You are not logged in - nap CSDb User Forums Forums > CSDb Discussions > LCP 2004 demos 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 ? 2004-08-05 08:39 algorithm Registered: May 2002 Posts: 702 Totally agree with you. Where are the VSP/FLI/Sideborder/New GFX modes. These combined with design would be nice again. It seems that most c64 demo's now are just too plain and don't use the hacking of the VIC chip enough. We need more demo's like Cycle, Deus ex machina etc. 2004-08-05 08:42 macx Registered: Mar 2002 Posts: 252 not being a coder, perhaps my perspective is different, but i'd really only agree partly and rather see it as proof of the scene evolving. we're not teenagers anymore, trying to compensate for lack of self-esteem due to all the time breaking new records and being "the best". instead we're mature sceners, interesting in a nice coherent demo. something communicating a flow to us, and maybe telling us something or making us think. we should not forget that demos are art. who'd be interested in thomas lundbyes paintings if he'd used more colours than picasso? we're not interested in art because of that, we love it because it gives us something. just like some of the demos at lcp did. my partial agreement is ofcourse that you're not completely wrong. new effects should be tried out. there are so many things to be done, so many effects that could be released. they do not need to be hard coded, as long as they look nice. in fact i believe one of the reasons coders do not try new effects is that they are so simple. and THAT is THE major problem. 2004-08-05 09:03 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 Well I for one only watch C64 demoes to see effects that makes me go 'how the hell did he do that with this small machine'. It's also the reason why I won’t touch the PC 'scene' as it’s just a matter of who got the best artists, and to me 99.5% of those demoes are boring. Gone are the days where the coder really mattered (except for a couple of 64k introes). I prefer tech demoes that require a understanding of the machine and where the uninformed wont know why it’s cool ;) The reason for this is I like a demo to challenge me and give me a reason to figure out how that could be done and maybe even do it better. IMHO if you want Art please go create it with all the other PC ....s And macx, your explanation really was closet psychology and about as far from the truth as it could be. It’s simple as a coder I like to see ‘incredible code’ the rest is just eye candy which give it the last 5%, but that’s just because I enjoy code more than the ‘story’. 2004-08-05 09:17 macx Registered: Mar 2002 Posts: 252 sat: instead of complaining and calling my arguing names i'd prefer you to comment what i really wrote. i agree with you when it comes to pc demos, cause pc demos are not hard coded with all that cpu-power, atleast many of the coders behind them have not made the effort. but the c64 got its limits, making something smooth is not the easiest thing (i believe?). and then i'd rather see a demo giving me something than another record next to yet another nude phantasy-chick, not really being nice to watch. but ofcourse new effects should be made, but they do not necessarily need to be hard coded. and also, old threads should be picked up. look at some effects and styles of some older demos, what happened to those? there are loads of inspiration to evolve from pre 4x4. 2004-08-05 09:32 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 I told you why I think your arguments are wrong. My reason to like 'record demoes' and hard effects has nothing to do with your teenage/mature reasoning. I also dont care for art its not what C64 demoes are about for me (tbh I think this demo-art thing was something that was invented for PC). Its as simple as I like to see amazing code, the rest is just extras and doesnt mean much to me. Dont take me wrong I have all the respect in the world for those really good artists that can do nice gfx for the c64, but I prefer to see good code. I would also like to see the 4x4 mode die, its ugly as .... except on a big screen, and it was only invented to impress 'pc' users. Lets have some good old effects running at 50 fps (or at least 25 fps) and in 'normal' resolutions. 2004-08-05 09:57 JackAsser Registered: Jun 2002 Posts: 1997 Agree without sat, however good graphics and nice flow is also necessary and is worth more that 5% IMO. :D I had this discussion with Oxidy last night and he told me I sounded like Oswald... But for you guys like sat and Oswald, I promise I'll give you coders pr0n some day soon. /JackAsser - who's currently in the process of mastering the VIC-chip... 2004-08-05 10:14 G-Fellow Account closed Registered: Jan 2004 Posts: 103 Hi all! I dont need new effects in a demo! I need a good looking demo with cool sountrack nice grafix and maybe a story. So i liked the new demos! Better a good demo design with old efects than a demo with new effects that looks ugly! Cheers, G-Fellow 2004-08-05 10:34 Oswald Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 5034 "see it as proof of the scene evolving." If a demo leaves me with the impression, that the creators have invested only 20-30% of what they are able to do into a demo, thats no evolving. I dont need new or fancy gfx modes to be ammazed, Sander was the man who prooved to me that koala is enough, the picture counts. I can be ammazed by a simple effect, but it has to offer visually more, or something completely new. As of the pc demos today: they reached the level where everything can be done, so there was no other way than going artsy. About 4x4, 4x4 can be nice if well done IMHO. Our demo in the works will have most of the effects in 4x4. Im curious to see what the reaction will be :). 50fps fullscreen effects are almost impossible hard to do.. especially new ones, this leads again to recycling imho. G-Fellow: how on earth are you not bored to death of old effects, stuff seen for the 25th time ? A demo always should have a "wow" factor, be it for code, or gfx, or design, or music, or all. Something that I see for the 25th time will kill the wow factor for me. what I really miss is, that I dont see the effort in demos as a few years back. Going the art way has a similar reason as on PC. We instead of being capable to do everything technically are too close to the limits, and this is a new way instead of making impossible hard code. Lets call lame coding art. And lets view hard code from the artsy point, so we can claim we are better than coders with better skills than us. 2004-08-05 10:54 Dane Account closed Registered: May 2002 Posts: 421 Watching Borderline really gave me a kick. 2004-08-05 11:03 CreaMD Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 3036 IMO, Visually interesting doesn't always need to be technically hard to achieve. Remember panoramic demos. Some of the effects vere subtle, some bigger, but always they were realisation of an new idea. "Chasing words" in scroller in final part of one of their demos, in combination with music was quite scarry I must admit. For me, demo doesn't necesarily have to be technically innovative. But I would of course like to see new visual/animation ideas, preferably in fullscreen and there is still a lot of space for new things. Whether it is math coded, consisting of pre-calculated parts, or pre-drawn animation phases, I really don't care, unless it's rotating phong dithered duck... ;-) For somebody, duck floating on the animated-charset-sine-water line... extended to borders isn't anything extra, but for me it's something which gets attention alerted. Good script (story telling, or impressionistic ;-) and good music timing sometimes makes 50% of the succes. 2004-08-05 11:17 _V_ Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 124 It's all relative as usual. I liked these demos, except the Postcards one where I (a) laughed hard at the 'let's keep Stockholm clean' bit and (b) got so very, umm... uninterested after that. I guess you have to be from the area to appreciate the royalty jokes - relative, right. But I'd say the general trend is very good. Demos depend on several ingredients: code, flow, concept, graphics, music. If a demo has these ingredients in spades, it will be a delicious meal for all. However, that doesn't mean that a demo lacking slightly in a certain flavour is bad. It all boils down to who you are, and which of the ingredients *you* like having in your demo dinner. I can live without the coding world records - as long as the effects do what they're supposed to do and the rest is there, I'm happy and nurtured. The LCP demos do just that. However, that doesn't mean that you have to enforce your diet onto everyone. Oswald, just because you aren't being served enough code, doesn't imply that the demos themselves are weak in the absolute sense. Of course it also helps that I'm a layman when it comes to effects and hardcoding. My intuition currently says this: sideborder = evil, math effects = unrolled loops and lots of simplifying tricks, hard effects in ifli mode = hmm, new gfx modes = murrr. This, along with the fact that I'm more into the drawing/composing/design business, explains why my emphasis lies more on the other factors. But I can understand where you're coming from, Oswald. I'm sure new demos with hardcode will come. There are enough competent chefs around - you won't have to be hungry for long =). 2004-08-05 11:18 hollowman Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 ahh, after bringing us numerous tunnels and bumpmappers and failing at making a conceptual demo oswald is here to tell afrika that their effects are old and flt & triads demos arent good enough. well, you would know, wouldnt you borderline - not good enough. its no doubt anymore, demos are wasted on the scene 2004-08-05 11:27 _V_ Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 124 No they're not 2004-08-05 11:29 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 Unfortunatly people focus on looks instead of content as always. Thats why I say if you want looks go for a PC demo. And tbh I dont think we are even close to utilizing the C64 to its full potential yet, but of cause that remains to be seen. For the record I havent seen one 4x4 effect that looked nice when viewed on a normal screen yet. For a coder adding the 'fadein' / 'fadeout' stuff also tend to be laberous boring stuff which in most cases doesnt require talent but just time (which is often what people lack these days).. Yeah I agree it looks nice when its done but I just dont value it as high as the superficial rest does ;) I completly understand and agree with Cruzer's 'You know the routine' style demoes.. I was impressed when I first saw them, where as the current 'top' demo Deus Ex Machina on this site didnt do the same for me.. It was more like hmm ok, and yeah I know it had some nice code too (dont get me wrong here, the demo is nice, but I have others I find more impressive). I know many 90% wont understand that, but also that the last 10% old school coders will. Another great thing about 'space-moes' is that you can load the part you would like to see incredible fast :) 2004-08-05 11:46 HCL Registered: Feb 2003 Posts: 719 Hollowman just told the truth, couldn't have said it better. 2004-08-05 11:51 Cruzer Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1048 Thanx for the nice words, Sat. :) Coder porn is what turns me on too, and I know for a fact that the c64 has lots of more potential in this direction, since my list of ideas keeps on growing. But alternative demos can be cool too, like Borderline/3ad with its ingenious patterns or Psykolog/Panoramic with its utter weirdness. What's most important is that you have fun doing what you do, that way a demo can never be "wasted on the scene" no matter what ppl think about it. 2004-08-05 12:19 Nightlord Account closed Registered: Jan 2003 Posts: 131 what one expects from a demo is way too personal to discuss. i can't help but enjoy good math coding or vic wizardry. and i enjoy good fresh artistic demos as well. however i think if we run out of coders that try to beat eachother technically i am afraid we will see the end of the scene. that is my gut feeling this is not to talk down to graphicians or musicians. but i think the existance of demos very much depends on coders. many groups faded away because their coders quit. if the scene moves in such a direction that coding is no longer a challenge than i do not know how this will effect the scene itself. and for the lcp demos: pcfs was way too sweedish. it is hard to comment on it for me. there obviously is a lot of graphical effort put on this but i could not enjoy the thing triad demo was i think nice and fresh. the only problem being the flow was so slow. i like the afrika demo because of the technical demo feeling it gave me even if the effects were old. in fact it made me realize how much i miss technical demos and their wow factor as oswald calls it. my favorite was ultragui with its two very fresh parts. i wish i could enjoy putermans music as much. overall lcp was a bit dissapointing to me. plus there was no major diskmag release or anything. when the diskmags are not there and good demo reviews are forgotten i have only one hope left. floppy 2005... if it follows the same pattern than i am afraid we might have no serious scene left in 2006. 2004-08-05 14:03 Oswald Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 5034 great, I lost a very long post due to that the forum was not working for a few minutes. anyway. Hollowman: After you failed to make bumpmappers and tunnels, you decided that you will compensate your lousy coding skills with concept. And after making a demo thats in top 10 on csdb (downvote it pleez).. yeah, I dare to say that this or that TRIAD or FLT demo is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I guess you only check the name of the group while forming your opinion. Hamerkullen/Afrika has 10 year old parts period. I strongly agree with nightlord: " if it follows the same pattern than i am afraid we might have no serious scene left in 2006." Id like to see the demos to evolve, but whats happening these years is to fall back to the NTSC scene quality. 