pouët.net

*but was THAT the cause...

so what's the actual plan here? you'll draft some hypotheses based on the survey (e.g. 'it is all mentor's fault!)' and try to do regression analysis with very limited pouet data to see if there's indeed a correlation? or will you just draw conclusions with qualitative data from the survey response?

This is one of the better replies I've read in a while :)

Maali: I'll try to put together something that makes sense based on the quantitative data, and use the survey responses in combination with 4-6 interviews. It'll most likely end up with something like "this shit is too complicated to tell something conclusively" :)

yzi: could understand, would understand, or should understand?

What is it really you're trying to find out about. The effect of constraints on creativity? Or the popularity of PC 4k intros since the invention of the 4k intro? Or just during the claimed "golden age"? Or just the role of constraints during that period of time, whatever the "constraints" might be? How are you going to find out how much of releasing frequency was influenced by "constraints", and how much was something else?

Personally, I see the following constraints which have a role in limiting my options.
- the audience's, and my own, expectations: what looks cool enough to be fun to do (which is of course relative to what has been done already)
- available processing power and memory
- number of bytes allowed for the executable
- the expressive power of languages and tools available (not limited to programming, of course)
- my familiarity with the languages and tools
- ease of getting help to programming questions
- build times
- amount of hours it takes to do something
- amount of free hours I have for doing it
- nature of the work: rewarding or not
- feedback iteration duration:
- can I try things without understanding what it even does, poke around until something interesting comes up
- ease of debugging
- ease of undo/redo: do I have to commit to decisions and get it right the first time, or can I postpone all decisions indefinitely.

Every one of those things has a "constraints and creativity" aspect. Every constraint makes something harder and something easier. Less choices: bad in one way, but good in another way. Less time: bad, but good. Unknown tools, bad but good. Cannot undo: bad, but good.

A really creativity-boosting thing is to pick an instrument I really cannot play. If I manage to make a sound or two with it, I might start jamming with just those. Which would not have happened in my comfort zone.

yzi: at this point I'm trying to find out what I'm really trying to find out about, if you get my meaning - this survey (and the thread for that matter) is basically just about talking about stuff. Like I initially said: I'm gathering some data, and seeing where they take me

overall though, I was hoping I could use it in relation to recent academic work on balancing constraints and reaching a 'sweet spot' of constrainedness (their term, not mine..) which supposedly enables practitioners to maximize creativity.

again thanks for the input!

Right - the survey is now closed - thanks to all who responded =)

summary of responses for those who care

spreadsheet of responses

as some have said many attributing factors such as technological innovations, new shader models, tools, general attitude in the scene, number of active sceners, highprofile 4k makers raising the bar, etc etc.. make this a complex thing. If it is indeed a "thing" at all.

As someone who researches and teaches at the VERY SAME INSTITUTION as farfar I am of course biased like a motherfucker, in fact I am so biased that I slept in the same bed as farfar on several occasions. Thats biased. Easy now tigers.

Nonetheless I see some merit in this kind of analysis if it leads to a well thought out argument rather than conclusive "proof" as many of you ahem, more natural sciences inclined types are looking for. For instance I had a long chat to Blueberry and Puryx (who know their stuff on 4k's better than most people) about "generations" of toolkits. Like, it might be the case that we had tools that could do the same thing as Rocket or 4klang before those, but because its easier, we get a wider variety of demos and intros of which some of them are at the very least cool in a new way. I am not going down the rabbithole of "better" because that has a whole host of other factors associated with it - I suspect "time spent actually building the demo/intro" being the major factor, since I conjecture that most demosceners are at the very least as good as they used to be when they did other projects.

Its just that these new toolkits makes it easier and more... tempting to do certain things and maybe by new people. Like for instance Rocket makes timing easier for people who dont get 4k code etc - and that means someone like me could do your timing. So new tools imo do open up new possibilities because a cool intro is not the person, the tool or the time spent. Its the sum total, the bringing together of a whole host of different factors.

That said, I would love, kill, shank someone to hang out with them for a few days while they work on a demo/intro and really get down to the nitty-gritty of where demoscene creativity comes from and what its interplay with tools is. Please. I will pay your food if you let me film + ask weird weird questions while we work :)

Bizarrely, nobody mentioned Rocket until now.. =)

Rocket is too large for 4ks, though for instance TLM's runtime isnt't that far off - but a more custom scripting setup (fitted to the actual contents) is generally needed for *good* 4ks..

I think farfar over interpreted my crinkler remarks a bit for the survey questions. Crinkler is of course not removing the the size limitation/size coding aspect, but it is removing the apect of custom compression hacks. Before crinkler part of doing a good 4k was finding new ways to compress the stuff - transformations, cab dropping etc etc, but now it doesn't make sense to even bother trying to beat crinkler.

Ray marching only happens at the end of this "golden age". You don't reallly see the distance funtion ray marching surge until 2009 (afaik Nevada from november 08 is the first realtime), and already there - after Rudebox did the stuff we missed (in sult, mouryn baron etc), we had a hard time time seeing where to develop it further. Cdak actually managed to do that in a slightly other direction, but after that, welll...
Part of this stagnation is because even though we have more gpu power available for more complex stuff, we can't really raise the complexity because of the size limit.

The 4k scene has become a LOT more accessible with all the public tools available (crinkler, 4klang/clinkster, shaderminifier, iq's frameworks etc), but we haven't seen the leaps in quality we saw there in the golden age.

Good initiative, doing homework=success.

You should run similar graphs for other size productions. If there's a matching green peak for other prods for similar release dates, there's a chance you're just seeing the peak of general Pouet activity. This is an educated guess only, but I think most of the releases get the majority of votes within a week of release.

General Pouet activity -> General Pouet activity acting on general release activity, obviously.

Plot the popularity of 64ks and you'll notice a similar transition between 64k->4k and 4k->1k. A category becomes too advanced and requires too much effort to be rewarding anymore, but then there's the next one that will still let you discover new things and impress people with an even harder size limit. Demos, on the other hand, live in a different continuum as their maximum filesize keeps growing.

In other words: tools are necessary, crucial, empowering and ever-improving, but it's still people (or at least demosceners) doing the prods and without their personal motivation nothing happens.

This.

Marq: I did another graph of "popularity" aka pouet upvotes, and there was basically a similar hump showing for demos, although it was slightly more dispersed:



I find what you're saying about motivation very interesting as well.. :) definitely a driver for doing cool stuff (obviously, I guess, but very interesting none the less!)

gloom: There is probably no connection at all, check the dates, read my post a couple of pages back. IMHO the popularity of sphere tracing has nothing to do with it - the timing doesn't match the peak.

Sphere tracing became extremely popular way after the 2008 peak.

also, pouet itself was probably most popular among sceners in the 2004-2010 period. judging how many users arent as regularly active as back then. so the right audience was there.

pouet != 4k scene && 4k scene != pouet