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2004-08-05 07:54

Oswald

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5034

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 11:15

HCL

Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 719

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.

2004-08-06 11:35

CreaMD

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 3036

HCL.. I said.. scene is in ruins... followed by smiley. ;-)

About communication between coders.. how can one communicate or cooperate with noone around.

(expelitve deleted ;-)... if I only knew how how to summon ex-sceners in my own country back to life, I would do that already. Seems like I'm much better at bashing zombies.

2004-08-06 11:55

Oswald

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5034

iopop:

"Oswald: I'm ok with you calling our demo lacking of effects, vic-tricks and having "bad" code. "

Actually I dont like vic tricks. I only like vic tricks if they are used to make the CPU's life easyer in creating a nice effect.

" Where you might get excited about vic stuff, I think the most interesting thing in for example Arcanum was the endscroller. "

Yep, was that a sorting multiplexer ?:) I liked the zoomer more. (now thats where the half of the effect is vic trick, another half is pure code)

"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?"

what I wrote was:

"I dont see the effort in demos as a few years back. "

I just could write feel instead of see aswell.

I havent said that it has nothing new. The fact that you think I wrote that, shows, that you think the same here.

"Reading between your lines I get the impression that you are very pissed because we get too much attention as coders..."

nope, Im not that wannabe. Im piseed coz I dont see the kind of demos Id like to see.

"And why dont I go and do pc stuff? "

I havent told you that either. I would be the last guy on earth to tell any scener, to go and do pc stuff :)

"Borderline does actually have a "new" gfx mode."

Yeah noticed it, cute :) But again its not me who cried here for new gfx modes, or vic tricks.

HCL:

"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!? "

Its just not the same than doing it in the real life. There's nothing like having a coders chit chat, showing our effects, explaining.. ahh memories :) But Creamd was wrong here (sorry mate:). I think I can blame only myself for being not that active. I got older, got job, etc..

2004-08-06 13:01

iopop

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 317

HCL: I actually had the same feeling the first time I watched the 15min dvd version. Everything felt too fast. My initial idea was to have each effect running for 3min. But our experience during the exhibition told us that most people was just about to leave when a new effect entered. (In the dvd the parts are running from about 1-1.5 min.) So, instead we settled for around 1 min for each effect. How knows, one day there might be a "Borderline Redux" where you can set most variables yourself, both presets and live tuning. But releasing such a thing might still be considered taboo.

2004-08-06 13:47

SIDWAVE
Account closed

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238

I think the Afrika demo should have won, because it looks nice and the music roxx!

It's wrong to say there were no new effect, because the Brudbilder demo is a new routine!

I never would have thought of that, and I think it's a nice idea, no matter how it looks!

It looks cool to me, so 100 points to those guys!

I have to say, I don't like the trend with minimalistic music at the moment. You should better try and compose themes that stick in the ears - that way we will remember them for a long time, maybe forever, who knows!? :-)

You CAN have strange sounds, and theme - just work on it!

Overall, I'm most pleased with the GFX, then code, then music (mostly suxx), Mitch+Dane tune in Afrika demo roxx IMO.. (!)
;-)

2004-08-06 15:51

Sat
Account closed

Registered: Jul 2004
Posts: 12

TDJ:

If you read what I wrote I said 90% would not understand. So I guess your one of those 90%. Just because your a old school demo coder doesnt bring you into the 10%, but I however expected that the 10% that agreed with me would be old school demo coders :)

_V_:

I never said I didnt respect the work of non-coders, I am extremely impressed with the artists that can actually produce nice graphics and sound for such a limited machine.
I know very well that we coders often also add additional constraints which make it even harder.

However I said I was tired of ART demos. A ART demo being a demo that concentrate on 'silly' fade in-out routines or a story, and never really show anything that is impressively coded or a nice effect and where 50% of the demo is spend doing the fades/story (these kind of demos is more fun on the PC IMHO).

So clearly you misunderstood what I was talking about.

You also fail to take into account that 95% of the people watching a demo evaluate it on looks instead of code. Which means easy as hell to do part A with nice graphics will get higher rating than a hard as hell part B (Superficial as defined in the dictionary: Concerned with or comprehending only what is apparent or obvious; shallow.). Its how life works I know, but that doesnt mean I have to agree.

