pouët.net

i agree with smash on both points.

There are plenty of hardware pushing demos out on various consoles, go for ps2 or xbox perhaps if you want to really push the limits a bit.

Pushing pc hardware is pretty much impossible i'd say, because by the time you've learnt the latest hardware enough to push it, it's already been replaced. Think about it: it took a few years for amiga demos to really push the hardware, perhaps that's why most demos run on dx7 hardware?

And what is the problem with making demos that need dx9 cards and fast cpus? Sure, a lot of people won't have the hardware to run it, but in a year or two most will. Blaming coders for your own lack of patience really sucks...

in my opinion, making a cool demo that make the masses scream is more important than pushing hw to its limits.

sincerely, venom

in spite of that : ryg,you go point! :)

i'm actually writing something (won't go into detail here, it si TOPP SEKRETT!!1) that requires at least a PS2.0 GPU, even tho i only own a GF3. (The reference rasterizer is your friend :)

For the record, I have some piece of code laying around, that requires a 2ghz+ cpu to operate in realtime. And it is already fairly optimised too. But then again, my coding sucks. Uh, well... :)

Didn't some Amiga demos require more ram to run? (say 1/2Mb). Didn't some require AGA when everyone had an ECS or 68030 when most people were stuck with their 020? And Amiga was a fixed platform... Did anyone complain? No.

Why? Well, because there were not any internet forums back then. You couldn't just log to a web site and start criticising demos as people do here. Some people think that demo makers are supposed to work in order to please their audience when the truth is that they do it for themselves. For their own enjoyment.

So, basically, people complaining about high hardware requirements: STFU.

I think the complaints about _irreally_ high requirements are proper tho. I mean, if a demo requires GF3 and it delivers TNT2-level visuals, then a non-GF3 user has the right to complain.

And anything with high req-s can be solved with videos.

Gargaj: Yes, but in that case the demo simply sucks coding-wise, there is nothing wrong with the requirements.

The problem is that people think that you make demos for THEM , wich sceners who ever made a demo knows is not true. You make a demo since its fun creating it, and seriously if you make a demo otherwise .. Then you make absolutely no sense.

If you make a demo for fun, and you find it fun using 2.0 shaders you do it, we have done it already (Kolme Missifitti), Noice did it IIRC etc.. Its all up to the coders, if they find it funny doing shaders/using volume textures etc..

Some coders do, some dont (some prefer sticking to glBlendFunc(GL_ONE,GL_ONE) or whatever its called.. and spinning some triangles..) , some prefer doing rendertargets shows still today, wich was 'new' for 6-7 years ago iirc :-)

Etc etc... People do what they find FUNNY, not what anyone DEMANDS of them.

nytrik: please, radeon cards support for your new demo!!!!!!

tiamad: for raw confession? if so you got it? maybe you was ironic.. i dont know.. a joke without a point if so :)

no, for NEW demo!!!

i will die, before wait patch version of demo.

my english suck, i know.

It's quite simple really. If you have a high end graphics card, you want every demo to make the most of it. If you don't, then you want all demos to run on lower specs.

But as arneweisse said, it's about what's fun to create and it's usually more fun to show the full potential of your work.

I'm sure graphic artists would much rather see their textures shown in high resolutions, with nice lighting and mip mapping than to appear scaled down and blocky. Same goes for coders who want their code to look its best, and musicians who want people to hear their music at a decent sample rate.

Size limitations exist for a reason, mainly because it's not very practical tor store 100-1gig demos on scene archives.

...but technical limitations are self imposed and from the viewer's perspective don't serve any real purpose.

size limitations can be beaten if you're clever enough... you can use OGG to compress your music instead of MP3 (96k OGG >= 128k MP3), you can use the JPG quality scale to adjust your texture detail level (it's worth trying around, just think how many textures are there in your demo), you can try a handful of compressionlibs as well which may result a better pack-ratio then simply zipping up the stuff...

20 megz are a reasonable limit when zipped.

one could always state that a demo/intro was made to squeeze the best performance out of <insert card or other hardware>

good ideas are most important to me not what functions in card x that were used.. if you use the latest cards etc and the the content of the demo is bad it still sucks imho..

Whatever happened to the dentro?

ryg: good point, but I still find a massive difference between "pushing the limits" and simply evolving the craft. "Pushing the limits" can also be an ugly thing to watch (just take my dhtml demo as example). Using new extensions or standards often isn't "pushing the limits", and I agree totally that we are beyond the point of the pushinlimitsglorydays, but it's about nudging it a step forward. You need to do new stuff, and accept that others always will do the same thing with older hardware (and then pick on you for not beeing technically good enough). But people need to do it.. otherwise the current stuff will never hit retro.

big ups to ryg and stefan for saying what had to be said.

Yeah people make demos for the fun of it. But altso to show off, to others. to denie that is hypocrissy.

If it was only for ones own sake...why release it for other to comment on it later? Why release it at parties...the money? arent all that good anyway.

As for the use of latest hardware. Please...use whatever you find suitable for your needs.

I agree with anyone who disagrees with me.

gargaj: any decent musician wouldnt want their work ruined by 96k OGG- or 128k MP3-compression though. just as any graphician wouldnt want their textures destroyed by jpeg.
but i agree, 20MB is reasonable for a demo :)

...and as good-old gandhi said, 'you have to Be the change you want to see in the world'. that is: if you think demos suck, do one that doesnt.

"Yeah people make demos for the fun of it. But altso to show off, to others. to denie that is hypocrissy."

I've made several demos/intros that has never been released for the public. And so have many others i think :)

However, if you make something that you find could be remotely intresting to someone else, and that you cant make any money off, then sure .. You release it for free and start bulling about it, since that is *fun*. Everything you do for free you do for fun, otherwise you're stupid.

Well, if u want to impress ppl, don´t use 20mb, but get ureselves into intro-competitions. just my op.