pouët.net

I like it when people groan about the old days, when rippers would be kicked out of the partyplace.

Back when Boris Vallejo 'copies' were rule of thumb.:)

It just went a step further, nothing new. Over the years some coderish people got the illiusion it's up to them to create demos with supportive aid of others, not as a team. The lousiest excuse for ripping audio still is coder-talk.

I don't find ripping ok, for me it's just acceptable when it seems that no other soundtrack fits so well to a demo like a specific commercial one (like in State of Mind for example, it seems that rock soundtracks are a big problem for the most scene musicians and so they grab a commercial one).

But in general the scene should remember its roots more serious and don't rip music, gfx or whatever just because it's easier or faster to do (sure it is). When I watch a demo then I want to see the creativity of the demogroup and not how good they are in building a demo around ripped gfx or music. The use of mp3 is also not totally innocent because ripping of commercial music wasn't a big theme in the earlier years when mainly tracker modules where used.

i must admit to finding mention of the scene remembering it's "roots" amusing; anybody who really remembers the olde days knows that the first demos used music, graphics and sometimes code ripped from games. This is, of course, from the time before tracker; when men were real men, women were real women and getting a music driver normally involved converting Rob Hubbard's target code back to sources...

Uhm,
a) about 80% of todays demos use bass.dll, 15% use fmod.dll and the rest probably have minifmod statically linked ...
b) about 20% use Quake1/2/3 textures in one way or the other
c) about 90% use algorithms that have been originally developed by someone else, use 3D engines that are based on someone else's original work, etc.
My point is: if you'd actually wanna condemn ripping, then you'd have to draw a line somewhere. All of the above points are common practice so I guess if you'd be really strict about it, only very few demos should actually get a "NO RIPS AT ALL" tag (Farbrausch demos/intros for example).

Skip the bullshit about oldschool and shit like that, that isnt intresting whats intresting is:

The trend of using commercial music is good in many ways:
1) It makes it possible for small group to get noticed and then perhaps some "big" musician will make a good tune for one of their demos.

2) it makes more pressure on demoscenes musicians, its no longer "cool" to make a 4channel/8channel lousy stinking module for a pcdemo , the year is 2002, start making some cool music, vocals are a great way to get some feeling in a demo (kudos for KBs track "in control" wich is simply great) , sure vocals where used before but seriously not in a good way ;-)

so demoscene musicians: traschan dos and ft2 and learn some real program, i mean the programmers have been forced to switch platform all the time, and apis and therefor also entire devel.studios , wich always is a pain in the ass.

demoscenemusicians today to 90% sucks ass :-)
demographicians today are prety much nonexistant so ripping gfx is a logical way for some lonely coders to succeed making a demo


ps. waiting for tmrs private pics. ds

Bac:




Most groups uses their own stuff in 64k biz. but noone has as good graphicians as farbrausch does :-)

(Oh: and using editors for doing intros are NEVER fun;)

btw: we wont register a domain for our crap tools as someone else does ;-)

Oh, nice pictures, I dont really get your point though ?!?!
Did you code those tools and say everyone else should use selfmade-tools/playback-code for demos/intros as well?

i just said prety much everyone already does ...
just because you are one of the lame nehe rippers(?)

I dont really agree with this:

A lot of people use minifmod for musicplayback.
although it sure is cooler to have your own synth code + playback code.

lol.
As far as I have seen, Nehe doesnt have anything else but tutorials on how to produce certain 3D Effects/Read File Formats and then some projects that use those Tuts. Thats's about all you could "rip" from Nehe. No MusicPlayback. It's pretty much just the basics of how to use OpenGL. I personally prefer Direct3D coz I just feel more comfortable with Microsoft's APIs (which is a matter of taste, not style).
Everyone who uses 3D acceleration via OpenGL is a potential "Nehe ripper", which is the most stupid cliche i have heard in a while since it doesnt really make a difference if people get their basics from a website or from a good book or a lecture at university. After all most effects are based on mathematics and it doesnt really matter where people learned that from, does it?

my point was: you suck/youre lame/youre an idiot/...

i used the word "nehe ripper" since i couldnt bother to write everything i did in this post, BUT now i did anyway, since iam very bored, and iam waiting for teletubbies to begin

stefan, oh, i didn't realize ector^medieval teamed up with dxm?
because im quite sure he coded that softsynth you claim to be 'your own' tool (phoenix studio)

i never claimed it was my PERSONAL tool ? :-)

ector joined dxm for more than a year ago... unless you realized he has been involved in like 5 prods or so...

http://dxmachina.yi.org :-)

i never said you did either, you said 'groups make their own..'

but i wasn't aware that ector joined dxm.
but now i know :)

Thinking about it... ripping's gone downhill a lot over the last few years, it used to be difficult to rip music and stuff! Oh and Stefan, no chance on the picture collection... =-)

Crest: "I don't find ripping ok, for me it's just acceptable when it seems that no other soundtrack fits so well to a demo like a specific commercial one (like in State of Mind for example, it seems that rock soundtracks are a big problem for the most scene musicians and so they grab a commercial one)."

