pouët.net

Actually, I'm here because someone, oneday, moved his ass and did some "outreach stuff".

I never said it did.

To be clear, I'm not saying that we should unconditionally claim this as a demoscene production. My point is this: if we DON'T accept it as a scene demo, then what do we need to change about our outreach efforts and the way the scene is portrayed to the outside world, in order to ensure that we get more products that we DO recognise as scene demos?

The link vectory has just posted is evidence that Steven Wittens quite probably *is* aware of the demoscene, through the JS1K compo. There are any number of other ways that a random Javascript hacker could stumble upon the scene: DemoJS, Displayhack, mr.doob's talk at DotJS, Alkatraz demos being shared on Twitter. But none of those things will dispel the notion that "a demo is a thing with music that you put on the internet and show to people", or convey the idea that your demo is actually a ticket of admittance into a social club with extremely deep-rooted traditions, rather than something you create for your own enjoyment before wandering off and doing something else.

Even watching Moleman 2, which is far and away the best resource we have for explaining the demoscene as a cultural entity, will not tell you "this is where you should upload your prods, this is where you find a musician so that you won't break our laws of etiquette regarding ripped music." (It will tell you to go to a demoparty, and a lot of those things would hopefully flow naturally from that. But that's an awfully big hurdle to cross.)

Therefore, we need to either broaden our definition of what a demo is, or focus our outreach efforts much more narrowly on getting people to join our social club and make demos that conform to our templates and rituals… because the default do-nothing alternative is that we watch our graphs of "new demoscene releases in 2013" plummet towards zero while failing to notice the wider impact we're having outside our little bubble.

TL,DR: I sincerely believe that Never Seen The Sky is the kind of result you get if you successfully get someone interested in making demos, but fail to give them a copy of "Being A Demoscener For Dummies". So what are we going to do - embrace it as a demo, or write that book?

A whole lot of us "get" the demoscene and its traditions because we grew up with a c64 and an amiga (or local equivalent), swapping disk, watching the cracktros and the demos that got passed along with the games.

Would somebody who didn't grow up with that still get it and want to embrace the traditions that came from that era?

I think that the proper response is to go "This was cool!" and then proceed to approach the author as yourself being someone from the demoscene who likes it, and not to try to apply your own labels to something someone else did.

"You" in this case is not _you_ specifically of course, it would apply to anyone.

Again: I'm all for outreach, I'm _ALL FOR_ people in the scene thinking outside their given box and "cross-polynate" with creative coders (and artists) from wherever -- my gripe is with the taking of something that's not really demoscene-oriented except that it takes some of the (worse) design cues from demoscene prods and then just labeling it a demoscene prod for the sake of "well what else could it be?" :)

For me Never Seen The Sky has nothing that prevents it to be a demo visually, technically, etc, it would be one if a scener had released it as is, but the fact that the author did make it and release it as a demoscene production makes it not a demoscene prod, but more an artist/coder portfolio demo of some kind. So: it's not a demo because it was not meant to be part of the subculture.

Even though I admit that naming the thing, and naming it like that, seems to be a way of trying to mimic demoscene style.
But the fact that the author knows about the scene but still did not choose to propose it as a prod is a big clue that it was absolutely not primarily meant that way.

correction: "the fact that the author did NOT make it and release as a demoscene production makes it {not a demoscene prod} "

http://iewebgl.com

Let's reboot this thread it was intended for, and share some things that might be of interest of JavaScriptians and WebGL ppl especially.

As a demoscene you prolly heard of GNU Rocket, and used it like a made man to sync all the things. I never did, but saw Tolle use it right next to me on Outline - which got me hooked.

Being a JavaScripter I thought I needed something like this, and ended up writing a lib to use GNU Rocket. You do need a Phyton middle man to speak Websocket to Socket, which is meh - I know, I know but it's documented on how to do that and for Windows there's a precompiled exe.

GNU Rocket for JS

Has been used for Feliz Navis ASD, especially for the camera - so it works, use it! :)
Also report bugs as you find them, this helps a lot <3


On a sidenote, Doob makes it easier and offers a timeline, shame on me that I haven't looked into it yet
http://mrdoob.github.com/frame.js/editor/

--
Actually, fuck your talk what a demo makes a demo - get your own thread, seriously.

