pouët.net

>right here doing awesome shit.

Sillyventure 2011 - if things go right, we'll have the first VCS only demo competition in history, let's keep fingers crossed. 128 byte RAM FTW!

m0d (& rez & ham): please do! =D

4k got so much more interesting over the years.

4k's took over because it was socially acceptable to have just one effect and milking that for a few minutes. There is nothing strange about that -- less commitment needed, and only ONE good idea, instead of many of them. It also requires less people -- often just one coder is enough, which is also easy to understand as an attraction. This isn't exactly rocket science. Why battle with the "demo-quality required"-stamp on 64k's when you can play around and have fun with the little free time available instead? Makes perfect sense, and isn't "bad" in any way, it just "is".

also the fact, that stupid antivirus/malware programs take away from the non-scene audience is pushing people more towards demos, imho.

No. :) Remember that people's first contact with demos aren't running the executables but watching videos of them online. Saying that people _make_ demos because some antivirus-software makes false positives on some 4k intros is an extremely unlikely scenario indeed.

What gloom said! Coder pr0n rules the demoscene! :D
I just hope people will keep 4ks below 2min, otherwise it's sooooo boring.

@Barzoule: you forgot JAC! in the "3 Letter Nick brigade"...

@rez: you're doing (very good) 64k, but you're not only a coder, maybe your point of view is different...

whats so big deal about releasing the doom 3 sourcecode?
bah...

#ifdef AMIGA

I have done neither (4k or 64k) for around 15 years, and things were quite different back then... but I'd still risk it and say that doing a good 4k today is FAR easier than doing a good 64k, taking the quality expectations.

Well true, 4k is easier to release something without too much context and get away with it. Though I recently find 64k something more attractive, since I found the size of 4k too limited for some of my ideas and then I had to try different permutations of C codeso that maybe it compresses better (wouldn't happen if it was pure asm :P). 64k is still limited but you can do enough and still have space, I could focus on procedural content creation which is my main interest. But then, my intros would possibly suck and I couldn't get away :)

8k intro compo nao.

Jcl: thats taking a huge risk! but who cares? i would not say it's easier today just because current graphics hardware produce better graphics than before. it just makes it harder to explore new way of doing things or find new techniques. maybe its a waste of time (because one use a considerable amount of time on something that is allready there in the graphics pipeline and those change over the years too), but thats also an subjective matter. if you have restrictions on one platform versus another, filesize or whatever then the story is quite different. i think and believe the definition of a good 64k versus a good 4k varies amongst coders and other artists as well. because they are two separate things, i.e restriction of executable filesize, other details like design, compression, pcg, new techniques. and as a final note the hardware produces what it produces, it's allready physically there. then does the graphics hardware really mean anything at all? (in a coders perspective that is, or let's say an mathematician). maybe its a different story with shaders (but that has restrictions too, if you ask any gpu-ppl, but they can answer on the details).

let's say you watch a "good" 256 byte intro, that's using something that is physically there too, you put in code and it produces some complex stuff on the screen. if you had better hardware and could do some better graphics with some gpu with the same amount of exe-size and it was some polygons and 3d-scenery or whatever would the code be any better? the output would be better yes, but the code, i dont think so. but it depends on what the actual code does. maybe it had some radiocity into there with some nifty algorithms. so..

rudi: did you hand Optimus your login-details or what..?

gloom: what?

Optimus is famous for wall-o-text posts that require a tl;dr. ;)

Coming from someone who's done numerous (not necessarily good, but numerous) 4k's, I seriously agree with what Gloom said about 4k's requiring less effort, smaller team, milking one effect for a few minutes, etc. I actually DO NOT agree with him saying it isn't bad :)

I, personally, feel I'm starting to get too comfortable with the 4k genre. 8k/16k (though I sortof like the idea of 16k) are just copouts for people who are too lazy to squeeze their stuff into 4k and even more lazy to attempt a 64k. Simle as that.

I'd like to see 64k grow over the next couple years. That takes time, effort, and dedication, and as Flt proved at ASM, it's perfectly possible to produce "smashing" 64k's nowadays. So, what's stopping everyone? For me, it's laziness, and I'm really starting to see that as a problem in myself and others. :)

..oh, and my humblest apologies to everyone else involved in the Flt/Atz prod; you all contributed equally and the result was fantastic :) I hope you get the credit you deserve from people other than fuckheads like me who only seem to remember Smash on these prods :)

tomaes: haha

Ferris: i've seen some of your work and i think some of it it's impressive stuff yes, and i probably can agree from your perspective with that it takes less effort, time etc.. but that doesnt mean that "doing a good 4k is FAR easier than doing a good 64k". good is not the same for all. i think quality is the same wheter its 4k or 64k from the gpu-standpoint because it has the same render functionality or something. and when that is the case then whatever code you put into it doesnt matter, if you dont understand this gloom please dont try understand it, i can write a whole page to explain it but i wont, i dont wanna waste my time. if you looked at what i wrote i didnt respond to gloom's post either. :)
i dont understand if gloom was trying to bash me with some unserious and out of the blue comments like this. you're just cute when you do it gloom. and to answer your question: No, i havent handed my login details to Optimus. i really don't think Optimus nor Jcl have enough facts on the table to say that something is better than the other. it's just my opinion. well, anyone who do it should convince someone by giving enough facts to actually be taken seriously. Optimus's comments are the most non-educable comments i've ever seen. hey! i think i am smarter than him because ive been told that it would have been better for me to jump directly to 3rd grade instead of wasting years on stuff i allready knew. and the teachers of that school didnt teach me anything at those years. that mean i would have graded when i was 16 and not 18. just to give some pinpoint on how smart i where and still am.

@rudi - the comment was about how you formated your text - its unreadable :p

how many gamechanging/blockbuster 4k's can you name?

more or less, sure, but Gloom's point still stands about 4k's milking a single (or perhaps a couple) of effects for a few minutes. 64k's don't get away with that :) .

And even if you're working with the same hardware, there's still alot of setup code for certain things and overhead that becomes extremely insignificant at 64k, where it's a very apparent portion of your work in 4k.

I mean, take a look at Elevated, even - IQ's words himself before it was mentorized and squeezed into 4k was "too big for 4k, not good enough for 64k". That alone is an indication that great 4k's take less work than great 64k's. Imagine if they had gone the 64k route and the epic mass of shit they would've had to come up with to fill the rest of the space given scenes like Elevated's content. That one amazing 4k would've only gotten by as a great scene in a 64k.. it's just nuts :) .

On the other hand, that's why people SHOULD do more 64k's. I'm probably not one to talk, but I'm kinda getting fired up and pumped and wanna do something big :) . I hope others do, too; seeing the 64k compo at Asm get cancelled is just extremely sad (and props for Flt/Atz for still competing; you know why). Maybe I'm just blabbering, but who knows.

Anyways, yes, doing a great 4k is much easier than doing a great 64k. Still impressive on its own merit, but easier.

Eating my own words:

Sure, the Flt/Atz intro primarily showed one (or many similar) scenes, but the quality was raised sooo much from 4k's that this is a completely different scenario. But as I said, maybe I'm just blabbering, who knows :) .

Personally I'm really tired of all the raymarched fractals in 4ks, it was very nice to see a few fresh ideas in this compo.
I think the biggest advantage 64ks have over 4ks (aside from the size of course) is that they give you the freedom to build the intro around a more complex concept. 4k intros like that are few and far between, 95% of them just make a single effect look great(ish).
As for CNS, we like concept demos and the challenge 64ks offer - it's unfortunate that due to some external circumstances we couldn't make it this time... But don't count us out just yet ;)