Your unpopular opinions about the scene
category: residue [glöplog]
Octamed is better than ProTracker
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Quote:Are those two mutually exclusive? (Bearing in mind I'm not sure what "mainstream content" might mean in this context.)
No, not at all. I think they're more like opposite poles along a dimension, or maybe opposite potentials. Certainly there is a tension between what is interesting to create as a demo, and what has "wide appeal" to watch. Perhaps the most successful prods are the ones that manage to balance them well.
I'm still not 100% sure what you mean - are you trying to make a distinction between a "classic"-style demo (object in the middle, scroller, tunnel, voxeltwister) versus one that is more modern in design, or tells a story or...?
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JS demos with online versions get watched in realtime by way more people than executables.
But then you can't fast-forward!
On a more serious note, while it may be statistically true that more people watch JS demos in real-time, I find the experience to be strictly worse than watching a recorded video. A web browser is usually already busy with windows and tabs churning in the background, and they're quite bad at being operating systems (to be fair, they're also bad at being web browsers). In my experience it's a stuttering and laggy experience, which in extreme cases freezes or crashes the browser anyway.
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That's more like an unpopular wall of text :P, but yeah. We all look for different things in demos, both when watching and making them. Demomakers often say we want to get the most out of the limited hardware, but the most what? That part is conveniently omitted. Is 324 bobs, or 128 glenz faces meaningfully better than n-10? Well... certainly not for the ones watching it. But for the one coding it, finding that one little trick that noone else found can be very satisfying.
Sorry, I hope it didn't take longer for you to read than for me to type. Just imagine a few linefeeds. :-)
Right, what makes a good demo is so highly individual that you cannot possibly find an universally acceptable common ground.
I'd like to refine it by saying that being "at the top" isn't a merit in itself either. The single most satisfying aspect for me is when I get something to work of which I know that nobody else has seen this before on this computer. When you're in uncharted territory.
But this is totally dependent on the particular machine and its history. Demos do not work without the computer's and demoscene context.
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Because "clicking on a thing" is nowadays the way to run most software, not downloading something, then unzipping to god knows where, then trying to hunt down whatever DLLs were installed on the coders' PC but not on yours, and then perhaps watching the demo.
Ahem, like Capturinha missing ffmpeg.dll? :) Well, I guess your intention was to have people build it themselves. And that it's more excusable with tools than with actual demos.
phoenix, that was more because if I had shipped ffmpeg with it (which its LGPL license would allow, btw), I'd have a giant PATENT INFRINGEMENT HERE sign painted on my back and in the worst case a handful of well equipped legal departments out after me. This way there's nothing infringing in the release archive itself.
It totally sucks but I don't see a better way at the moment :/
It totally sucks but I don't see a better way at the moment :/
Scrollers fucking rule
Running demos on the cloud ;)
was referring to
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How about packing everything into an compressed .exe then and doing away with the whole zip archive stuff? pouet would just link to an .exe and you immediately execute from browser (like .msi installer or similar, but no installation whatsoever is happening).
Okkie's mustache is big enough to hold opinions of its own.
texture mapped 3d is so meh in amiga demos, looks like crap!
The tendency of the scene to throw itself into drama over pretty much anything is in direct opposition with the grand idea if has of itself as being mature and adult.
Shader effects have been played out for a while now. All looks the same.
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Scrollers fucking rule
This.
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Quote:Quote:Are those two mutually exclusive? (Bearing in mind I'm not sure what "mainstream content" might mean in this context.)
No, not at all. I think they're more like opposite poles along a dimension, or maybe opposite potentials. Certainly there is a tension between what is interesting to create as a demo, and what has "wide appeal" to watch. Perhaps the most successful prods are the ones that manage to balance them well.
I'm still not 100% sure what you mean - are you trying to make a distinction between a "classic"-style demo (object in the middle, scroller, tunnel, voxeltwister) versus one that is more modern in design, or tells a story or...?
Well, mainstream content is content aimed at the general public, as opposed to content aimed at a niche population such as the demoscene, or subgroups within it. I guess I'm talking about the much vaunted "wide appeal" that 8/16 bit productions seem to lack, mainly because people who care about wide appeal don't create demos on those platforms.
For example the type of content that you would see go viral on social media is very mainstream, whereas, say, a good 32 byte intro is pretty niche as it requires a lot of knowledge and context to fully appreciate it.
Modern design and storytelling/humour, as well as technical aspects like resolution and overall visual quality would tend to widen the appeal of a prod, although of course nowhere near Tiktok levels. Too much focus on those things might water down the experience for that niche population who just wanted to see an unreadable scrolltext.
