An interview with Thadoss of Dune (Part one)

Forewords: I have known Thadoss from fame as a Dune member for 3 decades. He has brought us several nice games and demos among others but more recently he has also amazed us all with Taedium Vitae, in my opinion already a classic Falcon demo that was released at the latest Sillyventure winter edition. This is the reason why I wanted to learn more about him in this first part.

As you may have guessed you can expect a second part that will be dedicated to this great demo. I thought it would be cool to invite both Jade (gfx) and Virgill (msx) to join him in this second part to share their thoughts about the making of the demo. 

Before I forget, part one of the interview was carried in French and then manually translated by me, no AI implied here so that I will take full responsibility for my poor English. :) Now let's get started!

STS: Hello Thadoss, first question, an easy one to start with: can you tell us a bit about yourself? 

Thadoss: Hi everyone. My name is Laurent Sallafranque, I am a 51 French man who lives by the seaside near Brest in Bretagne (west coast). I work as a risk manager in a bank company but I have also worked in various IT departments over the last 2 decades first as a coder then later as a project manager. 

I have been into computers since the age of 9 when my father introduced the ZX Spectrum to the family. It was a turning point for me and also the beginning of a lifetime passion. First I started coding with the integrated basic language, then I played with the code samples in the user manual and listings in magazines. 

Later on I had an 520 STf I instantly fell in love with. Sure I used it to play a lot at first then I grabbed a copy of GFA Basic and went on coding on my own. When I found out about the first ST demos I immediately focused on understanding how such things could be achieved and how I could also code such effects.

At that time I decided to create my own band called Orgasm. We never released anything yet it allowed me to learn ASM 68000, meet gfxmen and also musicians. This is how I came to make acquaintance with both Chuck and Mic of Dune as we used to ride the same train to our studies location. In 1993 or maybe 1994 I was invited to join the band. 

About my nickname Thadoss (note of STS : it reads as « pile of bones » in French) it has nothing to do with computing. Back then I used to be a role playing fan and had imagined a brave and fearless dwarf called Thadoss that I was really fond of. When he died I decided to use this nickname as a tribute. Today this is something I proudly stand with. 

STS: when I go through your CV at Demozoo I can read that you coded the nice FAITH demo back in 1994 and then nothing for almost 20 years. Why did you stop and above all why did you come back especially on Falcon?

Thadoss: In 1994 I already had several effects in ASM ready and so did Chuck. I collected our code and turned it into a program. Fun fact: in Dune we all used the same 3D routs with the same variable names so that I had to rename all of mine into something starting with THA_. As a matter of fact the whole demo features twice the same 3D routs. 

At that time I had already coded several games with GFA basic such as a Boulder Dash clone as well as simple ASM routs.

After we finished the Faith demo I moved onto the Falcon. I truly loved that machine for its power (that DSP working along the 68030 CPU!) and the promises that came with it. Already the first great demos were released by EKO, Lazer, Abstract, Avena…I also spent countless hours playing around with Audio Fun Machine and the sound possibilities offered by the DSP. As I started studying to become an engineer, I had less time for coding. However I had already humbly contributed to the  BadMood project conducted by Douglas Little, working on the level map rendering and I had started coding a few effects : a zoom, something like mode 7 but I was only relying on the DSP to replay modules.

As my studies were over, my military service then work swallowed me so that the Atari world was growing out of reach. Instead I dove into Linux and the open source community, I learnt new coding languages and handled big projects. 

In 2007 I realized that I missed the Atari world, its computers, demos, coding for fun but also the friendship and shared moments of the community.
I accidentally discovered the Hatari emulator as a freeware and since I did not own a Falcon anymore (I had bought a PC instead) it was an opportunity to play games, enjoy demos or tools that brought back nostalgia and passion.

I tried to run Audio Fun Machine but at that time Hatari did not handle the Falcon DSP. I was not familiar with it not having truly used it with my code so I faced the challenge and learnt how to make full use of the DSP. Patrice Mandin had coded an advanced emulation of the DSP however it did not work as planned. I took over his work, fixed bugs and also added missing features. This project took me 2 years but fully allowed me to understand how a 56001 DSP worked, I knew every single instruction and feature of the « beast » until I managed to get my first DSP demo run under Hatari, I remember it being a dot sphere calculated thanks to the DSP. I spent more years on improving the emulation accuracy, especially the sound part, and on adding missing features.

