The 64 MB limit at BP07
category: general [glöplog]
@iq
-pics: ever tested JPEG2000 with it's haars transforms for texture purposes? I once toyed with lossless-haar-transforming a sound stream and then gzipping and it reduced to about 70% easily without any downgrade in quality.
-high polys: i bet all demos/intros are very-lowpoly compared to your usual test models ;)
-keyframes: tbl did indeed keyframe the dacing part of ocean machine, around once every 16 frames and linear interpol in the middle
-pics: ever tested JPEG2000 with it's haars transforms for texture purposes? I once toyed with lossless-haar-transforming a sound stream and then gzipping and it reduced to about 70% easily without any downgrade in quality.
-high polys: i bet all demos/intros are very-lowpoly compared to your usual test models ;)
-keyframes: tbl did indeed keyframe the dacing part of ocean machine, around once every 16 frames and linear interpol in the middle
hey, don't forget loading-times folks!
winden: Ehm.. once every 16 frames? :) More like 16 times per second. Which is also a typical Amiga framerate for 3D scenes like that.
" there's no need to do anything on PC for Amiga groups, since Amigas obviously still can beat the crap out of PCs"
without a pc in the backhand most of the newer amiga demos would have a much lower quality or wouldnt even exist.
who is coding under uae?
using ps to make textures?
3dsmax anyone?
without a pc in the backhand most of the newer amiga demos would have a much lower quality or wouldnt even exist.
who is coding under uae?
using ps to make textures?
3dsmax anyone?
Smash: Yes, I too absolutely adore what you're able to do with 64KB - which is also why I find it quite odd that you seem to advocate the 64MB limit for PC demos. What would you do with 64MB that you have not already done with 64KB? I'm not saying you can't think of something to use 64Mb for. It just seems such a waste of space, when we've all seen what you can do with 64KB - but OK, let's end this discussion and please be informed that you didn't make me your enemy just because we have different points of view. ;)
xeNusion: Touché, I guess. ;) But, as I wrote, I didn't mean to be harsh. I enjoy PC demos once in a while, too. I have the biggest respect for groups such as Fairlight, ASD, Kewlers, MFX, etc., but I can't shake the feeling that it's more impressive (because it is...you KNOW it is) doing 3D stuff on Amigas that even looks GOOD, like in "Starstruck", for instance. I'm very much focusing on the coding part, since musicians and other artists ("graphician" is such an ugly, made-up-by-the-scene word) mostly have moved on to PC. The coders still use Amigas or at least Amiga programs (running under UAE), so that still makes it Amiga to me. And still makes it damn impressive, especially when they beat PC prods.
xeNusion: Touché, I guess. ;) But, as I wrote, I didn't mean to be harsh. I enjoy PC demos once in a while, too. I have the biggest respect for groups such as Fairlight, ASD, Kewlers, MFX, etc., but I can't shake the feeling that it's more impressive (because it is...you KNOW it is) doing 3D stuff on Amigas that even looks GOOD, like in "Starstruck", for instance. I'm very much focusing on the coding part, since musicians and other artists ("graphician" is such an ugly, made-up-by-the-scene word) mostly have moved on to PC. The coders still use Amigas or at least Amiga programs (running under UAE), so that still makes it Amiga to me. And still makes it damn impressive, especially when they beat PC prods.
and dont forget using pc and emulator to record their demo with good framerate
just one thing...
if you would take terragen and render a screenshot of a snowy terrain from above.
save this screenshot and map it on a highly polygon reduced 3dobject,
which was converted from the same .dem landscape file you got from the landscape generator and then display the same scene
what would happen?
i think you know the answer.
making such a scene takes 10min and you dont need much skills for it.
on amiga ppl will start praising you...
on pc ppl would flame.
lowres hardware makes it also alot easier to produce higher quality stuff for this specific hardware.
and to get back to the whole 64mb discussion...
with a shitload of whining musicians in your back who demand "high quality" encodings of their songs who eat up almost half of the size of your demo its indeed time to extend this.
and i might be one of the few ppl who dont want to follow the procedural random spiky 3d path the current scene is going so a 64mb limit gives you at least the choice for making something else.
if you would take terragen and render a screenshot of a snowy terrain from above.
save this screenshot and map it on a highly polygon reduced 3dobject,
which was converted from the same .dem landscape file you got from the landscape generator and then display the same scene
what would happen?
