that kind of careful developer is becoming rare nowadays, sadly..
all about slowing down the computer nowadays, including build time cough like rust cough
Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
61–70 of 78 posts
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
My feeling is that there is no such thing as a "minimal configuration" when it comes to universes. Because there is no way to evaluate how "minimal" a configuration is. No matter which elementary property you assume the universe to have, one would have to ask "Is that a complex thing?". Is gravity complex? Is an electron complex?
This reminds me of all the episodes of Closer to Truth[1] about the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" He's absolutely relentless with that question, over two decades now, asking every single famous philosopher, mathematician and scientist he can find. Here's one from around Season 3 around 2009[2], another from season 12[3] a few years ago and so on. 1. https://www.youtube.com/c/CloserToTruthTV 2…
This question is maybe the deepest of them all. What a great project, can't wait to check these videos out.
My understanding of an answer I've heard is along these lines:
If there is truly nothing then that means there are also no bounds/limits/rules, which means there is nothing stopping everything from being. Out of nothing comes the boundless cornucopia of existence, from complete lack of constraints that is nothingness.
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
#63Maybe the universe is a demo written by the gods in <4kb
I think that was one of the theories roughly suggested by NKS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science though the work seems to have fizzled out.
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
#64Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o
This demo marks the beginning of the SDF era in the demo scene. If you watch most demos from 2009 they still use solid geometry. elevated showed the superiority of just using fragment shaders for everything. By 2009 the GPUs where fast enough to do SDF and people had come up with the idea of ray marching.
"Elevated" does not use a SDF, it is based on a grid mesh displaced with a vertex shader.
Iq, the main author of "Elevated" is indeed best known for popularizing SDFs in the demoscene, but for that particular intro, the SDF raymarching trend had already started and he wanted to do something different.
https://iquilezles.org/articles/function2009/function2009.pd...
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
#65The creator's homepage is a treasure trove https://iquilezles.org/
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd recommend starting with javascript: https://thebookofshaders.com/ https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_geometry_terrain_raycast
I appreciate the recommendation to start with JS, I'm actually trying to avoid targeting the browser as much as possible with my projects, with the exception of things actually returning hypertext or that I get for free via wasm or something else. The Book of Shaders looks quite interesting however, thank you for the link!
I'd encourage you to reconsider that. Using WebGL lets you skip over a lot of tedious initialization. Or, even better, using a platform like shadertoy.net lets you skip all the JS as well and just write shaders.
Using these tools doesn't mean your final project has to be JS-based as well. It just happens to be a convenient way to focus on specific aspects of the project.
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most impressive one for me will always be fr-08, the .product, released in 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dcrV_7JpXQ Pouet link if you want the binary: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1221 It blew my mind when I first came across it in 2003, and it's still highly impressive even now.
The most impressive for me, in a slightly different way, is A Mind is Born, because it manages to do some simple but impactful sound and video in 256 bytes, on a Commodore 64: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26511266
His other work is great too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNCqrylNY-0
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most impressive one for me will always be fr-08, the .product, released in 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dcrV_7JpXQ Pouet link if you want the binary: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1221 It blew my mind when I first came across it in 2003, and it's still highly impressive even now.
The most impressive for me, in a slightly different way, is A Mind is Born, because it manages to do some simple but impactful sound and video in 256 bytes, on a Commodore 64: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26511266
I still listen to that song just by itself. It's such an amazing demo.
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I really hope it continues to be possible for this art form to exist. Hopefully AI doesn't one day ruin the demoscene as well. Seems like a Pandora's box for cheating and/or asymmetric resource advantages.
The same may have been said about most other technologies introduced. The fact that a Windows .exe can do a lot more because it has access to DirectX doesn't invalidate the effort made in a demo of the same size made for the C64. There simply are different categories. I don't think they'll be much ruining going on. The people who make these demos use everything they can get their hands on, as long as it helps with co…
Well put, I think you're correct.
Re: Source code for 4kb demoscene production “Elevated” released (2016)
#70Sorcery. This is not possible by mere mortals to do in 4kb.
kB, not kb.