pouët.net

Re: all the killing the scene, scene is dead, why are demos so crap these days messages lately (in fact, the last 3 yearsish)

Can't figure out how to put this nicely, so: the scene is not dead people. not dying, demos are no more crap than they were 5-10 years ago (I watched technological death on my a500, and RSI's cebit 90. both rocked. but there were crap demos then too)

why do I say demos are no more crap than they were? because we have MORE crap demos these days, not that the good ones are worse. I just watched keftedes (optimus) and found myself thinking on this subject... something kinda oldskoolish about that demo. What we have, ladies and germs, is a profusion of shit from all sides, due to a new generation of coders, musicians etc being brought up on the internet... this means that is they submit a shitprod, there's no swapper to prevent its further distribution, it's just there. take a look at ASD's iconoclast and tell me that's not going to be in the scene.org awards list? There are about 10-15 (max) prods released every year that are true gold, the rest are mediocre, and the shit ones never stay on my hd longer than say... 2 mins. this has always been the case, and always will be.

sorry about that last paragraph, next!

In the days of amiga demos and swapping (i know, I know, not old enough to remember? try me :) ) we had a high good release/shit release ratio, about 1:3 or thereabouts, and yes, demoparties had their top 10 as good releases. But most of the old groups are going, got jobs whatever, new groups (outracks! STS! Lobstarrs!) are the future. and unfortunately there are a LOT of upstart groups. so our current good/shit ratio is about 1:20 ish (probably more!) because crap demos can make it to public release without being moderated by a swapper in the near vicinity.

BTW, anyone who thinks I'm talking out of my arse? you're right. but I'm a member of The Experience (we were here first! Bloody Xperience ;) and the only good release from us was on amiga AGA (don't ask me about programming on an amiga - blame my brother, epsilon, axon, tracksion and mesh. they were the original experience. the reins have kinda been handed down to me (Fdisk), Aphrael (music, design, girl (yes, my girfriend. believe it or not, we are happy nerds), Data and (probably) Epsilon (he wants to keep his foot in).

So if you think I'm talking shit, watch Terminal by The Experience and wait for a pc release by The Experience! (p/n, thumbup by me was BEFORE I was an honorary member. so not selfvoting)

Anyhoo, internet is killing the scene!

i always considered moderation bad (in this case swapper moderation)

what is shit to some, can be gems to others.

but then again i always been the "check _all_ prods" kind of nerd. i guess most scene followers dont have that much free time to do the same and just want the good stuff.

well, the good stuff nowdays gets spammed by blogs and word of mouth instead of swappers. it just means its faster and that everyone still has access to everything, not just the prods the swapper thinks are good.

so, its all positive things if you ask me.
less newbies are introduced to the scene nowdays though imho. before anyone into computers knew about the scene, nowdays only the more hardcore "underground artists" know about it. its quite sad really, but things are beeing done in that respect to outreach to more ppl so i guess things will either balance back or the scene will die for good. we'll see.

Well, it has one the demo compo of one of the biggest parties. Either all prods were just crap or there was a huge fake voting or the demo is quite good in most peoples opinions and you are one of the few who doesn't like it.

We may discuss a bit about the numbers (which are a personal taste) but it wasn't that different back than. But because the early 90's are gone for quite some time now you don't remember the shit and rate the medicore stuff a bit higher - at least that happens often to me when I watch prods from parties I've attended. Even the shit gets a thumb up if it brings back memories. Sentimentality.

Mekka & Symposium 2002 - PC demo compo; Breakpoint 2005 - Amiga demo compo

What's so bad about it? If you don't like it just be a mainstreamer and watch the top 3-5 of each party or watch only stuff which has a ratio of .75 or above with at least 10 comments here on pouet. Some people like to see the "shit" because of sentimentality, or because they may get some CDCs, or because they like to see how some well known groups have started.

That's less than two months. I should ask Abyss/asm.org for a future crew membership or Vouge/Starbreeze for a Triton membership and claim afterwards we were the best on the pc in 1992, 1993. ;)

Scene isn't dead. It just has changed because the world has changed. Scene was never about stagnation, it was about extending your boundaries.

it's absulotely not true that we have MORE crap these days. it's an altered perception because the crap didn't survive the test of time and the changing from bbs to internet mostly. i dig in old bbs backups quite a lot (and most of them are GOOD systems, like recently equinox or black arts) and the amount of crap is quite unsurpassed.

