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These days it's common for oldskool groups to bring their own hardware, and have it video-captured for the compo. That way you rule out configuration issues and incompatibilities.
Which I think is a better approach than the organizers having an actual physical 'compo machine' that your prod has to run on.

So if you make a 386 demo, bring your 386, show your hardware to the organizers and have your prod captured off it.

I don't see how any of that is misleading.



It is? I would argue that the slowest possible P133-configuration might actually be slower than the fastest P90-configuration possible. Not to mention different capabilities of 'SVGA' videocards. 8-bit, 15-bit, 16-bit 24-bit or 32-bit? And how much memory? Do you get a linear framebuffer? Etc.
Speaking of personal experience, my Pentium 133 had a Matrox Mystique graphics card. It notoriously lacked truecolour 320x200/320x240 modes in its VBE.
I wouldn't want to write a demo for 320x200 truecolour only to find out that the compo machine can't support the mode I used.

There is a problem with asking people to bring their real hardware and running the compos from that. Here is the compo-desk at the Forever party where that's how it's done for the "other 8bit" compo (basically, anything 8bit except ZX, C64 and Atari XL/XE which each get a separate compo)

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This is a relatively small party, and there are already 7 machines on the desk. With each different problems to get the audio on the PA and video to the beamer.

It is great to watch all the prods on the real hardware, but also big moments of stress for the organizers, making sure all machines are ready when the compo starts (and running after that guy with a gameboy color), that all the cables/scandoublers/adapters are ready, etc.

Unless of course you run the compo from videocaptures, in which case people can each do the videocapture on their own custom hardware and it's mostly the same as a wild compo again (and also, what's the fun in watching videocaptures?)

Having a common platform makes a dedicated compo more interesting as entries compete on the same hardware base. But, that works only if you can get enough people to use that particular platform.

You should never run the prod *live* during the compo, obviously. With these old machines, it's often a problem to even get them connected to the projection and audio setup in the first place (PC speaker and CGA composite NTSC in a PAL country, anyone?)... and then there's the risk of the machines crashing halfway, because of old unreliable hardware.

Allow me to explain it more elaborately then:
The group brings their hardware, and has it set up on their table.
The organizers will go to this setup and verify that it is real hardware, and that the prod works on it.
Then they make a video capture of the prod from this real hardware, if possible.
If not, an emulator capture could be accepted as well, since the organizers can compare the emulator output against the real thing, to see if it's accurate.
Depending on the situation, sometimes it might be easier to have the group do the capture themselves. They could even prepare a capture at home, and take it to the party.



Does it matter? If the video capture shows exactly the same thing, why would you bother to go through the hassle of viewing it 'live'?
I think a 'live' recording from real hardware is as good as the real thing.
In fact, I would estimate that at least 95% of the people who watched 8088 MPH have never seen it on real hardware, and probably never will.

To clarify: I mean during the compo.
Obviously it's cool to actually see a demo running on real hardware... but that's better for a setup at someone's table at the party, or just in the comfort of your own home.
On the big screen, you don't actually get to see the hardware anyway.

I'd like this "bring your own electric toothbrush or 386" wild nonsense to stop, and instead have an actual compo PC as the platform. You know, oldskool style. C64 and Amiga are stable established platforms, and I'm trying to say that it would be great to have such an established platform for Pentium DOS as well. To make that possible it needs to be... established.

If you want to know specific things like whether a certain VBE mode is available, that seems like a reasonable thing to ask. But some other things might not feel reasonable. Who knows?

You don't seem to be very open to suggestions though. Apparently you want to have your way 100%.

I know. Not one of my strengths.

It probably doesn't make much sense (I'm not part of the scene and hacking on 8bit machines for the rational aspects anyway...), but it does matter to me.

I see this as a first step to "why would you bother to go through the hassle of making it run realtime on the actual machine?"

And then we start getting prods that run only on emulators. I'm thinking of releasing an amazing video and pretending there is a binary that can run on some random obscure hardware, just to see how much time it would take people to notice.

I don't know if it is reasonable to ask compo organizers to check wether the prod runs on the matching hardware. That could take about as much time as getting the hardware plugged to the beamer (it is actually done at the Forever party, and the compodesk is in the middle of the room so sceners can come and see the machines). Sure, you need to accept VGA, composite, S-Video AND RGB Scart in a diverse range of resolutions. That can also be part of the compo setup spec: "anything with VGA output is a valid machine for entering this compo. in case of doubt, the beamer hardware decides if it's shown or not.".

