pouët.net

yeah, that was the general idea. the main point about having something different than 64k (at least for a while) is that 64k really seems stuck right now.

i think 4 is a good factor - the only question is what would be more interesting: a 16k or a 256k compo? i can see both working. i'd say 16k is a pretty sweet amount for the size optimization bend nowadays; 64k is an awful lot to fill if you're paying attention to size, and the audience has sky-high expectations so anything that's less than 6 months of work will disappoint (we've seen that plenty over the last few years). 16k has the chance to be a "reset button" there.

256k is the other extreme - at that size, you still have to pay attention to how you store/generate your content, but you can put your artistic visions ahead of the size limit without suffering endlessly for it. and you get to spend the last 2 weeks before the party making the demo better instead of frantically throwing stuff out to make it fit into 64k. that's what we had with debris, and it was so much better than all our 64k efforts that i've lost whatever little remaining interest i had in 64ks since.

las, no, 64k became boring because nearly everyone stopped making entries, and nearly everyone stopped making entries because after months and months of work, the last thing you want to hear from the audience is "okay, thiat's nice i guess, but i expected more".

Any renewal is good, whatever it is, both ideas are worth the try.



You fault, you had it coming.

didn't affect us actually, after all our last "large-scale" 64k effort was candytron in 2003, but fairlight and cns heard a lot of that.

That's more or less what I meant.

16k would be awesome. I think 4k is enough to do some interesting graphics, but not enough to do a synth that actually sounds good (if you want music with drums). Synthesized snare drums are yuck.

Bring back the 40k intros !

Actually having compos layout with: "intros (4k) / "small demos (dentros ?)" 256k or 512k or even 1 megabyte / "huge demos" (as it is now) could be worth a try ?

hitchhikr: I doubt it would work that way. I believe it is a better idea to keep the size as small as possible for a little more of the "we can pack this much in this little" effect. Thus I'd say either of 32k or 16k is good.

you really think that 16k intros will be anything more than "we can pack this much in this little" ?

well elevated has proven even 4k intros can be more than that, so why not? :)

i'd say elevated is pretty much exactly that, just like atrium and mojo dreams.

yay, cut down from 64k to 40k - great idea! it's not like it would filter out the bad entries that we see these days, however it shouldn't limit anyone that much.

64k is dead. I personally blame smash. Grrr

To be honest I thought Panic Room would have been a great initializer of the come-back of 64k era. It just never happened...

how about "shorter than 2:30 long soundtrack demo compo" ? I hate it when musicians have to make their ideas into these 10 minute orgies all the time. You just run out of content immediately :)

16k sounds good.

I dig the 256k idea better, really.

I think 16k offers the chance to introduce 3d models, proper design and flow to 4ks and allows artists to start getting into low end szie coding. I think this has a lot of potential.

At 256k wont we expect something much better than 64k? (debris was only 179k if I remember right so 256 offers even more space than debris had:-) ) so I see 256k as being equally frustrating as 64k. The standard will have to be enormously high.

I vote for 16k.

I'd rather like the limit to be bigger than smaller. Making a good (or any) 16k or 40k requires a lot more concentrated technical effort than making a good (or any) 256k intro, since I'd imagine that the bigger size would enable people to fare better with less tools. That would make it easier for new people or people without that much interest in the actual technology (such as myself) to contribute.

Whether that's a good thing or not, is a matter of opinion I guess.

256k? 16k??? What's wrong with the current 4k and 64k? If people expect a lot from 64k then go do an awesome 64k damn it. I don't think changing the numbers will make any difference, one day 16k intros will be the new 64k and suddenly they will be considered "hard" to make and blah blah... loop.



Auld, I hope you don't count Elevated in it, as it uses the very same public release of Crinkler that everybody is using.

there's something false about changing the size limit... e.g. 16k could be interesting for a while, but it would not be much different. it would be the same tricks we've seen in 4ks and 64ks. however, since you couldn't *directly* compare your entries to previous awesome 64ks/4ks, you'd get a false wow feeling. you could say "no one has done that yet in 16k omg!" but in fact, everyone has done all that in 4ks and 64ks...

a 16k would be just a large 4k. 4ks compos work well, so we don't really need to change anything there... (if you want to make a 16k, why not make a 4k?:)

however, 64k compos don't seem to work. the hardest thing on the scene is to create a good 64k, but you get played earlier and you even get less prize money than the demo entries:) i don't think you can fix that with <64k (32k/40k) compos. some winner 64ks were around 40k big, and generally, people would instinctively compare these with 64ks, making this a really sucky compo because everyone would have an "i expected more" feeling ;) on the other hand, you can also increase the size limit.. and that could be a real help - at least for a few years. people would still see intros "small" at around 200k (or 128k? 192k? 256k?), and you'd still have to go generative in most aspects. as for the expectations... i think people would begin with comparing these to existing 64ks (just as with debris) - so coders could get some room for comfortable progress. but the amount of team work will still be daunting compared to a demo. (especially for artists - who can't use their favourite tools!) if no one is making 64ks, not many more will make 256ks either. you can't help that with changing the size limits.

so, why not innovate with something more fundamental? like generative demos, software rendering or a voxel rendering compo? or how about a grid computing demo compo, where we use all pc-s at the party for realtime rendering? that would really make demoscene both bound to partying and state-of-the art in rendering ;)

I'd really like to give 16k intros a try :) sounds really interesting

And about non-public obfuscators: I coded my own GLSL compiler/obfuscator for valleyball. I'm still working on it, and plan to release it when it's ready.

I think that we could expect very interesting and exciting releases for 4k and 16k intro compos with the available collection of public compressors out there.

Let's face it, it's easy to make a great 4k with crinkler, but not as easy as to make a (at least eaqually) great 64k with upack or kkrunchy. You have to put so much more work for a 64k to really reach the expectations of the audience. Introducing 16k would be a good thing (in my opinion), because at first, the audience won't know what to expect and second, you have to work a bit harder to generate enough content that fits in a 16k. You won't see cubes and spheres nor 1-effect-shaders anymore.

I'd like to hear any arguments AGAINST 16k intro compos, so far I'm for giving it a try at least once.

with 256kb there'd be a lot more artistical freedom to achieve something that would be a lot of work in 64k or nearly impossible in 4k. i think that 16k compos would - just like 4k's - be very technically impressive, showing off what's possible, but be less, uhm, "detailed" when it comes to music and direction, although the additional 12 kb of space would help a lot in that department already.
I'm probably just being a lazy bitch when i say "i'd love to waste some kilobytes for something that i think is cool".

yes red you are a damn lazy bitch :D - shut up and finish the frakking synth (+send me the code dammit) - for that "thing" we don't talk about and of cause nobody is working on - you know.