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The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

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Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

#41

Post by mlyle »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #16
GuB-42 wrote: post #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…

Exactly; it’s like model railroads or stamp collecting. Never truly dead! (I mean this with deep sarcasm.)

I think there's still people hacking around doing cool stuff.

Things like PICO-8, etc.

It's much harder to throw a big party these days in general, and especially so about technical niches. Hack Club is popular with youth, but much more about smaller gatherings.

Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

#42

Post by 7thaccount »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #16
GuB-42 wrote: post #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…

Exactly; it’s like model railroads or stamp collecting. Never truly dead! (I mean this with deep sarcasm.)

I went to a coin/stamp shop not too long ago to kill some time downtown and the guy said basically nobody cares about stamps anymore. Still plenty interested in coins.

Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

#43

Post by Sharlin »

joenot443 wrote: post #31
satisfice wrote: post #29

I didn’t know what the demo scene was before I read this. I still don’t. Is it hackathons?

The very broad definition is people who write artistic shaders frequently limited to a binary size, sometime 4kb, sometime 16.

That's a very narrow definition, really. In general demos have neither much to do with shaders (except insofar that you have to write shaders to do 3D on GPUs), nor are they size-limited in general; only certain subtypes are.

Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

#44

Post by tehjoker »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #9
jsheard wrote: post #7

Earlier 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…

Big tech no longer cares about appearing to be revolutionaries fighting for good and ppl are disillusioned

Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

#45

Post by bitexploder »

GuB-42 wrote: post #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…

Computing in general is /huge/ now. X is dying is funny in tech. By raw number of participants has it ever really changed? Take MUDs for example, I remember my MUD days. There are still hundreds of active MUDs. Is X really dying? Who knows.

Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

#46

Post by jsonc »

Much love for the demo scene, where it all began for me, pulling all nighters as a teenager writing 68k assembler in asmone on the amiga.. phreaking calls to euro BBS, writing trainers and intro for games, scanning 1800 numbers for diverters/PBX systems to exploit, pulling all your best assembler graphics routines together for your crew's newest demo for release at all-weekend demo/LAN parties.. normal teenage activities, right?! :D

Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

#47

Post by dfex »

trhway wrote: post #12
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #2

The 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.

This is actually really exciting - it means in somewhere in the next 5-10 years we'll inevitably (well, hopefully if the cycles of history are anything to go by) see a bunch of new dissenters rise up with their associated subcultures - and the mass diffusion of the Internet will help them find their people regardless of which country they live.

Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

#49

Post by esperent »

abnercoimbre wrote: post #24

The demo scene inspired me to keep my next‑gen terminal [0] tiny: it is under 5MB (Mac download was once 900 KB) and my aim is to get all downloads down to ~1MB. If demosceners can do it, regular indie devs really have no excuse. This scene isn’t dead; we should just look beyond 3D glitter. See File Pilot [1] for another compact, clever example. [0] https://terminal.click [1] https://filepilot.tech

> If demosceners can do it, regular indie devs really have no excuse.

Demosceners and indie devs are working under different constraints. For demosceners, the file size (4kb, 40kb, etc.) is the goal. For devs, especially those making a tool that you download and install, extreme size constraints seem unnecessary (although avoiding bloat is always good).

Instead, it seems to me that primary constraints for indie devs should be things like being easy to maintain, well documented, easy to use, easy to fix bugs, easy for other people to work on and extend. Small size should be a secondary target rather than primary.

Of course, one of the advantages of being indie is that you can set whatever constraints and targets you like for yourself.

Re: The demo scene is dying, but that's alright

#50

Post by roskoe »

In all fairness, the conditions that saw the demo scene rising are so remote to be almost incomprehensible to the new generation.

"You see, when a cracking crew beat the protection of a new game, they would upload their hacked version to an elite BBS and repackaged it with a little intro and a trainer. They had to be very creative and skilled, often working directly in assembler, in order to achieve impressive imagery and chip music while still fitting on the same 1.4MB floppy."

blank stare

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