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2004-08-05 07:54

Oswald

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086

LCP 2004 demos

What do you think ?

I'm sad, as there were no real coder's demos.

Afrika - we 've seen all these effects 10 years before

Triad,Flt - The design / theme of the demos were not good
enough to excuse for no spectacular codings.

Effluvium - the code was not good enough to excuse no gfx/design/whatever.

are there really no coders out there, that can come up with new stuff ?

... 131 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2004-08-06 05:35

Nightlord
Account closed

Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 131

i do not think anybody is trying to force his/her view on the rest here so no need to repeat the "this is a matter of taste" line.

and no... i do not agree that having lots of forum posts shows that the scene is alive. i am not trying to sound like a stormcrow but i was pointing out a fact about the scene today:

there are very few coders left that are releasing non-fake demos (concept or technical). i am not sure if there are more than 10-15 coders left who has released any serious demo in the last year. there probably are about 5-7 who has released more than one demos in a year.

i do not know the number of coders who keep trying to get better in some sense, trying new effects, or trying to get cenceptual skills or whatever.

by the way to think about hollowman's question... i do not DEMAND so much from swedish scene. demand is not the right word. i adore and respect swedish scene for its approach, productivity, artistry, stability and technical skills. i just think the lcp 2004 releases are not quite up to my general expectations from that talent pool. this is not "demanding". who am i to demand?

also i think it is perfectly allright to discuss general trends in the scene or particular releases as long as you are discussing "releases" not the "authors". this again is a personal preference. so when someone gives an oppinion about a release, please everybody stop saying "if you don't like this go and make one yourself". i am all for praising productivity. but productivity and giving feedback are two different things.

regards

2004-08-06 07:49

CreaMD

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 3048

I agree with Turtle and Hein.

I say that all the time. The demos should be produced, watched and talked about. I can agree with Oswald and Hollowman. They both know what's their driving force, but they instead attack their egos ;-). IMO, Oswald's motivation for productivity is short-term, so he makes things fast when he is either asked for that (by party organisers) or he gets that feeling in himself. If you guys know the situation in Hungarian scene you would know that Oswald is probably one of the last 1,2, 3? remaining demo coders in Hungary. He doesn't have the whole bunch of productive weirdos around to talk about ideas and coding stuff and get the internal kick to do something. I don't know maybe I'm wrong, but I think that one thing with gets swedish scene going is the internal communication between the coders and those responsible for demos. Okay so maybe you don't have small meetings all the time, but you sure have more social scene life than any other scene around. Anyway Hollowmans motivation for productivity is kept alive by that buzz. He know that there are some other guys around the country who will make something and he knows that eventually he will get to meet them at some party and talk about things they have produced. I'm hyperbolising this maybe, but it reminds me of a family. I was most active when I had 1 commodore and 3 brothers to fight about time they could sit over it and code/compose/draw. We were showing our creations to each other and discussing concept, and we also knew that there are other groups here in slovakia with which we were discussing concepts.. (yeah we were talking a lot, and producing less, but we were producing more than now..) Now these days are gone.. scene is in ruins.. distances between the sceners are bigger ;-). As I say for a long time already.. there are 3 (if you can count few musics/year an activity) active sceners in slovakia.. about hour of travelling from each other.. and both 3 are musicians ;-).

How can one measure if scene grows or shrinks. IMO, somehow like this. In discussions and news. But first you must accept that it not only consists of creators, but also of audience. How big is the (c64) scene then? I don't know, I suppose about hundreds of people. I can only say from my point of view of maintainer of c64.sk that the trend of visitors is slowly increasing. Slowly means 1-2 visitors / month. Currently it's about 450-500 ppl/day. Even in summer (Which probably means, that most of us aren't student's anymore ;-)). Few times a year after the biggest parties, the ammount of unique visitors of c64.sk increases slightly. People are expecting new releases so they probably visit the site in bigger ammounts. Monday 551 unique IP's, tuesday 566..