I hope that clarifies my unpopular opinion for you.
Next unpopular opinion: 3D doesn't necessarily make anything more interesting.
Cubes and Copperbars are stupid
...according to an obscure one-hit-wonder Electropop band of the early 2000s.
...according to an obscure one-hit-wonder Electropop band of the early 2000s.
Never watched any browser demo from browser, I find them performing badly or something is not working if not using browser brand X (which I wont be using anyway)
Story demos are teh bore.
Story demos are teh bore.
90% of a demo is the soundtrack
- parts of the scene being so stuck in nostalgia that they seem to actively refrain from learning new tech and/or ways of artistic expression. don't get me wrong, I do like the retro nostalgia stuff, it's a defining part of the scene, but why not spice it up a notch here and there instead of doing exactly the same thing over and over again? at least google "smoothstep" plz. read a book about "how to camera".
- what happened to actually doing stuff at demoparties instead of "let's drink like we're all 18 again!". which is ironic, because when we were 18 we were weird nerds and made demos instead of getting shitfaced.
- chiptunes usually suck. it's the corporate "ukulele + whistling" of the demoscene.
- while we're at it: music compos suck. themed or weirdly restricted music compos are usually enjoyable though (7s loop compo, fast music, dj mixed music with fixed bpm, any sort of topic...)
- what happened to actually doing stuff at demoparties instead of "let's drink like we're all 18 again!". which is ironic, because when we were 18 we were weird nerds and made demos instead of getting shitfaced.
- chiptunes usually suck. it's the corporate "ukulele + whistling" of the demoscene.
- while we're at it: music compos suck. themed or weirdly restricted music compos are usually enjoyable though (7s loop compo, fast music, dj mixed music with fixed bpm, any sort of topic...)
jco, you could work on your amiga skills a bit too
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- chiptunes usually suck. it's the corporate "ukulele + whistling" of the demoscene.
Hey! No insulting ukulele.
While I'm in the flow:
The goal of my demo is not to please you.
The goal of my demo is to please me.
The goal of my demo is not to please you.
The goal of my demo is to please me.
Here is another one I was self-ranting like a lunatic.
Software rendering has degraded (if it exists on modern PCs). The last softrendering demos were dropped in 320*200 to look retro and emulating shaders from shadertoy.
I was looking at older demos and saw the evolution, 320*200 then some higher res 512*384 or 640*480 on late PC and then early Windows. I remember I was whining about Orange's The Non Stop Ibiza Experience that was running old on my crappy PC but now I appreciate, it was higher res (maybe 512 or 640?) but doing some harder stuff with bilinear filtering and voxels. I wasn't sure about Moral Hard Candy with it's untextured, but now I appreciate these, they were also more solid demos overall. The last one I remember that was good was Camden Town and then decline.
And these were at 640*480 most. But I wonder, with modern CPUs we could do 720p, 1080p or even 4k. Oh,. ok I tried Smash Design's Sleepless which is still smoothish sometimes (except few parts) in 4k. And Heaven 7 HD version.
I wonder how with modern CPUs and maybe use of vectorization and parallelism what would be possible in very high res. But easier to through bruteforce floating point per pixel on 320*200 from shadertoy and call it a day. Ok,. maybe I should do a demo about it.
Software rendering has degraded (if it exists on modern PCs). The last softrendering demos were dropped in 320*200 to look retro and emulating shaders from shadertoy.
I was looking at older demos and saw the evolution, 320*200 then some higher res 512*384 or 640*480 on late PC and then early Windows. I remember I was whining about Orange's The Non Stop Ibiza Experience that was running old on my crappy PC but now I appreciate, it was higher res (maybe 512 or 640?) but doing some harder stuff with bilinear filtering and voxels. I wasn't sure about Moral Hard Candy with it's untextured, but now I appreciate these, they were also more solid demos overall. The last one I remember that was good was Camden Town and then decline.
And these were at 640*480 most. But I wonder, with modern CPUs we could do 720p, 1080p or even 4k. Oh,. ok I tried Smash Design's Sleepless which is still smoothish sometimes (except few parts) in 4k. And Heaven 7 HD version.
I wonder how with modern CPUs and maybe use of vectorization and parallelism what would be possible in very high res. But easier to through bruteforce floating point per pixel on 320*200 from shadertoy and call it a day. Ok,. maybe I should do a demo about it.
the utah teapot is underrated and should be in more demos.
Layered, flatshaded, designers republic styled demos from the late 90ies / early 2000s were the best demos and sadly will never come back in this form.
