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angelo
Registered: Jul 2024
Posts: 13 |
Howdy
Hi there. It's my first post here, so lemme introduce myself. I'm angelo, or æn.d͡ʒə.loʊ, or unj, a founder of KSKPD, the group behind polish unesco application.
I'm in process of researching some early-computing stuff, including an idea planted by @Krill and @bitfat, that the default narrative of "In the beginning it was a cracker scene, that developed into demoscene later because $REASONS" might be worth challenging.
I might be asking in various sub-forums questions around data on this site, but while I used to be a part of demoscene as a coder (1995+), I also owned PC exclusively since my first computer in like 1990. I skipped 8bit phase completely, so please bare with me, if the questions sound obvious or straight-up outrageously naive :) |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2980 |
As for the oft-cited article How Those Crackers Became Us Demosceners - when reading it with the "alternative" interpretation of history in mind, a few phrases stand out:
Quote:In the late 1980s the legal part of the cracking and warez scene slowly drifted away from the illegal part. Quote:Based on the interviews, there were no sharp borders between different activities before the 1990s: cracking, swapping, intro coding and demos coexisted side by side. Quote:sceners did not somehow “become” interested in pure audiovisual programming, as there were such people right from the beginning. Quote:Bacchus mentioned two groups, Horizon and Ian & Mic, as examples that were not involved in cracking Quote:it was very common that the same people distributed both demos and warez at the same time These do raise the question how far demos and related things really go back relative to cracks-with-intros, and how much truth there really is to the old "first appeared crackers with their crack intros, which then evolved into the demoscene" narrative. |
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Fungus
Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 686 |
When I became active in the scene, there was just the scene. Demo and Cracking etc was just subparts of the scene, I still feel that way personally, they are not separate and never were. |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2980 |
From the same article:
Quote:Arguably, the distinction is somewhat artificial, as the members of both have simply considered themselves to be in the scene. Quote:it again becomes clear how games, piracy and demos initially co-existed side by side in the scene circles |
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Hein
Registered: Apr 2004
Posts: 954 |
I guess you'd have to interview the people that started c64 groups in 1982 and 1983, maybe 1984. The idea of a protoscener is interesting. We all started copying and swapping stuff, so it must've started with a copy-scene with copy parties. |
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4gentE
Registered: Mar 2021
Posts: 285 |
The way I see it (why existant research simplified things into "demoscene emanated from crackerscene") that some people seem to detest:
1) Distribution channel. It' very romantic to think that there was a network of (four-eyed) democoders who exchanged their work via mail robust enough to really be called a distribution channel. It's also very implausible. There was an alternative, one nation channel I was unaware of. UK's Compunet, mentioned by GPZ. Could be that the authors of past research were also unaware of that. Be that as it may, I think mailswapping was the decisive driver in rest of Europe. Mailswapping network was put in place by crack groups mainly to distribute cracks. Demos along with them. This was very important as early copyparties were not very big and pretty isolated.
2) Motivation. Many youngsters came in touch with the scene through intros. The intros were fresh, they were made by teenagers, they were in-your-face, they often looked/sounded better than the games in front of which they stood. The "cool" factor was off the charts for young minds. This coolness factor motivated many a teen computer game player to delve into coding. This thing you saw was miles apart from what uncool boomer dads, uncles and teachers in plaid shirts taught you, from what you did with BASIC in school, and from what Hello World booklets taught. This was cool, this was graffiti, hip hop and thrash metal all in one. Gee, computers can be "cool"! There was this whole scene and it was all driven by other badass teenagers forming these cool groups! I want in!
I think maybe the timeframe is what confuses the discussion. That's why it would be very useful to know exactly when the term "demoscene" started its life (as GPZ suggested). Oswald offered a kind of an answer by saying it was probably coined by Amiga/PC sceners which would (I guess) imply mid 90s. We certainly should not mix in 70s hackerscene or computer demos in general, like that one by Ed Catmull and the gang, as this would be utterly counterproductive. |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2980 |
Quoting HeinI guess you'd have to interview the people that started c64 groups in 1982 and 1983, maybe 1984. The idea of a protoscener is interesting. We all started copying and swapping stuff, so it must've started with a copy-scene with copy parties. Not quite sure how to interpret the last sentence.
And this dude churned out amazing graphics as soon as 1983 (or earlier). =) |
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Hein
Registered: Apr 2004
Posts: 954 |
Quote: Quoting HeinI guess you'd have to interview the people that started c64 groups in 1982 and 1983, maybe 1984. The idea of a protoscener is interesting. We all started copying and swapping stuff, so it must've started with a copy-scene with copy parties. Not quite sure how to interpret the last sentence.
And this dude churned out amazing graphics as soon as 1983 (or earlier). =)
So maybe interview him as well. My thought is that only people from those early days have first hand stories.
As for interpretation; any way that floats your boat. My first 'scene' experience was copying games on tape, but that's obviously way later than the first groups or releases appeared. |
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4gentE
Registered: Mar 2021
Posts: 285 |
@Krill
If I'm not mistaken, You did intro for this mag; how come you dismiss this text nowadays?
https://www.atlantis-prophecy.org/recollection/?load=online_iss..
@angelo
The link I posted could be of interest to you. |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2980 |
Quoting 4gentE@Krill
If I'm not mistaken, You did intro for this mag; how come you dismiss this text nowadays What makes you assume i ever okayed it and not just condoned it or was even aware of it in the first place? Or that opinions are immutable over time? |
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4gentE
Registered: Mar 2021
Posts: 285 |
Quote:What makes you assume i ever okayed it and not just condoned it or was even aware of it in the first place? Or that opinions are immutable over time?
1) The reason I mentioned that you did the Recollection #1 intro was out of respect and so that when I post the link you ((or someone else)) don't come back at me with something like "Look here, boy, I ((he)) coded the intro for the mag you're shoving in my ((his)) face." So, I apologize for insinuating you read the article. Or agreed with what was written.
2) Aha, so this all is about opinions and feelings? I got the (wrong, obviously) impression you were digging for some semblance of "truth", not some elusive and unstable "opinion". |
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