Now what can you do to increase ammount of general interest? I mean everyone who creates something person who does PR stuff for his group. Regularly put infos about releases to lemon64.com , comp.sys.cbm, and also general scene sites ojuice.org and pouet.net Some people already try to do that, but C64 sceners should be more consistent in that.

roman

2004-08-06 08:42

macx

Registered: Mar 2002
Posts: 253

creamd has got the point i said of us being mature sceners. the scene no longer is a scene of boasting and bragging, it is a social forum for c64lovers or scenelovers. yeah, face it, noone is on the scene today if they'd wouldn't have some emotional bond with the machine or with the scene. i mean, why would one?

the scene is lots more laid-back and friendly than it used to be. and being so means it will survive and flourish, as people will become interested in it. just look at the more "open" events like lcp; the amigaguys realise that their "other" format lacks something. and it is not a 060, it is the bunch of nice ppl socializing and having a beer around it.

this reflects not only in demos but in who produces demos. groups become less and less important as ppl help one another "cross the group-borders". old foes discuss some nice topic (not necessarily scene-related) over a beer emanating in some nice ideas to be tried out. eventually they credit one another and new constellations are born. if a groupname is added afterwards it is of nostalgic reasons.

producing a demo is a creative act. creativity nurtures on tolerance and playfulness. it withers in an uptight environment. the scene evolves, long live evolution :-)

2004-08-06 08:42

Oswald

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5086

Creamd: thanks for the nice words, I absolutely agree with everything you wrote.

hollowman:

"yes, the afrika demo had effects done 10 years ago, so does
your demos"

After spending my scene career since '96 with trying to always come up with upgraded/new effects, and never recycle things, this is the most rankling statement I got. Thank you.
(and how untrue, you could not point out a single 10 year old effect at its release time in any of my demos)

Of the other opinions "I dont need new effects"... this just makes me wanna close the shops.

2004-08-06 09:24

ChristopherJam

Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 1408

Hi all.

This post is really in response to messages closer to the start of the thread than the more recent comments, but here goes in any case.

IMHO, Borderline should have won the competition. While it is true that there were no parts that looked like they would have been very difficult to code, it was very nicely designed and extremely polished. To me, that is at least as important as some a shiney new routine that no-one has shown before. Shorter delays between parts would perhaps have been nice, but I'm in no position to criticize on that count!

Postcards from Stockholm - perhaps I can appreciate the republican sentiments more than many non-swedes as I am Australian living in England, and have seen first hand how irrelevant the British monarchy is to the English, never mind Aussies. There was some quite nice code, and the story was fairly well presented, but again something seemed lacking.

To my (perhaps biassed ;) opinion, the only particularly new effect codewise was my zoomer, and that was so poorly presented that it deserved to be ranked as low as it did. (Not that the 9 wasn't appreciated - thanx Trash!).

Effluvium being my first multipart demo, I made a pragmatic decision not to try and get an IRQ loader working, nor to try for a nice overarching theme - for these reasons alone I did not expect to do all that well, and named it accordingly (the effects were just coming off me like a bad smell). My main aims were to participate as fully as I could in the first party I'd ever managed to get to, and to get some parts released that had been rattling around the cupboards of my brain for up to ten years. To those ends, I thought I did ok.

However, despite modest goals, Effluvium was still decidedly unfinished - no part more than half done. Eg, julia and driller parts both being slower than they could have been, two of the parts using the rom font for the scroller, the music cutting instead of fading at end-of-part, no final credits section (would have liked to ack the original escher movie from http://escherdroste.math.leidenuniv.nl/ , and thank DCMP and my wife Jeanette for loan of c64 and iBook respectively), nothing occupying the CPU in the zoomer for half of every frame, the zoomer was meant to have more effects and be better introduced, the driller part should have had a camera path instead of just rotating the scene, the first part was not meant to be just the scroller (there was another effect planned for the bottom half of the screen).

