pouët.net

Animation or not, if it rocks it rocks of not then not. But it should be clear what it is because it is no shame to use it imho.



1. to be able to do it in realtime
2. fun
3. profit

norecess: animation is where the code can't render any frames that aren't shown in the demo. That's why whey are mostly repetitive. Even if you use a super routine that renders frames using tiles or sprites or EOR-fill, it's still an animation. The only control that is possible (and not always) - frame select.

If you use a sine table in a 3D effect, you can still rotate your objects as you want (maybe using keys, as in this), so they are not animation.

How many times did I discuss this topic? :)

Basically, there are Purists vs. the Audience. Why would the Audience "play with keys" to interact with your demo? Isn't a demo supposed run/start/stop show to impress first ? To me (me me me, it's ok you get your point) a demo is not supposed to be real-time, it's all about fake - if you can display a Quake-like scene because you pre-cached all your vertices positions for triangles in sorted order, why avoiding it?
Keep in mind the Audience will be pleased so see that Quake-like scene, simply because this would have never been possible in the past.

As I said previously, I'm not fan of preca-only, I like mix of both. So basically I partly agree with you :)

Quite often the cheaty stuff takes a hell of a lot of thought and effort to implement in itself, especially on limited performance systems.

technically its simple to decide: if its possible realtime but done in anim = lame, also anims disguised as realtime effects = lame.

Animations on low-spec 8 bit machines is not a problem in particular if the data is densely packed. There is still the clever code to depack as well as encode the data. This can also be a hybrid approach where precalculated animation data is combined with other realtime code.

Certainly if it can be done in realtime and the realtime approach would be considerably smaller than the packed animation, then use the realtime approach.

Many other factors come into play certainly, in particular if requiring additional processing time for other sections (which may not be as possible as doing everything the realtime way)

On more powerful machines such as the PC, no excuse really

Here's an excuse: you want something that breaks and bounces and instead of writing and debugging a physics engine for half a year, you bake the object position and rotation in Maya and then render it in real-time.

Okay? Or not okay? If not okay - why?

gloom: good example. I am slightly torn about that one, but for me it comes down to what the purpose of the effect is. Simulating 1-200 solid objects for the purpose of shading them in some way, then the answer is "Okay" for sure. Physics in this setting is like any other generated asset (like a texture or a sound sample).

There is always the aspect of pride to take into account, but more importantly (in your example) -- Maya is a bitch! Having your own simulation going, if only for the purpose of baking it like you would do in Maya, beats having to struggle with Autodesk.

But I think I would say "Okay" if there is something more than the mere physics, like some neat design idea or cool shading, and "Not Okay" if there is nothing else than the physics.

alone_coder: Think of code as a way compressing animation in a smart way. So a piece of demo is simply a movie that is compressed by a custom-made algorithm :)

Now, having cleansed the doors of perception every thing appears as it is, silly. And more importantly -- the doors themselves are not important, only the end result and compo votes.

*enters lotus position*

aaa..huuuuummmm

What if you write "10 million polygons" on screen while only showing a couple of hundred?
Is that:
a) a "fake effect"
b) a "real effect" with false advertising
c) a bad joke
d) an unfortunate choice of text overlays

And which of those is the "worst" one according to the official rules of the demo scene?

alone_coder: Also, are you sure you're not just a fake version of Photon?

Slummy: if you get away with it, you know it to be none of the above, but rather:

e) leet.

Why? Because you have successfully manipulated your audience using the facts:

#1 people can't count
#2 they would like to believe what you tell them

And by doing so, you've become the poly-king of the month. Which is great! Nothing beats being the official Master of Triangles, Lord of Vertices and Holy Convexifier and Protector of the Set of Sets of Triples of Points in R^3!

Is state of the art by an animation? Yep!
Does it rock hard and is it renowned as a massive turning point in demoscene history? Dam right!

In my opinion if a demo cheats the fuck but is stunning, stylish, slick as fuck andhas a rocking soundtrack, who cares!!

Alone_Coder, if you need, i can create the same topic at CSDb forums.

this is all ridiculous. you just do what the fuck you want to.

djh0ffman and w23 summed it all

Yep. And if the end result looks good it's really something to appreciate!

Then again sometimes it's almost like they made it look crap on purpose so that people would be fooled into thinking it's realtime. Like a certain recent C64 "physics" demo. That's kinda wack to me.

But "wack to me" is where it ends. It's not like doing that needs to somehow be forbidden. Compo organizers can implement any kind of rules they want of course, but lets face it, in the end compos are like Eurovision. The "competition" is just a bit of fun to spice things up, not some kind of objective measure of betterness. Worrying about it too much is just retarded.

omfg! cameras in project:ion were mostly done with a real camera, then tracked and converted into our coordinate system: we baked it and it is not calculated in realtime DAFUQ

sorry, but there was some craftsmanship involved - so it's fine to show it.

however, seeing a lot of baked physics (fluid, shattering, etc) lately makes stuff less impressive. i agree with that!

gloom, you use Bullet physics :)

pantaloon: I'm guessing whoever feels that faking demoscene effects is cheating still feels that is cheating, not that I care :)

so using realtime calculations is also cheating ? :) this is getting complicated, are we now back to: You should code everything yourself discussion :)

The demoscene is all about cheating and lying. You just have to do it in style.

I think the point I and others are trying to make is that going after "fake effects" in the demoscene is retarded. :)

Coding everything myself is a waste of time, when there are superior tools and APIs available that wouldn't benefit from my sub-par take on trying to implement something similar. I've always seen it in a way that if there's a new tool available that does something better than whatever I currently have in my workflow, I'll adopt it. That simple.

Some things thought I _want_ to code from scratch, because of a perceived chance for a learning experience while doing it.

diver, OK, just give the link to read and add there the following:

1. If you are so cool a designer then why you can't get a 3D engine and design cool scenes? Maybe because you can't learn new technology?
2. If you are so cool an animator then why you can't send your works to animation fests? Maybe because your animations only look good as fake effects but they look bad as real animation?