2004-08-05 14:20 G-Fellow Account closed Registered: Jan 2004 Posts: 103 Quote: "see it as proof of the scene evolving." If a demo leaves me with the impression, that the creators have invested only 20-30% of what they are able to do into a demo, thats no evolving. I dont need new or fancy gfx modes to be ammazed, Sander was the man who prooved to me that koala is enough, the picture counts. I can be ammazed by a simple effect, but it has to offer visually more, or something completely new. As of the pc demos today: they reached the level where everything can be done, so there was no other way than going artsy. About 4x4, 4x4 can be nice if well done IMHO. Our demo in the works will have most of the effects in 4x4. Im curious to see what the reaction will be :). 50fps fullscreen effects are almost impossible hard to do.. especially new ones, this leads again to recycling imho. G-Fellow: how on earth are you not bored to death of old effects, stuff seen for the 25th time ? A demo always should have a "wow" factor, be it for code, or gfx, or design, or music, or all. Something that I see for the 25th time will kill the wow factor for me. what I really miss is, that I dont see the effort in demos as a few years back. Going the art way has a similar reason as on PC. We instead of being capable to do everything technically are too close to the limits, and this is a new way instead of making impossible hard code. Lets call lame coding art. And lets view hard code from the artsy point, so we can claim we are better than coders with better skills than us. Dont get me wrong, i like fresh and new ideas for a demo, but i dont need worldshocking or worldbreaking codes for a demo, to say thats the demo are good. But when a demo comes with a great story, grafix, music, worldshocking and breaking code thats ok with me :D Iam no coder, only a musician, thats maybe the reason why i judge more the music than the demo in itself. But i see when a demo is totaly crap or not... /G-Fellow 2004-08-05 15:39 No-XS Registered: Mar 2002 Posts: 78 Why is it that, after one party with releases that one doesn't like, they have to say that the scene is dead? Just wait for next releases, to see something you like! Or better: make something you like yourself! :)) I'm pretty sure, in 1 week, there will be a very graphical demo from ASM (for the ones whining about too little graphics) I'm pretty sure, also at ASM, there will be some very nice music releases (for the ones whining about low quality music...ooh..that was me too) I'm pretty sure, in a few months, maybe at X2004, we will see some coders demo's (for the ones whining about no new code things) Remember: Your opinion doesn't really count! The scene is dead for you, when you stop watching releases :)) 2004-08-05 15:47 hollowman Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 macx, you are partly right, but the internal wanking never ends, no matter how old some people get. and its not unique for the demoscene,try any culture dominated by males, for example: hang out with some guitarplayers and you might end up hearing them ramble about how all the ignorants arent able to understand why yngwie malmsteen is the best musician in worldz. oswald, at lcp you give the demos the point you think they deserve, you can give all demos a 1 if you think they stink. still the demos got rather high grades, this must be because the attenders didnt all have a demo in the top 10 at csdb, hopefully next year only hcl will vote, since he's the only one who is able to tell if a demo is good enough. shame on the rest who think they have the right to vote however they like as for what i form my opinion by, well...if the rest of your lost post was full of such intelligent and well founded arguments, its a lost gem comparable in value only to that daffy duck game yes, the afrika demo had effects done 10 years ago, so does your demos but neither me nor afrika are stupid enough to start a thread about how disappointed we are. once again you are competing in a different league nightlord, go take a look at what was released at lcp98 and floppy98, and please say again that things are going the wrong direction. but you are completely right about the dependancy on the coders, take away a handful of people and the releases at the swedish parties are gone. but surely everyone will be really encouraged to continue now that they know that their demos arent good enough, and that they should go and make art on pc instead and i really dont understand why so much is demanded from the swedish scene, 5 months after floppy. i am more than pleased with the amount of, and the quality of the demos(but then i'm not in the top 10 at csdb, and only judge by the name of the group, so what do i know). besides, since so many here love technical and groundbreaking demos, go make some. with all you guys there should be enough releases to make everyone happy. and i promise i wont start threads at csdb where i tell you that your demos wont do, and that you should join some other scene instead 2004-08-05 15:51 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Children, children .. it's like _V_ said, it all depends on personal preferences. Personally I 'dig' the more abstract coding style of Borderline more than Cruzer's stuff, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy his workmanship, or that I think he's lame by giving us his old-fashioned coding porn. I think it's cool we see all these different styles next to eachother, and as for LCP not bringing us new effects, too bad, but does that mean the end of the world is near? Personally I think there's still a lot more that can be done on the 'artsy-fartsy' end of the spectrum, and I see no reason why I'd have to go to the pc scene for such stuff. That's like saying there's no use for a good rocksong in Dutch because there are already so many good ones in English .. not that I can think of a real good rocksong in Dutch but you get my drift. And you know what's really great? None of us have to watch demos we don't like! Isn't that cool? Believe me, your life would really suck if you had to watch 'Sex and Violence' once a month. So what I'm trying to say here (almost dead because of the 50 degrees heat in my room): just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it shouldn't be made. Finally Sat, please don't speak for others .. I'm an 'old-school' coder as well, but I doubt we have the same taste. 2004-08-05 16:10 Trash Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 122 Quote: Unfortunatly people focus on looks instead of content as always. Thats why I say if you want looks go for a PC demo. And tbh I dont think we are even close to utilizing the C64 to its full potential yet, but of cause that remains to be seen. For the record I havent seen one 4x4 effect that looked nice when viewed on a normal screen yet. For a coder adding the 'fadein' / 'fadeout' stuff also tend to be laberous boring stuff which in most cases doesnt require talent but just time (which is often what people lack these days).. Yeah I agree it looks nice when its done but I just dont value it as high as the superficial rest does ;) I completly understand and agree with Cruzer's 'You know the routine' style demoes.. I was impressed when I first saw them, where as the current 'top' demo Deus Ex Machina on this site didnt do the same for me.. It was more like hmm ok, and yeah I know it had some nice code too (dont get me wrong here, the demo is nice, but I have others I find more impressive). I know many 90% wont understand that, but also that the last 10% old school coders will. Another great thing about 'space-moes' is that you can load the part you would like to see incredible fast :) If you havn't seen a goodlooking 4x4 effect on a screen yet you obviously missed the bumper in Hammarkullen! As for the quality of the demos @ lcp I can only say: Be there and make a better release next year. New borders WILL be broken on the C64 and new effects and graphicmodes will brake the surface but it's like always a matter of time and in between at least I do enjoy the concept-demos alot. Neither Puterman, Iopop or Hollowman released bad demos in my eyes, their demos most problably could have competed even with a really cool technical demo and still be likely winners, it is all in the eye of the beholder. 2004-08-05 16:18 iopop Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 317 "If you like this demo then just remember it please. If you dislike it, then don't just hang around complaining, just don't look at it anymore" King Fisher, Red Storm, 92 2004-08-05 17:01 Puterman Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 188 Ah, another one of these useful discussions. Others have said it already, but I guess it deserves to be repeated once more: if you're not satisfied with the releases, make something better yourself. And Oswald: I guess you compensated for your lack of concept skills by coding bumpmappers and tunnels? 2004-08-05 17:02 macx Registered: Mar 2002 Posts: 252 this discussion goes in the right direction. lets make the discussion meta: why cannot both parts be right? "the swedish demoscene" is more postmodern and VERY pragmatic and tolerant concerning the definition of a good demo. "the ones opposing the swedish demoscene" are looking for more unsubtle demos pleasing their demand for hard hacking. in any way both parts have the right to their own opinion. demos ARE ways of expressing oneself, it is art. we want to draw normative conclusions, and we should. such gut-feelings are just proof of that we've got a living scene. or a post-scene if you'd prefer :-) i might continue this after work. 2004-08-05 18:08 Oxidy Account closed Registered: Mar 2003 Posts: 80 Macx: Aaah, you mean we can co-exist? So the "Coder Bandidos" doesn't have to kill the "Artwork Angels" or vice versa? As Hollowman subliminally tries to say in his demo, we have to clean the streets from these gangs. They make decent people sit and whine in some forum instead of actually producing something. I'm looking forward to all future demos, regardless if the 50/50 percentage between coding and gfx/design is slightly out of balance. And a small note, the scene will only die of you let it. Duh! 2004-08-05 18:45 Matt Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 597 what a stupid discussion. isn't this a matter of taste? tell me how to discuss taste :/ saying that I don't give a fuck about new routines wouldn't be 100%true but I care a lot more about originality and design, and the music ofcourse. that's what makes a demo special to me. but that's MY idea, nobody needs to agree. 2004-08-05 21:22 Turtle Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 70 Isn't the amount of opinions posted in very little time proof enough for a vital scene? Is a "scene" only alive and evolving when there are frequently tons of excellent releases? Do demos "communicate" the way people do like in this forum? 2004-08-05 22:45 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Guess Turtle has a good point, the debate about taste does prove that the scene is quite alive. When I first saw c64 demos after not seeing any for a few years, I was very impressed by the way demos have 'improved', in any way, concept, code, design, graphics, music, swapping thrue sites like these, this stuff is hotter than it ever was... Good thing about this relative democratic demoscene is the many opinions, many chances of voting some release or person up or down. You can go live in a dictatorial country, and enjoy the benefits of the absolute, if you rather like that. Demos that you don't like, shown on tv, 24/7. Eventually an average demo will become the coolest thing you've seen. 2004-08-06 03:44 Black Belt Jones Account closed Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 57 Quote: what a stupid discussion. isn't this a matter of taste? tell me how to discuss taste :/ saying that I don't give a fuck about new routines wouldn't be 100%true but I care a lot more about originality and design, and the music ofcourse. that's what makes a demo special to me. but that's MY idea, nobody needs to agree. Matt: "isn't this a matter of taste? tell me how to discuss taste :/" Right on the money! It's been said i dont know how many times, but i'll say it too, demos are not 1 for all. They are different things to different people. Once we all realise that, then this thread will fall apart quicker than a leper in a wind tunnel... :-) Ok i'm done... NEXT! 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: 3036 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: 252 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: 5034 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: 1391 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: 1997 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: 1391 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: 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 doesn’t 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 didn’t 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 doesn’t 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 don’t 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 that’s also why I like Cruzer’s YKTR’s. 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 doesn’t 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 doesn’t 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 didn’t 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 doesn’t matter much how bad/good the programmer is as the hardware does 90% of the job for him (and if it doesn’t 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 it’s 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’ doesn’t 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 doesn’t even fit with my definition for a demo, it’s 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. It’s actually the complete opposite of what I enjoy and I would prefer to see such things disappear, but that’s 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%. 