I don't think I overestimated how long it would take to finish the demo to my satisfaction, rather I overestimated how much time I would have for coding and music. Despite quitting my job, I've still been very busy travelling and preparing to move back to Australia. Being a one person crew is perhaps a tad ambitious (a reaction against my day job, where 70 people work on a ps2/xpox game for three years only to produce the incoherant mess which is Driv3r?).

In summary, I think I agree with Oswalds initial points - none of the demos had that combination of good design and impressive code that make for something truely spectacular. I'd like to think that with some more practice, and perhaps some collaboration, I could be responsible at least in part for something that does - but I guess that is one for the future to reveal or not as the case may be.

Oh, and to your most recent post, Oswald - don't worry, new effects are on the way!

Here's to better productions in the future,

Christopher Jam.

2004-08-06 09:35

JackAsser

Registered: Jun 2002
Posts: 2014

Oswald and others, please understand that the Afrika demo was a fake demo released from a fake group, implementing the best 4x4 effects I've ever seen just for the pure and sole purpose that no new serious demo can never have 4x4 modes again, it would just be silly to try to compete with a fake demo from a fake group. This will certainly and definitly put and end to all 4x4 demos, which in my opinion is good, cause I dislike them.

Other interesting facts: The Africa demo was made in like 10 days by a very skilled coder whom I will not reveal here because that would certainly spoil the fun of all this.

Ok... flame me... :D

2004-08-06 09:50

ChristopherJam

Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 1408

The Africa demo a 10 day effort by one person?

I'm impressed. As Ali G would say - Restecpah!

not sure what I feel about 4x4 - on the one hand it's chunky & orrible, but on the other it's nice to have fullscreen at a decent framerate...

2004-08-06 10:33

_V_
Account closed

Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 124

Quote: "Of the other opinions "I dont need new effects"... this just makes me wanna close the shops."

You should not interpret it that way, Oswald. I am the last to say that the c64 doesn't need new effects. I am satisfied if the effects in a demo suit their purpose to bring life to the concept intended by its creators. If I can feel that concept and see a beautiful execution of it, I will have watched a great demo.

However, nothing stops you from inventing new effects to bring such a concept to life. For example, if your concept is to mimic nature, then you might need to implement some realtime 0L-systems to create moving ferns. If your concept is to create an interactive world with a Quake engine, then you need to code a Quake engine with all the trimmings. If your concept is to go retro with cool hardcoded parts and music, then you create YKTR ;).

You set the limit as high as is needed, and this is what FLT and 3ad have done. I don't see anything superficial with that, nor do I see it as the end of the demoscene. In fact, like TDJ said, there is still a lot to do as far as this spectrum of demomaking is involved. Either way, whether high end (that is, a combination of tech and concept) or pure concept, or even pure tech with an attitude, I'll probably watch and like it.

......

I would also like to say the same things TDJ said to Sat - who thinks the 'superficial rest' should go to the pc to be artsy-fartsy - and add some more words. However, I would also like to aim the following to those coders who feel like him. This is not meant as a personal flaming - I just want to vent some steam regarding some of the notions I read about it in this thread, and hopefully bring a few points across as well:

Wtf? First off, I'm not superficial because I'm not into coding. Then I could call you superficial for not being into pixelling or composing.

Second, there is a reason why superficial people like me are still pixelling and composing on the c64. It's probably the same reason why you are coding on the c64: challenge, and love for the platform. Challenge: try pixelling (not wiring, but that's another discussion) something nice with 16 colours in any current graphics mode - it won't be easy, no matter how good the mode is. Challenge: try composing a tune in 3 voices with limited waveforms - it's not easy either, and often you'll wish you had a voice or two extra.

Love for the platform: those little vic and sid chips are something else. The sid creates such a unique sound, that I wouldn't want to trade it for anything else. Often, I listen to the radio, and inside my head, I'll hear a c64 version of that tune. Part of me even starts to analyse if an instrumental version would be feasible in 3 voices. That's how much I like that sound. And there's still so much to be done - new sounds are still found, new ways to combine them, and so on. Same thing for graphics, its colours and modes.

