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Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

creativeapplications.net

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Re: Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

#62

Post by sp332 »

rorrr wrote: post #60
haberman wrote: post #39

I'm pretty proud of my programming skills. I've worked in everything from assembly to JavaScript, JIT compilers to websites to large-scale, fault-tolerant distributed systems. etc. etc. But demoscene programming is still the one thing that leaves me totally in awe, feeling like I wouldn't even know where to start to achieve what these guys pull off. Even if I could imagine fitting all those drawing and sound generati…

Same here. 4096 bytes is just 64 lines of 64 characters. These guys are brilliant.

Well, ASCII characters use only 7 bits (the high bit is unset), so it's really ~73 lines of 64 characters. And if you limit to alphanumeric that's only 95 symbols, so 172 lines of 64 characters. :)

Re: Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

#63

Post by SpiderX »

haberman wrote: post #39

I'm pretty proud of my programming skills. I've worked in everything from assembly to JavaScript, JIT compilers to websites to large-scale, fault-tolerant distributed systems. etc. etc. But demoscene programming is still the one thing that leaves me totally in awe, feeling like I wouldn't even know where to start to achieve what these guys pull off. Even if I could imagine fitting all those drawing and sound generati…

Synchronizing with the music is easy if you generate the music yourself.

Re: Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

#64

Post by MaysonL »

haberman wrote: post #39

I'm pretty proud of my programming skills. I've worked in everything from assembly to JavaScript, JIT compilers to websites to large-scale, fault-tolerant distributed systems. etc. etc. But demoscene programming is still the one thing that leaves me totally in awe, feeling like I wouldn't even know where to start to achieve what these guys pull off. Even if I could imagine fitting all those drawing and sound generati…

Yeah - I thought I was doing fairly well back in the 70s when I wrote a (lossless) half-tone compression routine that got ~50% compression when there was only enough core [and some of the machines it ran on uses actual core] to hold one scan line. This stuff is amazing.

Re: Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

#65

Post by pnathan »

Note that if you crave this kind of world of limited resources and ingenuity for packing things very small, it still exists in a professional setting in hard real-time embedded systems.

I heard a story at my company about fixing a bug a couple years ago. Memory was full, so in order to do that, the engineers rewrote the UI messages to allow the extra instructions to fit into memory.

Re: Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

#66

Post by jlgreco »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #54

Well, colour me impressed. Interesting side note: demos tend to use music with pentatonic (ambient) or whole-tone (dreamy) scales. They’re easy to harmonise, which makes it easy to procedurally generate decent-sounding music.

When watching demoscenes these days I find myself always waiting for the dubstep 'drop'. Sadly I think modern music is starting to spoil this sort of thing for me.

Re: Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

#68

Post by pjscott »

maratd wrote: post #43
haberman wrote: post #39

I'm pretty proud of my programming skills. I've worked in everything from assembly to JavaScript, JIT compilers to websites to large-scale, fault-tolerant distributed systems. etc. etc. But demoscene programming is still the one thing that leaves me totally in awe, feeling like I wouldn't even know where to start to achieve what these guys pull off. Even if I could imagine fitting all those drawing and sound generati…

Have to start when you're young =) I'm in the same place as you. Pretty sure if I started doing it when I was 10, it'd be self-obvious by the time I turned 12.

Don't be intimidated! There are a lot of things you don't know about how to make demoscene-style programs, and the reason you don't know them is probably because you haven't tried to learn them yet. I'm pretty sure that if you start learning when you're n, a lot of things will seem self-evident when you're n+2.

Here's a series of really good blog posts from someone who decides to make a shiny procedurally-generated city. The result is an amazing how-did-he-do-that demo, but the steps he went through and the way he thought about the problem are understandable.

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2940

Re: Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes

#69

Post by randlet »

pjscott wrote: post #68
maratd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have to start when you're young =) I'm in the same place as you. Pretty sure if I started doing it when I was 10, it'd be self-obvious by the time I turned 12.

Don't be intimidated! There are a lot of things you don't know about how to make demoscene-style programs, and the reason you don't know them is probably because you haven't tried to learn them yet. I'm pretty sure that if you start learning when you're n, a lot of things will seem self-evident when you're n+2. Here's a series of really good blog posts from someone who decides to make a shiny procedurally-generated c…

This is a really great (well written, entertaining, informative, inspiring) series of articles about a guy programming just for the joy of it! Thanks for posting.
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