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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

#81

Post by satisfice »

npteljes wrote: post #65
satisfice wrote: post #29

I didn’t know what the demo scene was before I read this. I still don’t. Is it hackathons?

It's a kind of a coding competition, indeed. The goals and the circumstances differ from a hackathon. The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens, but rather for showing off the work that was prepared beforehand. Usually these works are multimedia, so visuals and sound go together, but the main focus is the visuals, the rest of it is supportive. Works are nominated in different categories, w…

Thank you. Whoever you are. I guess I could have googled it, but I love that you took the time and energy to respond.

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

#84

Post by npteljes »

satisfice wrote: post #81
npteljes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a kind of a coding competition, indeed. The goals and the circumstances differ from a hackathon. The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens, but rather for showing off the work that was prepared beforehand. Usually these works are multimedia, so visuals and sound go together, but the main focus is the visuals, the rest of it is supportive. Works are nominated in different categories, w…

Thank you. Whoever you are. I guess I could have googled it, but I love that you took the time and energy to respond.

You are very welcome! Sometimes, a hand-crafted answer just hits different. Have a nice day!

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

#85

Post by dr_dshiv »

mlyle wrote: post #41
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly; it’s like model railroads or stamp collecting. Never truly dead! (I mean this with deep sarcasm.)

I think there's still people hacking around doing cool stuff. Things like PICO-8, etc. It's much harder to throw a big party these days in general, and especially so about technical niches. Hack Club is popular with youth, but much more about smaller gatherings.

PICO-8 is super fun way to explore the joy of constraints.

Over the summer, we hosted a vibecoding PICO-8 game jam in Amsterdam. It wasn’t a demoparty but we nevertheless had some amazing demoscene folks show up with c64s and example demos. We attracted a handful of teenagers and had nearly equal gender balance—and made some really creative games. We definitely experienced some hateful online vitriol about vibecoding (eg “you are the human equivalent of cancer”) but that was to be expected—this event was almost deliberately about the tension between deep understanding and rapid iteration cycles. I found the tension between vibecoding and demoscene to be really enjoyable and productive.

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

#87

Post by actionfromafar »

Martin_Silenus wrote: post #34

The best period of my life as a programmer. I've never stopped feeling nostalgic for the demoscene of the 80s and 90s. When we used to fight between Amiguys and Atarists. The Amiguys always won, of course. In fact, there was no real point to flamewar about. They had almost everything. And us Atarists? Well... we had a 68000 at 8 MHz, a MIDI port, a budget several hundreds of $ less... and even more ingenuity to get t…

That's the perfect excuse for getting a floppy-emulator with an SD or USB slot, of which there are several models. :)

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

#88

Post by actionfromafar »

karel-3d wrote: post #68
satisfice wrote: post #29

I didn’t know what the demo scene was before I read this. I still don’t. Is it hackathons?

People creating interesting visuals in a very, very small computer program; often with some artificial constraints. Often it was put together with cracking scene, I guess the skills involved used to be similar (lot of low level hacking?). My personal involvement with this scene is nil - I always just saw some interesting thing playing with crack.exe that I got from some dubious source, thought "huh it's neat", and we…

If it doesn't exist already, there really should be an iOS Safari WASM scene. :)

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

#89

Post by magicalhippo »

npteljes wrote: post #65
satisfice wrote: post #29

I didn’t know what the demo scene was before I read this. I still don’t. Is it hackathons?

It's a kind of a coding competition, indeed. The goals and the circumstances differ from a hackathon. The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens, but rather for showing off the work that was prepared beforehand. Usually these works are multimedia, so visuals and sound go together, but the main focus is the visuals, the rest of it is supportive. Works are nominated in different categories, w…

> The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens

How to tell you've never been to a demo party without saying you've never been to a demo party.

I jest, but scrambling to implement the last effect before the deadline, or fix some stupid last minute bug was certainly typical at the events I was at. And you see this in a lot of the prods which released post-party "proper" versions.

There were also parties which had "live" competitions, where a theme would be announced at the party and you had then just a few hours to make a demo. Obviously wouldn't do it from scratch but typically coding would be involved, if for nothing else to tie the effects together.

But yeah, the main demos and intros would primarily be made well in advance.

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

#90

Post by npteljes »

magicalhippo wrote: post #89
npteljes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a kind of a coding competition, indeed. The goals and the circumstances differ from a hackathon. The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens, but rather for showing off the work that was prepared beforehand. Usually these works are multimedia, so visuals and sound go together, but the main focus is the visuals, the rest of it is supportive. Works are nominated in different categories, w…

> The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens How to tell you've never been to a demo party without saying you've never been to a demo party. I jest, but scrambling to implement the last effect before the deadline, or fix some stupid last minute bug was certainly typical at the events I was at. And you see this in a lot of the prods which released post-party "proper" versions. There were als…

Guilty, I never have been! But, if you contrast it with a hackathon, the objective of the event is the showing off part, not the preparation part. Prep is at least months of work. Whereas the point of a hackathon is to create somethere during the event.
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