless and returned to his original plan of starting a new group. To get the idea off the ground, he decided to attend Pilgrimage 2004 and release a 4K intro. Unfortunately, he ran out of time and had only a single effect to bring to the party.

thom and s_tec met while enjoying a fine lunch with Legalize somewhere near the Pilgrimage party grounds. After learning about s_tec's incomplete intro, thom quickly volunteered to compose the music, despite having no way to hear what he had written. The two borrowed Legalize's laptop and the 4K intro io was born.

After the party, thom and s_tec combined their demo-making ambitions into a new group. Rather than pick a fresh group name, the two decided to stick with Trailer Park Demos, even though it didn't sound as cool as Haujobb or Farbrausch.

Entering the Text Mode Demo Compo had become a tradition for s_tec, so he was eager to create an entry for TMDC7. He persuaded thom to compose the music, and the Finnish ANSI artist Uns3en volunteered to draw a picture for the demo. Uns3en's offering to create a caricature of Beethoven with earphones worked well with thom's classical music, so s_tec happily accepted.

As Uns3en toiled away on the artwork, s_tec busied himself writing a new text mode graphics library. Unlike other libraries that render in RGB and use algorithms to convert to text mode, s_tec's library renders in greyscale and uses hand-picked palettes to convert to text mode. The result was incredibly clean rendering with precise control over individual block characters.

Meanwhile, thom hammered away on the soundtrack. s_tec wanted something akin to Handel's Water Music overture, and thom did his best to fashion something containing identical orchestration with more-or-less similar structure.

With the library finished and only two weeks to go, s_tec started implementing effects. The plan was to create a mix of oldschool effects and newschool design elements on a vertically scrolling canvas, just like the old BBS ANSIs. However, vertical scrolling looked so awful it was soon switched to horizontal scrolling. The design ideas worked out well, and the demo was a public success earning s_tec his first compo victory.

But as with many demos, the original was concept was longer. Deadline constraints meant many effects had to be dropped and the soundtrack needed nearly 50 seconds chopped out of the middle.*

Now that TMDC7 is over, s_tec and thom are busily working on their next production for Breakpoint 2005. Euro-weenies look out: thom is going to Breakpoint in person, and he's bringing clean underwear...!

*If anyone's interested, the full music is still available on thom's hard drive.