I wasn't an active scener in the swapping days, but from reading old diskmags I learned that newbies and "lamers" in those days often produced crap demos and simply passed on everything they could get there hands on just to get some swapping material.

Probably the leet swappers would filter the crap out but I guess the crap lived on through the not so leet swappers...

I can actually confirm this because recently I checked out quite a lot of stuff from the early amiga days (the kind of demos which were released on the copy parties back in the 80's) and believe me, there is a huge pile of crap from those days still waiting for you, only one click away :-)

Or to gain upload quota at BBS's (*cough*) ;)

I remember collecting about 4000 mods&prods from all the BBS sites..
i filtered out all the crap and put onto loads of floppies with about 400 on 10% all the best ones
sent them to a mate(coder) who worked at the computer shop..then i took my computer in to be upgraded (later when CD writers came out) he said
oh you know those mods you gave me
'yes'
ive added loads more to the collection...here it is
he gave me a CD full of 4000 mods and 3000 of them were crap
so i had to start all over again!!!!

SSAD!

so anyway ive been away from the scene for ages i only did mod tracking and 3D modelling....
i'm awaiting my new pc so i can use this weerkseuug tool i picked up.....any chance of an upgrade to take in other scenes apart from just softimage????

also picked up the nfo on Bass...so is there a bass tracker then?? is the bass library unchangeable?? and accessed with another file?? or is the bass file the actual mod and if so how do you create them and play them??

sorry if i sound dumb....been away working but now i want to get back into fishy Bass pie!!

I believe the preferred trackers used by BASS would be dependent upon the members. For example, I would guess that Jeenio would prefer the keyboard and guitar tracker, Gargaj would probably prefer the drum tracker, and I of course prefer beer.

Bombe of course would confuse the issue by using the bass without a tracker.

As for Ian's bass.dll, it plays your general range of mod-based stuff from the 90's. There's a question support for 80's mods (probably works for most everything) and late 90's and 00's based trackers tend to not be supported (renoise, digibooster pro.)

Crap, of course, is relative. Anyone who actually is involved in producing demos can tell you that 99% of the crap involved with a production comes from the people commenting on it.

rotfl

Somewhat related oldschool swapping tactics:

For a week you would receive your letters (4-7 per day were not uncommon) and then on sunday you would prepare a standard letter and standard distribution disk images with all your best stuff, spent all afternoon dumping to floppies and then writting a short note on each floppy. In parallel you would prepare the faked stamps and the letter envelopes (sceners-to-be like young sisters were great for mass-faking and mass-copying, helped a lot). The mailing would then be spread into different mail-drop places so that no single postal service people would find 80 envelopes which weighted funny and had all funny names written as destination.

Superquote for FDISK.
I always thought this.

It's true.

it's not like anyone is _forcing you_ to check _everything released_ nowdays :)

for that reason exactly there are forums and blogs and chatrooms and the pouet top of the month corner.

you arent forced to checking stuff of doubtfull quality.

i unfortunatly seem to nearly be. i dont think its that bad though.. atleast one gets to see alot of examples of what one _shouldnt_ do :)

Winden, you waited until sunday to send your stuff? Must've been old wares by then. ;) Then again, having to frantically copy stuff and write letters after school so you could make it to the post office before the day's outgoing mail deadline was no picnic either. In retrospect, I can understand those megaswappers with hundreds of contacts only sending "thanx 4 stuff stamps back bye" instead of a real letter.

As for less off-topic stuff, I personally can't see a dramatic difference in "good/crap" release ratio between now and the "old" times, except maybe that jokeprods seem to be a bit more prevalent nowadays.

The way I see it, back in the day even a release without supercool code/gfx/music could at least have some interesting scene-related text in the scrolltext, making it worthwhile to watch if you were into following the scene culture and stuff. I personally enjoyed viewing even the most average intro I got in the mail as long as it contained some notable news/rumours/opinions/fuckings/etc. Nowadays this kind of communication is done on the internet instead, so the actual quality of the stuff seen and heard becomes absolutely vital. Since the internet has also eliminated the need for trading in the legal scene, so the main motivation for releasing something is now competing at parties instead of getting your group spread and connected. This means even less room for acceptance for releases without hardcore production values, leading to numerous glöppers going apeshit over cracktros etc.

