pouët.net

Greetings everyone, I am very aware that the American demoscene is next to non-existent (or very very very underground) . Since I am very much interested in the demoscene and have been following a lot of what has been going on in Europe I want to know how could I do my part to expand the demoscene to my part of the world?? I've been playing around with a couple of "pet" demos in my free time and I feel that there is a lot of hidden talent in the states. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Yes.

DEMO OR DIE!

hmmmmm.............on a deep level that is a very good answer

Pilgrimage party: http://pilgrimage.scene.org

You can also get in touch with the Northern dragons or Trailer park people.

I don't know a lot of sceners living in the USA but there are quite a lot of them in Canada (mostly Montreal) if that can be of any help.

Speaking of which, there was even a Siggraph related event in Montreal some months ago dealing with demoscene :) http://montreal.siggraph.org/chapterEvents/05-06/animation/creating-digital-animation/

There are a few Americans around... I think Garbagetruck is... and Northern Dragons is from Canada, that almost counts.

As for me, I'm just a spectator, sorry.

Well, you see the TV's and computers in USA don't work too well for demomaking since they run at 65 Hz/s. (ENTP) That's why the scene is so small in USA.

60, not 65

nitro2k01: That's 110 Volt, 60 Hz AC current. NTSC demos would not be compatible with European eyes. They move 20% faster than your demos.

And besides, it's all about the Pentiums.

Hz/s = NULL

:|

WTF?!?!

Just smile and back away slowly

We've got some members (like me) in exile in the US, as a consequence of being too employable.

Jonk, legalize was trying to do the demoscene activist thing for a while, doing outreach stuff at high schools and whatnot. It's tough to do and takes a lot of energy. I don't know if it's worth it.

The two best ways (IMO) to wake people up are to
1. post pithy comments in game fan forums that link to kkreiger or 64k-style demos and say 'bah, this game sucks, there was better graphics in this 64k exe 5 years ago" and link to a CNS prod.

or 2. make demos, get active online, go to parties, meet people, lather rinse repeat

For pilg 2004 there was some slashdot exposure, as well as after kkreiger came out. That's as much geek exposure as you can ask for, so there's no real point in pushing for more.

Right now, all the radical self expression and creativity in the USA is funneling into Burning Man.

Jesus christ, it was a fucking joke. I tried to make the post stupid and irrelevant enough to make people understand that, but appearantly, no.

As of 15.september, I will move to San Francisco and train an army of new coders for Andromeda.

Seriously: I remember I thought it was cool how the demo scene grew up from the cracking scene. It had attitude. I'm not sure how it presented to the uninitiated these days, but I can imagine that it is harder to sell the idea if it is presented as an "digital art"-community: "you know - art, only realtime. Y'know?" I know I would not be very interested.

Well, I live in the north east in the States and here there are no sceners. I'll eventually post a demo on this site as a first step in "attempting" to create a northeast demoscene presence.....stay tuned!!!!

good going, keep it up :)

Hyde: I might move to SF someday, I'd gladly be an ally of such a promising army ;)
Besides that, I tend to agree with your "serious" point.

Skrebbels: fuckings to you \o/ c\~/ \o/

Jonk23: being in north America should not prevent you from producing stuff with people from other countries. Just whore some random finnish musician and that's it ;)

Is this a thinly veiled accusation that us european demosceners are a bunch of jobless gits? :)

Jonk23: keops is right. The whole locality to the demoscene is obsolete -limp ninja has members all over the world, and it doesn't stop them proucing eyestrain on various platforms either.

producing, that is :)

I understand that the locality issue isnt much of an "issue" its just more of the local "community" aspect that is lacking. I personally believe that is the only way for the scene to both expand and "survive" (even though i know it isnt dieing)

Random US lurker here, and I just wanted to mention my experiences of just trying to get a few (even two or three) people to do a demo with me. Generally everyone I know who really has the skillset to do demos ends up making games in their spare time or doing open source projects or getting eaten alive by jobs. All the young coders I've ever met tend to be open source hacker types, and frequently ether intimidated by the graphics coding of demos(which could lead into a diatrabe about the quality of math education in the US) or confused by the idea of someone making useless software.

I have at least done what I can to let people know about the scene by hosting parties at which I show demos and scene related productions, but I have never been approached by anyone who was interested in making a prod as a result. In short, the people who might like to make demos in the US are, in my experience, so few and far between that they almost never link up. That, and the chicken and egg problem of the US scene - if there was one already, it could support people who wanted to join the scene.

Accusation? I thought it was established as fact that euro sceners were drunken stinking C64 noiseprod coding hobos... or is that just the swedes?

It was actually more of a backhanded self-compliment.

GbNd: nah that defined sweden atm. we stayed for some fuckedupness and drunkedness whilst everyone else in europe went for heavier drugs and gamegraphics porn

thought i just saw a (rather spunky little) 4k from Northern Dragons at ASM.. so yeah... canadans is kinda close...