pouët.net

or rather, to continue my last paragraph, I think most people would consider that to be fair game since some effort was spent in making it different enough for posting in the other competitions.

However to tie in JMPH's comment above, it really likely depends on how much effort was spent making it different. One could consider his soundtrack which had more to it. Was there enough extra content missed out by cutting it down for the compo? From what he said, I think so. However I don't think it's enough to avoid being considered double dipping, so to speak, if someone just adds an alternate short ending or a few more seconds here or there.

I don't see any problems in recyling assets. There is no reason a demo should exists of purely unique works. This holds true however for the sperate compo's. Since The order in which compos are schudeled, each assest is still an unique work.

Less talk, more demos. The current rules for the major parties are quite solid. No need to inpose any more restrictions like what has been suggested before in this thread.

Can I safely assume you are being sarcastic here?

numtek, yeah I think he's being quite sarcastic since he was arguing above that multiple submission of assets isn't a big deal.

However as I comment, I think it delves into "slippery slope" fallacy territory to assume that prevention of assets such as graphics and soundtracks from demos being prevented would lead to forcing completely original content (down to the effects) for every entry.

Don't get mad. Sorry. I just think everyone's been re-using "assets" since forever, and it has not been a problem, and it's not a problem now. I think the "not released before" rule is there to get people to produce new stuff for each party. Which is what the rule has achieved. It feels like you're suggesting that people are not acting reasonably now, and this has to be controlled with written rules, and self-moderation and everyone's trying to behave will not be sufficient in this case. I don't feel that way.

I don't call it a problem - I just tend to call it impolite...

(My reply was for Saga Musix, and yes the Blueberry remark was my usual being sarcastic, which isn't always the most helpful approach)

I think this is why it's not done more: there's a "stigma" or self-felt feelings that it's not right, and so kept to what seems to be a reasonable state of affairs.

I can see arguments both ways here, really. The one time I've done this (as far as I can recall...) was at Forever 2001, where I released Cybernoid's Revenge in the music compo and also used it in a demo (Pondlife) at the same party. On that occasion, I was damn proud of it as a piece of music (indeed, 15 years on it's probably still the most popular track I've ever written) so of course I wanted to enter it into the music compo. The fact that it also appeared in one part of an eight part megademo is pretty much incidental.

On the other hand, if you write a piece of music *intended* as a demo soundtrack, and release it in the music compo just to get a second shot at winning a prize, then that is a bit lame. Obviously, it's not going to be as fresh when the audience hears it in the demo - effectively you're prioritising your desire to win a compo over the audience's enjoyment.

So it's a matter of intent really, and that's not something you can judge objectively. And for that reason, I think banning the practice outright would be silly.

I did this at Forever as well, allowing me to use Exocet's beautiful graphics in my (not so good, in the end) demo, without preventing him for entering the graphics compo and getting a well deserved prize there.

http://demozoo.org/graphics/58722/
http://demozoo.org/productions/58728/

I would have been in a difficult situation if using the graphics prevented him from entering another compo with them. And probably I would have made some much more ugly graphics as a replacement.

Well, I stick to my point here.. It shouldn't be forbidden. Recycling old code is some quite different issue..
'regulations' go with my job and shouldn't be taking over, concerning my hobby.

I can understand (a bit) of all of your intentions. Still - in my opinion it feels more than an disadvantage for the musician or group with 'Double-shots'.
Speaking about being unfair: that would rather be using a Speech sample in the music revealing the authors name, while live voting is on. Did this ever happen? And no - I do not plan to do so. 😉

simplified list:

- having to watch/listen_to the same thing several times at the same party :(
- taking away slots/chances for other participants in the same compo :(

+ maker may collect more prizes

So, this is 1 PLUS for 1 person vs. everything better for everyone else!
While the one plus for that person in most cases doesn´t work out anyway.

Just forbid it from now and we made the demoscene a bit better once again!

