Handle : Fable Fox
Name : Azhar Mat Zin
Other Handle : Maniac Wolf
E-mail : fablefox at fablefox dot com
My name is Azhar Mat Zin and I’m a book writer. I have a lot of other hobbies, including but not limited to game programming, 3d animation, 2d graphics and music.

This is the about page. For portfolio, go to the Portfolio page.

I don’t want to be the best in all, although if I can, that’s would be cool.

I just want to enjoy it all. Life is short, I might spent it doing what I want.

Writing

Fable Fox enjoys reading and writing ever since he was just a child. Reading english children book fascinates him. Even the graphics looks cool. There was this book about children stories that have different artist work for different story amazes him. It was like being transported into another world, Alice in the Wonderland style. It is quite ironic that writing is the last thing he actually do seriously, despite being the first thing he actually enjoy.

Back to the root, so to speak.

Programming

First introduced to GWBasic at Form 1 (age 12), Fable Fox totally hooked, looking at how the computer responded to his every command. “Even a person with a brain can’t do this!” he joked and being sarcastic at the same time, referring to a lot of certain type fo people around him who just don’t listen (or think for that matter).

“I wanna make a game like Mario World 3″ That was his second line of word. This refer to one of the games he played on the NES.

Game Programming

Like writing, game programming allow him to create worlds and later roam in it. Contacting Epic MegaGames and received GPE (Game Programming Encylopedia) a two disk set of compressed text tutorials on game programming for DOS, eccelerates this vision. Despite small in size, GPE actually covers most of the important thing in those days, including joystick, sound, mouse, ModeX and other.

Trivia : His first NES game is Contra. The tune is soo good, he want to makes music too. Sometimes he uses the level change cheat and win level 8 just to listen to the ending music.

Trivia : His older brother bought 3D Game Creation System by Pie In The Sky in it’s early days. With The Dark Heart of Uukrul being one of his favourite game, he decided to make a remake. After realizing it’s going to take a long time, he decided to create a FPS first so that money can be used to fund his original project later. He did managed to create a 2 level demo game for a FPS game titled ‘Hostage’. Important exam came, and so does Windows95 – and both changes everything.

Demo Scene

One day when he returned from school, his older brother show him something on the PC, a demo called Crystal Dream. Followed by Panic by Future Crew, and Second Reality, also by Future Crew. He tried to follow the demo scene as close as he can get, and contributing to the popular disk mag HUGI (http://hugi.scene.org) whenever he has the chance. But not rich enough to go to the demo parties, or have the latest computer hardware, it doesn’t mean much. Usually he can only watch a demo after it’s like 2 years old.

Music Composition

Nope. He didn’t wish to be a musician because he watched a rock concert. Or the lavish lifestyle of a popular girl singer. He just goes “Woot! Woot! I can make music using all type of musical instrument without knowing how to use any of them! Or write a notation either! Or having to play the instrument all over again just for a small mistakes!”

Yes, Scream Tracker 3.2 released by Future Crew (written by Sami Tammilehto) is cool at the time.

Trivia : Yes, you can still find Scream Tracker on the net and run it using DOSBox, a DOS emulator. Fable Fox still listen to MODs using FT sometimes just for nostalgia sake.

Trivia : One of the modules he listen to using FT was a module called greenslv.mod. He really love the song very much and listen to it every year. Only much much later (like 2002) he realized that it’s a folk song called Green Sleeve (instead of just a song that a tracker made). In 2006, he found out that Green Sleeve is in public domain, and decided to use this song as Fable Fox theme.

3D Animation

He never watched early Pixar animation. But by the time Toy Story first came out, he already love it very much and thinking of doing the same thing, one year before.

“And I’m your host, Lance Boyle!” Do you remember this line. I’m sure you do. The game title is Mega Race. The game is both beautiful, fast paced, and fun. It’s more arcade-ish than realistic, but totally fun.

There is another game that lead Fable Fox to really love 3d animation. Lost Eden by Cyro. Simplistic game play, but the images are superb. The snow at ending credit just plain awesome (at it’s time, or even at today standard).

Sadly, he never had the chance to play Myst or Zork Nemesis. Come to think of it, he never had the chance to play any of Myst game. Maybe one day when he get a little bit richer, he’ll look for original CDs on e-bay.

He read reviews about The Journeyman Project, again, never had the chance to play any game in the series.

However, he managed to play The 7th Guest, which uses 3d animation to a degree.

Graphics

At first Fable Fox doesn’t actually enjoy graphics – they’re too serious, trying to look like reality. Therefore it’s boring, just like reality. However, as he read children book one after another that has graphics of different type of style, and imagination, his imagination too runs wild.

Other Trivia about Fable Fox:

Mean Street’s “They’re in my head!” was the first time he listen to a digitized speech from a PC Speaker (without a sound card, mind you) and it give him nightmares. He and his brother loves to do research, and found about the software called Monologue later.

His first PC can’t write to disk, which the reason why the shop willing to sell it cheap. As it turn out by reading a book and doing some digging, the cause of this problem is spider web on the read / write LED. A cotton bud dipped in cleaning alcohol solve the problem.

Trivia : However waiting for the book to arrive (ordered from The Computer Book Club of America, no less – mind you) takes time, and by then he become good at programming as he has to retype everything all over again just to see how it run.

Trivia : Andre LaMothe first book “Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus”, if not mistaken, ordered from the same club too.

Trivia : There was this funny story. Fable Fox stuck at The Dark Heart of Uukrul, at the last moment of the game. Actually, the “stuck” location is Black Pool, which is in the first quater of the game. But you can keep on playing and forget about the rod until the last moment. So he wrote a letter asking for hint to BroderBund. And yes, BroderBund replies with all secrets about the game. But what is the funny part? Well, he got the address on a photocopied manual, and he was playing the “3rd world country” version of the game – not knowing what is piracy means as he is young (not many people understand this at that time either as computer industry among general user is still early at that time). Now that he wins the game, he decided to return the favour by buying a silver handycraft, a model of WAU (Malaysian traditional kite) as a gift to BroderBund. He hope the people at BroderBund still keep it. It’s quite sad that he lost the hint many years later, as no matter how deep he searches Google, no one has posted a walkthrough that contains all the secrets.

There is another joke. If you ever play the game, you will realize the year it was made is 1990. He did this in 1994. BroderBund customer service is simply awesome! Woot! Woot!

Hacking

Fable Fox is a fan of Phrozen Crew, Razor 1911, CIA (especially the keyboard caper), Hybrid, CORE and many other. He is, however, hates piracy.