pouët.net

i bet heinrich has loads of experience in fistfucking, and not being that far from each other, i have a good guess on the wiener ;)

salinga: and award him with a shell script that takes backups? :)

behave! haha!

time it took =! quality

Should there be a technical achievement award?

Yes, there should. More to the point, "Best Effects" should be renamed Technical Achievement, in recognition of the fact that in 2008 there's more to demo coding than making "effects".

(and if it isn't renamed, we should stick all non-sizecoding non-alternative-platform-hacking technical achievements in that category anyway. Just because.)

"best multiplatform demo" :DDD

good point from gasman.

so what's a technical achievement?

Farbrausch's Debris is such an example for a technical achievement.

A production/part/whatever that pushes the boundaries of a machine/language/platform/category.

that's still a rather vague definition

@okkie: I am against violence. Junk and Cheese should do a dance-off to determine the winner.

@Gargaj: It should be vague, because it can be something no one really thought about before. This year I would put flt's Craft into that category - something totally different to the Debris production.

for me, programming the microwave correctly is a technical achievement. so let's call it "innovation award" until somebody semantically ridiculizes that particular alternative :)

Gargaj: So what's an "effect" nowadays? And if a plasma is one but a full-fledged 3D engine with multiple shaders that do pretty weird stuff isn't, how EXACTLY is it defined?

isnt that what 'best code' is for?

While I will agree that the "Best Effects"-name is (and has to some degree always been) sort of unprecise, renaming it to "Technical Achievement" changes the meaning of it completely, and does indeed just point it directly to a lot of sizecoding demos.


Of course there is, but this category highlights the effects in demos. There are also "Best Direction", "Best Graphics" etc. which talk directly of those specific things. Should there not be any category for straight down, hardcore cool demo effects?

I hereby reinstate my question. There are so many different opinions and there have been so many discussions on what constitutes an "effect" today - what's scene.org's definition?

I totally agree, those are totally different things. A demo can have tons of amazing effects with 0 technical achievement or serious technical achievements with no real "effect" so to speak.

Also, even if it's hard to give it a precise definition, a lot of people among us are still driven, among other things, by that demo "effect" thing, so specific to the demoscene.

kb:

Sounds like the 2008-equivalent of plasma :)

Seriously, the way I see it, a "full-fledged 3D engine with multiple shaders" is un-interesting if it does not benefit the demo e.g. in ways of shortened development time, more artistic freedom for designers etc. Shouldn't an engine be compared to a tool? I think that's what I'm saying.

That's only because size optimizing is what the majority "understands". But the scene.org awards should be jury-based, so it would be expected that this jury contains people with more in-depth knowledge about coding when selecting candidates for something like "best technical achievement".

And for me, drawing a smiley face on a post-it note is graphics. But in the grand scheme of things, neither of those accomplishments is likely to earn a scene.org award... I agree, you can interpret terms like "technical achievement" and "graphics" very broadly, if you want to - but I don't think that affects our ability to select the "best" of each category.


Well, it's a matter of perspective really - whether you consider 'effects' to be the essential core of demo making. If you'd said "Should there not be any category for straight down, hardcore cool demo code?" then I'd totally go along with that - as it is, I can only 95% agree :-)

I guess my problem with "Best Effects" being regarded as a parallel to the awards for direction / music / graphics is that it's putting the emphasis on one particular artifact of the coder's work, rather than the overall craft... it's a bit like calling the music award "best melody". With those other awards, the implication is that if you're a graphician / musician / director at the peak of your craft, and you successfully showcase that in a demo, you'll rightly be in the running for an award - but for coders aiming for the Best Effects award, it seems like there's an extra condition attached, that you need to do an "effect-based" demo to earn it. Any coders concentrating their efforts in other directions - physics, AI, audio, demotool infrastructure, optimising algorithms - will go unrecognised, or so you'd believe from the category name.

To be fair, given the lack of data points and the fact that the vast majority of technical achievements on the scene *are* effects, it's hard to know whether this is an actual gap in the awards coverage, or just us lot splitting hairs over dictionary definitions. But either way, acknowledging those other aspects of demo coding can only be a positive move for the scene, right?

Nobody to mention "Invoke" ? It's one of my fav 64k :p.

- Best animation
- Best demo
- Best effects
- Best graphics
- Best soundtrack
- Best direction
- Most original concept
- Breakthrough performance

All these categories looks stupid from outside,
except best soundtrack , they all about the same..
of course you see huge difference , only you see it.

dumb or dumber