2004-08-06 17:44 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Well, I guess that's the last time I'll have to recommend you something, but at least you've got the guts to say you voted a '1', so let me retract that sad fucker comment ;) I gotta admit, I'm a bit stunned .. and rather happy that people like you are not really part of the scene anymore, or else we would have to die watching kefren bars :) 2004-08-06 19:20 hollowman Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 Quote: 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. oswald, i'm sorry...i am all wrong, i mean a filled vector object like in plastic kiss had ofcourse not been done back in 94. and yes, you always try to come up with new effects, in void you had effects like bumpmapper,tunnel and fireworks, and four years later you had a bunch of new effects in soiled legacy like bumpmapper,tunnel and fireworks. i didnt mean to make you feel bad (if i understand the word rankle correctly), i will try to be nicer in the future. the positive and friendly attitude you have shown throughout this thread will be my guiding star creamd, so we're gonna enlarge the c64 scene by promoting it at orangejuice and pouet. browse back through this discussion and notice the amount of ignorant, or downright stupid opinions about the pc scene and its demos. if sceners on other platforms are anything like c64 sceners, what do you think they will say and think about our productions? sat, so i managed to produce the worst thing you ever seen? thats cool, the worst thing you ever seen happens to be the same demo as the best demo a few other people have ever seen. 2004-08-06 19:42 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 First let me rephrase my statement concerning Sat, what I meant was that I'm glad the scene doesn't consist of people like him, not that I'm glad he's not part of the scene. That's what you get for quickly wanting to type something while your g/f shouts that dinner is ready. Second, this same discussion made Hein watch that demo and vote '10'. I know whose opinion I hold in higher regards. Then again, Hein is a bit useless, can't even code a sideborder scroll, can he? 2004-08-06 20:10 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 Hollowman: Yeah I said it’s the worst I’ve seen and I don’t even award it the word demo, its art. Which isn’t included in my definition of demos, and if it was the only demo I had ever seen I never would have started to program, for a fact. It simply doesn’t contain an effect or routine I find interesting but that’s no wonder as you’re telling a story which some like. I prefer to get my art treatment elsewhere, demos for me is about challenge and it was what started the demo concept in the first place, unfortunately this ‘was lost/evolved’ as coders was needed less and less. You would probably hate my demos and tbh these days I find most of them to have been pure crap, but damn I had fun doing them and it was a challenge to me. If you can’t take constructive criticism then too bad (constructive because I already explained my view and rating system xx times in this thread) If you read my demo definition you would know why, that however doesn’t mean that everyone else can't consider it to be great and many do it seems. But that’s also what’s great about demos some you love some you hate, if you had fun doing it good for you, if others enjoyed it good for them. Demos I can rate according to my rules, but note I didn’t go in a give you a 1 as a coder just because I didn’t like one of your productions. If I aint allowed to express my opinion about it then what good is the vote system. From my point of view I would rather have kefrens bars than art any day, and its sad to see that fun competition and group vs group friendly competition has gone, it was god damn fun. But I guess the people that get triggered by the word impossible knows it :) Yeah I know art is for the masses and old school demoes are for the initiated its simple math why one is most popular. But if I ever do another demo expect it to code porn if I can manage it. 2004-08-06 20:29 hollowman Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 constructive is the one word that sums up this discussion 2004-08-06 21:15 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Quote: First let me rephrase my statement concerning Sat, what I meant was that I'm glad the scene doesn't consist of people like him, not that I'm glad he's not part of the scene. That's what you get for quickly wanting to type something while your g/f shouts that dinner is ready. Second, this same discussion made Hein watch that demo and vote '10'. I know whose opinion I hold in higher regards. Then again, Hein is a bit useless, can't even code a sideborder scroll, can he? Darn, truth is difficult to handle... again a sleepless night. But I know how to handle this truth, done it before, I'm born in a programmers family, they're all so freaking smart, it made me cry in the past.. doodling all day, composing all day, it did not help... Why was Freud a doctor, and why wasn't he some simple garbage man, one of the few jobs I respect. They don't complain about the stench, pick up the garbage every week, don't complain about the vegies I throw in the grey bin, don't care if the garbage stays inside the bin after some rough shaking with the machine, shout at people with big Mercedeses that are parked on the pavement.. think they are perfect.. ah, man, boohoooo. 2004-08-06 21:27 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 C'mon Hein, you know I still like you, even though you're not worth much as a scener. And without people like you drawing pictures, FLI effects would be useless! See, not all is bad .. 2004-08-06 21:35 elkmoose Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 45 art _IS_ art if you dont understand wank off you dont deserve to watch it even :P 2004-08-06 21:48 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Quote: C'mon Hein, you know I still like you, even though you're not worth much as a scener. And without people like you drawing pictures, FLI effects would be useless! See, not all is bad .. Thanks, I still like u too... not because of the milk. I've always had the impression that ASP worked out FLI for his own plessure, but I may have had more plessure out of it. Somewhat a symbiotic relationship between coders and graphicians. Pfew, conceptual programmers must have a dualistic life. 2004-08-06 22:06 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Dang, I just wrote a beautiful post oozing with pearls of wisdom about life, death and the c64 scene .. there even was a bit about how to get a better sex-life in there as well, but it seems to be lost in cyberspace now. Ah well, let's just do the hightlights then: - it's not often that you hear the word 'art' being used as an insult. - Sat, looking at your profile here it seems you were never an active part of the golden scene yourself. So why act so high & mighty? - I used to love those technical demos, Horizon was my #1 group. Then it became boring (oh look, yet another sprite in the sideborder, whatever will they think of next). Things got worse at first (I still wake up screaming, having nightmares about those horrible 4x4 block effect demos) but I'm glad that 'concept/art' demos happened, without them I for one would have left this scene a long time ago. Hell, the realization that the c64 could be used to transmit emotions even made me go active again (well, semi-active, 2 demos in the last 4 years is not that great)! - just because some of todays demos have more depth does not make them less special - if there were so many more sceners back in '94, why where there so few art demos back then? 2004-08-06 22:17 Cruzer Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1048 TDJ, and everyone else who don't wanna lose their postings: Always press Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C before hitting the submit button. That way your text is on the clipboard if something goes wrong. 2004-08-06 22:26 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 I never considered my self acting as high and mighty (Actually I point out more than once that my opinion probably only match 10% of the sceners). I just have an opinion and can back it up. I never claimed to be superior at anything or being part of the ‘golden’ scene as you call it. I participated in my own way and at my own terms and we had fun. I only say what inspired and inspires me to program and produce for the scene, and what bothers me about the scene. Never did I say my opinion matters more than yours and by the same rule I never take any one from the ‘golden scene’ words as more than just another opinion. The reason that there where few art demos were probably that people where younger and had new ideas or improvements to do and also had the required time to spend. Lately when the scene started dying concept things started to appear for various reasons none of which I agree with. Just as you hate the demos I like. I hate the ‘art’ demos because they only show something I see a zillion times in other mediums and often in much better quality (yeah I find the C64 doesn’t have the right power to present such stuff properly) and because they don’t inspire me to produce new code. Remember that your argument has two sides just as the concept demos keep you active in the scene it would be what would have kept me away if it was the only thing to do. You find them to have more depth I find them to present attempts at depth none of which has inspired me as much as art on other mediums. They are by definition less special to me if they don't match my definition for a demo. You are all extremely offended just because I don’t like the same type of demos as you, take it easy get along. 2004-08-06 22:53 hollowman Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 sat, yeah, how can someone be offended by you popping up here after 10 years, telling those who make 'art demos' to move to another scene. that is just your oh so humble opinion. just like your constructive criticism towards me, that what i do is totally wrong. very subtle. i'll keep that in mind but where are the rest of the 10% of the scene you represent? why arent they giving me some friendly advice to leave the c64 scene? shall we set up an opinion poll? and before you continue lecturing me, you could check loaded, the first half of emanation machine, and the second half of wok zombie(one half=one tune). you might identify parts of it as (non elite) code. in vice you can hit alt-w preventing yourself from wasting too much of your precious time on my silly fades or go watch demos from 1989, people were so imaginative back then. and they had so much spare time, not like today when you type down 321 KB of sourcecode during an afternoon and release a superficial art demo and get all the glory 2004-08-06 22:59 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Sat, calling yourself one of the 'initiated', sorry, but to me that's acting high and mighty. Anyway, I don't "hate" the demos you like, some of them even get my 'dick hard' so to speak. Most of them bore me though, but I would never give any of those a '1'. But like you said, what good is the voting system if you can't do that if you want? Answer: it's no good, no good at all. Also, I'm not offended, why would I? Believe me, I've heard far worse than this, I just think there are big holes in your reasoning. I really doubt you've seen most of the demos I'm talking about, yet you're eager to call them all failed attempts at depth, and claim such a thing could never be done at the c64 anyway. Why not? Just because you don't know how doesn't mean it's not possible. Limits are there to be broken, and while you're praising one group (the technical coders) for trying to do so, you're slagging down the other (the concept coders so to speak) for doing the very same thing. Something does not compute here. 2004-08-06 23:04 Puterman Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 188 I wonder why Sat's posts remind me so much of Radar's. Could it be that someone who pops up after 10 years of inactivity to lecture about how the scene has degenerated since the days when they were active just looks like good old conservatism? 