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************************************************** THE ANCIENT TEMPLE
################################################### F.A.Q. V1.01 [16-OCT-98]
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by Manni Schneiderbauer (Icey or Ice-T / TAT) (tat@manni.org, manni@utopia.or.at)
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I. INTRODUCTION
II.1. How many members did TAT really have?
II.2. Who were some key members of TAT?
II.3. When and by whom was TAT as The Ancient Temple founded?
II.4. Who were the founder members of TAT?
II.5. Out of which reasons TAT choosed such a long and strange name?
II.6. How old were TAT's members?
II.7. Is it true, that TAT was also active on Amiga?
II.8. What was the reason for the Austrian central section of TAT to quit their
activities after releasing Air Dance 4?
II.9. What was this internal war about, and what did it result in?
II.10. What was the true reason for the fact that Air Dance V never was released?
II.11. Were there different demo-producing sections of TAT?
II.12. Did TAT really use ripped codes in their demos?
II.13. Which trends, generally spoken, in the C64 demo scene did TAT initiate,
or participate in their initiation?
II.14. Where do some of the TAT demos have their strange names from?
II.15. Does TAT have any plans for the future?
II.16. What else did TAT do than producing demos and cracking games?
II.17. Are there any current C64 related activities of TAT?
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I. INTRODUCTION
This FAQ answers the most common questions about The Ancient Temple (TAT),
the well-known Commodore 64 demo group.
From time to time the FAQ will be extended, as questions from people all
over the world appear.
You can find the history of TAT, the TAT member list, and other relevant
informations on http://tat.manni.org.
This FAQ was created and is maintained by one of the former and founder
members, Icey (once known as Ice-T of TAT).

II.

1.
Q: How many members did TAT really have?
A: The exact amount is still unknown. Known are 43 up to now, but there might still be some
more. Check back here frequently, since the FAQ will be updated when new facts appear.

2.
Q: Who were some key members of TAT?
A: Key members of TAT have been Apollo-1 (for founding), C.A.T. (for coding
the most stunning routines), Mr Watson (for being the key coder for the
Air Dance demo series), and Ayatollah (a.k.a. PeeWee, for bringing the
illegal section of TAT to the top).
Other members playing key roles have been Rough (for being the major swapper and
holding many contacts) and former The Force members 'Air Design' (Zagor, Zoris, GI909)
(for enabling a higher graphics standard in TAT's demos),

3.
Q: When and by whom was TAT as The Ancient Temple founded?
A: TAT was founded in late 1988 or early 1989 (the exact date is not known anymore)
by Hotline member Apollo-1 and CyberPunk members Mr Watson and Powerlord
(later known as Ice-T, Icey).

4.
Q: Who were the founder members of TAT?
A: The founder members were Apollo-1, Ice-T, Mr Watson and The Bad One. A few weeks
after TAT was founded, another small local crew joined TAT. This crew consisted
of BoBo, C.A.T., CBM and Phil who so were, in a way, founder members as well.

5.
Q: Out of which reasons TAT choosed such a long and strange name?
A: The "first" TAT was actually founded earlier than 1989 by Apollo-1.
In these times, "TAT" stood for "The Apollo-1 Team". Due to the fact that
people in the region already knew the expression "TAT", CyberPunk and
The Apollo-1 Team decided to keep "TAT" as short form for their new group.
So three words had to be found that fitted the letters "TAT". There had
been alternatives like "The Altitude Tower", "The Austrian Team" and some
others. In the end, "The Ancient Temple" appeared as the most 'reasonable'
name for the group. Later, the group built their image on their name,
playing with expressions like "The Gods of The Ancient Temple" and so on.
Keep in mind that they've been young...

6.
Q: How old were TAT's members?
A: There has been quite an age mix in TAT. The youngest member TAT ever had
was GNU, a graphician from Germany. He was 13 years old when he joined the group.
The oldest member was apparently Apollo-1, who had already been 22 when
The Ancient Temple was founded. The average age of TAT's members has been 15
to 19 years.

7.
Q: Is it true, that TAT was also active on Amiga?
A: Yes. TAT had an Amiga section between 1989 and 1991. The Amiga section was
mainly held by Sir, who was a coder, a graphician, but mainly a musician.
Sir created many excellent MOD tracks during this time and also two TAT demos have been
released on Amiga. These demos have been produced by Sir all-alone.
Also, in two TAT C64 productions the Amiga was used to support the creation:
-For "Awakening" (1993) a two-minutes four-coloured vector movie
was rendered on Amiga and then converted and transferred to the C64.
-For "Air Dance V" (never released), another two-minutes movie of a significantly
better quality was rendered on Amiga, converted and then transferred to the C64.
-Ice-T used to draw graphics on Amiga and then to transfer them to the 64 because of
the more sophisticated editing possibilities on Amiga.

8.
Q: What was the reason for the Austrian central section of TAT to quit their activities
after releasing Air Dance 4?
A: The main reason was simply the lack of time all members had. Some started to study,
others to work. Partially also the internal war in TAT was a reason.

9.
Q: What was this internal war about, and what did it result in?
A: The war in TAT started out of a personal quarrel between Ayatollah and Ice-T.
It resulted in Ice-T temporarily quitting all C64 activities, and with Ice-T also
all members he held the contact to left the group. It also resulted in a move of
TAT's basic intentions away from the demo / legal crew to the illegal crew.
Later, Ice-T re-joined and further demos were created by the Austrian section.
The last demo created by the Austrian section was "Awakening" in 1993. Later, a
sequel to the Air Dance series should follow. Its name was "Air Dance V", and it
was partially finished and running, but it was destroyed before it could
be finished and released.