I'm 99% sure this isn't what usually happens. Take the demo that I think started this thread: Open Your Eyes by Critical Mass. It's almost certain (and maybe some CM members want to correct me, hehe) that this was made *around* the tune - ie it was artistically led by the tune, and the demo would look/feel very different had they either picked another track, or had just used it "post-facto".

talking about lazy musicians...

as a musician and pseudo demo-designer (dont start), i know how hard it can be to tell your coder what you want. Often it's like 'i want something like that <insert cool demo group> effect'

and in almost 100% of the cases, your coder doesn't deliver what you want...

The demoscene doesnt need musicians and graphicians no more.

The coder will just generate some abstract music and graphics and
make some boring effects and call it ART.

http://rhizome.org/Low_Level_All_Stars/
<< VIDEO GAME CULTURE HAS LONG RELIED ON "CRACKERS," THE FEARLESS GEEKS WHO REMOVE A GAME'S COPY PROTECTION THROUGH BRUTE FORCE. CRACKERS OFTEN LEAVE BEHIND MODIFIED START-UP SCREENS AS EVIDENCE OF THEIR TRADE. THIS SPECIAL CRACKER GRAFFITI BOTH DOCUMENTS THE INTRUSION AND PROVIDES A PLATFORM TO SHOWCASE THE CRACKER'S SKILLS.>>

project, part of:
http://www.aec.at/kop/
<< Kingdom of Piracy <KOP> is an online, open work space to explore the free sharing of digital content - often condemned as piracy - as the net's ultimate art form. Commissioned by the Acer Digital Art Center [ADAC] in Taiwan for ArtFuture 2002, <KOP> was designed to include links, objects, ideas, software, commissioned artists' projects, critical writing and online streaming media events. >>

Wain, something I like about the "boring" adjective, is that it often tells far more about the lack of imagination and inadaptability of the spectator rather than anything about the commented work.

In My Humble Opinion : (by 'ripping' i would say using commercial things or copyrighted sources)

preschool (before appleII) :
ripping was not possible, it was the best challenge to find the limits of the technology

oldschool (8bits, 16bits, diskettes...) :
ripping was very hard, because computers can'T do it
(no good scanners, no good samplers, impossible to use song, videos too big, jpg impossible ....)
so in oldschool, ripping was acceptable and a challenge.

newschool (32bits, pc/amiga with cards, more than 4Mb Ram, HD demos...) :
ripping is too easy and is not a challenge.
easy to use mp3, jpg, mpg video, scans, voices, sing ....
so in newschool ripping is not acceptable

nextschool (wild platform, big todays pc, big configs, GeForce4, 1+Ghz processor...) :
try to find the limits of the hardware is not the challenge because we dont have the time and the documentations to use special chips and instruction sets correctly.
making Art is the new challenge, so perhaps ripping can be acceptable if sources are credited or if sources are free for educational purposes.

but in all cases, ripping commercial products is a sign of the end of your imagination and skills.

bac: You have a totally wrong definition of "ripping", sorry.

Using a precompiled sound system is certainly no "ripping" since the soundsystems normally used in demos give you the explicit permission to use them in non-commercial productions. Same goes for free texture packs etc.

Ripping is using something without asking and without permission. No one will shoot you if you use something by permission.

(Btw, for algorithms, the discussion is absolutely superfluous IMHO; no one owns algorithms. Algorithms are found, not invented)

Ryg: Didn't some lame company try to patent marching cubes?

agree with ryg on the soundsystems...i think the scene would move alot slower if everybody had to code their own modplayer. At least the groups i'm in would have sevear problems producing anything with sound in it =)

I don't think it's ripping to use a commersial soundtrack. Ripping imo is when you take something someone else made, and put your own label on it. It would be silly to try to get a permission to use commersial music. As long as there are proper credits, there are no ripping...