
Basics of demo programming (2011) [video] - adamnemecek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbcZyAO6K7c
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wiz21c
Nice but... IIRC demo programming is much more about creativity. Syncing, time
and stuff are important but not that tough. The real problem is to fit all
your computations in a very limited amount of time (say 1/60th of a second).
That's tough. The other thing (and nowadays it's even of grater importance
IMHO), you have to be extremely creative. In old school demo you'd make some
cool code and then ask a GFX designer to fit a nice palette or a nice logo on
it and that was it. Nowadays, I think the design is so much more important.
I'm sure people don't spend the amount of time we did in the good old day son
things like : hacking the DMA, hacking the graphics chips, optimizing a MOD
player, writing yet another UI for your pitiful demo editors, optimizing your
MMX computations, etc. Now, with shaders, big 3D cards, big CPU, it's much
more about figuring out ideas and algorithm than figuring out nifty bare-metal
details.

Demos are like graffiti : technique is important but creativity is queen

(Wiz/Imphobia who spend a hell of a time on syncing timer, hacking video cards
and optimizing mod-players :-) )

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renaudg
You're right, but I kinda miss the days when the main drivers of the demoscene
were purely technical prowess and overcoming limitations : "wow, how did they
do THAT ? This machine isn't supposed to be able to, it can only display 16
colors in theory !"

Watching demos, in a way, brought to nerds the same kind of excitement as
watching sports did to a mainstream audience.

Much like athletes compete and break records within human limitations (usually
segregated by gender, and in some sports weight range categories), the
capabilities of specific models of computers were fixed, well-known and each
provided a level playing field for a few years to come.

So it was all about technical prowess by hackers for other hackers to
appreciate, because the artistic component was still way too weak for a
mainstream audience (raster bars or 4k intros wouldn't impress normies much
artistically)

Art and creativity started to become more of a thing when capabilities
improved to the point where computers could produce graphics and music for
anyone to find worthwhile and enjoyable, around the Amiga era I would say.

But that initial driver of technical prowess was changed forever (and possibly
died down) with the scene's move to the PC and especially accelerated 3D
graphics.

For the same reason that doping ruins the excitement of watching sports, it's
hard to be wowed technically anymore because nobody keeps tabs about what PC-
of-the-month is capable of. It's a moving platform and there's no level
playing field.

This has shifted the focus of the demoscener to creativity / art completely,
which is a great thing for art, but at the same time killed what made the
demoscene uniquely entertaining for hackers.

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uabstraction
In a lot of ways you're right, but I still find myself memorized by some of
the work that has been done in the 64kb PC demo scene. With such a low
executable size limit, intimate technical knowledge and creativity becomes
very important again. Everything from the geometry to the textures to the
audio samples to the score needs to be procedurally generated, and the program
itself needs to be written very efficiently.

~~~
renaudg
You're right, the only technical wow factor left is in size-limited demos.

