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Writing a winning 4K intro in Rust

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Re: Writing a winning 4K intro in Rust

#2

Post by doctor_eval »

I learned programming on the TRS80, and didn’t know about the demo scene until I was already too busy with other parts of my life; I think I first saw a demo on the Amiga.

I always feel like I missed out on something transcendental. I think I would have leaned a huge amount. Instead I had to settle with hacking NewDOS/80 binaries.

I have a huge amount of technical respect for the people who do this stuff.

Re: Writing a winning 4K intro in Rust

#4

Post by mroche »

doctor_eval wrote: post #2

I learned programming on the TRS80, and didn’t know about the demo scene until I was already too busy with other parts of my life; I think I first saw a demo on the Amiga. I always feel like I missed out on something transcendental. I think I would have leaned a huge amount. Instead I had to settle with hacking NewDOS/80 binaries. I have a huge amount of technical respect for the people who do this stuff.

I didn't know it existed until ~October(?) last year. My $lastEmployer (animation studio) had a demo day where in-house people would demo some personal projects they were working as well as exhibit entrants' works to the actual demo scene. It was insane, I would never dream of being able to produce most of the things I saw. If I remember correctly we watched demos from the 4K category to the 1 or 4M category. Procedural graphics, audio, emulation, it truly is an art form.

Re: Writing a winning 4K intro in Rust

#5

Post by int_19h »

Kinda surprised about iterators not getting optimized so well. Even in higher-level languages, this is a commonly utilized optimization opportunity - e.g. the C# compiler will replace a foreach-loop over an array with an identical (but faster) for-loop.

Re: Writing a winning 4K intro in Rust

#6

Post by dpc_pw »

int_19h wrote: post #5

Kinda surprised about iterators not getting optimized so well. Even in higher-level languages, this is a commonly utilized optimization opportunity - e.g. the C# compiler will replace a foreach-loop over an array with an identical (but faster) for-loop.

Compiler optimizers are full of surprises going both ways: good and bad. And details like this can probably change from version to version and get affected by compiling options. I would also expect that performance is higher priority than code size, generally, so missed opportunities like this might go unnoticed and unaddressed a long time if they don't show up on performance benchmarks.

Re: Writing a winning 4K intro in Rust

#7

Post by fernly »

TIL: about the Demoscene[1], "an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audio-visual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual art, and musical skills. Demos and other demoscene productions are shared at festivals known as demoparties, voted on by those who attend, and released online."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene

Re: Writing a winning 4K intro in Rust

#8

Post by the_af »

fernly wrote: post #7

TIL: about the Demoscene[1], "an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audio-visual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual art, and musical skills. Demos and other demoscene productions are shared at festivals known as demoparties, voted on by those who attend, and released online." […

There is also an active demoscene for microcomputers of the 80s, such as the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum. And also people coding new games for them.

I'm glad these venerable computers live on.

Re: Writing a winning 4K intro in Rust

#9

Post by nkozyra »

doctor_eval wrote: post #2

I learned programming on the TRS80, and didn’t know about the demo scene until I was already too busy with other parts of my life; I think I first saw a demo on the Amiga. I always feel like I missed out on something transcendental. I think I would have leaned a huge amount. Instead I had to settle with hacking NewDOS/80 binaries. I have a huge amount of technical respect for the people who do this stuff.

I grew up on BBS (started dialing at age ~6)

There were only two types of programming that intimidated me so much I wouldn't even try: people writing languages from scratch and the demo scene people. I just sat back and said "nope, I'll never get there."

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