pouët.net

yeah, I have a 15 inch 1600x1200 screen (resulting in all that Breed artwork being stamp sized), and I wouldn't even call THAT "hi-rez"...

Anyway. Converting an art group into a demogroup? Good luck. I mean, ok, seems you've got a lot of talents in your group (Visu ;), nice ambient music and the whole arsenal of the Livejournal Fetish Chick community at Ratspike's disposal...

.. but there are a few important points missing. Finding a coder is hard enough these days, and finding one who's trying to be at least on par with the quality of your 2d visuals is IMHO next to impossible. Getting 3D artists is also not that easy, getting "real-time capable" ones is even harder, and good luck trying to tell a few photoshop pixel pushers what's important when doing textures.

Trust me, I'm working in the games business, and converting a normal artist to one that produces realtime-usable output is tedious, hard work.

But that's not even your biggest problem. If Breed is like all other art groups I know, there's not the slightest bit of collaboration between your artists whatsoever. As you already said, there's the "Management" (ROTFL) with several hierarchy layers and at the bottom level there are the artists who are basically told not even what to do but just "do something".

That's not how a demo group works. Creating a demo is teamwork in its purest form, and everyone has to be involved in basically everything and know the progress of the project; everyone works for a common goal, and everyone has to make sacrifices and subordinate his own egoism. Oh, and everyone must be capable to take input and criticism from everyone else.

So, I would first try changing your group's structure from "loose collective under a common label" to at least a "collective of teams" (like eg. FR), maybe try to produce a video clip with several artists and one musician, and THEN look for a coder :)

I'd say that original 2d artworks are in dire need in the demoscene. By that I mean stuff that's not merely copied from stock photography or magazine spreads. good luck in your endeavours.

Kebby is right. Finally, there are demogroups whích have made themselves aquainted with Demopaja and don't have a coder... or have an external one do at most one new effect per demo and compile the player. ;) Not that many new FR demos would seem to have much new code either.

eye/midiclub: ever thought about the possibility that our gfx/music guys are enjoying releasing stuff while we coders are silently working on the next big thing? ;)

like i said, the Hirez scene is the evolution from the days of ansii/ascii. It is a relative term to what WAS the scene before demo's even existed (though not tracking from the looks of the equipment people are using).

Despite what you see in our most recent pack, we also have people in the mapping community for U2k3 and other games and while not all, some have an idea of whats required to create textures.

As for how this groups run, you'd also be suprised at the contributions our members have to others work. Its nothing that can be explained, but rather shown, and it cant be shown because its in a private section for members only.

Your also correct, Demo's usually have 3 people working on any one project. Hard to compare a 3 person team to a group of over 50 people. Good luck cordinating a 50 person demo. Honestly the opinions i've read here very uninformed so far and while I don't want to appear hostile towards anyone, some of your ideas are downright ignorant (eye). You sound like a disgruntled member of the scene if you think our members dont help each other to become better artists. Thats all this group is about really.

Keep in mind folks, the structure of Breed is changed to the point that we can add on new art-types, (e.g skins, music, flash, demos) without comprimising the rest of the artists time. Were starting this division slowly, and true we have no experience. I'm sure youll be mildly suprised at our first product.

Thanks to those who have already sent me emails, I'll be getting back in touch with you shorty.

Cheers All.

Scree: I never said that your artists don't help or influence each other. What I've said is that none of your packs looks like a joint effort to get something out, but rather like "ok, send over everything you've done in the last month". So still my points are vallid IM(NS)HO. The time, size and working style of the products still remain different.

i think it's really nice to judge a group to failure before you have seen anything from them.

Oh, yes, Scree, you may be as hostile towards me as you like. Making fun of other scene members is quite normal. Demoscene is not the friendliest piece of the world. But i'd say if i'm disgruntled, then with something else. Anyway, whatever is, is my fault. ;) And please, surprise us with your first product! However, i'm not exactly sure what you call ignorant. If suggesting Demopaja is ignorant then... I dont know! I'd say it's a pretty liberal view at the scene. Like, Demopaja is a tool. You don't code your own Photoshop or 3ds completely unless you have to, you use already exisitng tools. With it, you could get a (potentially) winning demo out to Breakpoint! And then care for better/own/whatever code. Sure, i'm coding my own demokit, but that's exatly what holds me from releasing anything. ;)

Kebby: i would be thinking that the progress doesn't stop in the background, but it does not weaken my point, nor does it weaken yours.

kusma: that's because usually we first see a prod, then, if it's interesting, we're asking who's the group behind it. Not the other way around. ;) There are way too many lamers like myself which may call themselves a group or anything. ;)

You are eye of teh group midiclub

raimo: Are you ignorant or what? i think breed stuff
is nice. i have seen some coders looking for modeler/2d graphician/musician at scenespot.org ...
TALK TO MY HAND MOTHERFUCKER :D

just to point some things:

a) black maiden made transformation from artgroup
to demogroup
b) fuel too...
c) acid has made demos
d) breed stuff is not so bad compared to others but
i dont think members got so much scene knowledge.

and there was some other euro ansigroups that have
made demos less or more succesfully. and ice made
that musicdisk long time ago..... baah baah

JUST MY WORDS...

hmm... people complaining that hi-res stuff isn't high enough res, and making intros that don't introduce anything. Wierd ;)

From what i remember, hi-res came about when people started using high-res mode on amiga, instead of the usual 320x240 shit. So back then it really was high-res.