Hi, Steven Wittens / unconed here. Someone pointed this thread out to me.

I have to say, I'm laughing my ass off here, it all seems a bit silly.

I released Never Seen The Sky the way I did because a) it was part of an advent calendar and b) I only had 10 days to build the entire thing:
http://christmasexperiments.com

If I had spent my time figuring out the proper shibboleths instead to please the greybeards of demoscene, there would be no demo in time for Christmas. And hey, I at least followed one of the scene's traditions: a severe lack of sleep.

Yes, it uses 'ripped' music, for the same reason. It also links to the artist's official page right at the end by way of apology, who is by the way on the mau5trap label, which are known to be very internet-friendly and who publish all their tracks on YouTube anyway. I don't personally know any musicians who could produce a unique soundtrack instead, nor was there much time for anyone to do so, especially not right before the holidays.

Regarding the way it was released, here's what I actually did. First, I immediately put all the code up on Github, with references and credit:
https://github.com/unconed/NeverSeenTheSky

The Three.js components it's built on are also on my Github, and allow you to set up a WebGL renderer with one line (ThreeBox), create audio-driven GLSL effects in a couple of lines (ThreeAudio), set up render-to-texture effects with feedback easily (ThreeRTT), and more.

Second, I'm also working on a full post for acko.net with interactive math diagrams to explain the principles behind the demo in a visual and intuitive way, using MathBox, which I've been working on for the past couple of months:
https://github.com/unconed/MathBox.js

This is part of a series of posts I'm working on to explain math non-traditionally, the way anyone who's done any demo/graphics code quickly learns to see it, similar to this conference talk that I did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONN3jBly364

Contrary to what gasman seems to think, I too was a starry eyed 6 year old with access to an Amiga 500, and I watched those same cracktros everyone else here did. And I always thought the definition of a good demo was that it becomes more impressive the more you know about how it was done, and that little else mattered.

I really don't need an exclusive "ticket of admittance into a social club". I do want people who would never seek out demoscene-style stuff on their own to see it, so they maybe learn something along the way. If we keep this stuff locked up where only people like us will see it, we're not doing the ideals of the scene any favors IMO. And from a wider cultural point of view, we're perpetuating the myth that math is boring and uncreative.

Personally, I always thought that code and numbers were to math what telescopes were to astronomy, and that anyone who argues about the telescope instead of looking at the stars is missing the point.

But I'm clearly just a dummy who doesn't know anything... :P Feel free to list all my demoscene sins below.

This Friday just got even more awesome, hats up to you unconed :)

And that, my friends, is how you win a thread.



There is so much truth here that it hurts.

Could we agree on not making crowdpleasers, and just do demos as a learning experience? In a demo I show of what I've learned since the last one,- and now go make a new thread about meta demoing please.

Preacher I wish I could order you, place you on my shelf and ask you for advice when needed, please have a nice weekend :)

unconed: Welcome to Pouet sanatorium!

If you want demo making advice, feel free to shoot me an e-mail :)

Preacher, I'll definitely make use of that proposal :)

This seems to illustrate my point :)

oh noooes!. you should have never posted or even come to this place, man. undo your user, destroy your profile, i think you are still in time

unconed, according to the demoscene greybeards, your sin is that you didn't add your demo here on pouet. After reading this deeply embarassing thread, I'm sure you're very eager to do that!

what iq and parcelshit said.

Uh oh! It's still very WIP... I still need to figure out a bunch of things before it can be used by others.

Especially the part about embarrasing.

Word.

It still feels wrong to me that the -scene side (community, competition, history, parties, ...) is forgotten.
Maybe the -scene is irrelevant. Maybe pouet sucks. But eg on pouet, unconed could have found a talented demoscene musicians with a track on his hand to collaborate with, instread of going to mau5trap.

It's never too late to point out that pouet != scene && scene != pouet.
I was wondering what do the japanese guys, that go to random easter party have to say about this whole scene thing, because they did travel thousands of KM to go to a demoparty, to see what the demoscene really is, and somehow they didn't do it just once.