Basics of demo programming (2011) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Basics of demo programming (2011) [video]

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68 pointsadamnemecek6 comments

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 :-) )

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.

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.

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

You can't run until you walk.

I haven't watched it yet, but the first word of the title is "basic".

I have to agree though that creativity is king :)

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