2004-08-06 23:08 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 The reason that there where few art demos were probably that people where younger and had new ideas or improvements to do and also had the required time to spend. Lately when the scene started dying concept things started to appear for various reasons none of which I agree with. >Think that some priorities have changed over the years for >some sceners. Just as you hate the demos I like. I hate the ‘art’ demos because they only show something I see a zillion times in other mediums and often in much better quality (yeah I find the C64 doesn’t have the right power to present such stuff properly) and because they don’t inspire me to produce new code. Remember that your argument has two sides just as the concept demos keep you active in the scene it would be what would have kept me away if it was the only thing to do. >I've seen better code on more powerfull machines than c64, >not a zillion times, I admid that. >The c64 is a perfect machine to show simple but effective >ideas. It's about abstracting things to less, and a c64 >got less, so for that purpose a c64 is a handy tool. Than >again, there are a lot of artists who dislike abstract art. >A concept is a concept, it won't be different on any >medium, only the technique behind it. If a concept stinks >(which is a matter of taste, too), fancy techniques cannot >make it better. Some people prefer the raw sound of >Hendrix, others prefer the shiny hairdo from Malmsteen or >Satriani. Jaikes, that's a mean comparison. You find them to have more depth I find them to present attempts at depth none of which has inspired me as much as art on other mediums. >I can imagine it doesn't. There is so much art that's not >done on c64, just like there has been math long before the >c64. It's just about having fun, either in this scene, or >in another one. <snipperdesnip> 2004-08-06 23:13 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Quote: The reason that there where few art demos were probably that people where younger and had new ideas or improvements to do and also had the required time to spend. Lately when the scene started dying concept things started to appear for various reasons none of which I agree with. >Think that some priorities have changed over the years for >some sceners. Just as you hate the demos I like. I hate the ‘art’ demos because they only show something I see a zillion times in other mediums and often in much better quality (yeah I find the C64 doesn’t have the right power to present such stuff properly) and because they don’t inspire me to produce new code. Remember that your argument has two sides just as the concept demos keep you active in the scene it would be what would have kept me away if it was the only thing to do. >I've seen better code on more powerfull machines than c64, >not a zillion times, I admid that. >The c64 is a perfect machine to show simple but effective >ideas. It's about abstracting things to less, and a c64 >got less, so for that purpose a c64 is a handy tool. Than >again, there are a lot of artists who dislike abstract art. >A concept is a concept, it won't be different on any >medium, only the technique behind it. If a concept stinks >(which is a matter of taste, too), fancy techniques cannot >make it better. Some people prefer the raw sound of >Hendrix, others prefer the shiny hairdo from Malmsteen or >Satriani. Jaikes, that's a mean comparison. You find them to have more depth I find them to present attempts at depth none of which has inspired me as much as art on other mediums. >I can imagine it doesn't. There is so much art that's not >done on c64, just like there has been math long before the >c64. It's just about having fun, either in this scene, or >in another one. <snipperdesnip> Hmmm.. this is not a Usenet debate on google.. 2004-08-06 23:27 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 Heh so much anger. It’s more constructive than if I had just said ‘man that’s awful fuck off’, I told you why I thought it was awful. It’s also a lot easier to do demos these days where you have proper editors and cross assemblers. With regards to the fades I said for a good demo they can make it better but I never required it nor gave a demo ‘much’ better rating just because it did them. I don’t lecture I give an alternate opinion. It’s funny how everything is whining or lecturing these days. Initiated only means that you have to know why something is hard or nice. A guy that doesn’t know about the side border for example would just look at it dumbfound and never even think why having X in the side border is cool or why 8 sprites on a line with open side-border and a logo is neat. Often (notice I say often) non programmers don’t know and it’s not something you can ever show to a non scener which you can with art demos, as it is art and most people have an opinion about it. I’m sorry for you if you can’t handle an alternative opinion and persons that rate according to their own opinion instead of a ‘scene’ opinion. I admit my first few posts might have been a bit lacking on why I think as I do, but I would like to think I explained myself. What do being away for 10 years have to do with how valid my opinion is? If I find it boring and uninspiring, should I still rate it with 10? If it’s something I delete right after watching it, it’s a 1 in my book. The only reason I am even active again is because I found this site on google by accident, and then stumbled upon YKTR, Demus Interruptus and stuff like it. Not many of the other new productions I have watched inspired me. The prime reason I might do another demo is because the platform has so many limits that the code becomes a real challenge to write. If I could do something I know I considered impossible 10 years ago then I would be happy. It might happen it might not. 2004-08-07 02:25 Dane Account closed Registered: May 2002 Posts: 421 Sat, Oswald...or anyone who wants to meddle in this discussion - you might want to consider phrasing. Saying "ok, Borderline wsn't my kind of demo but congrats on #2" is a lot nicer than "wtf art suxxor - leave the scene". It's also very fun to read about the Swedish 'arty-scene'. Apparently, since I'm a Swedish demo-scener, what I do is artsy as opposed to technical, if I understand some of the blaha in this thread right. I guess it's time to give up on digis, x-fli, rotating objects and stretchers then, or move to Germany (where everything released of course is technical and not arty). Also, even though I don't want to use the "I'm in so many top 10 productions on CSDB"-argument - try to balance all of the pretty stuff that you have to say (whoever you are) with doing some pretty stuff. If you want to preach about arty demos - well, release a few. Same goes if you want to save us with border sprites and kefrens bars - get a couple of releases or I won't take you that seriously. Sorry. (Psst Hein, I'll show you how to do a sideborder-scroll) Congrats to Dandruf for ripping a 10 year old tune for the Afrika demo to match the 10 year old effects. 2004-08-07 04:17 SIDWAVE Account closed Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 2238 Sticking to topic, I think I saw some new effects - so I don't complain. And I don't mind re-used code, as long as the demo has messages and possibly nice art. There's still a lot more that can be done, and it just takes a single new idea to spawn new life to more ideas. Keep going! The Brudbilder demo, I find interresting, because it's a crazy idea that just works. 2004-08-07 06:54 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Wow. Sat, you sure got a way with words. Basically you accidentely stumble on this site, realize there's still a scene, find a few good old-fashioned demos you like and dismiss the rest as art that doesn't belong on the c64 because you don't think it can work. And when people react to that (in a quite civilised way I may add, I haven't seen one person here using strong language) you dismiss that as unjustified anger. Must be nice being you. >It’s more constructive than if I had just said ‘man that’s awful fuck off’, I told you why I thought it was awful. But basically that's just what you did. You gave "Pretending .." a '1' and told people stuff like that has no place on the c64. So no, it's not more constructive, it's exactly the same. >It’s also a lot easier to do demos these days where you have proper editors and cross assemblers. So now tools come into play. Well, the first years of my active scene life, from 1987-1990, I coded my demos using the monitor of my cartridge, I only started playing around with Turbo Assembler when working on my first Focus demo. Now how is that for hardcore? Oh wait, 1990, you were not even active then. Sorry, I forgot I was dealing with a newbie. >With regards to the fades I said for a good demo they can make it better but I never required it nor gave a demo ‘much’ better rating just because it did them. And there you go with the fades again. What do fades have to do with concept demos? >Initiated only means that you have to know why something is hard or nice. A guy that doesn’t know about the side border for example would just look at it dumbfound and never even think why having X in the side border is cool or why 8 sprites on a line with open side-border and a logo is neat. Often (notice I say often) non programmers don’t know and it’s not something you can ever show to a non scener which you can with art demos, as it is art and most people have an opinion about it. I think most people on the current scene know how hard it is to do certain stuff. And I think some people here in this discussion probably could teach you a thing or two about hardcore coding. Just because they don't use it doesn't mean they don't know how to do it. >If it’s something I delete right after watching it, it’s a 1 in my book. So you just give 1's and 10's, is that it? No in-between? No grey area? What about trying it the other way around? Let's say you rate a demo first (maybe a 3, maybe a 4), then still delete it? Do you think you could live with something like that? >The only reason I am even active again is because I found this site on google by accident, and then stumbled upon YKTR, Demus Interruptus and stuff like it. Not many of the other new productions I have watched inspired me. How are you active? Telling people who have done a great deal in keeping this scene alive (and no, I'm not talking about myself here) that they have no place here (in *your* opinion ofcourse, lest we forget), because they don't play by your rules, is not being active - it's being arrogant. >The prime reason I might do another demo is because the platform has so many limits that the code becomes a real challenge to write. If I could do something I know I considered impossible 10 years ago then I would be happy. It might happen it might not. So tell me again, why is it okay for you to try break those limits, and not for others to try breaking the limits of concept demos on the c64? Please please please, tell me. Because I sure as hell see no difference. 2004-08-07 08:49 VIC Registered: Aug 2003 Posts: 73 This discussion is useless... pretty much lige some movie discussion... Different demos has different qualities: some focus on code, others on the design & concept - so does the viewers... personally the demos I like best represent the best of both worlds. That's also one of the main reasons why the voting system in here is "useless"... It should reflect the quality of multiple aspects like: code, music, graphics, concept(?), flow(?) -not only in a single value, but with points for each of these aspects (and perhaps some average of these to decide the placement among "Top Demos"...) This has probably been up in many discussions, so sorry if i say something that has like been said before :) 2004-08-07 10:16 hollowman Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 sat, you can keep saying things like "I’m sorry for you if you can’t handle an alternative opinion" you are still missing the point, noone has a problem with if someone likes a demo or not. if alot of people react on what you write, perhaps you should start to reconsider your opinions or the way you express them. what if i after watching the yktr demos started telling cruzer that his demos which rely only on code and ignore pretty linking, fade in + fade out, decent gfx etc. isnt good enough, and that he should move to the spectrum, and his demos are the worst things i've ever seen. i would ofcourse not do that, because i am perfectly able to appreciate different kinds of demos, and also because i am not a total jerk (well..) why is it that both on c64 and pc the people who like technical demos attack the 'artsy' demos and their producers, telling them that what they do is not what its all about, and that they should leave for some other scene, while the 'artsy' people never do the same to the technical ones and yes, this discussion is useless, because like all other conservative oldtimers sat will be gone in a few weeks time. until then we just have to live with him being 'active' on the c64 scene. 2004-08-07 11:44 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 Yeah this gotten to be quite a pointless discussion, I will do one last comment. TDJ: > Wow. Sat, you sure got a way with words. Basically you > accidentely stumble on this site, realize > there's still > a scene, find a few good old-fashioned demos you like and > dismiss the rest as art that > doesn't belong on the c64 > because you don't think it can work. And when people react > to that (in a > quite civilised way I may add, I haven't > seen one person here using strong language) you dismiss > that as unjustified anger. Must be nice being you. I explained why I think as I do quite civilized too. A few disagree as expected unfortunately some take it very personal, your free to rate mine with 1 if you dislike them, some will I know. > So now tools come into play. Well, the first years of my > active scene life, from 1987-1990, I coded my demos using > the monitor of my cartridge, I only started playing around > with Turbo Assembler when working on my first Focus demo. > Now how is that for hardcore? > Oh wait, 1990, you were not even active then. Sorry, I > forgot I was dealing with a newbie. Pointless personal attack, and yes I was active back then. This discussion never was about being hard core or not, more about what people like to see in demos. I never once said I was hard core either. > I think most people on the current scene know how hard it > is to do certain stuff. And I think some people here in > this discussion probably could teach you a thing or two > about hardcore coding. Just because they don't use it > doesn't mean they don't know how to do it. They probably do, I learned quite a bit since I started to mess around again, so much has been discovered the last 10 years; I would actually be disappointed if they couldn’t. My main point being that I don’t want to use time on watching demo types that I don’t like. > So you just give 1's and 10's, is that it? No in-between? > No grey area? What about trying it the other way around? > Let's say you rate a demo first (maybe a 3, maybe a 4), > then still delete it? Do you think you could live with > something like that? No I roughly use my demo rating system: 75% for code / effect, 20% for music / graphics, 5% for design / fades, 0% for concept / story. Of cause if something impresses/surprises me in one way or another I might give more/less for each category, nothing is fixed in stone. > How are you active? Telling people who have done a great > deal in keeping this scene alive (and no, I'm not talking > about myself here) that they have no place here (in *your* > opinion ofcourse, lest we forget), because they don't play > by your rules, is not being active - it's being arrogant. For me being active just mean that you produce / work on stuff for the C64, that might or might not