Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#121

Post by rzzzt » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 9:32 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #97

vardump wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a tracker module of some kind with very short looping samples, then yeah, it's a chiptune.

IMHO, a “chiptune” is music for an FM synthesis chip, like on the NES, the SID chip in Commodore 64, or the AdLib sound card for PC. A “mod” or “tracker music” is music made for a range of platforms in a rather narrow time-band, that could play digital samples, but could not reasonably store entire songs recorded digitally, like the Amiga, Atari ST, or early PC’s like 386s or 486s.

Neither the NES nor the SID employs FM synthesis. I'm not even sure what the collective noun is for these. Wikipedia tells me it's PSG (programmable sound generator).

The same behavior could be (also was) teased out of a MOD player if you choose samples with a handful of sample points, like 12. You could also draw up a sawtooth in paint and use that as a sample. These are down-to-earth honest true Scotsman chiptunes.

Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#122

Post by masternight » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 10:35 PM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #84

masternight wrote: post #27

Ah wow. I really enjoyed the demoscene back in the 90s. Was never a part of it but I was always fascinated by the effects and music and ascii art that these guys created. A BBS in my city always had the latest e-zines like Reality Check Network and Affinity, and others I forget. Reading up on the scene and about groups like Razor1911 was something I spent a lot of time on when I was younger. Amazing demo and homage t…

> I really enjoyed the demoscene back in the 90s. Was never a part of it but I was always fascinated by the effects and music and ascii art that these guys created. It was quite something... I take it there are quite a few hotshots on HN who used to be in the top groups. I was in a group and we were writing small intros for BBSes with a couple of friends and then we'd get infinite leech/upload ratio on those BBSes. B…

> I was in a group and we were writing small intros for BBSes with a couple of friends

Ah that would have been such an awesome time. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#123

Post by whizzter » Wed, Apr 08, 2026, 11:50 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #94

whizzter wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 megs is like 2005 era size :D , obvious that it's realtime stuff (and music is probably a significant fraction?).

> The Razor1911 zip[1] is 30MB, which actually is very much on the small side for a current-day demo. > and music is probably a significant fraction? For the Razor1911.exe in the ZIP which ends up being 31MB on disk, which is almost entirely made out of a compressed 145MB executable, whose size is mostly 48 PNG files (11MB), 69MB of zeros (nice?), 329 compiled DirectX shader blobs (DXBC) totaling 6MB, One large MP3 o…

Seems about right then, my guess was about a third for music, classic 128kbps mp3's are at about a meg a minute (960kb/m) so this is at a slightly higher bitrate. Not sure how compressible those parts are but between half and a third in the end depending on the final compressor checks out.

Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#124

Post by neonstatic » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 1:15 AM UTC

vardump wrote: post #88

neonstatic wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more appropriate term is "chiptunes". I also heard people refer to it as keygen music.

If it's a tracker module of some kind with very short looping samples, then yeah, it's a chiptune.

Right. Basically using simple waveforms either using samples or onboard chip like ZX Spectrum's. For tracker modules with more "normal" samples, we simply referred to them as modules or mods for short.

Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#125

Post by TacticalCoder » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 2:43 AM UTC

Narishma wrote: post #112

TacticalCoder wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an old MS-DOS .EXE. Actually it compiles with the ".286" directive too. So I don't use protected mode. It requires a VGA card and those were more common in 386 IIRC and, anyway, performance-wise to run at 60 Hz it needs a 386. I never tried to run it on a 286 with a VGA card: don't know if that was a thing. It's funny looking at that old assembly code and see ax, bx, cx, dx registers and not the eax, etc. ones.…

VGA was pretty common on 286, I even had an SVGA card on my own back in the day. And it also had protected mode but was still 16-bit.

> VGA was pretty common on 286, I even had an SVGA card on my own back in the day. And it also had protected mode but was still 16-bit.

Oh that's intriguing. Well I still have one, so now I'll have to find a VGA card and see if my code even works on a 286!

Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#126

Post by philxor » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 3:46 AM UTC

masternight wrote: post #27

Ah wow. I really enjoyed the demoscene back in the 90s. Was never a part of it but I was always fascinated by the effects and music and ascii art that these guys created. A BBS in my city always had the latest e-zines like Reality Check Network and Affinity, and others I forget. Reading up on the scene and about groups like Razor1911 was something I spent a lot of time on when I was younger. Amazing demo and homage t…

It is a great demo and really nostalgic. I was briefly a courier for Razor 1911 in the mid 90s. I recognize many of the handles throughout the demo and in the list at the end, and even BBS names if you slow down or pause some parts of the demo. So certainly brings back a lot of good memories. The music is great also.

Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#127

Post by SteltekOne » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 10:03 AM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #80

uzyn wrote: post #68

This is so sick! Revision faded out the credits part, which is still really cool on its own. The full version (10m 16s) can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AnbYNudAyM

Sadly, that full version isn't in 4K, unlike the submission. But this is Hacker News, we can do much better! Here is the actual binary: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=105954 Sadly I couldn't get it to work on Linux with Wine/Proton, like a lot of demos they seem to really be using less common paths, so of course it crashes.

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Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#128

Post by SteltekOne » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 10:14 AM UTC

tetrisgm wrote: post #2

Legendary demo group Razor 1911 submitted this beautiful demo as the closer for the Revision 2026 demo competition. It is an homage to 40 years of hacking from the group. For context, they were pioneers in both the demoscene and in the warez scene in the 80s-00s.

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Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#129

Post by SteltekOne » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 10:19 AM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #25

tetrisgm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: better answer below Idk what Revision actually enforces but that used to be the rule at Assembly. For the 1k, 4k, retro systems etc it’s specified!

Revision had no maximum filesize in the demo compo.

Demos were limited to 2GiB. Size-coding competitions, like PC Intros, were of course limited to the size of their respective category (256 Byte, 4K, 8K, 64K).

Re: Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]

#130

Post by SteltekOne » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 10:24 AM UTC

esafak wrote: post #86

I think a modern equivalent might be WebGPU. Anybody doing cool stuff that? I'd like to see the code.

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