pouët.net

BUT IT IS NOT AS COOL AS ANY DEMOSCENE PRODS?
WHY DEMOSCENERS CANT BE FINALLY SHOWN AS THE BEST IN THE WORLD? ITS A SHAME, IIIITSSS SUCH A SHAME, WE HAVE THE BEST MUSICIANS ON EARTH, THE BEST CODERS, THE BEST GRAPHICIANS (WE EVEN COINED THE NAME), WHY IS THIS SHIT BEING DISCUSSED WHILE WE ARE STILL IN SHADOWS? WHYYYYYYYYYYY?

why not?
its ok how it is and if anyone wants make something with webGL he will do. because of a new opportunity comes up, you dont have to take it. i think that a lot of us had enough "hypes" behind, to not jump on every little thing which is cool for a moment. WebGL is ok, but shall we do move because its in the browser? Just another layer?

Smash: It's a bit odd that you view the boundaries as so clear-cut, when you yourself have done as much as anyone else to blur those boundaries (and rightly so). Is Blunderbuss a demo? It certainly feels like you went out of your way to make it not look like one...

* releasing it under the 'directtovideo' label (which, unless I've totally missed the point, seems to be your 'sort of demoish but not really' alter ego)
* using your real name in the credits
* only using the word 'demo' very tangentially in the nfo file (and hey, it's a generic English term, it could mean anything)
* and, of course, having totally un-sceneish music and a complete lack of robots and tunnels.

If random people in the motion graphics community starting making realtime stuff with the same look and feel as Blunderbuss, I suspect a lot of people here would be reluctant to accept it as a demo. So what's the difference? Surely it's not simply the fact that you go to demoparties and hang around on Pouet and they don't? I mean, that *works* as a distinction, but it has the unfortunate implication that motion graphics folks (or any other 'outsiders' wanting to do something different from ribbons and techno) can't just dabble in making demos - they have to drink the kool-aid and immerse themselves in demoscene culture to be accepted.

they definitely have to drink the kool-aid and immerse themselves in demoscene culture to be accepted.

gasman: i'm very sorry on smash's behalf. from now on every demo of his will have "THIS IS A DEMO BECAUSE I CALL THIS A DEMO AND NOT IN THE GENERIC SENSE OF THE WORD DEMO" written in all caps on the very first line of the nfo.

gasman: Blunderbuss is a demo, even if it's not very original, and moppi always (?) used their real names in the credits.

gasman:
blunderbuss is a demo because i released it as a demoscene demo.

whereas this is realtime, generative, is released under the directtovideo label, uses real names in the credits, made by sceners, looks "totally unsceneish" (altho it does have cubes..), and is *not* a demoscene demo. because it wasn't released as a demo - it was released outside of the demoscene in a separate environment for a separate scene.

see, one of them was released at a demoparty, uploaded to pouet and publicised as a demo. and one of them was put out through a totally different route and publicised as a piece of "creative coding" or "generative art", not as a demo.



the demoscene's own definition of "demo" is now very wide - not even limited to running on a computer (OHP demo? no?). the only real criteria is intention.

just like not all music released as mp3 on the internet is "scene music", and not every hand-pixeled picture is a "demoscene picture", and not every animation is a "wild demo", not everything realtime is a demo either.

if one of those "motion graphics folks" made something and said this is a demo, then there it is - it's a demo. no barriers. but if they do something they dont consider to be a demo themselves, then it cant really be absorbed into the demoscene. if awareness is the issue - people making what amounts to a demo but that they dont consider to be one - then surely that's down to us. either a) they dont know about us or b) they know but dont want to be associated. go figure.

(not that all of those things are essential in making a demo a demo - the point was the intentions were clear from the fact it was released in that way)

smash for the win.


One thing is sure, if we are ashamed ourselves of our scene, we can't expect external people to want to be part of it ;).

But I'm pretty sure a (large?) part of guys doing WebGL/JS demo/hacks/experiments would love to know more / join the demoscene.
Being in contact with the Paris JS scene, my point of view on the topic is that the guys either:
- don't know the demoscene
- are aware of the demoscene but don't think it's made for them ("it's only for the elite", "it's hardcore ASM in 256 bits")
- are aware but they have no idea how to join, or they have no special incentive to do so (so they post stuff on things like chromeexperiments and everything is fine)

I think (I hope at least) that the non-demosceners folks that came to DemoJS enjoyed the experience.
DemoJS a very humble demoparty.
I can't imagine what would be their reaction if their experienced Revision or Assembly with webbrowser compos of the same quality as PC compos. They will probably shit in their pants, talk about the event to their JS fellows, and want to make a release for the next year edition.