be released. A month ago I was inactive. Maybe the ‘scenes’ definition of active has changed, mine hasn’t. > So tell me again, why is it okay for you to try break > those limits, and not for others to try breaking the > limits of concept demos on the c64? Please please please, > tell me. Because I sure as hell see no difference. I never said it isn't ok, I only said please don’t force me to watch such stuff. VIC: I agree more than one score would be better for demos. Hollowman: > if alot of people react on what you write, perhaps you > should start to reconsider your opinions or the > way you express them Well not many did and I already said I might have been a bit rough at the start. > what if i after watching the yktr demos started telling > cruzer that his demos which rely only on code and ignore > pretty linking, fade in + fade out, decent gfx etc. isn’t > good enough, and that he should move to the spectrum, and > his demos are the worst things i've ever seen. If that’s how you felt, I would have no problem with that. I would probably just post, a counter post saying I liked it just to let him know. > i would ofcourse not do that, because i am perfectly able > to appreciate different kinds of demos, and alsobecause i > am not a total jerk (well..) Well C64 demos for me is about one thing, it’s my opinion and I don’t see how I necessarily become a jerk just because I didn’t like the one demo of yours I’ve seen so far. I encourage you to rate demos like you think they deserve. > and yes, this discussion is useless, because like all > other conservative oldtimers sat will be gone in a few > weeks time. until then we just have to live with him > being 'active' on the c64 scene. Well its more useless because its opinions, its just as discussing movies,bookes, etc some like certain things others hate it and would never waste time on it. I am not conservative just because I like the old demo style. Nostalgic would be a better word and yes you might be right maybe I’m gone in a few weeks who cares this thread has shown that people of both opinions and various middle roads exist. So there's a reason to produce both types. 2004-08-07 13:08 Spectator Account closed Registered: Sep 2003 Posts: 35 Pushing the boundries of the c64 IS art. 2004-08-07 13:40 hollowman Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 >Well C64 demos for me is about one thing, it’s my opinion >and I don’t see how I necessarily become a jerk just because >I didn’t like the one demo of yours I’ve seen so far. sat, how many times do i have to repeat myself, you can have any opinion about my demo(s), like it, dislike it. i dont care. but you said that those who do art should move to pc instead, and you also said that demos like pretending to see the light should disappear. you can continue acting as if the problem is that i am pissed off because you dont like my demo, surely that easens your mind or you could try to realize what it is exactly that you have said here, how you have acted. perhaps a clever guy like you could then figure out why i used the word jerk but ofcourse, looking at what you said and done could destroy your idea of yourself, as the humble, intelligent person who discuss things in a civlized manner 2004-08-07 15:04 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Quote: Sat, Oswald...or anyone who wants to meddle in this discussion - you might want to consider phrasing. Saying "ok, Borderline wsn't my kind of demo but congrats on #2" is a lot nicer than "wtf art suxxor - leave the scene". It's also very fun to read about the Swedish 'arty-scene'. Apparently, since I'm a Swedish demo-scener, what I do is artsy as opposed to technical, if I understand some of the blaha in this thread right. I guess it's time to give up on digis, x-fli, rotating objects and stretchers then, or move to Germany (where everything released of course is technical and not arty). Also, even though I don't want to use the "I'm in so many top 10 productions on CSDB"-argument - try to balance all of the pretty stuff that you have to say (whoever you are) with doing some pretty stuff. If you want to preach about arty demos - well, release a few. Same goes if you want to save us with border sprites and kefrens bars - get a couple of releases or I won't take you that seriously. Sorry. (Psst Hein, I'll show you how to do a sideborder-scroll) Congrats to Dandruf for ripping a 10 year old tune for the Afrika demo to match the 10 year old effects. Hehe... a musician showing me how to do a sideborder scroll.. hmmmm.. I was about to ask GRG, or Jeff. Nono, my life will become too complicated, eventually I will want to make a complete demo by myself. 2004-08-07 15:36 Metal Maniac Registered: Aug 2002 Posts: 12 I don't know why Im writing this, but it might happen that someone here reads the words from the world party rulers #1, that is your friends in Dual Crew. If we can choose between a demo and no demo at all we choose a demo. But, as always remember the Dual Crew slogan: - There are ALWAYS 2 points of view. Take care guys, and be prepared for our next demo, probably lame in many eyes, but we for sure had fun making it (as usual). 2004-08-07 15:52 ChristopherJam Registered: Aug 2004 Posts: 1391 Hein Design: > Nono, my life will become too complicated, eventually I will want to make a complete demo by myself. .. and you _really_ don't want to go that route - next thing you know Oswald will be pointing out that your X isn't good enough to excuse no Y/Z/W ;-) ;-) did i mention i wrote the music player and editor the week before the compo.. btw, are any of the onslaughters based on the west coast of Aus? 2004-08-07 15:53 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 Ok one more comment. I know what I said and I stand by it. 1. I would rather have a ‘scene’ without these productions than one with. 2. I find it sad that concept demos and ordinary demos are compared (its not something that can be compared or judged by the same rules). You disagree and might consider me a jerk because of it. Let’s leave it at that and get along. 2004-08-07 19:35 Dane Account closed Registered: May 2002 Posts: 421 Quote: Hehe... a musician showing me how to do a sideborder scroll.. hmmmm.. I was about to ask GRG, or Jeff. Nono, my life will become too complicated, eventually I will want to make a complete demo by myself. Yes, that's precisely what happens. And seeing you know how to tweak both pixels and frequencies by now you should come join my one-man-army club. :) 2004-08-08 00:36 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Sat, my personal attack had a point in fact. Throughout this thread you've been putting down today's sceners on several occasions, with the all-too-known attitude of an ex-scener returning and somehow not being able to coop with evolution. I just wanted to let you feel how it is to be on the receiving end of such statements. So no, I don't consider you a newbie, but I sure as hell don't consider you an authority either. Then again, after this thread I doubt anybody does that, save you yourself maybe. 2004-08-08 03:29 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Quote: Yes, that's precisely what happens. And seeing you know how to tweak both pixels and frequencies by now you should come join my one-man-army club. :) Yes, well, Im terribly expensive. 2004-08-08 06:45 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Quote: Yes, well, Im terribly expensive. He is you know. Why do you think Focus went bankrupt all those years ago? I'm still paying off those debts .. 2004-08-08 15:07 _V_ Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 124 Hey. Before anything, I'd like to state that I'm very happy to read this thread, since so many posts show - in my opinion - real demoscene spirit. If anything, I am proud to be a part of it. Thumbs up, guys! Now, this response to Sat is pro forma, since he seems to have posted his last comment, but I was occupied with other things to make my stand in time. Oh well. >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). This is your opinion on the matter, and I'm completely cool with it. Another look on things is great, it's another angle, something which drives me to rethink my own stance and adapt if such a thing is required and wanted. In fact, orthogonal thinking is often a source of innovation. Things like trackmos, concept demos, story-driven demos etc. all came from people who said, "Let's throw it all around and do it like *this*". Who doesn't remember this one: "In this demo, you don't press space. We also might highly entertain you on various philosophical, political and/or technical levels."-King Fisher (quote may be partly fictional) >So clearly you misunderstood what I was talking about. Clearly I didn't since I seem to be entirely cool with the entire preceding paragraph. Always have been. No, what I disapprove of (and consequently argue about), is this: >It's also the reason why I won’t touch the PC 'scene' as >it’s just a matter of who got the best artists, and to me >99.5% of those demoes are boring. Gone are the days where >the coder really mattered (except for a couple of 64k >introes). <sarcasm> So basically, in the PC scene, the coder doesn't matter these days? In other words, the current day demos in the PC scene consist of loose music pieces and pictures on which we have to click separately to see them? ...no. I guess some of them also have a .txt file explaining the concept and/or the story. You know, as an absolute abstract form of demomaking, this wouldn't be such a bad idea for a demo, or for demo art, even. Except that it is not a revolutionary new idea, since all PC demos already are this way, obviously. </sarcasm> I think the coder still matters. Perhaps PC demo making is a lot more flexible, what with the amount of available software (all developed by graphicians, of course), but in the end, someone has to do the timing and create a show worth watching. Someone has to debug, someone has to optimize. No, not the compiler. I think the demoscene is a self-regulating unit. Those five factors I mentioned in previous posts are all vital, and demomakers will constantly push themselves to the limit in each of these five factors because there is an internal competition. Just like here. We all want to be the best in what we do, which creates a drive to go on and reach the next level. It's important to understand that this competition, and ultimately evolution is platform *independent*. The platform only matters as restricting factor: a c64 is a wholly different beast than an Amiga, or a PC setup. Which you choose, depends on yourself and your background. Also, the five factors evolve independently from eachother, and sometimes, the focus lies more on, say, concept than code. It just happens, but after a while, the tables may turn, or there is no particular preference. Some will like the current situation, others won't, others don't mind. This is all okay, but it is not okay when someone then says that people who like 'concepts' (which lead to 'art demos') should change platforms because they're not really wanted or needed. That's separatism, something I *really* don't like. And you said this not once, but thrice (in the posts before my previous one): 1(tbh I think this demo-art thing was something that was >invented for PC. 2IMHO if you want Art please go create it with all the >other PC .... s 3Thats why I say if you want looks go for a PC demo. Now, I didn't feel like responding on those first two comments, but 3 caused me to arch my eyebrows. "'Looks'", I thought, "that could be 'art', or 'graphics and maybe music'. That's what I do. Now why should I go to the PC for that?" Moving on: >It’s simple as a coder I like to see ‘incredible code’ >the rest is just eye candy which give it the last 5%, but >that’s just because I enjoy code more than the ‘story’. Oh, so my input is just eye candy? Which gives it the last 5%? Ideas, images, music are only a negligeable, shallow, superficial fragment of a demo? For the record, this percentage was 'kindly' modified into a 'much more realistic' 25% later on. Thank you, we feel much more appreciated now. And last, but definitely not least: >For a coder adding the 'fadein' / 'fadeout' stuff also >tend to be laberous boring stuff which in most cases >doesnt require talent but just time (which is often what >people lack these days).. Yeah I agree it looks nice when >its done but I just dont value it as high as the >superficial rest does ;) Just to make sure that we are talking about the same thing, I shall use the same definition of 'superficial' as you: "Concerned with or comprehending only what is apparent or obvious; shallow". Okay. I like concepts. I like the flow of a demo. I love demos which just keep pushing the envelope, which are full of emotion, which develop their story with superb imagery, tightly synced to a cool tune. I value that really high because of my background. Hence, by your viewpoint, I am one of the 'superficial rest'. I am shallow and obvious. I don't really matter in the c64 scene, I should go to the 'boring PC scene' instead. That glorious insight, coupled with my pride and love for my platform, caused me to respond, suspecting that other graphicians and musicians might feel the same way. Of course, they are much wiser than me and don't respond at all - unfortunately, I said A, so here's side B. One last thing: perhaps you meant that sceners are superficial in general? >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 doesn’t >mean I have to agree. This is true, but don't you think that it's a bit harsh to ask everyone to be an expert on everything? Must a PC scener know all the intricacies of a c64, sid music or graphics modes? The other way around, must we know all the intricacies of the Pentium architecture, sound and video cards or the DirectX libraries? Must we all know exactly how recursive ray-tracing, vector engines, quadtree partitioning and fractal imaging works? Is this the only way to appreciate a demo? Are you shallow otherwise? I don't know about this. The sceners I meet at a party are all, no exception so far, amazing people with great expertise in their field. You talk, you drink, you exchange ideas, you have a blast. Sometimes, their knowledge goes way above your head because you aren't as specialised in their platform. Now, do these people suddenly become shallow when looking at demos from other platforms? Should they be kept from watching the demo? Should they be kept from voting to show their appreciation? Let me put it differently: let's say I walk up to the table of a person coding a part for a demo. This person is very likely to know much, much more about coding than me. I talk to her a bit, then ask what she's doing. She shows me what she's got so far, then asks in return: "So, how do you like it?" Should I respond: "Wow! Cool object, reflections rock, the texture makes it really dark, you've even got shadows - I love it!" or should I answer: "I'm sorry, I would like to comment, but my knowledge about the *insert non-c64 platform here* is superficial to the point that I can't give an accurate statement about your part." or, more explicitly: "I don't know whether this is supposed to be impressive code or not, so I have no idea." Choose wisely, Guybrush. 