Cool idea, too bad it's not free software. It's less free than any software I've seen (explicitly saying that you can't use it for "settings where security is critical" -- something that doesn't even make sense from a software license perspective). It's like the "Good not Evil" line in the JSON license.
Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
41–50 of 154 posts
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
The C64 subset of the demoscene is still going if you want it.
That's a real challenge. :) My comment to Kristine has some other details on how we might do something between that and a full GPU.
If we go that way, a real challenge would be designing your own computer then making a demo to run on it.
Just because the tools are more capable doesn't mean the challenge is any less real or the result less impressive.
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
#43After viewing LFT's work in using an ATMEL microcontroller as a demoscene platform: http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/craft/index.php
...I had the thought a possible frontier in demoscene is make your own hardware out of discrete components to run your demo.
The MOnSter 6502 would count - http://monster6502.com/
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
#44[deleted]
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How much harder would it be if on a simple GPU from the late 90's It would be impossible since pixel shaders didn't exist until the 2000's ;-) As for software rendering: Since a pixel shader is essentially a program executed for every pixel, it's trivially portable to the CPU: Just turn it into a function and call it for every pixel on the screen. Making it fast is another matter altogether though.
Nitpicking: in the offline rendering world RenderMan had shaders ca. 1990[1], and graphics hackers got around to compiling those for research GPUs in the 90s too[2]. (Hardware had programmability equivalent to current shaders early as well [3], but no compilers for fancy shading languages) [1] https://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/bib/pdf/p289-hanrahan.... [2] http://www.cs.unc.edu/~olano/papers/pxflshading.pdf [3] h…
That's some neat stuff. Especially PixelFlow. It had some clever, architectural decisions in terms of memory and computing primitives. Such schemes are already re-appearing in deep learning chips with old work like this maybe having some ideas waiting to be re-discovered.
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you think that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computer_graphics
Sorry, I thought it was obvious, but the question is: Could procedural generation be used to achieve amazing compression rates given a currently impossible to code algorithm?
The difference between procedural generation and a video is similar to the difference between raster and vector graphics. Demoscene intros like this are more like your computer giving a live performance from scratch than playing a movie. Ideas like video compression don't really apply. They create 3D models and textures from simple math functions and filters, make a world from them, add more math functions for camera movements, and play some synthesized music that's more akin to MIDI than MP3 (to put it simply).
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a real challenge. :) My comment to Kristine has some other details on how we might do something between that and a full GPU.
If we go that way, a real challenge would be designing your own computer then making a demo to run on it. Just because the tools are more capable doesn't mean the challenge is any less real or the result less impressive.
I'm actually working toward that challenge. Well, that plus synthesis, verification, and analog tech to create it. Glad we agree on high end for a demo challenge. :P
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How much harder would it be if on a simple GPU from the late 90's It would be impossible since pixel shaders didn't exist until the 2000's ;-) As for software rendering: Since a pixel shader is essentially a program executed for every pixel, it's trivially portable to the CPU: Just turn it into a function and call it for every pixel on the screen. Making it fast is another matter altogether though.
"It would be impossible since pixel shaders didn't exist until the 2000's ;-)" Lmao. You got me there. "Just turn it into a function and call it for every pixel on the screen. Making it fast is another matter altogether though." I was imagining it took up many MB of memory and massive cycles even on a multicore CPU. Suddenly, one faces tough decisions about organization, resolution, primitives, techniques used, algor…
A soft renderer wouldn't fit in 4096 bytes, too. The overwhelming preference of the demoscene when doing PC filesize compos is to lean on OS provisions in order to free up space for more algorithms. Hence you have demos that use files in C:\Windows as source data. Likewise, you have demos for older computers that require aftermarket RAM upgrades and employ preprocessing techniques that require modern computing resources. In unrestricted compos modern game engines get employed these days, too, and while many of those entries suffer the downside of having a low entry bar, good work has been made too.
Pointing at the GPU as a particular cheat or a make-easy button is not relevant to the conversation, in this light. Having a Gravis Ultrasound was also a cheat back in the day ;) It's all fairly arbitrary stuff, and in the end, the point is to present something cool running on the hardware and within the nominal restrictions, even if you get tricky to do so.
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
#49For anyone interested/thinks this stuff is cool, the author of Elevated has made a website for experimenting with real time pixel shaders in WebGL: https://www.shadertoy.com/ Some pretty incredible things have been done there.
A friend of mine also has this project, http://shaderfrog.com/ Let's you experiment with and compose different shaders.
This is brilliant, I use shadertoy a bit to quickly test out where I've gone wrong in my fragment shaders (which is usually the whole thing).
This actually seems like it'll be much better for the job.
I'd love to see ISF export added too: https://www.interactiveshaderformat.com/spec
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released
#50Back in the day demos were more impressive imo. A lot of them now use direct x or opengl. For the most part the stuff you see isn't written by hand anymore AFAIK, they just have programs to generate the actual demo. Basically they use modeling programs.