For me a demo that has a nice design but no impressive code/effects will mean I will only watch it once, if the graphics/music is good I will probably extract it so I dont have to bore myself to death until the demo presents it.

However take demo A and program it with nice fades and the do the same without. The one with the fades will be given a higher rating (if you can decide how long you want to watch a effect and can select which part you want to see when launching the it). So I am not against fades/design at all

Personally I evaluate roughly like this
code/effect (75%)
graphic/music (20%)
design/fades (5%)
story (0%)

Demoes that get a good rating in this system is normally code porn and thats also why I like Cruzers YKTRs.

The reason why I evaluate like this is very personal (as most demo opinions are).

It probably dates back to when I saw the first demo I got intrigued by it, and wondered how the hell they where capable of doing stuff like that (having only programmed in basic at that time myself). This led me to learn ASM, and some of the tricks but every time I saw a demo with a new incredible trick. I found it to be challenging and fun to work out how this could be achieved. Later on it became very fun figuring out new tricks, I fondly remember the first time I figured out to disable bad lines, and still have graphics on the screen 

Secondly I program demoes for fun, and to me the fun part is to develop the effects (new / old+improved it doesnt matter). The boring part is the last 20% doing the fades and stuff which generally are very easy to program but just takes time and often doesnt represent a challenge (which equal a fun factor for me as I do enough slave code to please the crowd at work).

So for me a demo is about getting the machine to do stuff people didnt think possible or show that I also figured out how to do a certain thing like at the birth of the demo scene and especially have fun while programming it .

If you look at a PC demo which many groups try to emulate the focus is more on graphics+music+ design (stuff that anyone can appreciate because its visible) because it really doesnt matter much how bad/good the programmer is as the hardware does 90% of the job for him (and if it doesnt run on this cpu/gpu it will on the next)..

So the bottom line is I think you should do what you consider fun, but I personally find it sad that people concentrate on pure looks/crowd pleasing these days. But its a general trend and one that is easy to understand because 90% does not understand why a effect/routine is hard.

2004-08-06 16:45

TDJ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1879

Sat, nice post, and I'm not even going to argue with you about the "don't understand" part :) However, you clearly make a division between coding & visual demos, but you leave out a third category, the concept demos. These often may not look too good but contain a lot of depth, and the platform they're build on is not as important as the other 2 categories.

It's almost as if you stepped into this discussion with the scene of 10 years ago still in the back of your mind. I might be wrong ofcourse, so I'll just ask you: did you follow the scene the last few years? Have you watched the amazing stuff by people such as Hollowman & the Triad guys? If you haven't, I beg you, load up "Pretending to see the light", it may change the way you think about c64 demos.

Then again, it may not, just as long as you realize that productions such as it couldn't have been done better on any other machine, as the machine doesn't matter, only the emotions do. And that's what I consider ART.

2004-08-06 17:12

TDJ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1879

Silly me, always proclaiming "Pretending to see the light" to be such an important piece of work, but not voting for it. Well, I did, and guess what? It's #1 in the charts now. All you downvoters, hurry! Hurry!

2004-08-06 17:23

TDJ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1879

Well that was quick :) Too bad the hero voting '1' doesn't have the guts to make himself known, but alas, we've had this discussion before, right? Btw, I have a pretty good idea who it was, thanks to the 'users online' box.

Sad fucker ..

2004-08-06 17:32

Sat
Account closed

Registered: Jul 2004
Posts: 12

Well I never speak for the scene or about the scene.

I only say what I find interesting in demos and what I consider to be a demo. This for me has nothing to do what the 'scene' thinks as I often disagree with general opinion. I admit that I have been out of touch with the scene for almost ten years, but as I said the scene doesnt define what I consider good and fun.

Concept demos seem to be what I called story demos and are close to most PC demos, and after watching 'Pretending to see the light' I must admit its the worst thing I have ever seen (sorry) and wasted time on. The only reason I saw it in its entirety was because you recommended it. In fact it doesnt even fit with my definition for a demo, its more an artmo and for me is a waste of time as it has nothing I consider interesting or challenging in it.

In fact I found the first demo that did a raster line more interesting than this.

Its actually the complete opposite of what I enjoy and I would prefer to see such things disappear, but thats just me.

Yeah I voted 1, as I find it to be the worst thing I ever seen, it has little code, boring music+graphics and little design, instead it has a story which is rated at 0%.

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