i think you know the answer.
making such a scene takes 10min and you dont need much skills for it.
on amiga ppl will start praising you...
on pc ppl would flame.
lowres hardware makes it also alot easier to produce higher quality stuff for this specific hardware.
and to get back to the whole 64mb discussion...
with a shitload of whining musicians in your back who demand "high quality" encodings of their songs who eat up almost half of the size of your demo its indeed time to extend this.
and i might be one of the few ppl who dont want to follow the procedural random spiky 3d path the current scene is going so a 64mb limit gives you at least the choice for making something else.
hollowman: I don't know who actually does that, but I find releasing an Amiga demo which runs fine in UAE and not on native hardware absolutely bull - what's the point to go beyond the platform?
If you're going to use emulators when developing, please make sure the prod runs fine in native hardware aswell.
If you're going to use emulators when developing, please make sure the prod runs fine in native hardware aswell.
64ks and demos - it's not a dissimilar argument to pc vs amiga, actually.
in 64k you can do a lot - but you have limits. you can do certain things that you know are possible, and you can blow a lot of size on a small element, but you have seriously limited what you can do. it's like "any 3d scene as long as it's entirely constructed using these simple components; any texture as long as it's made only with these generators; any 3d model as long as it's less than 1000 polys; any animation with less than 100 keys".
that's fine, and you can do a _lot_ with it. but there's some stuff you just cant do, or that you could make a lot better if you didnt have those limits.
remember, the point of a demo isnt always to make something that's good in a really harsh limited environment - sometimes it's to make something that looks as good as you can possibly make it look, in realtime, on the hardware. to _try_ and do something that looks better than the videogames and graphics manufacturers demos out there. thats why the size is needed.
re: pc vs amiga - you cant really compare doing something at the cutting edge of realtime gfx, which is what some pc demos probably should be, to doing good looking 3d at all on an amiga - it's a totally different ballpark. and by the way, just because it's on an amiga or in 64k doesnt make it better than anything on pc in 64mb - if somebody does something amazing in 64mb, i hope it'll be recognised too.
iq: by the way, didnt you mean dds instead of tiff or jpeg? :) (for the sake of the hardware and loading time.)
you're right tho - if people used the filesize for that it'd be a real shame. then again, we already do all of those things - good fileformats, skeletal animation (fk and ik) - and we could still use a lot more. :)
in 64k you can do a lot - but you have limits. you can do certain things that you know are possible, and you can blow a lot of size on a small element, but you have seriously limited what you can do. it's like "any 3d scene as long as it's entirely constructed using these simple components; any texture as long as it's made only with these generators; any 3d model as long as it's less than 1000 polys; any animation with less than 100 keys".
that's fine, and you can do a _lot_ with it. but there's some stuff you just cant do, or that you could make a lot better if you didnt have those limits.
remember, the point of a demo isnt always to make something that's good in a really harsh limited environment - sometimes it's to make something that looks as good as you can possibly make it look, in realtime, on the hardware. to _try_ and do something that looks better than the videogames and graphics manufacturers demos out there. thats why the size is needed.
re: pc vs amiga - you cant really compare doing something at the cutting edge of realtime gfx, which is what some pc demos probably should be, to doing good looking 3d at all on an amiga - it's a totally different ballpark. and by the way, just because it's on an amiga or in 64k doesnt make it better than anything on pc in 64mb - if somebody does something amazing in 64mb, i hope it'll be recognised too.
iq: by the way, didnt you mean dds instead of tiff or jpeg? :) (for the sake of the hardware and loading time.)
you're right tho - if people used the filesize for that it'd be a real shame. then again, we already do all of those things - good fileformats, skeletal animation (fk and ik) - and we could still use a lot more. :)
xeNusion: Well, those musicians should stop whining and just be happy that some groups find their music interesting enough to be used in a production.
If the reason for extending the limit to 64MB is due to musicians whining, then I would even more advocate the suggestion to lower the limit gradually to 16MB over 3 years.
Musicians: Try having your perfectly balanced and well-mixed tracks reduced to ADPCM at 28Khz, 5 bits - then you might stop whining about the sound quality of your tracks in PC demos....
Oh, you really SHOULD try to work with ADPCM once in a while. It's good practice to develop your mixing skills, aswell as your composing skills, as it demands that you think just a bit outside the box.
