Toxic Zombies history--11/1/93
By: Pallbearer

[6/20/95--This history is quite old and you can debate whether the
"Toxic Zombies" exist at all as a group--demowise--nowadays because of
our lack of productions.  Everyone is doing their own thing these days--
from me with the FREEDOM and ESCAPE CD's, to Dana (Webfoot) who runs a
software company, to Krister (Swellow) who coded a game called TwinBlok, to
Pascal who still does coding, to Jason who still composes cool music.  We
are still out there as individual zombies.  Read on for the little history
we do have, or did have back in 1993.]

So, you want to know "all" about the Toxic Zombies? Well, it all started
slightly over a year ago though the exact date remains unknown.

After I (Pallbearer) started the internet demo site and showed my roommate
some of the amazing productions groups were doing he mentioned we should "do
a demo before we graduate." I though "no way" because that would require a
lot of time and programming skills--we were lacking in both. My roommate
reminded me we just took a C programming course and we could program in C. I
laughed and said we do not know anything about graphics, scrolls, or how to
do special effects. Worse yet was that we did not even have the any "C"
programming help guides besides the book we used in the class. Somehow or
another, I gave in and said yes, lets do it.

At that point we decided we needed a name. That afternoon/evening we each
jotted down some possible group names. We discussed the possibilities and
arrived with "Toxic Zombies"--a name I had on my list. Though the arrival of
a name is not that significant I do remember how I came up with our name. I
decided to go through a zine like "Maximum Rocknroll" and the group name
"White Zombie" rang a bell. So I kept the Zombie and though of something I
could add to the name to make it more vicious (aka cool). Maybe it was the
movie "Toxic Advenger" or perhaps the air quality that day which allowed me
to come up with the "Toxic" part of our name. I then added Toxic to Zombie(s)
and added the name to a list of other candidates. Toxic Zombies won in the
voting/discussion.

Joe (aka Slam) got started on the C programming for our first demo. He sort
of used DEA's "Lamer" demo (written in Pascal) as motivation--think about it
for a second; if DEA could write a demo that good in Pascal then we should be
able to do equally as well with C right? So our thinking was a little off
mark and Slam's first demo attempts--scrolls/copper bars--ended up being more
of a super lamer demo (even worse then "Genocide"). We definitely needed help
if we wanted to create a demo before graduating in about seven months.

When we started Slam was considered more of a coder when our group started
but he ended up contributing art--the first logo--for the UNDEAD demo. I, on
the other hand, scratched my head and decided I would undertake the
PR/writing tasks for the group. I released our demo to 15 groups through the
mail and sent a press release to a few popular computer magazines.
"Boardwatch" actually published part of my press release (August 93). "Dr.
Dobbs Journal" almost printed an article I wrote for them while I hear "Game
Players PC Entertainment" will be printing an article explaining demos
(NOV/DEC 93). [***AND they did print the article***]

[See boardw.txt for the "Boardwatch" article, ddj.txt for the article I wrote
for "Dr. Dobbs Journal" which never got used, and pc_ent.txt for the "Players
PC Entertainment" article I had a little to do with.]

Thanks to my internet maintainer status I met Pascal (aka WildCoder) after he
responded to a demonews file I wrote. Though a bit far away in France
WildCoder was such a good Assembly programmer we had to have him on board. He
had a demo, which was originally an Amiga demo, that he had re-programmed to
work on an IBM. Through many delays this eventually became our first
demo/intro some six months later!  Yes, UNDEAD was about 6 months in the
making and the long ass TEXT scroller is probably the longest scroll text
in the PC demo scene--it takes over 30 minutes to fully read!

Another member, Dana (Webfoot) mentioned she was interested in doing demos
and was forming a group. When I saw some of her art I decided to ask her to
join--as we needed an artist--and have her group could join the Toxic Zombie
crew. Webfoot, from Chicago, joined and though quite busy working on an
advanced degree she was able to do the final graphic logo in the Undead demo
and write a little scroll text.

Our musicians Adam from Utah (Dr. Hard Ass) and Jason from Indiana (Jaz)
mentioned music to me via E-mail. After they expressed interest I asked them
to join up since we need some musicians. Jaz, who prefers the ease of
creating MIDI tunes, created the MODS which can be heard in our UNDEAD demo.

Another of our coders is Krister (Swellow) from Sweden. He sent some pretty
decent (and quick) code our way--vector/space--so we decided to bring him on
board. Swellow has been involved in making a breakout game which I suspect
has been released by now. [UPDATE:  It has been two years since then and
the game will be out by the time you read this, in fact, it may be on this
CD.]

Seap (?) for Denmark is our newest member whom WildCoder got to join after
seeing his vector source. Seap, an ex-Amiga coder, is already excelling on PC
code and should prove to be an asset to the Toxic Zombie crew. [UPDATE: Seap
stayed on for awhile then joined Surprise! Productions.]

That is all Toxic Zombie members though some new ones may join and older ones
(like Slam) will vanish by the time you see this. Like many demo groups a
problem that plagues us most is the "work" everyone has to do which leaves
little time for demos. One thing is for sure and that is we are all in the
group if we want to be and no one has been kicked out--maybe forgotten due to
lack of contribution but not kicked out. We tend to take a less serious
attitude toward demo coding.

During the Summer of '93 Dr. Hard Ass, WildCoder, and I attended Assembly
'93. Though we did not contribute anything besides to the mess we had fun
meeting people and seeing how competitions unfold. I highly recommend
attending to anyone within striking distance. Our travels took us from Paris,
France through Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, to Kerava Finland. The
seven day 4000km round-trip journey was quite the adventure.

[See asm93rpt.txt for the report I did for Mayhem magazine.  Also check out
asm93.txt as it contains my journel of the ASSEMBLY 93 journey.  There is
also a video tape of the journey which Dr. Hard Ass took.]

For now though, our adventure must conclude but we will continue to live on
via our demos. On that note, be sure to pick up our first demo/intro UNDEAD
and the demo disk mag MAYHEM which I worked on. As for future productions you
will just have to wait and check the boards where our demos can be found.
Spasm-o-Tron (514) 744-5718. Now, if only I could remember the other numbers.

Greetings to: Avlanache, BSD, Digital Infinity, Epical, Extreme, Future Crew,
Iguana, Imphobia, Public NMI, TSG, VLA, Witan, and all my friends on the
internet.