2004-08-08 16:07 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Quote: He is you know. Why do you think Focus went bankrupt all those years ago? I'm still paying off those debts .. Yes, that 1 picture I did for Focus, costed them a fortune.. I feel like Kluivert; don't have to play, still get paid. That's the spirit. 2004-08-08 18:33 JackAsser Registered: Jun 2002 Posts: 1997 Let me get constructive: PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS And yes, I'm from Sweden therefore this is Art. :D Best regards /Jack 'Penis' Asser - the well hung stud. 2004-08-08 19:15 _V_ Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 124 Point taken, Jackasser. Though not not all pens are pens, the sheer artistry of it all dazzles me. Is there no limit to Swedish creativity? ;) 2004-08-08 19:20 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Quote: Let me get constructive: PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS And yes, I'm from Sweden therefore this is Art. :D Best regards /Jack 'Penis' Asser - the well hung stud. Wow, check this out, huh, huh, he said penis, huh, huh. 2004-08-08 19:32 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Quote: Wow, check this out, huh, huh, he said penis, huh, huh. And still he made more sense than Sat. By the way _V_: excellent post, once again. 2004-08-08 19:37 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Quote: Yes, that 1 picture I did for Focus, costed them a fortune.. I feel like Kluivert; don't have to play, still get paid. That's the spirit. It's a good thing you don't have a car then .. 2004-08-08 20:01 _V_ Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 124 *Hi5s TDJ* Hey man, you weren't so bad yourself =) 2004-08-08 20:21 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Quote: It's a good thing you don't have a car then .. :D 2004-08-08 21:03 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 _V_: A well crafted post deserves an answer, so I thought I might as well spend my hangover reflecting on my opinion about demos and this thread in general. I would like to admit I was being rude with some of my remarks here too and I apologize for that. My only excuse is that I truly love old style demos where it was code for code’s sake and I guess some of my sadness with the loss of focus from effects to art finally exploded. My opinion is probably based on the fact that I started to code because of the challenge and to have a good time doing it. I mainly did things to see if I could do them and because other demos inspired me to figure out new things about our wonderful little machine. If you look at it historically it’s something like this: Demos used to be about using the hardware and showing what tricks you could do. I guess I often see them as friendly code competition where one awesome trick inspired new (code) ideas and presented a challenge for other coders. They where coded by programmers for programmers (more or less). It was simple days where a part was constructed by a single guy with a brilliant idea and he did it because he liked it, and yes music and graphics where often added as an afterthought. Back then the coder spend 98% of the time doing what he thought was fun, namely working on the effect/trick he just came up with. Things produced back then where mostly technological demos. Later some brilliant guy figured out how to do trackmos (something most probably thought impossible back then), and it led to the development of some truly awesome productions. But it had the side-effect that it made everything take longer to develop as you now where required to do extra code to fade gracefully from one effect to another. This often resulted in the coder having to spend 75% of the time on the tricks and the last 25% on the transitions. As the transitions most often are extremely simple to program they often didn’t present a challenge and meant you would have to spend a lot of time doing boring things just to be able to release it. As productions grew and design got to be a bigger and bigger requirement you often ended up having to spend crazy amounts of time managing the production instead of doing what you loved which in the end made it felt more like work than a fun hobby. I guess that’s why I can enjoy a demo with little design but pure code porn more than those without because I know the guy had fun doing it which I would have had too. My love truly lies with the effects and not so much with the design part, and the story/concept demos, often don’t contain any worth talking about. Which mean that the primary thing I enjoy in a demo is missing. I guess you would feel the same way if the demo contained no graphics or music worth talking about? Now a comment on a few of the things you mentioned: > I think the coder still matters. Perhaps PC demo making is > a lot more flexible, what with > the amount of available software (all developed by > graphicians, of course), but in the end, > someone has to do the timing and create a show worth > watching. Someone has to debug, > someone has to optimize. No, not the compiler. Well there need to be a programmer but how good he is doesn’t matter as much as it used to. This is related to the power of the pc cpu and gpu’s being used these days. To be fair you of cause need some experience to get it to run on all those different configurations and driver bugs. PC’s doesn’t really seem to have any limit these days, and that of cause removes the need for excellent coders, at least I think it’s very rare you will find a pc demo programmer spending six months to just figure out how to do one routine like Boogaloo and Exilon did for their vector routine in the last tractor 3. This is not to say that PC programmers are bad in any way, I just think they are not the determining factor anymore (not even close) It’s not all up to the artist and musicians to make or break the demo. A programmer will often have to find a platform with limits to be able to express himself in his art these days. > Oh, so my input is just eye candy? Which gives it the last > 5%? Ideas, images, music are only a > negligeable, shallow, superficial fragment of a demo? For > the record, this percentage was 'kindly' > modified into a 'much more realistic' 25% later on. Thank >you, we feel much more appreciated > now. What I guess I was trying to say with the rough percentage scheme was that I focus on the effects and super design, music and graphics alone would not make it a good demo in my book. It should be clear to anyone that awful music and graphics can ruin even the best effects. It’s not meant as anything negative, more like a statement that if there are no effects worth looking at then I probably wouldn’t enjoy it or rate it high, thats the bad thing about only having one value to describe a demo. A few numbers would be better and demoes should be rated inside their category. > This is true, but don't you think that it's a bit harsh to > ask everyone to be an expert on everything? > Must a PC scener know all the intricacies of a c64, sid > music or graphics modes? The other way > around, must we know all the intricacies of the Pentium > architecture, sound and video cards or the > DirectX > libraries? Must we all know exactly how recursive > ray-tracing, vector engines, quadtree > partitioning and > fractal imaging works? Is this the only way to appreciate > a demo? What triggered my outburst was somebody complaining about the record demos (tech demos) and how much better the art demos are. Personally I love tech demos as they tend to contain the effects I want to watch, and I find it sad that people put them in the same category and compare them as if they where the same thing, when the target audience is clearly so different. When you sum it up it I guess your right that I have a hard time coming to terms with what the demos has ‘evolved’ into. It’s like I lost my creative playground, but luckily a few excellent techmos showed me there is still room for such around here. That was a long one, and my head is still pounding so I think its time to a repair beer. Bbl. 2004-08-08 22:10 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Sat, nice to see you can post something intelligent without having to 'accidentely' insult people. One thing though: I don't think anybody here said that art demos are better than technical demos. As for the voting system: I agree it doesn't work, but I don't think that having to vote for the seperate ingredients and for seperate styles will be the answer. Instead I think that using a (limited) list of fave demos per person will do a much better trick, where every demo on that list will get the same amount of points. Because, if you think about it, it's not about what is the best demo, it's about what is the most favourite demo. And in that aspect, 'comparing' tech & art demos should be no problem at all. 2004-08-08 22:24 JackAsser Registered: Jun 2002 Posts: 1997 Just to clarify my previous post: http://penis.istheshit.net/ Best regards, JackAsser - Who thinks the discussion finally has become a bit more mature... :D 2004-08-09 00:47 _V_ Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 124 Sat__I would like to admit I was being rude with some of my remarks here too and I apologize for that.__ Thank you for honouring me with an answer. Assuming that you are not the person who regrets his actions after a hangover, I'll accept your apologies and retract my claws, even though some of the later parts of this response might seem to dictate otherwise. When you see smileys, I'm just having fun. When not, I'll probably have a reason for it. __My only excuse is that I truly love old style demos where it was code for code’s sake and I guess some of my sadness with the loss of focus from effects to art finally exploded.__ I know one explodes from time to time, but that shouldn't be an excuse to advocate separatism on repeated counts. __My opinion is probably based on the fact that I started to code because of the challenge and to have a good time doing it. I mainly did things to see if I could do them and because other demos inspired me to figure out new things about our wonderful little machine.__ That sounds like you had a lot of fun indeed. Perhaps as much fun as me and any other pixelling c64 graphician discovering both the limitation and the freedom of the VIC chip? Perhaps as much fun as me and every other c64 musician trying to milk every last drop out of those 3 voices to create the SID's unique sound? I followed the 'coder wars' as well at the time, and with great interest: who could get the most DYCPs, who would be the first to create a FLI DYPP, etc. Good times. But, since my main passion lied elsewhere, the main pull was towards other things: "Wow, look at the style of that logo! Great fill effect! How did he get those colours? Damn you, *insert Vibrant/Maniac/Scortia here*, for being so ungodly good! How *do* you get all that jazz out of the machine?". Bottom line: such an experience is worth as much as yours. Don't offend me or others by trivialising it, or we *will* return the favour. =] __If you look at it historically it’s something like this: <CUT> It was simple days where a part was constructed by a single guy with a brilliant idea and he did it because he liked it, and yes music and graphics where often added as an afterthought. <CUT> I guess that’s why I can enjoy a demo with little design but pure code porn more than those without because I know the guy had fun doing it which I would have had too.__ You might view it as this and it might indeed seem like it happened that way, but there still is something wrong if you say 'afterthought'. Because if graphics and music are just an afterthought, then you don't NEED graphics and music - ...OH! I just realised something... you *are* right! Theoretically, graphics and music are only an afterthought. Pure code truly doesn't need graphics or music! All you need is the c64, power and a storage medium (optional). A PURE coder enters code blindly on the keyboard while the power is on, because she knows the routines by heart and is HARDCORE. She needs all the processing time and memory she can get to allow the code to run optimally, so it's great that nothing is wasted on display and/or player routines. Unless, of course, the code is about display and/or player routines. The PURE coder then shows her BADASS routines by running the code while other HARDCORE coders stand gathered around the c64. They will look at the c64 case with great interest while they are being explained about the functioning of the routine, about the phenomenal processes going on inside the c64's chips and why adding a single ROL to the routine at zeropage has increased the efficiency of the routine by 15%. The other PURE coders will then praise and approve of her code to no end, stare at the c64 case some more, their brains in total awe at how the transistors inside the chips must be changing. Someone will mention the TAINTED coders and how they actually need a MONITOR with - the insolence - SPEAKERS to show their routines. They will scoff at their misguided colleagues who dare to ask the UNCLEAN to paint them a logo and make them a tune. Then, they will dance circles around the partridge in the pear tree and climax multiple times together until dawn breaks. ................ Okay, as an 'afterthought', I just couldn't resist ^o^. Of course this was a reductio ad absurdum. I basically want to say that Code indeed doesn't need Graphics and/or Music in theory (pure), but Code indeed does need Graphics and/or Music in practice (tainted). As far as I can tell, graphics and/or Music are essential to Code, and vice versa. It's a mutually dependent symbiosis, and saying one or two of them are not important makes them all unimportant. "But, I only need a few sprites to show my routine! It's really just an afterthought!" "But, I only need a tiny piece of code to show my picture or play my music! It's really just an afterthought!" So historically speaking, I don't really see a difference between then and now, except that all elements of a c64 demo have evolved in such a way that the symbiosis between graphics, music and coding has become much more apparent, which pushed forward things like concept and flow. These 'new things' are now being explored while leaving room and ample respect for everyone who wants to focus on technical parts. Don't quite see what's wrong with that. __My love truly lies with the effects and not so much with the design part, and the story/concept demos, often don’t contain any worth talking about. Which mean that the primary thing I enjoy in a demo is missing. I guess you would feel the same way if the demo contained no graphics or music worth talking about?__ I think that as experience increases, so will the amount of good demos which are a combination of 'artsy fartsy' and 'very technical'. You'll need to give the explorers the time and room to innovate (and not banish them to another platform). And as to the last question, I'd say 'depends if the used graphics and music serve their purpose and are, more or less, the best they can get'. __Well there need to be a programmer but how good he is doesn’t matter as much as it used to. <CUT A WHOLE LOT OF 'BLAHA' WHICH I WOULD *REALLY* NOT FORWARD TO THE PC SCENE>__ I could say a lot of things, that PC coders still need to figure out how all these libraries work, what they mean, that they need considerate math skills to understand what they are doing, to create something new and much more, but I won't. This because I am too superficial as far as PC coding is concerned. But, if you want, I'd be more than happy to ask people like Picard, Fiver2, BoyC, Gargaj et al. for their objective opinion on your insightful stance about PC coding. ...you know, Farbrausch and Conspiracy have made their development tools public. Does this mean the end of the PC scene? Hells yeah! It's not like these groups already made better development tools with more functionality and effects. __What I guess I was trying to say with the rough percentage scheme was that I focus on the effects and super design, music and graphics alone would not make it a good demo in my book. It should be clear to anyone that awful music and graphics can ruin even the best effects. It’s not meant as anything negative, more like a statement that if there are no effects worth looking at then I probably wouldn’t enjoy it or rate it high, thats the bad thing about only having one value to describe a demo. <CUT the similar rest>__ Okay, no problems there. Your opinion, your value system, and as long as us artsy-fartsies (why am I suddenly thinking about Willy Wonka? =) don't have to take a hike to another scene, that's fine by me. JackAsser__Who thinks the discussion finally has become a bit more mature... :D__ *crazy late-night mode: ACTIVE* Aww HEEEELLLLLSSSS YEAH! I just discovered that PURE scene pr0n is teh sh17! Now excuse me while I go naturalise myself and dance with the other creative Swedish sceners around the May tree after mutually expressing awe over our graphical prowess in the theoretical art of creating images. We will probably climax together many, many times. JackAsser, I'm comming right now!!111 LOL XD 2004-08-09 01:24 Dane Account closed Registered: May 2002 Posts: 421 Good points, V. Don't ignore the synergy effects in a demo. Inserting random noise into D418 and just showing junk on your X-fli screen doesn't impress too many people. (believe me, I've tried) 2004-08-09 03:16 CreaMD Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 3036 Hollowman: I agree with your point, but still I think that general scene news promo is useful. It only costs registration in the mentioned sites and some time for posting of the standard news ("there was that and that C64 party, get the releases here"). Even when if 1% of the people will click on the download link, or visit the announced site with stuff, and eventually see the releases (on emu). If if will be just one person from 100, it's still more than zero publicity. I would like to add, that since friday the ammount of text this discussion grew enormously but I was curious and decided to read everything even when it was quite painful at times, especially thanx to various invwentive ways of quoting ;-). I quite enjoyed some points. Reading all those arguments I recalled how I learn, during those 5 years of "accidental" experiences at multiplattform party, how other sceners from 8-bit plattforms (that means Atari and ZX Spectrum) look upon C64 demo productions (presented in demoshows) but it brought reflections to my mind which probably aren't good to discuss in this thread so maybe somewhere else... 2004-08-09 04:24 Luca Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 178 CreaMD: as plus/4 user, I'm very interested in your ideas about "other scene's users", thinking about, e.g., "Heartfixer" presented at Forever party... 2004-08-09 05:14 CreaMD Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 3036 Quote: CreaMD: as plus/4 user, I'm very interested in your ideas about "other scene's users", thinking about, e.g., "Heartfixer" presented at Forever party... Demo was shown in wild compo section and although it was only presented on TV screen the party people surounded the TV and seemed quite surprised. Nobody expected anything like this to be presented. IMO, if Hearthfixer was a C64 demo it would get very high in any demo compo at any party it would compete. 2004-08-09 07:43 QuasaR Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 145 @Dane: So you mean Cologne isn't arty but a tech-demo. Ah, I forgot the coloured rasterline... =8) 2004-08-09 07:47 QuasaR Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 145 I ment, since I'm from Germany... 2004-08-09 08:41 Sat Account closed Registered: Jul 2004 Posts: 12 _V_: Farbrausch I respect for their 64k demoes where they have plenty of limits, and really have to be smart about what they do. I love their work. Conspiracy I didnt know but a quick search also make it seem like they produce 64k (limits) and I will have to check those out, it sounds like something I might like. Some of the programmers you mention ring a bell but I think thats from old demoes. I admit I more or less stopped looking at normal PC demoes when it became total 3d accelerated vector madness with a zillion overlays. 2004-08-09 09:25 Oswald Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 5034 Dane: "Sat, Oswald...or anyone who wants to meddle in this discussion - you might want to consider phrasing. Saying "ok, Borderline wsn't my kind of demo but congrats on #2" is a lot nicer than "wtf art suxxor - leave the scene"." Read the comments of Borderline, I wrote that it should have won. I never told anyone to leave the scene, nor stated concept/art demos are suxxor. People dont really see my point. Its not that I dont like concept demos. I adore manhood I-II (hi hollowman), whatsoever. Simply I think that at LCP the concept demos did not cut it enough. On the other hand I miss coder pron demos. Hollowman: That fuckin filled vector took more time to code than your last 2 demo altogether (it uses a totally new aproach, you know that yourself but be it for you its 10 years old), and this is where it comes to the point that I dont see the effort in demos. Something thats easy to do is not apreciated, be it for painting pictures, or growing trees. This also the point for ppl wanting hard code in demos. I also said that I tried to show either new or UPGRADED effects. Probably you dont think its cool if a bump mapper/tunel runs on a bitmap screen instead of 4x4, or if a fullscreen filled vector runs faster. I do. If its only for more speed/colors/resolution the effect is new/upgraded for me. 2004-08-09 11:21 yago Registered: May 2002 Posts: 332 Oswald wrote: "People dont really see my point. Its not that I dont like concept demos." My main Problem with your Posts is the spreading of the term "concept demos". Just show me one demo without a concept! Sure there are Demos which are technically bad, but IMHO this has nothing to do with beeing a "concept demo" or not. Its very difficult to explain what art is, but (at least in german) it has a lot to do with competence and knowledge (and requires loads of work) and breaking limits. In this Respect, even the first sideborder-demos are "concept demos" and "artsy demos". Have Fun, Zed Yago -- If everything is worth money money is worth nothing 2004-08-09 12:40 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Quote: Oswald wrote: "People dont really see my point. Its not that I dont like concept demos." My main Problem with your Posts is the spreading of the term "concept demos". Just show me one demo without a concept! Sure there are Demos which are technically bad, but IMHO this has nothing to do with beeing a "concept demo" or not. Its very difficult to explain what art is, but (at least in german) it has a lot to do with competence and knowledge (and requires loads of work) and breaking limits. In this Respect, even the first sideborder-demos are "concept demos" and "artsy demos". Have Fun, Zed Yago -- If everything is worth money money is worth nothing C'mon, don't try to make things even harder. I think everybody knows what is meant with a concept demo. Having a sideborder scroll is not a concept. Ofcourse you could argue it is (I know people have done before with effects) but that's just plain bullshit. Because hey, then all demos are technical demos too! And graphical demos! And musical demos! Wow .. no more differences, no more problems .. And please go tell the music industry that all albums are now concept albums as well. 2004-08-09 13:57 J.T. Account closed Registered: Mar 2002 Posts: 2 demos without design are boring and bad, even if they have nice effects if you don't present them nicely it's just a waste of code effort. and the same goes to grafix, you can have tons of nice graphics but if you don't have any design to present them then the demo will be boring and bad, i guess you guys get my point(couldn't keep quiet any more). 2004-08-09 15:15 yago Registered: May 2002 Posts: 332 Well, we could not disagree more, TDJ! 2004-08-09 15:26 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Let's agree to disagree then, but please don't get mad while the rest of us keep using this term okay? :) 2004-08-09 16:48 RaveGuru Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 41 2004-08-09 16:58 _V_ Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 124 Well, of course. Theoretically speaking, every production has the elements of graphics (the visual), music (the audial), concept (the underlying idea), code (the implementation) and flow (continuity of execution). But the amount or quantity of each element, each factor can be completely different from one production to another. The concept of a coder demo usually consists of trying to awe those in the know about the limitations of the platform by creating effects which appear to push the envelope of the platform a little further. The concept of a 'concept demo' usually consists of trying to transfer human emotions to the viewer, to make her think about certain aspects of life. Or simply to find more abstract ways to express these emotions. You could call it, 'demo poetry' in a sense. Are these concepts equivalent? Yes, in theory. In practise, 'concept demos' place a strong emphasis on the concept with code working in function of the concept. Coder demos, on the other hand, focus on the technical side of things. So basically 'coder demos' and 'concept demos' are theoretically equal in concept, but practically opposite in emphasis. Sat: Don't you think that the same PC coders who do 64k intros, are also doing smart things for 'real' demos (which have a size limit of app. 10Mb, by the way)? And coding zillions of overlays and new effects is still the coder's turf... it's no coincidence that the most popular groups also have the most talented coders. I would definitely not catalog PC coders as 'only card tweakers'... that's simply insulting. Think of demos as 10Mb '64k intros'. And there are still coder demos released on the PC, albeit that they are hard to recognize as such - take a look at Recycled/Byterapers, Live Evil/Mandula and The S/Suspend. And if you want to hate me some more and lose a few hours over nothing no-good PC demos, then take a look at Heaven Seven/Exceed, A place called Universe (or Beyond)/Conspiracy, H+/Halcyon, Stash (or Jizz)/The Black Lotus, Liquid Wen/Haujobb, Tesla (or Energia, or Wonder)/Sunflower, and Kkowboy/Purple and Blasphemy. And if you want to find out which drives me at the moment, then download the videos of Silkcut (or Perfect Circle, or Little Nell)/The Black Lotus, Fluffy Digital Snowflakes (or Amsterdam Blessings)/Madwizards and Suspend and Respirator Stories/Ephidrena. I could go on for a while, but I guess this is enough for public ridicule. 