In the 90s the demoscene was really quite exciting. Second Reality was groundbreaking and opened my eyes to what was possible on our pokey old 486s (plus it was awesome to show off to your friends). Going to demo events and realising there were plenty of fellow hackers in Australia doing cool stuff, and having a chance to hack along with them was also a lot of fun. Good times.
I remember the feeling I had when Unreal came out. I was hacking the VGA registers to optimize my bitblt to the maximum, all in assembler, and I felt I knew pretty well what was going on inside my computer. Then I ran this demo and it did stuff that I knew wasn't possible with my hardware. Quite mind blowing..
The Demoscene -- an Overview
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Re: The Demoscene -- an Overview
#12Some recent PC demoscene stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON4N0yGz4n8
Re: The Demoscene -- an Overview
#13The problem is that everyone doing demoscene stuff got jobs and is getting paid for it now. Look at crysis, etc. No one cares about programming dick waving contests anymore, it's all about who can get a job at Microsoft. If it doesn't benefit your resume, no one cares for it. I personally became a computer science major because I wanted to write demos. After about four years is when I really started to get it as far…
I got my first paid programming job without having studied, without any references but a video tape of one my old Amiga demos.
Re: The Demoscene -- an Overview
#14Some recent PC demoscene stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON4N0yGz4n8
Farbrausch's "debris." shows just how much you can pack into 200k (including the audio, btw). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqu_IpkOYBg&fmt=22
For the webby crowd: "Masagin" features animated, recursive SVGs with antialiasing and motion blur at high rez and high frame rate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbQhgEJuExY&fmt=22
Or, you could download both demos from http://pouet.net/ and run them on your own PC.
Re: The Demoscene -- an Overview
#15I used to help organise the (very small) demo scene in South Africa many years ago and it was so much fun. I recently watched some old classic favourites of mine and dang if the bug didn't bite me again. So now I'm working on my real instrument synthesizer that must fit into 16k. Pure asm, fourier transforms, impossible tricks - this is coding at it's most fun.
Re: The Demoscene -- an Overview
#16Some recent PC demoscene stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON4N0yGz4n8
Farbrausch's "debris." shows just how much you can pack into 200k (including the audio, btw). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqu_IpkOYBg&fmt=22 For the webby crowd: "Masagin" features animated, recursive SVGs with antialiasing and motion blur at high rez and high frame rate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbQhgEJuExY&fmt=22 Or, you could download both demos from http://pouet.net/ and run them on your own PC.
Two more by Farbrausch
the.popular.demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBpo5GHcmsE
and Candytron (64K) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGk_pF67gc
For some newer releases
blunderbuss by Fairlight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezltebzdgjI
is very different is style but still very cool and two post about the particle system behind the demo http://directtovideo.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/blunderbuss/ http://directtovideo.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/a-thoroughly-m...
Elevated by Rgba & TBC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWMGuh15nE
is a great example of what people can do in 4K, and they even have a presentation about the technical details http://iquilezles.org/www/material/function2009/function2009...
and
State of the Art by Spaceballs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5kuYfTCGLg is a highpoint of the amiga scene
(edited to add, which I should have clicked on the link to see it had already been embedded)
Re: The Demoscene -- an Overview
#17Some recent PC demoscene stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON4N0yGz4n8
Direct to Video have a post about the technical details if people are interested
http://directtovideo.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/agenda-circlin...
Re: The Demoscene -- an Overview
#18Growing up in the scene in the U.S. was quite hard. I was lucky to grow up on the East Coast where most of the little U.S. parties were in the 90s. Drove all the way up for NAID 95.
Good times.
It's been great to see the demoscene roar back to life these last few years....some amazing stuff to watch on http://www.demoscene.tv/
Re: The Demoscene -- an Overview
#19"The demoscene" can also refer to the largely overlapping subculture of tracker [1] musicians. There're a few well known electronic artists still using trackers today, like Venetian Snares [2], Bogdan Raczynski, and enduser. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker_(music_software) [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjAwxG3q3Yo
Writing music in trackers is like using a great programming language. A super fast way to get your thoughts into something you can listen to. I've never found a more efficient mechanism since.
Re: The Demoscene -- an Overview
#20There's something really beautiful about demos and the demoscene. I'm glad they're being preserved and seen as an art form, was afraid that they'd be forgotten.
The scene is remarkably strong today. It kinda died off in the late 90s but has really seen a strong resurgence I think. There's some amazing new stuff coming out these days.