Not to mention the Amstrad CPC purist who would say things look right only with the original CTM644 display that was sold with it, with its slight blurriness, lack of scanlines, and strange behavior on badly synced video signals - or even finding effect that only work with such displays, on purpose).

Moreover, if things go the "bring your own hardware" way, there is again no single platform to jusge the prods again. What if one of the groups has a 3GHz super overclocked pentium 133 with liquid helium cooling? What if they designed their own video card? (or likewise, what if they plugged a PCI bridge into their Amiga and used a Radeon card with 3D acceleration?).

It depends what you are after. An "oldschool compo" can be either trying to ressurect the spirit of 1980-2000 demoscene, with a fixed and limited hardware which allows to remove that from the equation and judge prods solely on the technical and artistical skills and achievements. Or, it can be a compo with any machine (or possibly "hardware from before 1997" or whatever), and in that case you are judging people ability to chose and exploit the right platform - they set their own challenge with regard to the technical limitations, and then show how they can handle it.

If you go for the latter, people will complain that the compo is unfair because people can get "platform vote" (of any kind: because it's AMIGA, or because you had to write your own assembler for that custom CPU, or because it has much more capabilities than other platforms, or...). If you go for the former, people will complain that it is not their preferred platform.

how can the pentium be both 133MHz and 3GHz? ;)

Obviously not, that's why the organizers have to verify that the prod works on hardware before accepting a video capture of it.



Your alternative is to run it 'live' from the real hardware during the compo. How is that different from checking whether the prod runs on the matching hardware?
In both cases the prod is running from the actual hardware, and the organizers are watching the prod. Only difference is that in one case, the audience watches along at the same time.
I think for a better 'flow' of the compo and less stress for the organizers during the compo, it's much easier to have video-captures in advance, so during the compo you just know that you can start one demo after another, and don't need to plug all sorts of things around, and change all kinds of settings trying to get things to work.



We had the same issue with 8088 MPH and the CGA composite output.
Since CGA is a rather crude standard, it is not 100% NTSC-compatible, and we've found that not all monitors, projectors or capture devices will even show an image at all.
And when they do, the actual colours depend on how the hue and saturation are dialed in on that particular display.
We could actually make our own capture with hardware we had already verified to work before we got to the party, and we had tweaked the colours so that it came out the way we intended. I think that's a win-win situation. We didn't have any stress not knowing whether our demo could even be shown at all, or if it would look representative. And the audience also got to experience the demo as we intended it.



Well, that's why there are still compo rules. In our case, Revision had strict rules, such as only 16-bit or less, and you could only create demos on '1 standard medium', which in our case was a single 5.25" 360K floppy: https://2015.revision-party.net/compos/oldskool

I think the Revision scenario works very well for oldskool platforms, and I would want more parties to adopt a similar model.
I don't think PC lends itself well for a single 'fixed spec', because (as we've already seen in this thread), everyone will have their own idea of what that 'fixed spec' will be, and as a result, any compo trying to do any such 'fixed spec' will rule out a lot of potential entries from people who have a slightly different 'fixed spec' in mind.
I mean, one person discovered the demoscene when they had a 486, so that is 'the DOS platform' to them. Another person got a Pentium, so to them, Pentiums are 'the DOS platform'.
I say: make a demo about it, and bring it on. Put them all in the same compo, and let the audience vote whether 486 or Pentium is more ossom.

a bit unrelated, but that 'one standard medium' rule is pretty stupid when you see 180MB PC demos that are basically vertex-based players for prebaked cinema4d effects. a bit of cheating with lookup tables is fun and i can understand it is probably mostly there to avoid full animations, but 'no animations' as a rule would then suffice. :)

Hah! I would love to see you in the line at Asm waiting for doors to open, in queue with hundreds-thousands cs gamers (some rain maybe for added bonus) at 10 AM. Why this early? Because this year party opened Thu 10:00 AM and deadline was just 2 hours after, while ppl were still waiting outside in queue. So come early! Bring your sleeping mattress and camp out the night before :) :)