As to the new group stuff... seems theres a lot of good artwork on the site... and we sure do need more quality artists. Perhaps it would be good to have the artists telling the coders what to do more too.

hirez scene is just term invented by usa sceners,
as far as i know... this goes like back in 1996/7 when
acid quit ansi section...

AND ID LIKE TO SEE BREED DEMO, SO GO BREED
GO GO GO.. (please release at european demoparty)

I used to call hires effects (because I think other people used the same term too), the ones at C64 that use pixel per pixel resolution (even at 160*200 and not 320*200). Because every common demoeffect was running at 8*8 or 4*4 in better cases. I don't know what I would call hires on the CPC, because there is that 640*200 resolution too.


Old/newschool is the term which is having it's hard times however:

* A simple fire effect is oldschool for a PC but preety newschool for the little CPC. Flat polygons might seem oldschool for Amiga/AtariSt demos but they have breed the so called newschool design on the PC in a way ;). There is a diferrentiation between what sceners of diferrent machines think about it. Because it's scene has it's own culture and demo trends.

* If you make a demo with so called oldschool effects (rasters, scrollers, amigalike plasmas, rotozoomers, shade bobs, flat sexy cubes with glenz or metal shading :) or amiga/c64 like design, people think you are oldschool. For others, these intros suck ass (not necessary needing a 3d accelerated card for effects I could nicely watch on my Amiga500), oldschool should be about the code itself.

* But what could be oldschool code? Having something that trully runs in a 386 but that scroller still jerks? Writting preety optimized and clever code in VC++ without any assembly? Asm size competitions? (Mostly a newschool trend imho) Optimizing pure assembly? (Does anyone do this today, and how can you define anyways???). In a way, some of the best 64kb intros, doing teh amazing shit, could be considered oldschool. Because the way of thinking of the coders was oldschool (or better to say, hardcore) when they did it. But it looks like newschool in your eyes!

Forget hires. So what is oldschool for you?

ansi: 80x???x16
hirez: not ansi :D

oldschool = sinus scrollers, star fields, etc. Newschool = flatshaded cube art style with random noise and flashing red shit.

Well well. Opinions seem as divided as liberal party.
I must agree with some, we need more talented 2D artists to demoscene. No ideas, only fast solutions.
In demoscene we are "messing" with others? Sadly enough that opinion can only be reloaded from here.
You can smile right? yes... that's so much better.

Scree: I wish I had the time to join your group as a coder... time is my most limiting factor. With my book and organizing Pilgrimage, I barely have time to keep up with the weeds invading my yard. I couldn't tell from your handle sheet if you're based on North America, but if you (or any members of Breed) are based here, I would recommend attending Pilgrimage to help recruit some coders. I was checking out some of the Breed works on the DarkDomainDVD and I remember the Breed works sticking out above much of the rest. Best of luck to ya!

As the quality at the breed-works on their site are rather high, I believe they would need a talented coder without much of an ego when it comes to artistic expression. Thats quite the oposite of me, but I'd still be willing to make a coop-demo or something one time ;)

legalize: lack of time is my favorite excuse for everything!

kusma: that's exactly what i said. With an addition that they don't want me either because i'm a lamer. ;) I don't seem to like Scree's attitde, but it doesn't say anything about the group. Noone knows, perhaps it *could* work!

Quality *is* high and they are skillful and so, but still, i can't say i like much of their work due to somewhat tasteless style. BTW, it's the same thing i said about Spinning Kids! ;)

eye/midiclub As much as I would like to work on a demo right now, I think finishing my book and organizing Pilgrimage are better goals :-). I hope to be able to do some sort of demo productions when my book is finished though.

Ey a book! cool! Although i'm not exactly a fan of DirectX (recently rather due to practical reasons, such as world domination, rather than design) i'd be interested to read it someday!

legalize, the majority of our group is based in North America, but we have had (and still do to some extent) quite a few members based in 5 continents around the world. We don't like to think of ourselves as localized to one location as much as being an internet collaboration.

I'd love to attend your party, I've known about it for quite some time now but lack of personal funding and a new full time job restrict me from going to your next party. Next year for sure though.