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Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)

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Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)

#71

Post by bayindirh »

Daneel_ wrote: post #15
routerl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demos of this caliber are like F1 cars from 60 years ago: a single genius, or small team, creating something totally beyond the reasonable expectations of everyone who is familiar with the technology in question. I really hope it continues to be possible for this art form to exist.

The most impressive one for me will always be fr-08, the .product, released in 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dcrV_7JpXQ Pouet link if you want the binary: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1221 It blew my mind when I first came across it in 2003, and it's still highly impressive even now.

When I watched the '.the .product', my perspective about the computers have shifted dramatically and permanently. I became an high performance programming (not in HPC sense) enthusiast, and decided that performance and optimization matters.

That path brought me to HPC, efficient and high performance programming and showed me how thinking about writing efficient code made a difference.

Yes, you can't arrive to demoscene level wizardy in every application/tool you write, but optimizing the obvious and then some changes things a lot.

Thinking about it again, possibly coming from C64 and early x86 hardware already primed me to "do more with less" mindset already, but '.the .product' get the things rolling.

Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)

#73

Post by twic »

routerl wrote: post #68
twic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most impressive for me, in a slightly different way, is A Mind is Born, because it manages to do some simple but impactful sound and video in 256 bytes, on a Commodore 64: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26511266

I still listen to that song just by itself. It's such an amazing demo.

I was at a film festival, and saw a short film about AI or something. The film used just the music for the end credits! I told the director i appreciated the reference, and he was amazed someone recognised it.

Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)

#74

Post by puddingcat »

bob1029 wrote: post #57
brodo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This demo marks the beginning of the SDF era in the demo scene. If you watch most demos from 2009 they still use solid geometry. elevated showed the superiority of just using fragment shaders for everything. By 2009 the GPUs where fast enough to do SDF and people had come up with the idea of ray marching.

Using SDFs and other pure maths to build these kinds of demos makes me wonder why we don't just build a whole game this way. Why not go one step further and just skip the geometry pipeline altogether? Most of the stuff I see on shadertoy has absolutely nothing to do with triangles.

Claybook[0] uses SDF throughout. I don't think any of the game is conventional poly-based geometry.

Having built with both SDF and conventional geometry, it's much easier to find excellent 3D modellers than it is to find people who can build with SDF though.

[0] https://ubm-twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/gdc2018/pres...

Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)

#75

Post by bob1029 »

puddingcat wrote: post #74
bob1029 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using SDFs and other pure maths to build these kinds of demos makes me wonder why we don't just build a whole game this way. Why not go one step further and just skip the geometry pipeline altogether? Most of the stuff I see on shadertoy has absolutely nothing to do with triangles.

Claybook[0] uses SDF throughout. I don't think any of the game is conventional poly-based geometry. Having built with both SDF and conventional geometry, it's much easier to find excellent 3D modellers than it is to find people who can build with SDF though. [0] https://ubm-twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/gdc2018/pres...

> it's much easier to find excellent 3D modellers than it is to find people who can build with SDF though.

Maybe we simply need to develop a more intuitive domain-specific language for artists to work at this level of abstraction? The benefits of working this way are incredible to me... Just in that one presentation you find quotes like:

  > Runtime performance not dependent on brush count
  > O(1) particleSDF collision detection
  > Perfect LOD

Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)

#76

Post by djmips »

jwatzman wrote: post #43
djmips wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully for the graphics the very person who did the graphics in this Elevated demo is very generous with their time. Inigo Quilez has many instructional videos on his channel in how to code procedural graphics from the very beginner to the advanced. I link a couple of examples. You can watch the more advanced video even as a beginner but trying yourself is easier at the beginner level. Beginner. https://youtu.be/…

Indeed his videos are amazing . My recommendation though would be to start with the "beginner" video -- which is completely 2D but at least gets some ideas across. Then watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGtv-dBi2wE which isn't his but introduces how you get 3D out of fragment shaders. Finally just drink from the firehose -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cfe5UQ-1L9Q is fantastic, yes it's five hours but worth it…

great! Thanks for your course!

Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)

#78

Post by tomcam »

npteljes wrote: post #72
tomcam wrote: post #34

Imagine if this beast did a “No Man’s Sky”-style game

Just in case you're interested, there's an FPS made with similar techniques, called .kkrieger. The game itself if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger

Astonishing. Thank you.
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