Maximum file size for demo (esp. @Assembly)
category: general [glöplog]
I don't rate demos in Mb's, only in awesome.
This thread kind of reminds me why making demoscene related stuff has lost a lot of its appeal for me: the (imho) pointless fetishization of technological and aesthetic conventions. A demo is often not judged on what it represents, what sorts of emotions it conveys or not even how it looks and sounds from a purely aesthetic point of view, but by how it's made, what technologies were used in it and how well it conforms to an ancient idea of what a demo "should be". I kind of understand the appeal in that on a purely logical level (I'm a coder after all and I write software for living), but I cannot share it in any way.
i don't know if it has been mentioned already in this thread (tl;dr), but:
How about having 2 demo categrories, similar to the 2 major intro categories (4k, 64k)?
E.g. a 64MB category and a non-capped category.
Of course this would probably mainly work at larger parties (revision and assembly).
How about having 2 demo categrories, similar to the 2 major intro categories (4k, 64k)?
E.g. a 64MB category and a non-capped category.
Of course this would probably mainly work at larger parties (revision and assembly).
Btw I remember certain breakpoints/revisions with nearly 30 demo entries (or more) and they had to split the show into two parts with an hour of pause inbetween.
Part 1 then was mostly the crap entries, while part 2 was where the good stuff slowly started to appear.
Having two separate categories would maybe help with that, with the potential added benefit of putting probably more balanced quality in both parts..
Part 1 then was mostly the crap entries, while part 2 was where the good stuff slowly started to appear.
Having two separate categories would maybe help with that, with the potential added benefit of putting probably more balanced quality in both parts..
It would only make sense if the size was somehow relevant to the end result (which is it not, except in few rare cases). How about splitting along some other arbitrary line? Like a compo for demos with mostly blue colorschemes and the rest? Or demos compiled with VS 2015 against everything else? Demos created by scene veterans with more than 10 years of experience versus newcomers?
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Preacher: Mind the word demo. It stands for a demonstration of the skills of the makers, their (artistical, but foremost) technical skills to make impressive stuff on a platform. If you think that the "how it's made" conforms to an ancient idea, then the whole concept of a demo needs a revision. For purely aesthetics reasons better make a movie.[...] but by how it's made, what technologies were used in it and how well it conforms to an ancient idea of what a demo "should be".
xTr1m: Very well put.
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the whole concept of a demo needs a revision
I agree :)
Mainly I'm with Preacher though.
Luckily we have a Revision each year during Easter!
For some definitions of "demo", "skills" and "impressive", definitely. I would argue that, looking at what sort of stuff is released nowadays, the demonstration of pure technical skill is pretty low in most peoples list of priorities in demo competitions (and we can all name the exceptions). It's a lot more about style than anything else nowadays. Size-limited categories and productions on oldschool platforms hit the sweet spot for most people interested in the pure technical stuff and I don't see any reason why that mindset should also be applied to demo competitions, which is are for the majority something completely different.
Or something else entirely, although there's a lot of fun in coding realtime things. That's actually what I've been doing with my spare time: writing stuff and playing music.
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For purely aesthetics reasons better make a movie.
Or something else entirely, although there's a lot of fun in coding realtime things. That's actually what I've been doing with my spare time: writing stuff and playing music.
what xTr1m said .. if I want to watch expert level animations I watch a Disney Movie .. the discussion about the limitations like file size needs first a definition what a "demo" is and what the scene makes unique .. I think it's not just the audio-visual aesthetics of a prod, since this doesn't help to differentiate a demo from any other art ..
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Preacher: Mind the word demo. It stands for a demonstration of the skills of the makers, their (artistical, but foremost) technical skills to make impressive stuff on a platform
Yep! And I remember how impressed we were when Coma and Weird Magic put video in their demos! Video! On a computer! Pushing the limits with incredible technical skills!
Just a random shower thought, it's funny how these days you already have more than enough RAM alone to load the whole demo as "singleload", or even load a VM that loads the demo, even if it was mutiple gigabytes in size.
Anyway..
My personal opinion completely outside of ASM: I really see the file size limitation as a legacy relic that does have upsides for a challenge but IMO these days ultimately limits the "blow me away with what cool shit you can use a computer for" aspect a bit, which is always something what I've viewed demos as, code/gfx/music.
I do not want to discount good code or the crunching of size to make it small & lean. I've seen a bunch of demos that could have been way smaller, maybe unoptimized, and a bit slow too, although I'm really happy that those did in fact exist as they really tried something fresh. Maybe inspires someone to iterate on that? Who knows.
Good explanations by noby/ryg/etc.. Shares a lot of what I had in my mind, except I suck at explaining.
Anyway..
My personal opinion completely outside of ASM: I really see the file size limitation as a legacy relic that does have upsides for a challenge but IMO these days ultimately limits the "blow me away with what cool shit you can use a computer for" aspect a bit, which is always something what I've viewed demos as, code/gfx/music.
