"Demos are like movies or animations, but the effects are calculated in real time!"
category: general [glöplog]
What is the point of enforcing you to make it larger if it isn't large enough?
Raspberry Pi will shave the scene.
Freefull, it would probably remove the "look, we didn't match the quality of the other productions, but we did it in 16k!" problem. And solve the discussion about should people take size into count when voting. There would be no problem if 64k and 4k compos only had one exact size :)
Don't know if it would actually work, though.
Don't know if it would actually work, though.
1) No, it wouldn't. It just means that the info slides in 64K compos that previously said "Note: This is a 16K intro" will now say "Note: This is a 64K intro that only uses 16K".
2) Some people choose to judge a 16K intro in a 64K compo as a 16K intro. Other people choose to judge it on its merits as a 64K intro. Other people judge it by the amount of penis jokes. WHY IS ANY OF THIS A PROBLEM?
2) Some people choose to judge a 16K intro in a 64K compo as a 16K intro. Other people choose to judge it on its merits as a 64K intro. Other people judge it by the amount of penis jokes. WHY IS ANY OF THIS A PROBLEM?
only seven pages? I'm disappointed sceners, we should be able to ramble on about this for at *least* 10 more pages! LET'S DO THIS!
Let's really not :)
Quote:
Let's talk about jazz musicians.
Suppose you want to introduce someone to the world of jazz music. You might tell them that it's a style of music characterised by syncopated rhythms and complex chord progressions, and typically performed on instruments such as guitar, piano and trumpet.
Then you discover someone who plays a kickass jazz harpsichord.
Does that destroy the credibility of jazz as a musical genre? Fuck no.
The 'rules' of an art form, whether that's jazz music or demos, exist as a framework for people to be creative within. They exist as a shared interest for people to congregate around and be inspired. They do not exist for some whiny bastard to say "no, that doesn't count because it's pre-rendered / interactive / doesn't have a D&B soundtrack".
added on the 2012-02-15 00:35:33 by gasman
Hey, you know who else took an overly prescriptive rule-based view of jazz music? The Nazis.
(...there you go Okkie, I reckon we should be good for at least three more pages now)
guyz are did '1ddkit' even if stupid 31337 said - all precalculated
wat
While some groups spend their time in hard work, some others spend it mostly in promotion. This is the ultimate source of animation in demos and the ideas like "demoscene is an art of lying".
AlCo is great lyer:)
Guys, with 64k vs demo debate it's not really about the rules, it's about the impact - ultimately how impressive and how many views it has - even if someone doesn't want to admit it, saying "oh, I do it for art" bla bla bla...
So obviously you can go fake all the way, make shortcuts, use really cheap tricks (like use standard windows samples from dll or built-in speech synthesizer or pre-calculated videos etc...), but it will just be less impressive for a trained eye.
The same goes with limitations - the more limitations you put on your demo (size-wise, content-wise etc..) and the more you can actually do with those limitation just gives you more bonus points for impressiveness. Proof? See the all-time top on pouet "fr-041: Debris" has 177kb.
Also on youtube - the most viewed demo seem to be for some reason "The Timeless by Mercury" - it's 64k, even that it is not clean rendering at all, and content is fully procedural, it turns out to be not only pleasent to view, but you have this exciting feeling while watching it - your imagine how it is all squished and efficiently coded.
Of course if you feel your creativity is limited by this - you don't have to do it. Lifeforce is still very respected demo, among others. There is also a place for fully unrestricted artistic productions - just make a video. There is one point though when video is restricting your creativity and executable is better - you can achieve higher framerate with executable and use exotic displays and resolutions (volumetric displays, VR, really wide 360deg. projections etc...).
So yeah - rules are not for rule-fetishists or rule-fascist, and they are not something evil, you can impose them on yourself to show off your skills better.
So obviously you can go fake all the way, make shortcuts, use really cheap tricks (like use standard windows samples from dll or built-in speech synthesizer or pre-calculated videos etc...), but it will just be less impressive for a trained eye.
