spot talking with skaboy, head coder with Avenge..

x!x Now talking in #skabitch
x!x Joins: skaboy101

Skaboy:
ahaah =)

x!x spot sets mode: +o skaboy101
x!x skaboy101 is now known as skabitch

Skaboy:
wee

x!x spot sets mode: +pnti
x!x skabitch is now known as skaboy-

Spot:
Well hello, you ready?

Skaboy:
hey =) yup

Spot:
Ok, I'm here this very early morning with skaboy one of the scenes top coders and a new found friend(?)

Thanks for being with us..

Skaboy:
no question mark needed there bro =)

Spot:
Ok well tell me about your self... name, age da shit

Skaboy:
My name is grant passmore ... i live in houston texas (well suburb called sugar land, same place where tara lapinski is from [the ice skater], heh), and im 16, hm..

Spot:
Well cool, you ever come up to dallas..? we'll do lunch..

Skaboy:
Woah? damn yer close yo

Spot:
yeah

Skaboy:
yer kinda over by nivenh, right?

Spot:
Haha yeah... (thats a LOOONG story) and Sinister X (good friend)

Skaboy:
ahaah =)

Spot:
In fact me and Sx worked together for a long time

Skaboy:
Yeah i know sinx .. hes cool as shit, havent sene him around lately tho. Real work? or like art/scene wise ?

Spot:
Real... i was supervising a site production and he was a artist..

Skaboy:
Woah thats cool =)

Spot:
Anyways.. danger is gonna kill me if i dont keep on subject.. =)

So what are your current/past affilz..?

Skaboy:
Current aphils are the avenge cult, CiA, and iDT (infusion development team) .. past aphils, hmm . unison (smoke's old group), pez (local art group .. you might remember a few of our mebers, zippy [ex-fuel], nighttrain, etc), and chrome (dr. freeze's old group)

Spot:
Ok, you have infusion in alpha now... but we'll get to that in a minute.. First tell me about avenge pack ....

Skaboy:
ah, k.. Well, especially in the last monghts, i have noticed all of the time that creator had to spend packaging our avenge packs .. He had to make all the seperator files, divide the file into sections manually, and then copy each file under their sections 1 by 1 into a temp directory .. and then zip up the pack ..

I thought to myself .. what a waste of time, so when creator asked me to try and make something that would quickly package his packs a few nights ago, i was more than motivated ..

So basically, avenge packer allows for automated packing of packs .. one can define upto 9 sub groups (such as '-LOGOS-', '-PICS-') etc, and tag each file according to their group .. then they select which sections they would like to incorporate into the pack, and the pack is automatically packaged and ready in the directory of their choice ..

So it really comes in handy, heh =) makes packaging up packs, a task that would once take a lot of time and effort, into a quick and single automated opperation.. its pretty nifty, heh =)

Spot:
Very nifty!

Skaboy:
haha =) thanks

Spot:
Now when i was talking to you yesterday you mentioned you wrote it all overnight ... so do you have any long term plans for it... are you thinking of developing any 32bit 98 or UNIX ports?

Skaboy:
Yeah, heh .. i worked from like 1am to 5am that night hardcore on that bitch, heh =) hmm .. i never really thought about taking it that far, but if there really was a demand, and i had the means to do so, sure

Spot:
Ok, so is it in beta, or have you released a final yet?

Skaboy:
Final was released yesterday, but tonight im adding in SAUCE editing (cause ALOT of people wanted it), and a new version will be out tmorroe

Spot:
Ok, do you plan on attaching a price tag to this anytime in the future?

Skaboy:
Of course not =) i release all of my projects as freeware (wow .. u have no idea how good it feels to see my lag-meeter blank) heh

Spot:
Haha.. Well, it sounds like your doing the scene a huge favor with Avenge Packer..

Skaboy:
I sure hope so =) it was my intention to make it all alot easier, and thats what it seems to be doing =) heh

Spot:
Ok, infuuuusion... the 'only TRUE scene' bulletin board software =) It has now been released in alpha

Skaboy:
Hha .. hellz yeah

Spot:
I have only got to glance over it but it seems to sparkle and shine nicely..

