pouët.net

I guess it might be a nice idea to kick off a new thread group on finding scene people... I've been looking for some people for a long time before finding them (or giving up), and the demodvd folks have, no doubt, done a lot of the same to get permissions etc.

Anyway, Denthor / Asphyxia; rasmus/loonies asked about him on this thread, and I did a brief google search. He does seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
- Author of these tutorials
- The tutorials say his real name is Grant Smith from Kloof, Natal (at least when the tutorial was written, which is 1999 or most likely much earlier)

Any other hints?

he didnt disapear from the face of the earth, ask some old school spanish sceners for his contact. in escena.org for example. jcl or astharoth probably have it.

or maybe im confusing denthor with derethor o_O
but im pretty sure they're both spanish and that astharoth has their contacts :D

the apparent realname 'grant smith' sounds very spanish to me at least!

hmm.. confirming some things makes me not that sure anymore :)

denthor is from south africa, not spain.

it is derethor who is from Spain.

the Scaling Bitmaps tutorial contains the date: 23-9-94. I remember some of these tutorials from SWAGS iirc. Goodies.

http://www.algonet.se/~afb/programming/jonny.html :)

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/grant-smith/12/b85/836

?

yeah, probably not the guy :(

"Outside of University has played for the South African National Hockey team."

I don't see why having once played hockey for South Africa would be incompatible with being a demoscener...

(well, apart from the whole 'doesn't play sport' geek stereotype obviously. But since we're talking about a financial controller who once played international hockey, I wouldn't say "financial controller who once played international hockey and wrote some coding tutorials" is *that* much of a leap.)

what gargaj said <3 <3 <3

Maali is also a hockey player, so it's indeed not much of a leap!

I often wondered what happened to Denthor too. I remember he resurrected his old series briefly and wrote 1 or 2 windows graphics programming tutorials. One of the things I liked best were the sign-offs, like the one above.

The last tutorial on gamedev is number 21, with a couple emails and a www address, but none of the servers seem to exist anymore.

As someone mentioned, Denthor did a couple windows tutorials, and the second one is dated 03/04/97, and has, as contact address, http://www.eze.co.za/denthor.. for which the server at least exists, but not the subdirectory.

His postal address is available, might be worth a try.

it's not like i'm desperately looking for him. i just remeber enjoying his tutorials (especially the stories :)

also, there was this guy "bas van gaalen" who did the gfxfx and gfxfx2 compilations of effects for the swag archives. i never heard of him in relation with demos etc.

Funny coincident. I have a few 2004 printouts of some of his 1994 tutorials floating around. Just read one at the doctor's a few weeks ago.

... coincidence even.

What we know so far name: Grant Smith
Nationality: South African
Birthdate: 16-04-75
Age: 35

I googled for that and I found this guy: http://www.facebook.com/people/Grant-Smith/611351562
...will anyone bother messaging him about his misterious past?

I can't really join in on this because it's before my demoscene time, but wow this is a cool thread :)

short hunt for bas van gaalen, he is here: http://webtweakers.com/page/nostalgia
and apparently only encountered the demoscene in the late 80s.

Those tutorials was kicking ass! Got my first introduction into the demo scene stuff with these, coding my first routines.