Demoscene guidebook (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Demoscene guidebook (2018)

#51

Post by b3lvedere » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 11:48 AM UTC

joemi wrote: post #42

I was really into the demoscene back in the early/mid 90's. These days it's fun to find out about some old demoscene people who went on to interesting things. Mostly I hear about people getting into the game industry. Some of my favorites of note: Some of the Future Crew guys went on to make Remedy Entertainment (and made Max Payne and Alex Wake games, among others) and Rovio (makers of Angry Birds) was started by so…

I loved Purple Motions music back then. He's still awesome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonne_Valtonen

Re: Demoscene guidebook (2018)

#52

Post by theandrewbailey » Fri, Nov 08, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

joemi wrote: post #42

I was really into the demoscene back in the early/mid 90's. These days it's fun to find out about some old demoscene people who went on to interesting things. Mostly I hear about people getting into the game industry. Some of my favorites of note: Some of the Future Crew guys went on to make Remedy Entertainment (and made Max Payne and Alex Wake games, among others) and Rovio (makers of Angry Birds) was started by so…

When some of the guys at Remedy wanted to benchmark things, they founded what is now Futuremark (3DMark, PCMark). It's cool that they're still pushing hardware to the limits.

Re: Demoscene guidebook (2018)

#53

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:44 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #16

snvzz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A demo seems like a seriously high hurdle. Maybe a 4K intro.

A 4K intro (a decent one anyway) is much harder than a larger one. "If I had more time I'd write you a shorter letter..." I found a 256k intro to be a pretty good balance, constrained enough that you don't need a pro-quality art team to look good, but still enough space that you don't have to go too deep into procedural generation and compression.

> A 4K intro (a decent one anyway) is much harder than a larger one. "If I had more time I'd write you a shorter letter..."

Disagree. Yes it's hard, but all good demos are hard.

The difference is that you can write a 4k as a one-person project, enter a competition and have a chance to end in the top-three.

As soon as they get bigger, and IMO this is already the case at 64k, you need a team of at least 2-3 people to be competitive. You're going to push as much code/data into 64 kilobytes, and once you get the hang of this, you'll realize this is in fact already an ocean. There's no way that a single person is writing the audio synthesis engine, the musical score, texture generation, model generation, scene direction, animation sequencing tools, and whatever else. Yes, demosceners are very interdisciplinary so certainly a single democoder could take on a few of these roles. But if you want to be competitive in the 64k compo and win a prize, I'm going to argue that these are just too many roles for a single person to really excel in all of them.

For bigger demos, the expectations are even higher, and I really can't imagine doing it as a single person (except with no intention to win).

Re: Demoscene guidebook (2018)

#54

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:53 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #46

snvzz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. 256KB is a quite odd format to pick.

It used to be one of the standard brackets: 4k, 64k, 256k, and open (although there was often an upper limit like 4MB to limit download time.)

When was 256k a standard bracket? Can't remember. There might have been some odd exceptions, but it's always been 4k, 64k and (big) demo (indeed often limited to a few MB, dunno if that rule is still effective).

Those categories you would have at every party. Usually times categories for PC/Amiga/C64. The 256k or 256b or the 96k game categories were usually one-offs or specific to a party.

Now it's been about 15 years since I was active in the demoscene, so maybe 256k demos have become a thing in the mean time. But I would think that's silly because going from 64k to 256k doesn't really give you a new world of possibilities, it's just a bit bigger than 64k.

There are 64k's that show eye candy which can compete with the big demos, yes it's hard but not a lot of big demos are doing things you couldn't do in 64k. Why put 256k in between that? It sounds like a category for people that started out writing a 64k and then ran out of space.

I'm really curious, name me one thing you can do in a 256k that you simply cannot do in a 64k? (for the other categories these have easy answers)

Re: Demoscene guidebook (2018)

#55

Post by soulchild77 » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 12:25 PM UTC

_0ffh wrote: post #47

soulchild77 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, a guy called Scythe, operating a board called Burning Chrome was a member of my group (Paranoia). We mainly developed PCBoard PPEs. Good times indeed! ;-)

Omfg, Burning Chrome, that's the one! I remember I dug the Gibson reference, still do in fact! Btw Paranoia rings a bell as well, definitely not an obscure group at all. This is turning into a blast from the past! ^_^

Hehe, sometimes Hacker News is unbelievable. ;-) So, I take it you‘re from the Cologne area as well, given the Burning Chrome‘s proximity to the city (if memory serves) and long-distance calls were outrageously expensive.

Re: Demoscene guidebook (2018)

#56

Post by taneq » Sun, Nov 10, 2019, 9:06 AM UTC

tripzilch wrote: post #54

taneq wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be one of the standard brackets: 4k, 64k, 256k, and open (although there was often an upper limit like 4MB to limit download time.)

When was 256k a standard bracket? Can't remember. There might have been some odd exceptions, but it's always been 4k, 64k and (big) demo (indeed often limited to a few MB, dunno if that rule is still effective). Those categories you would have at every party. Usually times categories for PC/Amiga/C64. The 256k or 256b or the 96k game categories were usually one-offs or specific to a party. Now it's been about 15 year…

It's a long time ago but I'm sure I remember 256k brackets being a thing. Maybe not as big as 64k intros but still.

And you're right, there's nothing really that you could do in 256k but not 64k, it's just much easier to fit your assets and code into the limit so you can spend more time on the demo itself and less time on space optimisation, so it's more casual-friendly.