Skaboy:
=) what a great usage of words. heh

Spot:
Can you tell us a little about the bg and work involved in getting out the first version..

Skaboy:
Sure.. it all started back in march of '97 .. Me and mirage (an ex-scener, local to you in dallas, btw) started coding infusion as an escape so to speak .. we were tired of waiting for features in packages like renegaade, and sick of waiting for iniquity releases, etc, etc .. so we started coding infusion..

Infusion was originally sposed to be released in june of 97 (i figured i could finish the whole thing since i had a co-author in 4 months .), but alot of things happened .. My co-author stopped coding .. I had some medical problems .. Which all pretty much slowed down development ,. then in october 97 i started picking it up again sooperhardcore, and got the first private alphas out to my testers, mrplastik and raekwon

Spot:
Ah, raekwon, good man

Skaboy:
Hells yeha, raekwon is sooper rad =)

All around this time fiend dropped iniquity, and dink sold it, and the new author didnt do a thing .. so i pretty much giained the whole iniquity crowd, as well as support from the (now dead) fuel

Spot:
And when was this exactly...?

Skaboy:
Hmm, all around august-october.. I then managed to get out i think 8 more alphas before the new year, and then the REAL trouble started.. my harddrive crashed ..

Spot:
ouch!

Skaboy:
I (thought) that i had lost all of my inf code .. it was terrible, something you work so hard on just gone, like that .. But i wasnt gonna just let go.. So i started coding another system, called infusion/2 .. i worked on it for about a week or so (got basic system done, and released the code, btw) when i found an old backup of the infusion alpha 8 on floppy!@!

Spot:
=)

Skaboy:
Man, what a great day it was =) and then i began restructuring the system and added TONS of features, including FULL online configuration (kargus talked me into it, heh), new comm rotuines, new menuing system, fully configurable interfaces, themes, etc, etc .. basically gave it those "sparkles and shines" you talked about, heh.. and then after extensive testing by my bros raekwon and mrplastik, it was released .. and the feedback i have been getting makes it all well worth it =)

Spot:
And its still ONLY you working on this?

Skaboy:
Only me =) heh

Skaboy:
oh.. i cant forget this part =) And then around february of '98 sudden death introduced me to creator (of avenge), and we pretty much hit it off .. i joined as head coder, and began releasing infusion under the avenge cult, as i will contnue too =)

Spot:
Creator is one the most badass fewls on the block.. Now, I understand you have been having a problem lately getting art for certain sections ... how are you handling this?

Skaboy:
Well, the first full release of infusion was released with my board as default setup.. and so far up through alpha16r1 (last release) i have been doing so .. but i got sick of that, and wanted a whole new theme, so ive basically just been asking people to do art for the release .. so far i have new waiting for caller screen, new menuset, and am waiting on some new hardscreens (hard theme interfaces)

heh =)

Spot:
Ahh well feel free to take a free plug here anytime.. =)

Skaboy:
Hmm ... well id basically just like to thank everyone for the great respsonse infusion has gotten ..

Spot:
Ok, now i noticed that some of the art on the website (infusion.home.ml.org) was created by Comatose.... who HAPPENS to be the head coder on the Iniquity project... can you explain?

Skaboy:
Ohh .. i left that part out of the story, oops..

k. Well comatose was also an infusion tester, and HEAVY infusion follower..

Spot:
Doesnt that seem kind of stange..?

Skaboy:
He initially asked me to release a special version of infusion under his group FUEL, because he was sick of iniquity.. When the source code was released publically, comatose did everything he could to try and keep it from getting around.. Hell i remember the day, people were trading that shit like candy =)

He couldnt code back then and tried to get a team started for working on iniq.. All during this time he was still supporting infusion, and even came back to support infusion around march to redo the infusion page,..