The same goes with limitations - the more limitations you put on your demo (size-wise, content-wise etc..) and the more you can actually do with those limitation just gives you more bonus points for impressiveness. Proof? See the all-time top on pouet "fr-041: Debris" has 177kb.
Also on youtube - the most viewed demo seem to be for some reason "The Timeless by Mercury" - it's 64k, even that it is not clean rendering at all, and content is fully procedural, it turns out to be not only pleasent to view, but you have this exciting feeling while watching it - your imagine how it is all squished and efficiently coded.
Of course if you feel your creativity is limited by this - you don't have to do it. Lifeforce is still very respected demo, among others. There is also a place for fully unrestricted artistic productions - just make a video. There is one point though when video is restricting your creativity and executable is better - you can achieve higher framerate with executable and use exotic displays and resolutions (volumetric displays, VR, really wide 360deg. projections etc...).
So yeah - rules are not for rule-fetishists or rule-fascist, and they are not something evil, you can impose them on yourself to show off your skills better.
tomkh: people don't make demos to impress you. they make demos because they want to.
psenough: I disagree. They want to impress me, you and others, and at the same time deliver a unique experience for the viewer. If they wouldn't want to impress, why they compete at all? Why not just release the thing without selecting the winner? Also another argument: if they wouldn't want to impress, they wouldn't worry so much about the cirtique, that someone is actually not impressed ;)
Quote:
If they wouldn't want to impress, why they compete at all? Why not just release the thing without selecting the winner?
Exposure is not the same as trying to impress.
Let me emphasise again one of important point in my first post here: I said people impose limitations on themselves (64k, less "fakery" etc..) to impress others.
Demos are relatively unrestricted, so I can agree here it is not that much about impressing others, but more providing unique experience for the viewer, communicate in an artistic way etc... so yeah - many more functions there.
Demos are relatively unrestricted, so I can agree here it is not that much about impressing others, but more providing unique experience for the viewer, communicate in an artistic way etc... so yeah - many more functions there.
impression is subjective as hell. size does not impress me (that's what she said, etc etc etc), aesthetic quality does.
We can go all the way to rendered animations with that argument though. Realtime is as arbitrary as 64k.
Maali: apparently there is a big group that thinks like you, but I bet there is as big that thinks that size is impressive. For pure aesthethic quality, I would go for a 60fps video, why even bother with executable (unless you have special hw/VR use-case of course)?
Gargaj: that's exactly my point, real-time for animation is a restriction, it makes sense for interaction or exotic projections, but why bother imposing it on yourself if you want to squish the most out of aesthethic quality?
Sure, I can find another reason of doing it - developing the field of real-time animation: improving tools, rendering quality etc.. so eventually they will draw production rendering meaningless. It already happens in the movie industry that until final rendering is done everything can be previewed in real-time with better and better quality - they have similar fun that we do, just do one step more to make it prettier at the end.
tomkh: Go make a demo about it.
Extending "fun" argument further: doing something that impress others can be fun as well. And I think when the rules are clear and respected (i.e. 4k, 64k, would be nice to have 256k maybe?), people compete for the fun of it, it's not hard-core "dick comparison" and bullying, but precisely fun of competing in a civilized manner, developing a field and learning together.
Saga Musix: you see, I did 4k, 64k - it was a lot of fun, I want to do it again for sure, also recently just a video - because I didn't want to impose real-time restrictions and see how much surface detail you can render without worrying about performance.
And to be honest, maybe I will contradict myself here a bit, I did it not so much to impress others, but to develop myself - but that's just another reason why limitations and rules are a good thing, and ironically violating rules and adding "fakery" is just a cheap way to... just impress others.
And to be honest, maybe I will contradict myself here a bit, I did it not so much to impress others, but to develop myself - but that's just another reason why limitations and rules are a good thing, and ironically violating rules and adding "fakery" is just a cheap way to... just impress others.