Which is something we all should do once in a while.
If the reason for extending the limit to 64MB is due to musicians whining, then I would even more advocate the suggestion to lower the limit gradually to 16MB over 3 years.
Musicians: Try having your perfectly balanced and well-mixed tracks reduced to ADPCM at 28Khz, 5 bits - then you might stop whining about the sound quality of your tracks in PC demos....
Oh, you really SHOULD try to work with ADPCM once in a while. It's good practice to develop your mixing skills, aswell as your composing skills, as it demands that you think just a bit outside the box.
Which is something we all should do once in a while.
doom: i recall reading the "keyframe whole model + linear interpol between" at the jurassic pack interview... was the doll at the start of kilofix was a realtime bones part, or did have any step precalced?
the thing with having more than 2 or 3 megs of diskspace and ram is that you can easily store all sort of precalc stuff either on disk or on the rather misnamed "loading" screen
the thing with having more than 2 or 3 megs of diskspace and ram is that you can easily store all sort of precalc stuff either on disk or on the rather misnamed "loading" screen
nutman, are you at all reading what the others are saying in this thread? every argument you make is basically deducible to "you don't need so much space because on AMIGA! it's even harder to do!"
I still don't understand why Amiga people are complaining about PC Democompo rules.
everyone needs a hobby.
I am 99% sure that we will not see a demo more than 20mb anyway..
navis: bet you a fiver we will.. :)
If PC democoders want a raised limit, give it to them. That's pretty much the end of it IMO.
If you want to show off your impressive compression techniques in the democompo, that is what the endscroller is for. If you explain what you're doing and why your demo is only a few megs, people will respect that.
Drawing comparisons with 64k is stupid and pointless. They're entirely different beasts.
Anything that can help the scene make cutting edge graphics in the demo compo, do it. Personally I lost most of my passion for watching PC demos from a technical POV when the games industry overtook the scene in the mid-late nineties. Since then the gulf has widened so much it's almost pathetic :(.
1991: "Holy crap, I had no idea my little A500 could do 3D graphics!"
2006: "Snooore. It's another 3D scene with less effects, less polys, and less textures than a game I played a year ago."
(Not that this is the scene's fault so much - hardware has gone towards general purpose huge 3D engines rather than showing off clever hacks... it takes a lot more work these days I guess)
If you want to show off your impressive compression techniques in the democompo, that is what the endscroller is for. If you explain what you're doing and why your demo is only a few megs, people will respect that.
Drawing comparisons with 64k is stupid and pointless. They're entirely different beasts.
Anything that can help the scene make cutting edge graphics in the demo compo, do it. Personally I lost most of my passion for watching PC demos from a technical POV when the games industry overtook the scene in the mid-late nineties. Since then the gulf has widened so much it's almost pathetic :(.
1991: "Holy crap, I had no idea my little A500 could do 3D graphics!"
2006: "Snooore. It's another 3D scene with less effects, less polys, and less textures than a game I played a year ago."
(Not that this is the scene's fault so much - hardware has gone towards general purpose huge 3D engines rather than showing off clever hacks... it takes a lot more work these days I guess)
Quote:
in 64k you can do a lot - but you have limits. you can do certain things that you know are possible, and you can blow a lot of size on a small element, but you have seriously limited what you can do. it's like "any 3d scene as long as it's entirely constructed using these simple components; any texture as long as it's made only with these generators; any 3d model as long as it's less than 1000 polys; any animation with less than 100 keys".
Absolutelly true, now, have you ever thought what happened if a coder is simply not interrested in doing size optimisation, even though he is able to? Is it really evil? Is it really bad to focus on something else? Making a texture generator is one of the most boring tasks IMHO. I'd rather use an external texture generator (there are professional tools that are ages ahead scene tools in this area, e.g genetica pro). If i end up being in a group where i could use a decent texgen by someone else the issue might be different though. Flame me for it. :-)
About pc vs amiga, i think it's easier to throw an amiga demo, you just have to put a rotating mesh on the screen with a silly background and you get praised for it. Do the same on pc and you get flammed. I think hardware limitations are bullshit, i coded both a software 3d engine and an opengl engine and i can't decide which one is more complicated than the other...
@nystep
But do you have the coding ability to get a rotating mesh onto an Amiga screen at a decent frame rate? It isn't the same thing as doing it in OpenGL or Direct X.