But recently he has mainly been focussed on this new iniquity release (which he told me is mainly bug fixes and some new art, i do look forward to it tho) and has mainly been supporting it .. but from what i hear alot of the iniquity guys havent been holding their shit, and all of the work has come down on him .. and he just recenlty got a new job, etc, etc .. so i dont know who thats working out

Basically me and comatose go back .. and we support eachother whenever we can =) Its not like the old vision/obvdays where it was a war to have yer software #1 .. we basically help eachother out whenever we can (im doing the comm rotuines for iniquity/2), and strive to mak sure that we both are doing well

Spot:
Ok, so can we expect a infusion/iniquity hybrid in the future?

Skaboy:
Hmm, hybrid?.. not really in the full sense of the word, but like i said we will try and work together on things..

Spot:
Well, you may know that iST has contracted me and creator's firm to develop a new iniq website.. it would be great to produce a iniq/infu site..

Might be something to discuss with iST

== at this point ska started bitching at me for misstyping iST as iDT =) == it has been edited.. *grin*

Skaboy:
A joint web site? hm, thats something that would be ncie to talk over .. i dont really know how we both stand on being that close, but it is worth consideration

Spot:
Ok... one more question concerning infusion

Skaboy:
k =)

Spot:
We have all seen the bbs world start to reawaken with the emergence of 'NetModem/32 (R)' what kind of extra options are you going to offer sysops of telnet boards... my sources tell me that iniq/2 will have NetModem config support..

Skaboy:
Haha lemme go into that =) I was the one who originally propsed the netmodem/32 integration..

Spot:
Why does that not surprise me? =)

Skaboy:
I talked it over with mag69 (dedrick allen) and we together came up with the original netmodem/32 integration specifications.. So naturally, infusion was the first software to support this =) then judge dredd grabbed the specs and added it into lucid, and then comatose added it into iniq =)

Spot:
Ahh the NMIS preposal.. =) I'm sure microsoft will try to steal the credit for that.. =)

Skaboy:
Hahaaha.. But just so you guys know, new netmodem release will no longer support these integration protocols, as mag has pretty much redone the whole layout of the system..

Oh, and let me also add a few more things about telnet.. Infusion's comm rotuines were totally redone for the last release and they are the fasteast and most advanced that im sure youve seen .. (ie, most softwares such as iniq only support ports 0-8, while infusion supports 0-127, upto 3 init strings, ISDN support, etc), also with these new comm routines you will notice a HUGE speed increase over telnet .. on just 2 38.4 connections it was almost like a dualup 28.8 .. so check that out =)

Spot:
Very good.. One last question

Skaboy:
k =)

Spot:
Please dont get the wrong idea... out of any group in the scene i support Avenge 100%, but both these products you are releasing under the Avenge label.. my question to you is.. What possesed you to take all of these hundreds of hours of work and stress and loss of sleep and frustration and down right hell sometimes.... and hand half of that credit to a art group you have known for a reletivly short time?

Skaboy:
No i totally understand the question =) heh. Well first of all, i really dont see it as "handing all the credit", but i feel that strong software and products should have a strong group to back them, and over these months avenge has proved to be nothing but that. If in the process i increase the quality or scene-wide-respect of the group, then that makes it all worth it =)

Skaboy:
Oh, and about knowing the group for a short time.. Sudden death originally introduced me to creator, because sdn had been given a leaked copy of infusion and creator saw it and wanted to run it..

Suden death and i go way back (even back last summer when he was coding quantum he wanted to co-author infusion, heh) so his relation to the software has always been close.. When he introduced me to creator and the group (even though he is gone now, heh) i trusted his judgement and was more than happy to release under it =)

Spot:
Ok, the author is Grant Passmore (skaboy), the products are Avenge Packer 1.0 and Infusion Alpha 16 ... and you can get infusion, at infusion.home.ml.org. As soon as Avenge Packer is released it will be posted here on Acheron.org in the news section..

Spot:
Grant.. thank you very much for your time

Skaboy:
Spot, thank you bro .. the pleasure has been mine, heh =)

Spot:
Any greets you would like to make before we close?

Skaboy:
Hmm, sure .. id like to give shoutouts to raekwon (my undying infusion supporter), mrplastik, creator and all avenge members, sudden death, taintedx, crimson blade, natedog, horrid nature, nivenh, .. and anyone else i forgot, heh =)

Spot:
This has been a Spot interview and a Acheron.org production!