pouët.net

we should be glad with every demo that people still bother to superglue together in their spare time, whether they enjoy coding shit from scratch or use some prefab tools. It's not like it's a Dada-like thing that a demo gets generated from unity with zero effort, there's still plenty of creativity and effort involved that will define the artistic value of the demo.

pouet != demoscene. This community is far more social and accepting than threads like this lead you to believe. :)

ferris: lets hope so, this thread is getting off topic and i'd rather be writing.

aborting

Was this thread ever on-topic? :D

My fucking ass.


....and I know that I haven't made a demo.....

In any Pouet-argument about principle, multiply what anyone says by the amount of prods they have contributed to. Discussions become a lot more balanced and constructive.

Pouet==demoscene and it's not toxic. It's on par with every other internet forum out there. Heated discussions resulting in some misunderstanding, hurt feelings etc... That's a norm!
I don't understand this demonizing attitude. Liamislord: come to some parties and don't worry. Again,everything I said wasn't suppose to be personal,and you know, you were also playing 'devils advocate',so...why hypocrisy.. peace?;)

tomkh: so if youre back and ready to get back on topic, so am i...

my original question / point was this: if demos are about striving for impressive graphical output (and of course attention should be paid to process( and of course I know thats not a full definition)), on limited hardware constraints, could a game engine be considered a constraint?

i.e. could someone make a demo using unity that makes you say 'wow cannot believe they pushed that engine that far / in that direction!'

to me, if we were to embrace comm. engines and take THOSE to their limits, it could lead to a resurgence in the scene / OC?

i also stand by my original point that we COULD expand the potential of demo by doing things that commercial engines are afraid to do, i.e. OS manipulation and multiwindow / windowless prods.

I do not want those OG experts to stop making 4k's or c64 demos, not at all! I just think the scene could be more inviting to the possibility that maybe these platforms can become... idk categories...

and Gargaj before you weigh my words less because of how many 'prods ive contributed to' i've been a lurker for years and years and i'm passionate about code / the subject so be as dismissive as you want, thats on you

Gargaj seems to be one of the pouet admins, and he was actually dismissing my opinions, not yours.

Probably defending what Smash said, as Smash is famous and respected -- including by me.

Anyway, I would not be afraid to compete against Smash though, lets say on a 10kb prod without additional "art", just code.

Apparently you haven't seen his 4k's. :)

I know that he produces awesome code/prods.

Everyone is welcome to the scene! We want prods! You just have to understand the frustration that can happen in parties when categories are not balanced.
Say some sceners make lots of efforts to do everything by themselves, proudly present months (when not years) of work at a party, and get beaten by a guy that spent a few hours on UE4. How can this happen? Easy: the public in parties has less and less technical knowledge (I don't criticize that, it's cool to have more and more diverse people), and will be impressed by UE's default features (the incredible lighting, etc). Can you understand the frustration? It's like seeing a Shaolin master killed by a guy with a gun. Would you say: "well, guns are more efficient, stop kung-fu, it belongs to the past"?
All we want is to embrace new people and new technologies gracefully in the right categories so that no-one gets discouraged. Fair enough?

Soundy yes. size limits are the way we can do this.

lmfao if someone could somehow leverage ue4 into 64k... well they did it.

but i think demo could REALLY open up to unashamedly game engine demos, and if the stigma was removed, imagine the content that those willing could create!

It's easy to understand the frustration, but difficult to avoid it. A non-technical audience can easily appreciate the different properties of a martial arts master and a gun. They will have a harder time understanding why it's important to make the distinction between prods made with Epic's commercial engine (Unreal) and Smash' commercial engine, or indeed, why the pre-rendered animation isn't allowed at all because everything looks like rendered animations anyway.

interactivity!

Interactivity used to be a hallmark of very oldschool demos. This is how people used to prove that their effects are "properly realtime". All those scrollers with tens of control buttons...

For modern computer video installations, which most demos happen to be, injecting interactivity would be as hard and labour intensive as it was for film and music video when they tried it. Next to impossible. It is interesting to think in that direction, but much bigger communities than ours tried and, well, maybe not failed completely, but did not achieve much either.

There are also computer games. They achieved more. However, (I am only guessing) for a lot of people here the distinction between games and demos is just too clear and too wide.

i think that gargaj wasnt dissing, but mostly was trying to say that the more demos you actually make, the less you talk out of your arse.

"Interactivity used to be a hallmark of very oldschool demos. This is how people used to prove that their effects are "properly realtime". All those scrollers with tens of control buttons..."... errr, i've been around a while, but, scrollers with control buttons?

of course there is grey area in demos / games but we live in a postmodern artscape... so be it

What noone mentioned yet is the amount of time/work a coder puts into a demo or an intro...
...it takes me months to get a 4K done, of course not working on it nonstop, spare-time, not much of it available.
But for coders like Shadow and LJ and even me, who don´t copypaste or even look into others code, so having to come up with the concept/maths for effects themselves, it´s work that takes a lot of time...and in the end we did it all on our own and can be happy about it.
Coders always invested the most time into a Demo...a splendid Soundtrack may need some weeks in the worst case, same for a splendid Graphic, but the coders need months or even years to get everything done.
That´s why we coders keep saying stuff like "without us there wouldn´t be a Demo at all any Musician or Graphician could put his work in!". It´s really not as arrogant/bigheaded as it sounds at first. ;)
Why i wrote all this? Because i read about people complaining about "lazy coders" once again! Any coder getting stuff done can´t have been lazy...and if it takes him 2 years to get it done, there was a lot of work to do for it, that easy! (plus maybe even less sparetime in those years)

Just so no1 gets me wrong again: I am still totally fine with 3rd-Party-Engines used for Demos...i upvoted most of them as said. Selfmade stuff will still always impress me way more.

(Now i´m back to reading the last two pages of this thread...just wanted to get rid of this text for now! Ventilation++)

And I say that this is a ridiculous assertion. How many demos have John Carmack or Tim Sweeney published, for example?

Does that mean that they will, as you disrespectfully say, "talk out from their arses", when John for example said that there is nothing exciting about demos category?

You are quite an arrogant wannabe for what you really know, I say.

Number of demo prods says nothing about one's abilities. With enough motivation, you might be eventually surprised and have your status quo stuck in your deep ass.

Imerso, calm down! ;)
Gargaj just formulated this in a general sentence! Of course this is no rule or can be used on really "anyone" ...there are many people in the scene that didn´t release much but still are top in what they do.
I even think this was mostly adressed to those lurkers without any prods ever released but spamming the threads with their opinions. Why do they think they should debate about how a scene should roll they do not contribute to, this will not affect them, right? ;)

imerso maybe you want to calm down a bit? Nobody explicitly accused you of anything. I also think that the number of prods says nothing about one's abilities but how do you expect people to assess the skills of said person then? Nobody gives creds to anyone based on the things he might be able to do "with enough motivation".

Also to be honest even though Tim Sweeney and John Carmack would get advance creds for their skills from me, in this particular question I wouldnt value their opinion higher than any other "outsider" opinion, as they're not part of the scene as far as i know.

Haha hardy, beat me to it :)