I do not want to discount good code or the crunching of size to make it small & lean. I've seen a bunch of demos that could have been way smaller, maybe unoptimized, and a bit slow too, although I'm really happy that those did in fact exist as they really tried something fresh. Maybe inspires someone to iterate on that? Who knows.
Good explanations by noby/ryg/etc.. Shares a lot of what I had in my mind, except I suck at explaining.
guys, let's be honest with ourselves:
the whole argument of "filesize limits us" and "we could do so much more if those limitations are lifted" is complete bullshit in 99% of the cases.
As Preacher said:
It will mainly be Navis, Fairlight, Cocoon & et al. doing good stuff with less size restrictions.
The rest will pile together more cheap "design" shit than before. just bigger textures ripped from the web, more animations, huge pre-baked vertex animation stuff (done with leet blender skillz).
don't fool yourself. quality still needs talent.
the filesize is not the major problem that is facing the demoscene - it's lack of skills.
the whole argument of "filesize limits us" and "we could do so much more if those limitations are lifted" is complete bullshit in 99% of the cases.
As Preacher said:
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looking at what sort of stuff is released nowadays, the demonstration of pure technical skill is pretty low in most peoples list of priorities in demo competitions (and we can all name the exceptions).
It will mainly be Navis, Fairlight, Cocoon & et al. doing good stuff with less size restrictions.
The rest will pile together more cheap "design" shit than before. just bigger textures ripped from the web, more animations, huge pre-baked vertex animation stuff (done with leet blender skillz).
don't fool yourself. quality still needs talent.
the filesize is not the major problem that is facing the demoscene - it's lack of skills.
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If "anything goes", and there are no more "borders" - then nobody knows anymore what the demoscene differentiates from other artsy fartsy stuff.
Oh the horror, having to make sure productions are actually interesting to watch!
absence: yeah right, using 3GB content automatically makes things "interesting". And there are 0 interesting demos released up till now. They are all crap.
Of course you personally have done tons of amazing productions and know how to do stuff the right way and we don't.
You know, in discussions it helps to reply to what people actually say, rather than invent something else and reply to that. :) I didn't comment on size limits, or any technical limit for that matter, and yet you make it out as though I require 3 GB of content to be satisfied. Also, you can keep the appeal to complishment fallacy.
I'll say that most compofillers and crap prods I've seen in parties take way less than 100MB, it's usually few models, PNGs, streamed mp3, scriptfiles and SDL /etc.. libs or similar :)
Again, I'm pretty sure that bigger sizes have never been a real issue on parties I've been part of.
Anyway, that's enough of this thread for me!
<asmorg mode> please keep the discussion going, every post will be checked </asmorg mode>
Again, I'm pretty sure that bigger sizes have never been a real issue on parties I've been part of.
Anyway, that's enough of this thread for me!
<asmorg mode> please keep the discussion going, every post will be checked </asmorg mode>
Just a historical note: just before asm05 I did the final compile and collection of all resources, then (for some reason) "encoded" the resource files with a one-time pad using xor with a pseudonumber. Then zipped. BANG 17 mbytes (16 the limit). What do you do? (in panic, flight tomorrow etc).
Good thing I realized that a one time pad with random numbers would increase entropy by some way , which meant that zip would not handle it very well. Replaced the sequence with a much shorter, clipped under 16 mb, job done.
Today I would still thrive for smaller size, but these volumetric stuff dont come cheap you know...
Good thing I realized that a one time pad with random numbers would increase entropy by some way , which meant that zip would not handle it very well. Replaced the sequence with a much shorter, clipped under 16 mb, job done.
Today I would still thrive for smaller size, but these volumetric stuff dont come cheap you know...
What would have happened if you had compressed first and then applied the one-time-pad...
it would work, but it wouldnt "unzip" (with winrar or other extern tool). No idea why I bothered tbh
Now that I have a good graphics card I don't have enough free space not to watch demos on YouTube(tm). Crap.
P.S.: I don't want to delete my pr0n.
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You know, in discussions it helps to reply to what people actually say, rather than invent something else and reply to that. :) I didn't comment on size limits, or any technical limit for that matter, and yet you make it out as though I require 3 GB of content to be satisfied. Also, you can keep the appeal to complishment fallacy.
Ok, well, it seems i didn't get your point then. Because _I was_ refering to technical limits. That people try to aim for something appealing and interesting I take for granted when talking about making quality demos.
But maybe I just failed to understand what you mean. In that case I apologise.
To help make demos available for the masses to download and run, it would at least be nice to keep zip files under 300 MB or so in regions with less bandwidth. Above that, I guess YouTube is an option.
For super-huge demos, I would at least encourage entrants to compress their resources, to discourage files with, say, 2Kx2Kx32b or 4Kx4Kx32b raw textures.
For super-huge demos, I would at least encourage entrants to compress their resources, to discourage files with, say, 2Kx2Kx32b or 4Kx4Kx32b raw textures.
Anyone out there who knows about data compression? Please help Navis get his volumetric data crunched down to 250 megs.
I just love demos.