This made me eager to code again on Falcon until I happened to find that open source fighting game called “Beats of rage” that was coded with C on PC. I took all the gfx assets of the characters and levels and wrote my own game engine in 68030 ASM so that a Falcon could display the game with a decent speed. Had I known I would have coded using planar instead of true color to make it run faster but it was my very first big Falcon project.

Remember that in 2007 all I wanted was have Audio Fun Machine run properly in Hatari. As soon as 2010 it ran almost flawlessly except for a nasty bug when the equalizer was activated. In the end it took me 14 years to track and kill that very last bug. ;)

STS: since you returned in 2012 you have been pretty active on the Falcon, bringing us a lot of games but also great invitations and demos. Were they started years ago and put on ice? I cannot believe you coded Beats of Rage or Racer 1 and 2 within only a couple of years!

Thadoss: when I first owned a Falcon back in the 90s I did not really use it to code, besides most of my floppies from that time are long time dead. Already in 2008 I started back from scratch when I worked on Hatari. It made me learn a lot of things not to forget that I had spare time and no time constraint so that I took on me to create a clean work environment and also optimized display routs for true colour gfx. One good point is that these libraries could be used in other projects instead of having to code the same things again and again.

When I get involved in a project, motivation is my daily fuel and I like doing things properly and to the final point. Also I really want to support the Falcon, it is a great computer that deserves more than what has been done. It can do great things (DSP and 2 clock cycle mutliplication) but also limits (16 bit bus) that force me to optimize my code but brings great results. Last but not least the ATARI community is such a great place to belong to, it’s like a second family to me.

Another reason why my productions are released on a regular basis can be explained by them being presented at another Sillyventure, hence the compulsory deadline I need to work with. Once a prod is released I can peacefully move onto another project for the following edition. My work experience brings a true plus here as I am used to deliver projects on due time (even though some people may add “with the usual delay”;).

Also I don’t sleep a lot every night what gives me extra time to code and carry experiments.

STS: of course I am not a coder but I have watched all your demos and I feel really impressed. Some silly questions come to my mind like: how do you manage to squeeze so much out of a standard Falcon? Do you make full use of the DSP especially with the 3D parts? Are you a wizard? 

Thadoss: Lol. No, I am not a wizard but I am driven by passion and greed for knowledge. I love facing new challenges (juggling, unicycling, playing the guitar, coding a DSP emulator with C…). I don’t like giving up, I am stubborn and keep working until I manage to reach my goal (I hate starting something then being forced to stop development before the end). No secret here, simply a lot of time spent on the keys, I try a lot of different things and I don’t mind recoding an effect that I am not fully satisfied with.

For istance in Taedium Vitae I had coded a first version of the flight over a lava landscape only using the 68030 CPU but I could not even display one frame per second (fps). Then I recoded the effect with the DSP, it took me a week or so, and I could reach 4fps. Months later I managed to optimize, sometimes even rewrite my code until the final version came to life, running at about 13 fps. The effect was also improved, allowing to fly up and down and adding curves too.

No magic here, a lot of time and attempts and that goes for every effect coded.  Another ingredient is of course dedication and love.

STS: before we move onto part 2 of this interview is there anything you would like to add? You seem pretty humble and discreet, we seldom meet you in parties, any reason why?

Thadoss: I agree with you here, I am a low profile type of person. That’s just the way I am. I don’t spend that much time on social networks yet I love having talks with other Atari fans. I am pretty active when it comes to forums like Atari.org, Yaronet and Hatari. 

I have visited every Sillyventure winter edition since 2012 and this is my only attendance to a demoparty. Living in Brest (west coast of France) makes travelling a bit difficult over a simple weekend. However I enjoy having a beer with community people at the party. This is also an opportunity to meet and talk other fans in real life, as opposed to messages on forums.