I'm not saying that Amiga demos are automatically "better", but they are judged differently because they ARE different.
But do you have the coding ability to get a rotating mesh onto an Amiga screen at a decent frame rate? It isn't the same thing as doing it in OpenGL or Direct X.
I'm not saying that Amiga demos are automatically "better", but they are judged differently because they ARE different.
nagato: Hm, you might be right about the endscroller thingy. I simply "complained" (as some people put it) that the limit has been set so high now that one loses a little respect for PC coders, because they're no longer forced to use as much imagination to create great effects. Instead they can slap on some extra textures and 3D scenes (ok ok, I'm sure it's not THAT easy, but I think you know where I am going). And since I simply don't believe that most coders are able to limit themselves although they're allowed to use 64MB, I think the parties should do it for them, so we don't see tonnes of pointlessly-with-3D-loaded demos that we have become so acustomed (and dead tired) of. And no, I'm not either saying that 3D in general is lame, but it has become been overused and exploited to a gagging degree....I could better accept the massive use of 3D if only there was a good story in the demo which utilized it, but this is seldom the case.
Okkie (and, in part, Skrebbel): But...eh...sigh..... once again: I am NOT complaining. I am simply suggesting that PC coders should try to limit themselves, because in MY opinion doing great things with little space is more impressive than the opposite (and no, the opposite is not doing lousy things with lots of space, although some will undoubtedly do just that) and you will undoubtedly pick up some skills you never thought possible.
Oh, can't remember who said that demos have never been about limits. Pah, of course it has and still should be. If you want to be limitless isn't that what the wild compos are there for?
Okkie (and, in part, Skrebbel): But...eh...sigh..... once again: I am NOT complaining. I am simply suggesting that PC coders should try to limit themselves, because in MY opinion doing great things with little space is more impressive than the opposite (and no, the opposite is not doing lousy things with lots of space, although some will undoubtedly do just that) and you will undoubtedly pick up some skills you never thought possible.
Oh, can't remember who said that demos have never been about limits. Pah, of course it has and still should be. If you want to be limitless isn't that what the wild compos are there for?
[QUOTE]Absolutelly true, now, have you ever thought what happened if a coder is simply not interrested in doing size optimisation, even though he is able to? Is it really evil? Is it really bad to focus on something else? Making a texture generator is one of the most boring tasks IMHO. I'd rather use an external texture generator (there are professional tools that are ages ahead scene tools in this area, e.g genetica pro). If i end up being in a group where i could use a decent texgen by someone else the issue might be different though. Flame me for it. :-)
[/URL]Quoted for truth. I think this is even more true for music. Most of my stuff would compile under 64k without any modifications, but I am in no way interested in coding a softsynth and I prefer to use music from different people with their own preferences on what tools to use.
[/URL]Quoted for truth. I think this is even more true for music. Most of my stuff would compile under 64k without any modifications, but I am in no way interested in coding a softsynth and I prefer to use music from different people with their own preferences on what tools to use.
oops, critical brain failure in bbcode.
> Oh, can't remember who said that demos have never been about
> limits. Pah, of course it has and still should be. If you want to be
> limitless isn't that what the wild compos are there for?
But the demo compo is about computational limits, not storage limits.
The problem right now is that the limits are so far out there, and require a layers and layers of 3D/technical knowhow to exploit, that they rarely get pushed.
You can't do shit about that with compo rules. It's a reality of modern hardware.
> limits. Pah, of course it has and still should be. If you want to be
> limitless isn't that what the wild compos are there for?
But the demo compo is about computational limits, not storage limits.
The problem right now is that the limits are so far out there, and require a layers and layers of 3D/technical knowhow to exploit, that they rarely get pushed.
You can't do shit about that with compo rules. It's a reality of modern hardware.
Quote:
Isn't this just the tired old "mp3/xm/photoshop/amiga/pc/c++/wekkzeug will kill the scene"-argument in disguise?Hm, you might be right about the endscroller thingy. I simply "complained" (as some people put it) that the limit has been set so high now that one loses a little respect for PC coders, because they're no longer forced to use as much imagination to create great effects.
Also, it's not true. The limit will just be pushed a bit further, with the benefit for all.
My conclussion is that we are all adults. If someone knows needs 64 MB for a demo, just be responsible and correctly use the 64 MB. (I pressume we should see lightmaps/SHmaps everywhere).
