This saddens me. The idea of the demoscene really resonated with me, and I was curious about making stuff and joining.
The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
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Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
#12The EFF types and HN reader types are also dying subcultures.
Across the world the balance between conformism and dissent is getting heavily tipped toward the conformism. Subcultures that are dissent from the mainstream cultures are thus getting toned down.
Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
#13This saddens me. The idea of the demoscene really resonated with me, and I was curious about making stuff and joining.
Then go and do it. As the article says, a lot of the scene is very open to newcomers today.
Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
The vim and emacs guys had to join forces to flame the greater evil - Electron-based editors.
And they’ve lost. Everyone and their cousin uses Electron editors while showing up to FOSDEM on their MacBooks to discuss kernel development. It’s already long over. We’re just starting to notice. The EFF is baffled - why do they yell in a void now, when just a decade ago they stopped SOPA/PIPA with dramatic effect? The free internet and the communities that support it have lost their voice and their cultural support…
Vim and emacs have definitely lost the main mindshare, but development on those projects is still very strong. Their main focus has never been on mass adoption, so how can you really compete with projects whose main goal is to eat the world?
Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
#15"The scene is dead" has become a meme by now. For example the "new talent" Meteoriks award is introduced with "For a scene that has been dead since 1999, our walking dead are pretty fresh".
It is well alive. Sure, we still see some of the same people from 1989, and the average age is certainly going up, but it absolutely doesn't mean we aren't seeing new blood. Styles change, technical achievement is usually seen in the sizecoding or "wild" competitions, while PC demos tend to be more cinematic and focused on art. We are seeing new things, like livecoding shaders and fantasy consoles. Of course, the Amigas and other oldschool platforms are still there, with new tricks being discovered year after year.
There are still regular demoparties. Revision, the successor to Breakpoint and Mekka Symposium is doing well year after year. With the addition of some online events like Lovebyte.
Things come and go, but there is no sign of the scene really being dead. Heck, we even seen older demosceners bring their children to the parties, with some of them already doing cool stuff.
Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
#16"The scene is dead" has become a meme by now. For example the "new talent" Meteoriks award is introduced with "For a scene that has been dead since 1999, our walking dead are pretty fresh". It is well alive. Sure, we still see some of the same people from 1989, and the average age is certainly going up, but it absolutely doesn't mean we aren't seeing new blood. Styles change, technical achievement is usually seen in…
Exactly; it’s like model railroads or stamp collecting. Never truly dead!
(I mean this with deep sarcasm.)
Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
#17I was just walking down demoscene memory lane yesterday. Some of my favorite demoscene demos were Amiga ones (playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPdB_zdyMbM&list=PLwds84NCmJ...), which lead me to "The Greatest Video Game Tech Demo Ever," Shadow the Beast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovwFjgAFhOs
That video's great because it breaks down how Psygnosis managed to get 12 layers of parallax scrolling at 50fps and 128 colors on-screen. I never really loved the game as much as (say) Blood Money, but it was an awesome accomplishment in the same way demoscene demos were!
Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
#18I would love more outlets for creative coding, I feel like neocities is a bit like that. That said there isn't really a scene or real sense of community (AFAIK). I mean someone liked something I uploaded once, but I never interacted with them again. Cohost had fun vibes like that as well, but I guess it's no longer with us. Same with Glitch, but admittedly I didn't use it in the last few years, but it was my go to op…
HTML in the Park is one of my favourite events in Toronto! Great crowd, I highly recommend attending yours or setting one up if nobody runs one.
Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
#19Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright
#20Seems the modern corollary to the demoscene is TouchDesigner programming. I always thought it would be such a neat thing for demosceners to jump to TD and work with other forms of art like live dance and live music. The fact you can have body tracking, hand gesture recognition and also have it react to sound seems like the next step in demoscene stuff.