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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

#71

Post by zokier »

To me one of the problems in modern demoscene is that modern PCs (especially GPUs) are so ridiculously powerful that full fat PC demos struggle to fully take advantage of it, at least in a way that is apparent to viewer. To me it feels like the emphasis has shifted more on the content side than purely techical excellence.

Sizecoding is another matter, and arguably the more interesting side of the scene these days. But it is kinda sad that we need artificial restrictions to make things interesting rather than trying to exploit every drop of perf you can squeeze from the computer.

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

#72

Post by rightbyte »

hollowonepl wrote: post #67

The only people who still pitch demoscene dead are those with unrealistic expectations or who just returned and are surprised it’s still alive, ran by a number of 40+ people while they remember themselves joining at the age of 15. But the conversation about new generation is missed by solid 20 years and all of us who just stay focused on producing don’t waste time on rants, only to have 5 mins on hacker news that by…

> all of us who just stay focused on producing don’t waste time on rants

English is not my main language, so I don't understand the nuance. Does this imply that this is your first rant on HN in 20 years?

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

#73

Post by 3036e4 »

I was never part of the scene, but I did write code for a couple of demos and had friends in various groups. I just wasn't much interested in making non-games, and no one I knew were interested in making games. Made me sad later when I learned how many people from the demo scene had ended up in the games industry. If I had know that as a teenager I would have happily done more boring demo coding just to have a path into game dev later. Well, kind of ironic considering everyone I met in the scene were loudly proclaiming how lame it was to play games.

In hindsight I would have loved something like the 2010s game jams and indie games culture to have existed in the early 1990s. Guess this just proves how much of a lamer I was.

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

#75

Post by unwind »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #52
akst wrote: post #10

I would love more outlets for creative coding, I feel like neocities is a bit like that. That said there isn't really a scene or real sense of community (AFAIK). I mean someone liked something I uploaded once, but I never interacted with them again. Cohost had fun vibes like that as well, but I guess it's no longer with us. Same with Glitch, but admittedly I didn't use it in the last few years, but it was my go to op…

I would argue dwitter is demoscene reinvented for the internet age. https://x.com/KilledByAPixel/status/1925252647520444719#m

That is fantastic, except the trees are clearly not pines [1]. It's ... Scrolling Spruces [2]!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce

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

#76

Post by torginus »

roskoe wrote: post #50

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 imager…

I think the conditions of the demoscene arising were a software interface that consisted of coding, and people's first experience with a computer was

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"

20 GOTO 10

RUN

This piqued the interest of curious youth, who then were further enabled by a hardware interface where you could write a value into an area of memory, which would then appear as a pixel on screen.

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

#77

Post by torginus »

msuniverse2026 wrote: post #20

Seems the modern corollary to the demoscene is TouchDesigner programming. I always thought it would be such a neat thing for demosceners to jump to TD and work with other forms of art like live dance and live music. The fact you can have body tracking, hand gesture recognition and also have it react to sound seems like the next step in demoscene stuff.

Yeah, I remember reading an interview with one of the few big demosceners, and they said that to compete in the highest leagues, you need editing tools to build these impressive scenes.

After all the most talented musicians and visual designers often were not the same people, and every artistic pursuit involves a lot of iteration.

To be fair groups tended to build the tools themselves, not to take away from their achievements, but once the tools are done and public (like the ones you shared), a lot of the challenge and point of competition is gone.

Tooling also tends to create a moat between 'users' and 'developers', the former of which lack the low-level knowledge to transition into the latter.

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

#78

Post by endymion-light »

akst wrote: post #10

I would love more outlets for creative coding, I feel like neocities is a bit like that. That said there isn't really a scene or real sense of community (AFAIK). I mean someone liked something I uploaded once, but I never interacted with them again. Cohost had fun vibes like that as well, but I guess it's no longer with us. Same with Glitch, but admittedly I didn't use it in the last few years, but it was my go to op…

~I've begun to set up creative coding events in my city just due to this. I'd love to join an online community to show stuff off, I always find places like twitter end up feeling like you're shouting into the void.

It's not about loads of people commenting and liking your work, just finding a place to actually discuss it would be fantastic

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

#79

Post by endymion-light »

bradly wrote: post #37
akst wrote: post #10

I would love more outlets for creative coding, I feel like neocities is a bit like that. That said there isn't really a scene or real sense of community (AFAIK). I mean someone liked something I uploaded once, but I never interacted with them again. Cohost had fun vibes like that as well, but I guess it's no longer with us. Same with Glitch, but admittedly I didn't use it in the last few years, but it was my go to op…

I recently starting dabbling in live coding and found it to be really hard and fun and technical and creative. And while I'm not really that comfortable in Discord, I did find the community welcoming and helpful.

What discord's are good for live coding/creative coding?
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