

Assembly 2015 demo party winning entry - zaf
http://archive.assembly.org/2015/demo/monolith-by-andromeda-software-development

======
Jare
A pretty recent interview with Navis, the programmer of this demo (and many
other gems of the demoscene):
[http://6octaves.blogspot.com.es/2015/04/interview-navis-
asd....](http://6octaves.blogspot.com.es/2015/04/interview-navis-asd.html)

~~~
jzzskijj
This was the first time I read Navis' comments about Moroder ripoff case. I
wish ASD got well compensated.

It is interesting to read, that Navis (or ASD) won't be available for third
parties (as in music videos.) And he has no current interest work without
aMUSIC. aMUSIC seems to strongly divide opinions in demo scene (especially
because of his use of electric guitar), but I enjoyed the audio in Monolith a
lot.

------
Audiophilip
Here's a link to a 60fps video capture:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGm33hsXP9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGm33hsXP9w)

However, if you have a decent GPU, I think it's worth running the original
executable (no video compression artifacts, etc):
[http://www.asd.gr/~navis/ASD-Monolith.zip](http://www.asd.gr/~navis/ASD-
Monolith.zip)

~~~
frou_dh
Never mind running it, you'll need a decent GPU just to decode the 1080p60
capture in real time. My poor 9600M GT isn't up to it.

------
misnome
Very impressive. I don't fully understand the Demo party competitions - what
constraints/limitations are there for this category? I assume it has to run
real-time (i.e. not just a prerecorded video) but can people otherwise e.g.
turn up with whatever they have made over time?

~~~
Jare
It is usually expected that all the work included in the demo (code, visual
art and music) is originally created by the demo authors (or donated by
friends / collaborators). Most of the demo is also expected to be original
material, but it is ok to reuse some material from demo to demo (audio
samples, textures, models, animations, shaders) as long as it is used in a
unique way.

Demos and intros have to run in real time on the target machine without
downloading new material on the fly. There used to be fairly generous size
limits for the "demo" category, whereas the "intro" categories vary among
64kb, 40kb, 4kb, 1kb and even 256 bytes. They are meant to run autonomously,
without needing user interaction. Demo competitions usually include other
categories such as standalone music, art of various styles (pixel, 2d, 3d,
procedural) and "wild" demos which are the exception in that they are pre-
recorded videos.

As with any form of art, there are always people that ignore or challenge some
of these rules and assumptions in one way or another, and a few do so in
memorable ways, but that's another discussion.

~~~
bane
I'll add that there's quite a bit of controversy over the 2nd place demo this
year, "DEMO2" by ekspert. It centers around the use of Unreal Engine 4 as the
engine the demo was coded in (and a few other assets like animations
"borrowed" from elsewhere). This is all normally very frowned upon in
competition.

It's brought up a bit of an existential question in the scene however, it's
not uncommon for teams to use their own engine, or engines coded by other
teams, and assets of various sorts are frequently borrowed (but heavily
remixed) and used in demos (famously photos of models are often turned into
digital paintings used as filler scenes, but it extends to samples and other
material).

So DEMO2 exists purely on its artistic merits, design and style without a
great deal of technical work having been done by the team. So is it "ok" by
the unwritten scene rules or does it challenge the scene to focus less on the
technical merits of a piece and only on the artistic bits?

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66096](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66096)

~~~
Jare
Everyone is going to give different weights to the various rules and criteria
for judging demos. In a community that strives for pushing boundaries, these
existential debates are a staple. It was assembly vs C/C++, it was pixel art
vs Photoshop, mouse vs Wacoms, chips vs raw CPU, MODs vs MP3, soft vs hardware
rendering, party version vs polished release, handcoded vs demo engines,
secrecy vs opensourcing, compatible vs "runs-on-my-machine", design vs tech,
closed groups vs collaborations, fully self-contained vs using system assets
like fonts... That's healthy.

I personally value both pacing and merit. I love demos where I ask myself "how
did they do that!?", and I love demos where I forget to ask that question
while I'm watching them. This one, I found rather uninspired, and obviously
very weak in the merit department. It clearly does not deserve a 2nd place;
there's just too little of value that the authors brought to the table. In
fact, their biggest contribution may be to open the door for other sceners to
use UE4 for great things.

~~~
bane
My knee-jerk reaction when I found out about the engine was to be upset, but
when I thought about it, it's not really any different than all the groups do
at this level...it's just that the engine is well known.

I'm more interested in the scene's artistic growth these days anyways...art in
real-time, hyper constraints, etc.

~~~
mkarr
In my opinion, a demo, in addition to artistic expression, is a showcase of
the technical skill of its creators.

Using a pre-built engine is not _quite_ up to the standard I would normally
expect to see.

However, an argument could be made that the Unreal Engine itself is a platform
(like the C64, PC, Windows, etc.), and pushing that platform's boundaries is
keeping with the spirit of the demoscene.

If we restrict one from using something like Unreal, do we restrict also the
use of something like OpenGL or DirectX? Or Windows/Linux itself? There are a
lot of layers of abstraction we can remove.

~~~
bane
The best news to come from all of this is that the scene is engaged in this
kind of self-defining discussion. It makes me really feel good knowing it's
growing as an art movement.

------
KuhlMensch
I'd be curious to see the tooling pipeline for the animations, camera and
edits (and I'd be absolutely amazed if there was none).

~~~
z303
You could have a look at .werkkzeug [1] and this talk [2] by Digi/Alcatraz

[1]
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=12511](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=12511)
[2]
[http://thedemoscene.tumblr.com/post/22588846914/digialcatraz...](http://thedemoscene.tumblr.com/post/22588846914/digialcatraz-
talks-about-exporting-3d-scenes-from)

------
Zolomon
Would be nice to see the source code for this.

~~~
Munksgaard
The pouet page has a download link that includes some of the source code:
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66065](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=66065)

It's just above the youtube link on the right.

------
jzzskijj
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10050086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10050086)

~~~
pavlov
Posting dupes is generally considered ok on HN if the link is relevant but the
previous post didn't get noticed. (Sometimes the mods will even email you
asking to repost a link.)

In this case, the interest in the 1k intro winner makes it likely that people
might want to see the demo compo winner too, so IMO the repost is warranted.

