pouët.net

I wrote a demoscene article in the current issue (Fall 2014) of '2600: The Hacker Quarterly', so if you read the magazine or are interested, you might like that issue, or you could use it to introduce friends who are into other areas of hacking into the demoscene. The article has a couple errors, from me, and maybe editing: citation 11 should have not said it is referencing Phoenix's texture-mapping code, but HELiX's bump-mapping code (also on scene.org/hornet.org), and that code was edited so the set of comments in the middle look like part of the article, but it is actually one piece of code. The article was based on my senior computer science academic paper.

cool! got scan?

cool! got beer?

No; I will be publishing it on my website about the time of the Winter issue.

Please let us know as soon as the article is online! I for one would be very interested to read it!

I'm looking forward to that article as well! We have subscribed to 2600 at work, but usually it takes the people before me in the list a couple of months to read it before I will get it...

As promised, I uploaded the article--corrected/longer version--to a page at my homesite; the article is available in various formats in links in the first sentence on http://www.cwu.edu/~melikd/demos.html (I would link to the files but such links to non-HTML files are no longer accessible at that domain). You also should be able to access a directory mostly of files of the article in various formats at http://mathematicon.com/david/lit/David .

Hi, thanks for posting.

Here, fixed the link to the txt file for you.

The article basically sums up scene history up to ~2000 and then stops. Then some computer graphics stuff that has either been obsolete for 10 years or is too basic to be scene-specific is explained.




Yeah well. People who read that article now without having heard about the scene before will think that it must have been dead for 15 years now. I can't imagine a reader even thinking there would still be demoparties, let alone contribute. Sure that this is not from some 2001 issue of the magazine?

Yup, it has a strong oldschool PC focus and the Pascal code snippets certainly add to that. Some popular and more up-to-date examples and techniques (Deferred Rendering, Raymaching; in general more shader based approaches instead of DOS-era SW rendering) would have been nice to add. As it is, it sounds too much like a retro phenomenon than it actually is. Then again, it's a complex topic and you can't stuff all the nuances of the scene in a couple of pages. The best thing such an article can achieve, is to make people curious enough to look for further info and demos themselves. :)

The hereunder sentence is ambiguous in its punctuation :



It transforms history if it means something other than :



Othen than that tomaes's article is nice.
Met with Eric Corley at NYC at Empire State Building in 1990, but prefer Phrack magazine.

I understand the criticism yet think a few things have been missed. The paper (other than modifications for an article) was written in 2011 - '12 academic year, and mentioning Pilgrimage demoparty, goes to 2005 or '6 in scene history. Even before that, there were tens of demoparties in Europe/EU, and at the time, several more in USA and elsewhere, that maybe no one could agree any new one was a 'main' demoparty of any large region--I was not aware, anyway--so I did not try to say any were. I argue that no graphics are obsolete except algorithms designed for obsolete systems/displays (though many sceners would disagree, still making demos for those to the current day)--programmers normally try simpler graphics before more complicated. I wanted to give an introduction to relatively simpler graphics, then people could find more complicated stuff if they want. I even considered giving the algorithm for the Bresenham line or a newer one that may be faster, though on the system I first (and ever) tried that on, the (non-primary) source I programmed it from did not work for me, and I thought, most people will just use a premade line function nowadays. Besides that I think I mentioned all systems I know of that demos were made on in early days, and mentioned important demos (like the first ones according to the book FREAX) that were probably not PC, Tomaes is basically right--the article (a few pages in 2600, but actually almost a 20-page paper in full-size text) is not necessarily intended as much more than to make people curious (at least as far as algorithms go, originally). Long-time sceners would get more from a book like FREAX, though, as said, there have been many more demoparties and effects since then--it would be great if there was a new larger documentary text.

Thanks for linking to the TXT, but I have reorganized my site, so hopefully this link to
the TXT works--if you do not mind reading from a Unix-TXT with no line-breaks, with formatting marks such as for italics /like this/--the printed and ODT and DOC versions are easiest to read.

My last bbcode link was wrong, this should have been the link to the TXT

Sorry for two wrong links in a row... I rarely ever use bbcode, and wish Pouet had a delete post function for mistakes. Now, this should be the link to the TXT (in text to be sure: http://www.cwu.edu/~melikd/math/papers/David/2600-The_Demoscene.txt]the TXT )

darwin: just in case you are not aware of this: http://www.kameli.net/demoresearch2/?page_id=4

Kind of terrible. And I'm being polite :)

rrrrrright. despite that Dope did feature some nifty new effects back then, this statement is a bold, personal opinion that i'm pretty sure does not reflect the opinions of many demosceners at all. you may have missed important things like 'procedural music/graphics' or the migration from an effect show to a more coherent "experience" (just to name two things that come to mind). like cupe said it seems dated, this article reads like it's written in 1997 or smth :)

Something about abstaining from articles on graphics programming if this is your literary take on it. Thank you.

This article is very bad and reads like a history lesson written years ago.

wat

that article needs more commas

Very bad article indeed. Next time do a peer review, please...

It reads like a high school student wrote an essay about his hobby scene in 2001.

Wow, that's horrid and cringe-inducing :/

At least it captures the mid-90s diskmag writing style.

Oh wait

Speaks volumes, doesn't it.