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My personal definition of "a good effect" hasn't changed at all since I got involved with the scene many moons ago. It is simply something that both looks good and makes you go "Wow, how did they do that?" at the same time. It doesn't have to be amazing code, but it has to look good AND impressive.

Examples:

- The sword scroller in "Second Reality"
- The bouncing light-ball in "Nexus7"
- The mirroring TV-screens in "Machines of Madness"
- The morphing shapes with radial-blur-lighting behind them in "Variform"
- The cubes and flourishes mapped to the metal pipes in "Only one wish"
- Etc.

That's pretty much how I view "effect", as in: something clearly designed and focused going on.

I think the category should be renamed to "best hypnoglow", and automatically be won by me every year. Hypnoglow is the only effect we seem to agree is totally super-awesome, and worth watching over and over again.

Oh, and how could I forget: The vector-slime in "Crystal Dream II".

Actually, CD2 is the perfect demo to further explain what I (personally) mean when I say "effect":

- The dot-morph intro: SCENE (as in: a collection of things going on)
- The vector-scroller over starfield: SCENE
- The colored 3D objects flying over the screen: SCENE
- The space-cut: SCENE
- The "magic block": EFFECT! (as in: focused, something surprising and cool-looking)
- The plasma: EFFECT
- The fractal-zoomer: EFFECT
- The vector-slime: EFFECT (x2! :)
- The "virtual reality"-part: SCENE
- The rest: SCENES

Programmers and artists are free to tell me I'm loco.

if you were part of the scene awards jury, would you vote as best demo :

- the demo that uses 'common' (disputable judgment) techniques to form a very coherent beautiful trip that you love so much that you would have loved making it by yourself to dedicate it to your sweetheart, like let's say Midnight Run or Masagin :p

- or the demo that shows off impressive technical skills and new effects to aggregate mindblowing scenes without any much sense that you may not be totally fond of at the end, like uh Stargazer or Only One Wish ?


personally i think the jury should keep their 'coup de coeur' for themselves and judge the demos mainly from rational facts, so vote rather for the 2nd type.

anyway i would vote for panic room as the best demo 2008, as it's both technically & artistically a wonder :)

Zest: Also, panic room is an INTRO.

gloom: i hate to point this out but if we take that as a pointer, the definition of effect is "something wobbly."

Zest: a bit of a daft question, seeing as there are no such "two types of demos". Also, the question is loaded with personal preference on your behalf. :)

Zest : i think a good demo is precisely finding the good balance between these two things... make it both coherent and impressive :)

gargaj: Which is interesting, seeing as "things that wobble" are almost always percieved as more complex than something rigid. (see: vector-slime, metaballs/surfaces, spheres with deferred shading etc.)

heh that's funny, this dichotomy seems to correspond to the 'feminine demos / masculine demos' one, aka 'the demos that will be easily shown and loved outside the scene / the demos that will give most demoscener a boner' :D

(and I ment to write "particles with deferred shading" above)

:D so my favs this year 2008 by far till now :D
http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=51438
http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=50136
http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=50865
as most already said it has to do with a little bit of all together. these demos worked fine as overall concept for me.
by the way 2008 was the year of the 4k demos ;)

Gloom, I agree with your views on what is an effect and what is a scene, however I think the examples you pull are the same sort of things that the scene.org people looked at when they dreamt up the 'best effect' category - oldschool demos.

It's much less common for demos to be split up into multiple single effects like twisters, tunnels and vectorslimes separated with pixel art and 3D scenes these days - the modern approach seems to be much more contiguous, with 3D scenes and effects and art all blended together rather than shown off one after another.

And I think that's where the problem lies with this category: it is becoming less easy to pick out effects in demos - the effects are used more to enhance the art. There are still plenty of demos that give the effects centre stage, like Media Error, but that style is less common.

I'd like to see 'best effects' changed to better reflect what it really means: 'best wobble'.

Insectecutor: Good point indeed, which is why I'd like this thread back on track. It is interesting to see what you people think the Scene.org Awards should focus on. I'm guessing Scene.org will put up a poll or something later on as well.

Also: I think it's worth mentioning that maybe not every demo can win every category. If you make a 9 minute tribute to the black screen and whitenoise, you're clearly not eligible to win "Best Effects". They way it is defined now (and I'm not saying that it will or won't change), I see "Best Effects" leaning towards rewarding those demos with "one-screen demoscene magic", but is there really something wrong with that..?

Discuss.

what about distinguishing best 2D graphics and best 3D graphics ?

i have the feeling that pixel artists are more and more forgotten and that's a pity.

youre naive

Gloom, you're right that categories apply to subsets of demos, I think I would be more happy with the awards if we got some info on why each one was awarded. They don't justify their choice on the majority of award categories.

I can't accept last years decision, for example.

Best graphics: Media Error by flt
Best effects: Life Force by asd

I would say the graphics in Life Force - i.e. the art, the use of video, the 3D work, was stronger than the effects. In Media Error the effects were the focus of the demo, right in your face, but the 'graphics' were functional, they served as something to apply the effect to.

Perhaps I'm missing something, and I would like to be enlightened, so can we at least have some explanation this time around?

last year is not a good example as the choice was warped : Lifeforce should have scored in every category :p

Smash : I'm sure you read between the lines and that you understood I was not refering to *your* prods at all when writing that I was not impressed by those DOF / SSAO copy-paste from GPU gems or Siggraph papers without anything tasty added ;)

Lifeforce should have won best demo and that should have been the end of it. Awarding it other awards cheapens 'best demo'.

me votes for Hypnoglow!

Insectecutor: Actually, a statement from the jury is normally published for each prod after the awards. For some reason, the jury never got to all of them this year. If you check the archive, you'll see such for previous years.

Cool, that's just what I wanted. Hopefully they'll be more in-depth this year.