
Interview with Japanese demoscener 0x4015 (2017) - codetrotter
http://6octaves.blogspot.com/2017/06/interview-with-japanese-demoscener.html?m=1
======
pferdone
I have this firm belief that demo writers are literal gods amongst
programmers. Nothing comes close to their knowledge and craftsmanship and the
resulting art they create. To me it is the purest form of programming bar
none. I'm in constant awe and have the utmost respect for these guys. Just had
to get it off my chest. Thanks for reading!

~~~
skrebbel
Programming skill isn't a 1 dimensional space.

I used to feel like you. Having done some mediocre demos myself, I looked up
to some of the best democoders a lot. Until I met them (hey, demoscene is tiny
- just show up at a demoparty and meet your heros in person). I noticed that
the top democoders were invariably:

    
    
        - extremely nice
        - better than me at graphics programming
        - worse than me at X
    

For example, at some point long ago I wrote a tool to synchronize effects to
music. A famous democoder wanted to try it, I said "here you go", he said
"shit, the API is in C++. I don't know C++". Turns out all these amazing demos
were written in C and this guy had never bothered to learn classes, templates,
etc etc. Of course there's nothing _wrong_ with that, but, well, it's just
different skills. I mean every programmer I knew at that time knew C++. It's
like working in web dev and not knowing any JavaScript at all. It was very
surprising to me :-)

tl;dr I'm sure I make better scalable realtime backends than some top
democoders would.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> tl;dr I'm sure I make better scalable realtime backends than some top
> democoders would.

Exactly; some make magic happen in 4K, others can spin up 4000 high
performance GPU servers in a matter of minutes, out-performing the
supercomputers of just a few years ago while costing a fraction of it. It's
amazing how much power some can squeeze out with the tightest of constraints
AND how much power others can summon with the biggest of credit cards. These
two overlap, too.

------
bane
For those on the East Coast who are interested, there's a small, but long
running demoscene competition and hands-on retrocomputing museum every year at
CMU called Demosplash.

It's great fun and one of the engineering professors (who's originally from
Japan) participates in both. He and the retrocomputing club bring tons of old
computers, including Japanese and European only machines and even write demos
on them.

Some hi-lights:

May be the world's only Fujitsu FM-Towns Demo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlCZTEUJlOo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlCZTEUJlOo)

A demo for the Fujitsu FM-7, a machine with two 8-bit CPUs:
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78816](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78816)

The first demo ever for the Looking Glass displays:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7hzM0a21E&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7hzM0a21E&feature=youtu.be)

The first demo ever for the Fujitsu FM-7:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VGK80il4Rs&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VGK80il4Rs&feature=youtu.be)

A 32Byte DOS Demo (with sound!):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSz7xlUkQFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSz7xlUkQFI)

And some live demos on an Apple Lisa and a Vectrex.

It's totally worth checking out.

 _edit_ also worth checking out, a demo inspired by...

A 1k homage
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pyIpoqpYt4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pyIpoqpYt4)

~~~
codetrotter
> May be the world's only Fujitsu FM-Towns Demo

Adorable! :)

------
nokonoko
Thank you for sharing the link! And here's from the latest posts (shameless
plug).

“Who is Demoscener?” - What I've learned from interviewing them
[https://6octaves.blogspot.com/2018/11/who-is-demoscener-
what...](https://6octaves.blogspot.com/2018/11/who-is-demoscener-what-ive-
learned-from.html)

~~~
marcusjt
An enlightening post indeed, but the title reads oddly - "Who is Demoscener?"
suggests that there is a single person called "Demoscener" that your article
is about, whereas as it's actually about multiple people in the demoscene I
suggest you should rename it to "Who are demosceners?"

~~~
nokonoko
Grammatically speaking, you're absolutely right! But I had some personal
reasons to name it that way :) Thanks for pointing it out! And thanks for
reading!

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Aardwolf
Some website designs are timeless!

[http://www.pouet.net/index.php](http://www.pouet.net/index.php)

------
incomplete
so happy the demo scene is still happening... my first taste of this was the
future crew's unreal demo from 1992 (yes, i just aged myself a bit):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxGtPAhkEQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxGtPAhkEQU)

~~~
NikolaNovak
Future crew seems to have reached a lot of folks... I watched it for hours as
a teenager in Croatia,looped on computer store's monitors. I still check it
out every now and then - though watching it on YouTube just doesn't seem as
satisfying!

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userbinator
The demoscene is largely European, so to see Japanese entries is interesting.
There was a discussion on Pouet 15(!) years ago about this:

[http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=915&page=1](http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=915&page=1)

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glitchc
I'm just amazed this is still a thing. Are these demos always written in low-
level GPU primitives?

~~~
daeken
Not at all. Many demos these days are either built on in-house engines which
abstract things away (a group of tool devs builds those, while the actual demo
devs/designers just work with the tools), or they're built on a premade
engine. There are plenty of folks somewhere in-between, too, doing WebGL and
the like.

~~~
twic
Some are still done the hard way:

[https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-
born/](https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/)

~~~
jacquesm
Awesome. A meaningful program in 256 bytes is like a jewel.

------
test1235
Coding on a Zaurus?! Proper hacker mentality

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Zaurus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Zaurus)

Seems like this little device might have a bit of a following:

>Arch Linux ARM has been ported in 2015 on the C3x00 models.

~~~
aw3c2
Imagine such device but with a colored e-ink screen. It would be pure bliss!

~~~
devereaux
Shut up and take my money!!

The closest thing now seems to be the GPD devices.

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_Codemonkeyism
I so miss the 80s C65 and Amiga demo scene in Europe, so much traveling, so
much coding, so much fun.

I love the 'modern' demo 'Colonies'

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40H4OD6ZTvA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40H4OD6ZTvA)

~~~
jamiek88
I was just a kid coding his first space invaders game on a bbc micro when I
saw my first demo on the Amiga.

It was like seeing in color for the first time, blew my tiny little mind and
nothing was ever the same again. Kind of like when I went online the first
time.*

*via compuserve dialing a London number (as it turned out, 12 year old me didn’t quite get that) for hundreds of hours and no free calls in UK, even local calls, calls to London were expensive. I got my arse tanned for that I tell you hwat!