If someone wants to participate in a compo he can always paint/track sth else than what is used in a Demo already. Demo-Soundtracks should be made exclusive for usage in the demo anyway.

So? Nobody forces you to be present in at least X compos per party.

I have to admit I find the excuse of not having enough time completely irrelevant. Your time constraints are your problem, not anyone elses, you would have known about a party well in advance, it feels like you're taking a shortcut.

When I got started entering compos for the first time, I, like everyone else, read the rules first, the one about not entering anything that had previously been released was fair and made sense. And although unwritten, I just took it as good form not to use the same track in more than one compo. If I had time I would write more allowing me to compete in multiple compos, if I didn't have the time, that was my problem and I was happy that I could at least contribute in one compo at all.

It is a practice that I have seen repeated for a number of years, and while not letting it bother me too much or detract from any experience or demo work, it kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I see it happen.

I'm not expecting any major rule changes, but at the same time I am glad someone actually brought the issue up to be debated.

I think the double air time of your work is what makes it unfair. Lets say I enter a compo at a party I'm also performing at. Would it be right for me to play my compo entry during my set? God knows I've wanted to on a lot of occasions.

I also think that the lack of this happening so regularly is a sign that there is already a stigma attached to doing it and the longer this conversation goes on the more people will feel awkward about doing so.

But the rules shouldn't change as in some cases (gasmans example for instance) a spontaneous addition at a smaller party is worth it.

For me, I have to admit I don't agree with the practise. Not certain about banning it though. I know that I have, on occasion, either knocked a point off a demo if I've heard the soundtrack in an earlier comp, or, if I really like the demo, gone back and lowered my vote for the soundtrack.

God knows I'd like to have done it myself though. At the second Revision I entered a 4K that came last, but whose music was almost universally praised. Really wish I'd stuck the music in the exe music compo now, but I felt bad about it so I didn't.

Also, @Jazzcat: Pretty certain H0f has managed to enter every music compo at a party before. ^__^

If you look at the isolated case of promoting your music entry, I don't really see a difference in this and having it in a demo (getting your track played twice for added exposure).
In both cases you may or may not get punished by the audience, depending on how they react to the stunt. Feelings about this are obviously divided, as observed in this thread.

In these days of live voting, it's increasingly less likely that anyone will go back to change their votes hours after the compo in which they voted.


From an organizer's viewpoint I'd like to note a couple of practical issues:
1) For parties of some size, it's probably not gonna be the same person(s) who does preselection/qualification of entries. That means there's a high probability that the organizers won't notice what has happened until the demo compo (assuming music compo shows are done before demo compos, which is the case for most parties).
The consequence of this is that disqualification will have to be done after the compo shows (not in preselection).

2) Technically, the demo will in most cases be the second release of the doubly entered item. If you want to disqualify something (assuming a rule is in place that an entry can not be released earlier) it will have to be the demo. Is that something we really want?

3) The definition of a time for release is ambiguous. If you don't release the entry yourself (Soundcloud, DeviantArt etc.) the release to the public is at the party organizers' discretion (in most cases this will be when releases are uploaded to scene.org). If that is done after compos have been held, you could argue that whatever the asset was was not released (in the definition of made available to the public) by the time the demo was entered/shown (another ambiguity).


IMO, it's going to be really hard to regulate this as a compo organizer without putting yourself in a situation where you would have to disqualify entries after showing them and having them voted on. In some cases perhaps even after the party, when trophies and prizes have already been handed out.
As an organizer, I would not set myself in a position like that.

People have opitions.

Some think
- using unity for demos
- using demotools
- using scanners and photos for digital art
- using photoshop for a oldschool gfx
- recycling and/or entering multiple compos
is lame.