2004-08-09 17:26 chatGPZ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 11165 oh dear, this is so funny. the only thing that comes to mind is, that if everyone loves your work, then you must be doing mainstream. go figure phun intended. jezuz loves you all 2004-08-09 19:02 Hein Registered: Apr 2004 Posts: 933 Quote: oh dear, this is so funny. the only thing that comes to mind is, that if everyone loves your work, then you must be doing mainstream. go figure phun intended. jezuz loves you all haha. Definately true. A lot of people loved Jesus for being mainstream then. 2004-08-10 10:42 yago Registered: May 2002 Posts: 332 Quote: Let's agree to disagree then, but please don't get mad while the rest of us keep using this term okay? :) The weather here in Europe is too fscking hot for me to drive heaty discussions about "to be or not to be" a conceptdemo ;-) Furthermore, if these categories help you to write your Reviews, keep em! Have Fun, Zed Yago 2004-08-10 12:30 WVL Registered: Mar 2002 Posts: 888 Looks like this discussion is exploding a little bit ;) so i will not mingle in it. But just to put the facts straight : the multiplexer in the upscroller of Arcanum is _not_ a sorting multiplexer. Nowhere did i ever claim it was. I'm not even using close to the amount of sprites i could've used (I use about 50% of available sprites). If i'd used more sprites, the upscroller would've been _totally_ unreadable. Thus a sorting algorithm was not necessary. nice for an effect, but not for readability ;) It IS a 100% random upscroller however, you can test that with a joystick. As for the discussion : let the fight continue! 2004-08-10 13:16 Oswald Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 5034 WVL: I just questioned wether it is, but now we know :) 2004-08-10 13:57 Britelite Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 51 Well, I might be a little late in replying to this thread, but here it goes: I've watched all the LCP-demos, and I don't think I'll ever watch them ever again (with the exception of the Afrika-demo, which was kind of fun). I also tend to have a problem with concept-demos, why the hell do they all have to be so bloody ugly? I'm not talking about the code or gfx-modes, but the looks of these demos in general. Ofcourse appearance is a matter of taste, but just because the demo has a story or a message doesn't mean it has to look like shit. There my 2 cents... 2004-08-10 15:21 hollowman Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 i was a bit surprised at first when oswald started a thread critizing certain demos, considering that he himself will break down as soon as someone isnt 100% positive about his own stuff and since the only response i get is angry replies, without any reflection, i give up on that one. so over to the next britelite, i understand that you feel like #1 after winning at assembly(one of the most undeserved victories in my humblebees opinion), but complaning about boring and ugly demos? you shouldnt throw bricks in glasshouses, especially not glasshouses made out of ugly interlaced 8x8 animations 2004-08-10 15:25 Luca Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 178 I love so much all the stylish nordicpop demos with minimalist taste, it's a personal weak point. I love VIC-stressing and CPU-killing demos too, watching the monitor asking myself "which way in order to obtain this framerate?" or "how to display so many colors?". I liked so much Borderline, neat, a specimen of real class; and I liked Harmarkullen and its nice fx. Am I a stupid borderline dummy user, or should this discussion be never born with those tones and volumes? 2004-08-10 15:44 Britelite Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 51 Hollowman: How fucking predictable can you get? Yeah, I use chunky resolutions, so fucking what? Am I not allowed to have my opinion on what I think looks good? And have I at any point claimed that my demos are the best around? My taste in demos has nothing to do with me making them, I still like the same kind of demos and graphics that I liked when I began coding. And didn't I say it's a matter of taste, you're allowed to dislike my stuff and I am allowed to dislike yours... 2004-08-10 16:44 _V_ Account closed Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 124 Luca__Am I a stupid borderline dummy user, or should this discussion be never born with those tones and volumes?__ No =), and no. The fact that this thread became as massive as it is, justifies that this is a topic worth discussing. It's something which is anchored deep into the hearts of us all, and it was about time that it all came out. A lot of interesting points have been raised (unfortunately also a lot of less interesting points). It forced me to think carefully about my own ideas, and I'm sure I'm not alone on that. In the end, I will stay by my initial statement that it's all relative. One thing shone through, though: We care, we like demos, and man, how cool would it be to see a demo which does everything right: cool graphics and music, super code contained in a tight concept/flow package. So, enough talk: let's get together in teams and make these dream demos a reality already instead of starting flames which lead to frustration, more flames, anger, aggression and ultimately nowhere. Or you go One Man Army, but that's another thread =D 2004-08-10 17:49 hollowman Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 474 Quote: Hollowman: How fucking predictable can you get? Yeah, I use chunky resolutions, so fucking what? Am I not allowed to have my opinion on what I think looks good? And have I at any point claimed that my demos are the best around? My taste in demos has nothing to do with me making them, I still like the same kind of demos and graphics that I liked when I began coding. And didn't I say it's a matter of taste, you're allowed to dislike my stuff and I am allowed to dislike yours... yes, but do we have to discuss our personal taste in threads like this? i think theres a voting system here... 2004-08-11 06:42 HCL Registered: Feb 2003 Posts: 719 It has been stated before, but i say it again. YOU ARE SO MEAN!!! Is it showing good taste when you start yelling at people who made a demo you don't happen to like. Keep your f**king opinion for your self. Delete the ugly demo and shuthefukkup! And as Hollowman just mentioned, there are voting systems nowadays where you can express your most humble feelings. Give us something positive instead, keep the demos you like and get inspired from them, or perhaps tell the maker of *that* demo how much you like it. .. Kids! 2004-08-11 08:06 Oswald Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 5034 hollowman: I think it's natural that I defend my demos against your opinion, everyone would do so. But in one thing we agree, maybe I shouldnt attack other's demos if I cant stand the critics myself. However in some cases I felt you were simply unfair. As for thoughts like "you dont review flowers" (KF), "dont watch it if you dont like it", "keep your opinions", "this is childish": - Even amongst flowers are ones I like and ones I dont, and sometimes I *do* discuss that. - Atleast once I have to watch it. Thats enough to start complaining. - Calling demos Art is a bit too much IMHO, but looking it at this way, arent paintings reviewed ? Arent there forums to discuss music ? etc. Ever heard a poet/actor/etc telling the critics they shouldn't read/watch their poem/film if they dont like it ? 2004-08-11 08:31 Britelite Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 51 HCL & Hollowman: well, I just wanted to express my opinion about the LCP2004-demos in a thread about LCP2004-demos. I do realise that the things about concept-demos in my message was perhaps unnecessary and offtopic, and it wasn't aimed at the LCP-demos at all. So I'm sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings... 2004-08-11 09:29 macx Registered: Mar 2002 Posts: 252 oswald: what are demos if they are not art? would you atleast agree that it is a way of expressing and exploring ones creative output? is it a way of playing? of being in a flow? a way of communicating? 2004-08-11 09:42 Mermaid Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: 338 I like roses, at least the ones that smell nice. But they would have been so much better without all those nasty thorns. I'm sad that noone has made more thornless roses. Sure, we have Pax Amanda, Pax Apollo and Pax Iola - but they were released in 1938, and that's like *ages* ago. 2004-08-11 11:07 Oswald Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 5034 macx: Creative output, thats the right word, tho Art (with big "A") could be titled like that aswell. Anything can be called Art. But in its everyday meaning I dont think its applicable to demos. This brings to me to the fact, that I disagree that demos must have concept, they need a story, whatsoever. Look back where did we come from. Why should we put a one word sticker onto demos ? As I used to read on web pages that define demo: It's a multimedia presentation of graphics music and code, that is made to show the creators best skills, and the best they can pull out of the platform. (now maybe this is why concept demos fail to make me smile) mermaid: hey, I promise whenever we will meet on a party, I will bring you a thornless rose, and have a chat about flowers ;) 2004-08-11 11:19 Twoflower Registered: Jan 2002 Posts: My last released article, "Borderline", was for sure not produced with the intentions of making a demo. It's intentionally made as an art-experiment and was well recieved amongst both the audience, the artworld and the newspapers, so what do you suggest I call it, Oswald? 2004-08-11 11:27 CreaMD Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 3036 IMO... C64 scene is an off-stream artistic movement. Demo is a creation serving the purpose of enteratining, amusing, shocking, spreading a message or anything else it's creator or perceiver can identify in it. Demo consists of graphics & music, which, when we evaluate them separatedly from the demo, are form of art expression. So is demo-code and design around it. Demo is art even when it's creator says that it is not. 2004-08-11 11:39 macx Registered: Mar 2002 Posts: 252 concerning the definition of a demo: "It's a multimedia presentation of graphics music and code, that is made to show the creators best skills, and the best they can pull out of the platform." i do not believe ones creative output necessarily needs to be equal with the best someone "can pull out of the platform". atleast if "the best" means the hardest hacking. however, a creative output could be to "show the creators best skills", atleast if people release productions they are satisfied with. and that may sometimes oppose "coderpr0n", as that is not necessarily "the creators best skills". it may instead be a really compromised production in order to show the hard hacking/coderpr0n. now, do not get me wrong here. ofcourse really hard hacking is a necessity in order to get inspiration for SOME new demoparts. demowatchers (especially coders?) who burst out in a 'WOW!' by a hardcoded routine may, nedless to say, spur their own creativity and start improving the routine, get ideas for something completely different, etc. for some demoparts, however, it is not a necessity. inspiration could be found in really easy-coded stuff that never was repeated, it did not become a trend. i value a demo of the mood it puts me in, meaning the mood i am in when i am watching it really plays a vital role. it is important to watch the demo with open eyes, and not with glasses set on "how dull todays demos are". for me it often is a whole concept, including design, graphics, music, code, text, etc. i usually like "smoothness" and flow. sometimes however i prefer other things. i am really stuck in some old demos which lack all of the things mentioned above except a really good scrolltext, like e.g. the cooperdemo. there is one limit set by the cpu. there is another one set by our imagination. let the creativity out. 2004-08-11 12:46 Oswald Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 5034 I agree wiht macx, and creamd, so the case so far is closed :) Twoflower: Lets apply Creamd's definition, so Borderline nicely fits into the demo "category". 2004-08-11 13:39 ricky martin Account closed Registered: Apr 2002 Posts: 1 you adore us. 2004-08-11 14:09 Cruzer Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1048 Do we really need to define what a demo is? 2004-08-11 16:44 chatGPZ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 11165 borderline sux because its to short. and oswald sux because he didnt just release a demo instead of mucking up. and i sux because i didnt make a top10 demo and dont even care. 2004-08-13 12:29 Cruzer Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1048 Sat just re-joined Camelot. I think we're gonna call our next demo "Down With Art" or something like that. :) 2004-08-13 12:33 HCL Registered: Feb 2003 Posts: 719 We all hope you'll make him talk less on csdb and be more active on the scene >:). 2004-08-13 12:49 CreaMD Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 3036 Quote: Sat just re-joined Camelot. I think we're gonna call our next demo "Down With Art" or something like that. :) Hell of a good name for demo ;-) Right next to the "Coder Pron" ;-) 2004-08-13 13:28 TDJ Registered: Dec 2001 Posts: 1879 Quote: Sat just re-joined Camelot. I think we're gonna call our next demo "Down With Art" or something like that. :) Great, now I got the "you down with o.p.p." song stuck in my head again .. thanks a lot .. 2004-08-27 11:15 Ed Registered: May 2004 Posts: 173 Quote: We all hope you'll make him talk less on csdb and be more active on the scene >:). Is Slammer still doing the thing on the c64 aswell. Some of the new stuff rocked. nice to see some old faces. by the way: joe send his regards! Refresh Subscribe to this thread: You need to be logged in to post in the forum. Search the forum: Search  All forums C64 CodingC64 ComposingC64 PixelingC64 ProductionsCSDb Bug ReportsCSDb DiscussionsCSDb EntriesCSDb FeedbackCSDb InfoCSDb moderatorsCSDb QuestionsCSDb V2 developmentMessages to moderatorsRequests  for   in Writer & textTextWriter  All times are CET. 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