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Nova
Registered: Jun 2012
Posts: 13 |
Pushing the envelope, Or stay beaten by a 16 YO kid!
I got abit nostalgic tonight and enjoyed some early ninetees
perfection by Flash inc, A little Light, Even Bob got in a few minutes of lalaland,Origo, byterapers, Upfront etc (Mathematica still gives me goosebumps)
It occured to me that todays elitegroups (according to me) like Oxyron,Booze,Plush,Chorus,Camelot started to emerge when us guys from the older school where just about done and our lives got in the way of the scener-life.
Back in those days everything was about squeezing every last cycle through perfecting a routine that many had made before you but if you got that last DXYCP char or those extra 10 (only in a Y sin,horrible) Plots you could reighn supreme for a few hours or even months or years before someone stole your glory and made a faster routine that often could be totaly outside the box and therefore superior.
Today everything seems to be about polished loader screens and perfect transitions between (again my opinion)"demoparts" that probably squeezes every last cycle, but who knows because there are just not 5000 fucking hungry young coders trying to make the same demopart, but just abit better.
I fell inlove with coding on the C64 because the hardware is set and everyone has the same precursors.
So, Here come the "hot potato",
Did "todays elite" choose a different path simply because
the "oldschool" effects just cannot be done faster within the hardware limitations, (sticking my chinn out here, punch it if you want to!)
Or since most of todays elite code for a living on other platforms but still cant write a faster routine then some pimplefaced 16 year old did two decades ago!!
I am not sure where i was going with this but i guess i just miss the old sceenerdays..
But it still seems strange that someone that can code bumpmapping and phongshaders on a C64 still cant write a faster dycproutine then some kid who sold the "moped" and bought a C64 two decades ago.
-WRAP!- |
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Mr.Ammo
Account closed
Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 228 |
Quoting Raistlin[...]
One really annoying thing for a programmer - but annoying in a funny way - is that sometimes you spend AGES on an effect... optimising, trimming down the memory use, hand-tuning timings so that there’re no nasty taster jitters, etc etc etc... then you release the finished product and people say “oh, that’s quite nice”... gaaaaah. You want to scream - “nice? The blood, the tears, my fingernails, my receding hairline... you can’t imagine what went into this”. And that’s even worse when you try to tell someone who doesn’t know C64... “oh, if it wasn’t meant to do stuff like that - why don’t you just do it on PC?” SLAP!
The IKEA effect all over. We invest in something and love it very much and don't see how other people don't see things our way. We all suffer this irrational behaviour ;-) |
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HCL
Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 728 |
Quote: I remember their PR wasn't as good as the others. :)
Hmm, what was that all about?! Did Bob give you one of his (free) beers, or what actually did he do to make you all vote for *that* demo!?
As for Time Machine, it really wasn't finished enough when the compo was held. |
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JackAsser
Registered: Jun 2002
Posts: 2014 |
Quote: Hmm, what was that all about?! Did Bob give you one of his (free) beers, or what actually did he do to make you all vote for *that* demo!?
As for Time Machine, it really wasn't finished enough when the compo was held.
Well we did have a cake when winning with 1991 so we’ve had our share of PR stunts. ;) |
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Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 680 |
Does the size of the cake need to be inversely proportional to the size of the demo? |
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Perplex
Registered: Feb 2009
Posts: 255 |
We'll bring a cupcake then. |
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JackAsser
Registered: Jun 2002
Posts: 2014 |
Quote: Does the size of the cake need to be inversely proportional to the size of the demo?
Tbh it was a 15 min demo and the largest cake, so no. Directly proportional |
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Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 680 |
"Tbh it was a 15 min demo and the largest cake, so no. Directly proportional"
Nice. We'll bring a raisin ;-) |
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Radiant
Registered: Sep 2004
Posts: 639 |
Quoting RaistlinOne really annoying thing for a programmer - but annoying in a funny way - is that sometimes you spend AGES on an effect... optimising, trimming down the memory use, hand-tuning timings so that there’re no nasty taster jitters, etc etc etc... then you release the finished product and people say “oh, that’s quite nice”... gaaaaah.
I've found that the effects that were the hardest (for me) to code are often not the ones people comment on. F.ex. I did a double FPP chess zoomer in The Social Demo, which was a really fiddly piece of code to write and I was super happy when I finally managed to squeeze it all in. Nobody else seemed to really care about that one however, instead mostly commenting on a really lazy static twister effect with some non-standard graphics. :-) |
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Golara
Account closed
Registered: Jan 2018
Posts: 212 |
Quote: Quoting RaistlinOne really annoying thing for a programmer - but annoying in a funny way - is that sometimes you spend AGES on an effect... optimising, trimming down the memory use, hand-tuning timings so that there’re no nasty taster jitters, etc etc etc... then you release the finished product and people say “oh, that’s quite nice”... gaaaaah.
I've found that the effects that were the hardest (for me) to code are often not the ones people comment on. F.ex. I did a double FPP chess zoomer in The Social Demo, which was a really fiddly piece of code to write and I was super happy when I finally managed to squeeze it all in. Nobody else seemed to really care about that one however, instead mostly commenting on a really lazy static twister effect with some non-standard graphics. :-)
I find making the main effects much easier than the whole design around them later on. Of course the main effect is usually much more complicated and bigger piece of code, but it's also what is most interesting and keeps you going. Making some transitions is so hard for me. Especially multi stages, like here comes one part of graphics, then something else happens, them something changes and THEN we just to the main irq. Although it's probably the lack of experience and I'm just doing it the stupid way. |
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Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 680 |
Here too - and I think that applies not just to demos but ALL programming. 25% of the work is the fun initial work. Then 75% is the polish. That applies to game development, applications, demos, websites, ... for me at least.
I’m trying to build up a toolset of code for C64 that at least makes this work easier - but it’s still a pain at times. |
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