For a long time, I too thought this equals the internet killing the scene. But lately I've come to understand that it's just evolution. Although the old times may seem better, and maybe they were, why should everybody try to repaeat the same thing for several decades? I myself may not like the current mixing-demoscene-into-all-sorts-of-trendy-digital-art thing myself, but if that's what it takes to get new people onboard, go for it! And if you don't like it, just do your own thing inside the scene.

Sorry, I guess I'm just repeating what others have already said. Oh please tell me Chavez, what cartoon character does that make me?

this fdisk is just an advanced troll/fakeuser, right?

OH NO THE SCENE IS DEAD! KILLED BY INTERNET AND BLACK BACKGROUNDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111

yup, that's me. the best and biggest fakeuser there is... come on, seriously people.

Anyway, what demoscener said ;) not that I did - but I'm not going to justify my actions, that's neither here nor there.

Break - you, I think, have hit the nail on the head (or put the code in the demo?) What I noticed to be 'killing' of the scene by the internet is simply the removal of old scene traditions. Been reading to much oldskool stuff (diskmags etc) and watching to many amiga demos methinks.

Btw, no, I don't watch every demo that comes out, just ones I think may be good, ones that come anywhere from 1st-4th in a party (or fewer depending on how many votes were cast) and pretty much anything with a coup de couer attached to it. and I've noticed that since about 2001-2002, the general quality of these percieved uber releases has been diminishing, with the exception of a select few (obsoleet was very cool, but did not stretch the limits of the platform graphics wise. code wise... well, that's a totally different story, innit?)

and whatever happened to the fairlight (and silents, not going to pretend they don't exist!) crews that made Only Kings and Better? great demo... shame about the very tripped out style of new flt releases (though it does have *some* appeal...)

anyway, me stop ranting now, let this thread do what it will...

fdisk, the ones who made only kings and better are more or less still here. however, i personally much prefer the change of direction we took in recent years. funny, people always used to bitch at us for being quite traditional in our demos, now we get it for being, what, too newschool? :) horses for courses, eh.

fdisk: well, i would be up for making a new "only kings.."

fdisk, nothing happend to me atleast. im still active as ever before, working on a new demos.

Internet has definitely killed the old-style scene. There's just no point in swapping when the files are all there on the net. Thats not to say that some moderation isn't a good thing... try some of the demo review type sites, that offer a selection of recommended demos. I guess those sites have taken the place of the swappers. Probably a good thing, as you have the choice of viewing somebody else's version of what good demos should be or you can just view whatever looks appealing and make your own mind up.

I'd say that's lead to a diversification in the scene, its possible to make stuff now that you know won't be liked by the majority, and the minority who do like it will be able to without having access to it blocked by some swapper who thinks its shit ;)

I would say a vast majority of swappers sent away what was NEW, not necessarily what they thought was good. With a gazillion swappers working on trading the same stuff, only the ones with a very big amount of contacts including ones in famous (= good and productive) groups could afford to select only the "cream of the crop". And most of the time they didn't either. Don't agree? Check out 50 random Amiga packdisks from the early 90s and you'll see what I mean.

This "discrimination" based on the prods' freshness was of course limiting as well. There are known cases of a very good demo staying almost completely unknown to this day, because the group didn't manage to spread it fast enough..

hype has always been and i guess always will be, one of the most important factors for anything in this world beeing famous. (demos included)

this ofcourse is subjective when comparing artistic and technological value of productions, but in the bottomline of things, 2 prods with same quality will always get differently ranked pending on their group hype.

namevoting is corelated to it to some degree. but it aint an absolute thing. and more often it'll work against you then for you. ppl enjoy dissing big names when they dont get their expectations met these days.

</rant>

then ppl create fakegroups to release their fun fastmade stuff and get even more flamed for releasing prods not knowing "the real spirit of the scene".

oh well.. scene is dead anyways..

Yes I was refering to "elite 500 contact swapper" style.

Anyways when you managed to get "official spreader" status for some diskmag or intro pack, thing were indeed much more frantic bcoz you received the -1day warez and next day all your letters should be already going to everyone of your contacts ;)