
Demoscene - The Art of the Algorithms - AbyCodes
http://www.metafilter.com/114704/Demoscene-The-Art-of-the-Algorithms
======
ChrisNorstrom
THIS ([http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/kkrieger-
chapter-1/scr...](http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/kkrieger-
chapter-1/screenshots)) Entire game (interactive demoscene) is only 96kb. It's
all procedurally generated which is what demoscene is all about. Everything
you see, sound, music, textures, models, is just code. No images or audio
what-so-ever. Just algorithms that generate shapes within shapes, within
shapes. Like fractals almost.

I was devastated to find the group's website is gone and the game's page no
longer on the internet. For those of you who want to experience it I've got it
on my server here: <http://data.chrisnorstrom.com/hosting/kkrieger-beta.zip>.
They were probably the best group out there. Looks like they closed up show
because their site theprodukt is closed for good.

I knew a really good Demoscene coder, and he introduced the culture to me. He
worked on synthetic procedurally generated voices (which is really hard). But
the problem is that the bar to entry is extremely high because it's all
algorithms and the culture is all about fun, not profit. So the community
stays small. Why spend months making lights and patterns react to music in a
64kb file when you can make a 200mb game or animated and sell it. The means do
not justify the ends, thus most people will never know the awesomeness of
demoscene.

~~~
jimminy
A lot of the members of .theprodukkt joined Farbrausch[1]. You can still find
the productions by that team, including .kkrieger on the Farbrausch site[2].

[1] <http://www.farb-rausch.de/> [2] <http://www.farb-
rausch.de/prod.py?which=114>

~~~
Centigonal
IIRC, .theprodukkt is/was Farbrausch's commercial "arm."'

~~~
DanielH
Farbrausch is simply a demogroup...

<http://www.49games.de/> was the 'commercial' arm of Farbrausch (most
Farbrausch members worked there) and they got bought by the german game
developing company Bigpoint: [http://bigpoint.net/2011/09/bigpoint-takes-over-
the-entire-d...](http://bigpoint.net/2011/09/bigpoint-takes-over-the-entire-
development-team-of-49games-gmbh/)

Here's Kebby (FR) talking a bit about the demoscene at MIT:
<http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/17875473>

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DrJokepu
I used to be the coder of a small demoscene team in the early 2000's. I never
had as much fun writing computer programs ever since then. It was creating
awesome stuff just for the sake of awesomeness.

~~~
Cushman
What do you think is stopping demos from taking off as a serious commercial
art form? Just culture, or something more fundamental?

~~~
elemeno
I'd argue it's because they're universally rather dull.

On a technical level, demos are highly impressive and how they manage to
overcome the limitations imposed by the scene to create the works that they do
is ingenious, but it doesn't make the resulting product interesting from an
artistic viewpoint.

For me at least, the glaring weakness is the lack of narrative - there's no
stories being told, there's nothing that engages or challenges the viewer.
They're akin to videos that show off the features of a game engine where they
engender the "that's pretty" reaction, but little else.

To my mind, this is caused by two things - primarily, it's a side effect of
the restrictions imposed by the artform. With the limitations of the scene in
play, there simply might not exist the scope to create enough content for an
engaging narrative structure to be based around and procedural generation only
takes you so far when it comes to creating assets in a resource limited
environment.

Secondly, I'd argue that the types of people who are primarily interested in
creating narrative are going to gravitate to different creative areas -
creating short films, or animations for example. As a result, the demoscene is
likely to be made up of people who mostly interesting in the question of how
pretty the output is, rather than how interesting it is. This is of course
also related to the fact that people who 'grew up' in the scene are likely to
have a relatively narrow view of what the scene looks like and are unlikely to
buck that trend and break out into doing something completely different.

The above is naturally just my two euroyencent of course.

~~~
henrikschroder
> how they manage to overcome the limitations imposed by the scene

It's pretty telling that the scene adapted to the increased hardware by
imposing their own limitations instead of anything-goes. If we can't be wowed
by what they do on limited hardware, we have to be wowed by what they can do
under their own very harsh limitations.

~~~
forza
I'm not sure what you are referring to. 4k/64k have been around for a long
time, close to 20 years. Demos are generally "anything goes" and for anything
else there are usually a "wild compo".

~~~
henrikschroder
I remember demos on Ataris, Amigas, and early PCs, 286s, 386s. Back then there
were no scene-imposed limitations, because the hardware was seriously limiting
what you could do, and the awesomeness of demos lay in overcoming the crap
hardware.

But when hardware stopped begin crap, when you started getting hardware
accelerated graphics, when you could do mp3 playback in realtime, it got too
easy to make something pretty, and less awesome.

If the demo scene had been about making pretty things, they would have just
continued using the new hardware, but since the most important thing has been
overcoming difficulties, making something pretty DESPITE the limitations,
making something awesome, you know they value the challenge most.

And that is hard to communicate to regular people, because they can only value
the prettiness of a demo, and that limits the popularity of it.

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Centigonal
Woooooooaaaah! A demoscene link appears on HN! I'm really excited that you
guys seem to be interested in this!

You guys should watch this movie! <http://molemanfilm.com/about-moleman/about-
moleman-2/>

It's very good, and also on Youtube. It'll tell you all about the demoscene!
you'll enjoy it!

-mkC/3LN: The clumsiest ever

Note: This post used to have a lot of redundancy inside of it, but that's gone
now!

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CobaltHex
This was an awesome documentary, even though I am not currently writing
anything for the scene I still like to watch what they do and I generally try
and tune into streams of the parties. Fun times

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aw3c2
Don't miss the BBS Documentary's Artscene episode.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ReS4Bp4IPY> seems to be a copy of it.

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sp332
This is a _great_ collection of links. And it's extremely up-to-date - that
last demo, Gaia Machina, just came out last week!

~~~
defdac
Wow. Just wow. 64kb: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kx66_i3ue4>

~~~
sp332
Somehow, to me anyway, it loses something if you just watch a video of it. If
you have the hardware for it, you can download the binary from
<http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59107> and run it in real-time on your
own machine, the way it was intended :)

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rabidsnail
More links:

<http://capped.tv> \- recordings of demos

<http://pouet.net> \- combination forum and demo repository

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mulytani
I was wondering: how recruiters perceive demoers ?, in: \- start-up \- big
companies Should you put this activity on your resume or totally hide it ?

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sgt
Good to see the Demoscene is alive and well in Europe! I haven't dabbled in
the Demoscene since way before I left the continent.

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dsirijus
Actually, demo scene could get some jobs if flash player 3d content spins
well. Anything procedural is great in there.

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vigo
well. there is only one thing left to be told: amiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigaaaaaaaa
(::