Here's the thing: there is no rule that can be enforced to fix this. But there's still something you can do if you don't like it:

- find the scener responsible and tell him about your feelings
- vote accordingly to your opinion
- shout "booooh" as loud as possible on the party place
or finally
- make a demo about it

My main issue with double-entering things is this: If you enter something into both the graphics compo and the demo compo, the graphics thing is usually shown first, meaning it's judged on its own. The demo will have many other elements, so the double-use will only be a minor issue for the voters, if any. If that direction was reversed, you would go "yeah, we've seen that image already" and not vote that much for it. If you double-enter something, you are exploiting the order of the compos. I always go back and change my vote for the graphics entry in this case, but sometimes I forget (like at revision this year).

At bigger parties it's impossible to enforce some kind of rule, as lug00ber observed. So I consider it basic decency to disclose the double entry on the beamslide if the compo with the single asset runs before the compo with the bigger prod, otherwise you are fooling the audience on purpose. Yet I've never seen that being done. Many probably guessed what kind of production would be coming up later anyway when a certain picture was shown at revision, so that disclosure doesn't break any secrecy (and if you want to remain secret, you can always not enter the asset).

I dont like double-releases too much either, tho I can understand the motivation behind it.

But imagine there would be a rule against it, we would be drifting into the large gray-area of "how much do I have to change for it to be allowed?" and thats a pretty subjective and relative thing to decide.
On the other end I have seen many demo-soundtracks released in the music compos as "compo edit" so this is already happening (probably because of time limits per entry mostly, but still).
Personally I feel a lot better about seeing or hearing the same pic or track in several compos when I know each of those entries is slightly different and fitted for its purpose.

As for the orga side of things: maybe it would be a good idea to let the entrants flag their entry if its part of another release, so the orgas can decide how to handle them and maybe priorize them down when it comes to preselection (to have more room for original content). Of course this requires the entrants cooperation but after the compos are done with it'd be obvious anway.

And regarding the spoiling of upcoming prods:
Epoch wins by giving away their full .nfo beforehand (which is very nice, tho) ;P

PC demo compo

by the way, the Forever rules explicitly allows this.



Maybe the situation on 8bit machine is slightly different, as it is not too uncommon to have the music in a demo or intro cut much shorter because of memory constraints. In that case the "full" / "long" version can still be heard standalone in the music compo.

when I noticed this happening, I feel it mostly was at the disadvantage of the demo reusing the stuff from previous compos, because there is much less surprise effect. In some cases it probably costs a few points to the demo, but in other cases, it could be a crap demo using some nice graphics or music, which do deserve a separate entry. Or maybe the way the graphics are used in a demo (with a rotozoom or whatever effect making it difficult to look at the graphic for itself) is not suitable to seeing all the details.

If entering the graphics separately is allowed, people won't need to ruin their demo-flow because of this. I'm thinking of the rotozoom in second Reality (where the picture is first shown "normally" before distorting it) or some amiga demos stopping to show worksteps of a picture to make sure everyone knows it was made from scratch. Why not move this to the appropriate compos, and allow the demo to run free of these constraints?

In these times of diminishing scene activity we surely need more constraints for compo participation.

With all due respect to both (or more) sides to this discussion, I doubt that the outcome of this has much impact on the results of the compos. A piece of music made for a demo is different than one made for a music compo in most cases, and that is no surprise. Sure, there are opposite examples, ones where the music is great in both contexts. But in my experience, music made for a demo is oftentimes good in a demo but weak on its own because the audience doesn't have the visual context. Unless, of course, the song was originally meant as a stand-alone song that was used for a demo anyway, in which case it usually doesn't fit the demo well, again with exceptions.

For graphic entries, things are probably a little different even though I must admit I have never quite understood why demos would be misused as slideshows in the first place. But that's just me.

Either way I'd say that the audience will probably "punish" double-entering, unless the work is just great both as a demo asset and as stand-alone work, in which case it might just deserve to win. I am, however, against just stuffing compos with just any assets you have just to have as many entries as possible. Then again, I don't quite understand why one would enter anything into a competition that they don't especially like themselves. Yet, that happens regularly.

TL;DR: How is this really a discussion.

Yeah, let's all go for more quantity over quality!