If we want to reach those guys, we need:
- great JS/WebGL prods / famous groupnames (and not only Alcatraz & Ribbon)
- proper browser compos in demoparties
- advertising both to the right spheres (and not only to pouet.net/demoparty.net)

(The main issue I'm seeing is that great coders/groups are not really interested in the techno)
(and I understand a bit)
(but please try)
(it's good for the demoscene)
(plus you will be famous on Twitter ;p)

"the non-demosceners folks" = ~60% of the DemoJS demoparty visitors BTW

There was one indeed, sorry about that... the rest of the comment stands :D

also a reason many creative people dont associate with the scene (allthough they mostly know about and respect it) is that they dont want to limit their own audience.
even tho the demoscene is an open community it has a strong odor of incest here and there ;)

How about a parallel with any competitive industry.
If a low quality product comes in an underserved market, it will still win audience-wise over über-quality products in a crowded market. After such win, the new entrants come to the older, venerable market with a seemingly inadequate yet thriving product.

That said, captures of Javascript demos are a crime against common sense.

And so do non-crossbrowser ones ;o

wysiwtf: Not sure I get what you mean with that last sentence.

Indeed, they are quite clever.

p01: I think his last sentence is clear. We need fresh blood in our scene.

gloom: Nice flame you started. LOL! :D

ham: Ah! like that.
The word 'incest' felt strange there ... or maybe that's just me being itchy feely daddy of a little girl.

Well, if I was the creator of that webgl demo and I ended up here and read this thread, I probably wouldn't want to be associated with this scene...

Well the fact that he didn't post it on pouet started this whole clusterfuck in the first place so it's his fucking fault.

indeed, how dare he!

Changing topic, i'm still so frustrated and disappointed by WebGL.

Three years in the making, and the standard is still not very standard - as in it doesn't work yet. The whole point of "okey, let's relax the specification and lower the expectations in the rendering quality and capabilities of the API in the hope the remaining will be simple enough that it will work everywhere in every platform" (so we wouldn't have to make youtube videos).

Yet, WebGL shaders compile differently in different browsers, some demos don't even start, others freeze the browser... WTF? Wasn't the whole point of giving up on visual quality getting compatibility so "the world" could access 3D? I'm so disappointed on WebGL. How many more years do we need before things work? In the end, it almost seems that going native with a good driver is the safest way to enjoy compatible 3D.

And i cry out of love. Because I had (still have) hopes in this WebGL thing :(

The solution is easy... We should invite him to some demoparty and nobody would dare to neglect that "Never Seen the Sky" is a demo when he appears in that slengpung photoalbum that everybody forgot to mention in every demoscene outreach! :D

Well, that's the thing. There are no clear-cut objective rules to determine what the author's intentions were - even the seemingly obvious ones, like "did they *call* it a demo?", fall over when you apply them with Aspergers-like levels of logic (Is it enough to simply use the word "demo"? What about all the demos that never actually mention the word "demo"?), as we inevitably do in discussions like this.

Historically, this has never been an issue, because we've all made demos in our little bubble where we all have certain expectations about what demos look like and how they get released - and in general, there's been a clear common-sense distinction between the demoish things that are released within the demoscene, and the not-demoish things that exist outside it. But every now and then, we get something that sits somewhere on the borderline. For some people, RO.ME was a borderline case - arguably things like Linger In Shadows / Datura / Catzilla are somewhere in between too. This is another one, and I think we're going to be seeing this more and more as we keep on broadening our reference pool, and reaching out to similar communities, and doing demoish projects for profit.

The thing that really bothers me is that we might be putting all this effort into making ourselves known to the outside world - whether that's Outreach with a capital O, or events like DemoJS, or just making great demos that have an appeal beyond the demoscene hardcore - all in the hopes of attracting new people to the scene, with new backgrounds and new perspectives. And maybe, just maybe, that message is getting through, and people are coming away with their own interpretation of what demos can be, and reinventing demoscene ideas in a new format (and even calling them 'demos'). And we're not even acknowledging them, because they doesn't tick enough boxes on our mental checklist of what a demo should be.