pouët.net

Let me adjust - as soon as you don't enjoy demomaking, stop.

Alumuum, at Breakpoint 99% of the people speak English.

Also, C rocks. Just go for it! New Zealand sceners is all we need - would love to visit a demoparty over there some day if there was one. :)

the russians at breakpoint this year didnt have that big of a problem communicating with the rest of the world despite their somewhat rough english.
strangely enough some 12 people were revealed to be able to speak russian at the partyplace despite only 2 russian travellers beeing present. it was quite puzzling for me to tell you the truth, didnt know russian was such a disseminated language outside russia/ex-soviet union.

ps: well, um, my sister is fluent in Russian... so it's not as uncommon as say, Finnish.

Alumuum - don't worry about attire, just be yourself. Trust me if some form of your attire is gonna become part of you, it's just gonna happen.

If there's one thing I do know, it's that worry and procrastination don't get demos finished. Just go for it, try some stuff out, and enjoy all of it - mess with music, see if that's for you, draw some stuff, play with other people's tools and get ideas, and when you have ideas just start working on them. But have fun, no matter what platform it is.

And I'd also reccomend looking at Pain for Preacher's coding articles.

And I fully second gargaj on the adjustment - if you turn out to enjoy the hell out of making frameworks and tools - there ain't NOTHING wrong with that. (It's abnormal as hell but there ain't NOTHING wrong with being abnormal.) Just like there isn't anything wrong with having fun coding a c64, an Atari, or even having fun coding under Windows. Just have FUN being creative.

I agree with those that say "begin small", more specifically I would make a single-effect intro using the coolest shader hardware. That way you can get away with a minimalistic framework and experiement with shiny new thigs in the gpu.

Prehistoric hardware is of course nice, but it's extremely hard to produce something not seen before.

don't forget there are other ways to be active in the scene besides coding. Maybe one day you will find graphics or music your passion instead :)

Isnt coding where all the glory is at? I want to be popular with the ladies you see. Just kidding, just always been interested in efficient coding, dont see myself doing other stuff primeraly. Maybe as a break from coding but other than that, well well se, wont we.

What Cruzer said...

So you're out for sort of a coding bootcamp, just to get away from the
everyday work once in a while, eh?
Than size coding stuff (i.e. 64k, 4k) could be a goal.

depends really what 'efficient coding' is since you'll have to choose speed OR size when doing it efficiently :)

Well the way i see it, before you can do efficient coding you need to know what the hell you are doing so you can adjust to situation. Been going through the help you people posted, top stuff, pity the building next door is being demolished so i cant concentrate at the moment (my whole house is vibrating from the jackhammer)so here is a question

Is there a list of upcoming parties which i can look through? The list on here seems to be of ones that have been? Not sure. What i want to do is sort by country since australia is the best i can do short term.

ojuice.net :.(

http://www.demoparty.net/ shows some upcoming parties.

Start by selecting this user avatar for teh street cred.

1) Create time machine
2) Travel back in time to 1992
3) Send crappy article and text advert to Pazza/LSD to hype up your 3 man group in Grapevine 12
4) Swap discs through the post
5) Use a disassembler on simple routines
6) Release same routines "tweaked"
7) Join bigger group
8) Leave scene after two years, 20 demos and 5 discmags
9) Wait 16 years
10) Build time machine
11) GOTO 2

don't be tricked by all these n00bs.

do it the way Chaos done it. Buy an Amiga and start from the roots of the (real) scene. don't take the easy route, reject all PC-like API programming paradigms. Learn to code in 68k assembly, appreciate low-level hardware interaction of custom audio & gfx chips, feel the core of the medium at the lowest possible level. then you may abstract.

The atom-bomb could never have been created by studying compounds - and you want to become "teh bomb!" right? Touch the source and you will become a God my friend!

take my advise, i'm wise!

omg your nickname change even increased your sense of humour! it's not perfect, but i admit you made me smile!

-------------------
---MY TURN---
-------------------
After coding a year in DarkBasicPro, I'm getting fed up with the limitations.
The only option is an other language.
I'm going for both demos and games.

Should I go for this C++, SDL, OGL and FMOD? (thank lorents for the links)
Or should I go for C# and XNA, where I here so much about? (from other game creators)

Also, are there major differences in limitations?

notes:
-I know only the fundamentals of C coding, and I have a good basis of (game)logics.
-The things I make should work on my own machine (Pentium4, ATI 9250), I thought programs in XNA could get heavy pretty fast, with the pixelshaders and such.

It's the content that matters, people do demos on all sorts of freaky compys and tools. Just choose something you like. Out of those two options the first one is closer to the scene mainstream and would actually be portable too. With the latter one you'd tie yourself to a specific platform (which might still make sense if you're just trying to build skills for X360 game development).

@ Marq : only pc :)

i'd go for xna, or at least c#, so that you'll prevent memory management hell and can do decent data structures immediately from the start. xna because it's basically a free demoengine with docs. it's not perfect, but know that it's just a wrapper making some things easier for you - you can still call all the d3d methods directly.

but indeed, xna ties you to windows. or win and xbox if you try really hard, but there's not really any point in it. i suggest make a demo where you can focus on the content and effects and looks with xna, and then you can always decide to switch to lower-level languages/environments if you want more portability or whatever, for later demos. it's best to learn to *make demos* before you learn hardcore coding. back in the days, those two were the same thing, but things have changed.

...get interest in the algorithmic and math side of 2D/3D renderings...
have some culture before experimentations:

the foley / vandam is always a nice read. (basis and more: I've seen a lot of demomakers with this book in the early 90's, and it's still fine today.)
also, I like the ken perlin research site a lot:
http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/
java applet with sources there. astoundingly interesting to my mind.
... and a last note: it always takes a lot more giving than receiving in demoscene. So take vitamins.

you don't need an interest in algorithms and math of 2d/3d to make demos.

As many others have already stated, starting out with high-level stuff and pre-made libraries brings you nowhere. It is just futile to use something like OpenGL without first learning how to implement the math and rendering on your own.

I've noticed that it has been increasingly common for new democoders (even the youngest of them) to start out with old/limited/extreme platforms and/or assembly-level sizecoding. It is a lot easier path unless you deliberately want to become a lamer, and besides, it is part of the demoscene spirit to appreciate and understand this kind of stuff even if you end up doing something more softcore.

I call 'bullshit'. :) Sure, you need to know/learn math, but there is nothing wrong with starting on a very high level. For nothing else then to inspire people to learn, instead of demanding they memorize a whole library before they start.

..and the reason why people are into/start with sizecoding is that it is intriguing for different reasons than "classic" democoding. 1) You can do it completely on your own, no big team to organize, no massive asset-list to maintain, and 2) Sizecoding appeals to people not really into the visual part of demomaking.