I'm not alone in this. I do think quite a few people are out there who love the sid, who love the vic. Are they all superficial for not being as much into code as you are? Is code the only justification for the c64?

And oh, before you continue calling us superficial, when 'our kind' works with coders (because, you know, teamwork is fun?), we often have to adapt our creations to the coder's needs: specific graphics modes, music limitations, and so on. And we will comply. Because those limitations pose a challenge to us. Because we want to give as much rastertime to the coder for the effect he wants. So that it fits to the concept we all wanted. (So that he is nice to us when we want a graphics part ;) That's how deep 'we' are prepared to go, so think twice before you call us superficial as we tend to 'go for the looks'. That's because we *create* the looks, and we might like what we do.

Also, you might want to repeat that 'go to pc to be artsy-fartsy' statement to the Amiga guys. After they literally obliterated the crowd at Breakpoint this year, they'll be very interested to hear something like that. They are proof that making good demos doesn't depend on the platform. It depends on the love for the platform, the effort your team is willing to put in, the code, the graphics, the music, the flow and the concept.

When the mountain landscape appeared during the The Black Lotus demo, I did not hear anyone say, "Pfft, just a low-poly voxelscape with nice textures". What I did hear was cheering and multiple jaw drops. Or when the Madwizards demo showed a nice glass vector object. Now, I am a realist and will admit that doing something with a similar impact on the c64 is nigh impossible. We don't have enough horsepower for that. But we do have enough creativity and ingenuity to make something to boggle the mind. And even make the other sceners smile. Either way, at the moment I'm being creatively led by the Amiga scene, not the PC scene (one exception: Heaven 7).

End flame. Small aside to ChristopherJam: party and home experiences are always different, which is why the results are what they are. Trust me on this.

2004-08-06 10:44

iopop

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 317

My sources tell me that the Afrika demo was made from scratch, starting 5 days before the compo. Just for the fun of doing it. Despite I never really been a fan of 4x4 I was really amased by that demo.

Oswald: I'm ok with you calling our demo lacking of effects, vic-tricks and having "bad" code. We are not playing for the same team and most likely never will. Where you might get excited about vic stuff, I think the most interesting thing in for example Arcanum was the endscroller.

But calling my demo "a demo without no effort put into it" and having nothing new just because it lacks those wanted effects. isnt that abit harsh? I suppose the effort put into making a non-linear demo is nothing new and worthless? The same with a demo that you can acutally run from 1541/1571/1581 and cmd devices such as hd. Your last demo didnt even work on a stock 1541 and that a big no-no in my book. (cheapass point, but it have to be mentioned.)
Reading between your lines I get the impression that you are very pissed because we get too much attention as coders, despite we dont code stuff that is considered revolutionary and new?

About the missing coders, I did a search at csdb and came to the conclusion that 36 coders have participated in a released demo so far this year, and 12 of them have been invovled in more than 1 production.

But dont you worry, I will most likely continue releasing crap as long as I live. And why dont I go and do pc stuff? well, some people write poems, music whatever. For me the creative output have naturally by time become the c64.

oh, btw. Borderline does actually have a "new" gfx mode. and sorry for rambling, its still hot as hell here in sweden.. .

2004-08-06 11:15

HCL

Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 727

Yeah, Borderline really gets hotter and hotter for each time i look at it! And it's not too slow, it's too fast!! Usually i also get thrilled by advanced effects, but a well made demo like Borderline also appeals to me. Also UltraGui/FLT gets better and better, especially the endpart :).

Could i please ask you all to stop yelling about the end of the scene etc.. We've heard that the last 10 years or so by now, it's kinda rediculous.

Also i'd like to give my deepest respect for ChristopherJam's production. Not too clean, but awesome!!

And one question about those 2-3 lonesome coders in Hungary.. Isn't sites like this, or email etc, enough to make the distances between people shorter!? I can't remember that Dane and I met too many times in real life while we made Cycle.