

Results from Assembly Summer 2011 - bemmu
http://www.assembly.org/summer11/news/results

======
bane
I love the demoscene, I wish it were a much bigger phenomenon than it is
(especially outside of Northern Europe).

That being said, one of the constraints on _really_ getting why a demo is
impressive is being able to appreciate what's going on. It's like
understanding wines or beers or fine cheeses. You need to have a large base
knowledge going in to get _why_ the winning demo is unbelievably amazing.

Most people, even very technically or artistically inclined people don't get
it. They think it's an interesting art project or something. But really
understanding why it's impressive compared to say
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oXRP5OM6tA> requires a pretty deep
understanding of the capabilities of modern computing.

~~~
skrebbel
Nonsense. I'm neither technically nor artistically top of the bill, I have no
good clue about the "capabilities of modern computing", but still I've been an
active demoscener (producing and consuming) for years. To say I don't
understand why these things are impressive is, well, a bit weird.

For me, it's simply (and only) freeing yourself of the limits of <your
favourite animation tool> and replacing that by the limits of your programming
skill and your computer's raw power.

This differs per person, but in the winning Assembly demo shown at the OP, for
instance, some people may find the sea-particle-system impressive for its
technological prowess; i'm more impressed by how code, not keyframes, was used
to choose where which wave flows.

This also implies that I can find the same awe in watching Processing
sketches, even though those hardly ever push the hardware limits.

------
VMG
Download:
[http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=57446&howmanycomments=25...](http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=57446&howmanycomments=25&page=0)
(43mb)

Edit: Second place is a 64k demo: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Xjc7eklxE>

~~~
macrael
What does it mean for it to be a 64k demo. That all the code required to
produce the video fits in 64k? Can they call external libraries? How do they
talk to graphics hardware?

~~~
inoop
The executable file may not exceed 65536 bytes. No external data files are
allowed. Any and all external libraries available on the compo machine may be
used, including OpenGL/DirectX. The full specs of the compo machine, including
software configuration are announced beforehand. In general, you can pretty
much expect a stock win7 machine with modern hardware.

In 64k competition, data such as textures, models, samples/synth, etc. are
either precomputed or generated on the fly. Most groups have their own tools
or use tools available in the community.

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kaib
Having seen the demo scene from its inception in the late eighties I find it
fascinating that after all these years we are close to saturating our analog
senses with this digitally created content. 32bit pixels saturated color
perception, compressed music maxed out hearing and we are now pretty close
with form and structure.

There are still nuances that we can keep chasing but looking at the big
picture we are pretty close to generating a comprehensive audio visual
experience.

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angrycoder
These demos are always so impressive.

I am always a bit disappointed though that such creativity is always
restricted to demo comps while we are stuck with relatively mundane, static
visuals in games.

~~~
ethereon
The creativity is in no way restricted to the demoscene - just more
conspicuous. Creating games involves a different set of constraints, and there
are plenty of examples of ingenuity & creativity to be found there.

In fact, many game programmers are also involved in the demoscene; For
instance, the guys who created Max Payne were a part of the infamous Future
Crew.

~~~
angrycoder
Really? I don't remember the part in Max Payne where I got to drive a car made
out of squiggly light that turned into a rhinoceros.

~~~
ethereon
Nor did you get to _drive_ it in the demo - it's the scripted composition that
makes it interesting. It works brilliantly as a demo, but I suspect the
novelty of driving the morphing squigglemobile in the demoverse would wear off
pretty fast.

And once you do start incorporating other elements like AI, level geometry,
physics, etc to make things interesting, you'll no longer have the luxury of
allocating all your computational resources for graphical eyecandy.

------
bemmu
At first I somehow missed this archive page, it's linked from the page, but
just in case: <http://archive.assembly.org/2011>

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st0p
The winning one is really impressive from an artistic point of view imho.

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BigZaphod
Greatest demo ever, IMO, was Future Crew's Second Reality. That utterly blew
my mind in 1993. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G_aUxbbqWU>

~~~
ck2
Wow check out 1993 - we have come soooo far:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU>

Listen to those hard drives!

Netscape Navigator didn't come out until over a year later (December 1994) and
IE 1.0 another year after that. Wow.

~~~
res0nat0r
Cool I've never seen this before. Ah ScreamTracker 3 I used to listen to mods
in that all the time.

Does anyone know if there is a current good site that reviews/indexes good new
mod/scene releases besides index sites like pouet.net or scene.org?

~~~
denzil
Modarchive is probably the place you're looking for: <http://modarchive.org/>

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brndnhy
I've always thought of 'Codename Chinadoll' as an unheralded beauty.

It seemed unusual in 1999 and still stands out stylistically today.

It featured some really nice 2-d elements, nods to print media.

Its poor placement in competition, difficulty running on a wide variety of
hardware, and general lack of direction was mostly due to the sad circumstance
of its main coder dying before it was completed.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q0xv2123Ic>

------
brndnhy
It's ironic that the main method for sharing our favorite demos today is a
youtube link.

------
unkoman
I can watch these for just the music. The amount of work into these few
kilobytes is just amazing.

~~~
brndnhy
<http://scene.org/>

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leon_
I wonder if the guys used a functional programming language.

~~~
SwellJoe
Functions? Luxury! When I was a wee lad, we had naught but JMP. And we were
_happy_ to have it.

Actually, most demos are written in C these days, I believe.