10.
Q: What was the true reason for the fact that Air Dance V never was released?
A: Up to now, all people were told that an accident happened to the discs with the
source codes. The truth is, that C.A.T., a militant non-smoker, destroyed all
Air Dance V source codes as an act of revenge when Ice-T smoked a cigar at 1995's
new year's evening. (But this is long forgotten and never was the reason for a fight
between C.A.T. and any TAT member).

11.
Q: Were there different demo-producing sections of TAT?
A: Yes. There was the Austrian section of TAT. All major TAT productions
have been released by the Austrian section, i.e. the Air Dance series and the
Mega Blast series. Then there were the Dutch and the British sections of TAT,
who produced merely 'standard' demos, such as intro and music collections.

12.
Q: Did TAT really use ripped codes in their demos?
A: Yes. In fact, when TAT started to code they used many ripped routines in their demos.
Some of these demos even consisted only of together-linked ripped routines.
Even in "Air Dance", a ripped scroll text routine is contained. "Air Dance" was TAT's
breakthrough and first "real" demo. It was the last demo where ripped routines
were used. All further productions were entirely coded by TAT members or cooperating
friends.

13.
Q: Which trends, generally spoken, in the C64 demo scene did TAT initiate, or participate
in their initiation?
A: -TAT invented the long and scenic intro part to trackmos and multi-part demos.
-TAT was the second group ever to use FLI graphics in a demo.
The MFLI full screen picture appeared in the introduction part of 'Softpizza'.
-TAT was the first group to use SEG (Sprite Enhanced Graphics) in a demo.
SEG was used to display a 96 pixels wide area either with all 16 colors to be used
without any limitations (sprites overlaying a multicolor bitmap) or to enhance the
resolution to hires, adding color to a hires bitmap. A SEG editor and converter had
been written by C.AT.
-TAT was the first group to use IRQ fastloaders in all their multi-part demos.
In the later productions, TAT sometimes used to integrate the loaders into the demo parts
themselves to 'swap' the memory in the background.
-TAT was the first group to produce disturbtion- and sometimes also lag-free shifts
between their demos' parts.
-TAT was the second group ever to produce a mag ("Magnetic Dreams", together with Magnetix).
-TAT invented the advanced block compressed animation (based on the principle later known
as MPEG).
-TAT was one of the pioneers of digi music sequencing in demos.
-TAT was the second group ever to use FLP effects in their demos.
'Softpizza' was the second demo ever to present a fullscreen FLP show, turning a 4-color
charset image (packed into two charsets) around its x-axis, zooming and varying the vertical
line positions of the image. Fast 4-color and 16-color zoom routines have been programmed
by C.A.T. for the never released 'Air Dance V'.
-TAT was the first group to have a female table dancer / stripper on their party
appearing at midnight. ;-)

14.
Q: Where do some of the TAT demos have their strange names from?
A: -"Air Dance" is the name of a novel the protagonist in Stephen King's "Salem's Lot"
is reading. Since Ice-T was a big S.K. fan, this name was choosed.
Also the dancing and spinning TAT logo as the heart of the Air Dance series implied
"dancing through the air". Today, Mr Watson owns a firm he called 'Air Dance'
(http://www.airdance.at).
-"Softpizza" does not have any special meaning. It should implicate that the demo
was easy to consume and very enjoyable, like a slice of pizza.
-"Visitation" meant that the demo was mainly coded during a visit at member Rough's
place.
-"Milchpause" (German for milk break) was named after the intro part that showed
an analyzer, consisting of milk glasses, the milk level going upwards and downwards.

15.
Q: Does TAT have any plans for the future?
A: Some. Demo releases are not planned, but things being planned are:
-A TAT revival meeting for all ex-members in Innsbruck/Austria somewhen in the future
where old friends ofcourse also are invited. No time schedule yet.
-TAT's internal tools which were never given to the public, such as a SEG editor,
various other graphics editors, notemakers, an advanced tool to create compressed
real-time loaded and displayed animations, and a graphics transfer and conversion
tool between C64 and Amiga are planned to be released via TAT's web site.
-The collection of TAT files on the web site should significantly grow soon since
British ex-member Case will provide all the missing British TAT demos and intros.
-A collection of TAT's intros is planned to be released on the web site.
For further informations please check frequently the web site at http://tat.manni.org.

16.
Q: What else did TAT do than producing demos and cracking games?
A: There have been activities besides, such as
- developing miscallenous graphics and coding tools
- developing a serial connectivity system between Amiga and C64 to transfer and convert
graphics from one system to the other, including special modes such as FLI
- developing a system called DEOS which was actually used in 'Air Dance V' and
which should have been made public. DEOS, developed by Mr Watson, stands for
'Demo Operating System' and was a system to load and swap memory content in the background
to make continuous trackmo shows possible.
- developing an adventure game called 'John Sinclair und die Alten der Berge', which was
produced on three systems: PC, Amiga and C64. On all three systems there have been playable
demo versions. The C64 version used almost photorealistic interlaced SEG graphics of a never
before seen quality which have been digitized on and converted from Amiga. Unfortunately,
TAT did not get the contract to finish the game and so the production was stopped in 1993.

17.
Q: Are there any current C64 related activities of TAT?
A: Some former TAT members are still active in other groups, such as Chromance and TRC/Success.
Icey maintains the TAT web site and archive and will start a radio show on a public access
station in Innsbruck in the second quarter of 2000. The show will be SID related, similar to
KDVS' 6581 SID with Hard Hat Mack (http://www.kdvs.org). It will be broadcast one hour weekly
on Radio Freirad (http://www.freirad.at), 105.9 MHz in the Innsbruck area, in German language.
Probably a real audio server or at least an online archive will be available.
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-> Created 1998 by tat@manni.org <-