Fabian just posted the companion blog post: http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/if-in-doubt-go-to-th...
Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
51–60 of 70 posts
Re: Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
The PC demoscene started out on DOS and Watcom C++, and switched almost exclusively to Windows and Visual C++ around 1999. It was a natural choice at the time, as Linux wasn't ready for primetime and MSVC really was the best compiler around. The choice of platform had to take the majority into account: most people didn't want to write demos that ordinary people couldn't watch. The opinion of programmers was not the m…
Really, the demo scene, which started out in the 80's, was using Watcom C++? Watch the behind scenes video of Second Reality (1993). They're coding Pascal and (duh) assembly. The demoscene was really born out of cracks/intros/loaders which means its origins are C64/Apple/Atari etc and assembly language.
yeps. almost correct. scene started with c64. pc scene / first demo came out from future crew : second reality. also in 1996, smash designs created second reality 100% same fx via C64 (:
Re: Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagined that demo skills would eventually die and the more recent stuff would just end up being bloated or lame. But it really has improved. Infeasibly improved. Debris is amazing. But it isn't the only more recent amazing demo. Someone once asked me whether there was a limit to how realistic demos can be made. I would normally prate on about Shannon information or something, but it was a very smart mathematician…
Self-introspective code is trivial, and it's been done before. I suggest looking at LISP :)
This is precisely the same thing as a quine. A Lisp program able to "introspect" its own source contains somewhere in the binary a quoted representation of the source code in some format (stored as a list instead of a string if we aren't worried about whitespace, comments and line breaks). Of course, with Lisp, you essentially bundle the compiler or interpreter with the binary. At any rate, the first known quine was apparently written in a derivative of ALGOL, not LISP.
Re: Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your piece of paper example caught me a bit off guard. It sounds pretty similar to a quine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) ). I think that the same thing is possible with a demo - write the code to render a piece of paper from an array of letters, and put that part of the source code into the array.
Yeah I'm wrong. What I had in mind I guess, is take an existing very impressive 64kb demo, then do this. That might be much harder, but not necessarily impossible in theory.
A far better argument for me to have made is that it would be impossible to have a 64kb demo which models a surface on which is printed the source code of all 64kb demos written since the start of the scene decades ago. Of course, if equations that describe all of reality are discovered and fit in 64kb, and the graphics card contains a universe simulator, then maybe it's possible.
Re: Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time I see the this demo YT I want to teach myself C++ (despite I hate compiled languages) - this is great inspiration for me. Nowa days this graphics is not really that impressive but back in 2000 that was jaw-breaking OMG
I guess, you'll have to learn so much more then just C++, most likely assembler too, and a lot (lot lot lot) of tricks. Everytime i see those multi-minute long demos, with music and animations and see those in 64k (or even 4k intros!!) i'm baffled.
asm is not required anymore (besides reading it for debugging or optimization purposes)
you'd rather have to learn practical 3d/2d math and try many things out.
Re: Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
#56I didn't know this whole demoscene existed. This is amazing.
A good place to start looking around is here: ( http://www.pouet.net/index.php ) Remember that a youtube capture of a demo will be bigger, and not as good quality, as the actual demo.
But the processing power needed to run it will be less.
Re: Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
#57the werkkzeug IDE was beautiful - you could take apart every scene in The Popular Demo and see exactly what they did, all while rendering in real time. The interface wasn't pretty, but after working through that first rusty-iron texture, it made me feel like a genius.
Re: Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I'm wrong. What I had in mind I guess, is take an existing very impressive 64kb demo, then do this. That might be much harder, but not necessarily impossible in theory.
A far better argument for me to have made is that it would be impossible to have a 64kb demo which models a surface on which is printed the source code of all 64kb demos written since the start of the scene decades ago. Of course, if equations that describe all of reality are discovered and fit in 64kb, and the graphics card contains a universe simulator, then maybe it's possible.
Such a demo would be possible, it would just take an infinite time to run.
Re: Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time I see the this demo YT I want to teach myself C++ (despite I hate compiled languages) - this is great inspiration for me. Nowa days this graphics is not really that impressive but back in 2000 that was jaw-breaking OMG
I guess, you'll have to learn so much more then just C++, most likely assembler too, and a lot (lot lot lot) of tricks. Everytime i see those multi-minute long demos, with music and animations and see those in 64k (or even 4k intros!!) i'm baffled.
In fact, you don't have to learn C++ either.
You can use any native compiled language without problems (say, Pascal). You can also use any other language as long as its runtime is small enough.
Most important though, much more so than whether you know C++, is knowing graphics programming. In fact, I've been calling myself a democoder for 10 years now, and I still suck at graphics programming, which is why my demos suck. Focus on the graphics, not the language. A fondness for math is much more important than a fondness for compilers.
I'd recommend making a demo in your favourite programming language. Don't care about size, care about looks. Once you've learned to make it good, you can consider learning, say, C(++) to make it small enough for the 64k or 4k categories.
Sidenote: most 4ks these days are entirely coded in a shader. This means you can mostly copy&paste the entire C part from somewhere, and start hacking GLSL or HLSL. Sure, you'd need to learn the shader language, but it's smaller and simpler than c++.
Re: Farbrausch (demoscene group) releases their tools and engine
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does nationality have to do with anything?
From what I remember as an observer, nationality always was a point of pride in the European demoscene, even when tongue in cheek.
Eh, no. Or, well, not the last 15 years at least.
And especially not in Germany. Saying you're proud of Germans when you're a German in Germany is considered scary.