pouët.net

So much this. Let's have a relatable example, shall we? Just because


Smoke & Mirrors was criticised (by Photon, among others) for having a lot of pre-rendered 3D content. Here's how it works:

The 3D engine is written is Amiga assembly and integrated into the demo code, so the 3D scenes can be scripted in Rocket along with the rest of the demo. It features texture mapping, glossiness mapping, 16-bit Z-buffering and some world-space post-processing (for the rust and de-rust effects). The main 3D scenes in the demo contain tens of thousands of triangles and are far from being able to run realtime on a real Amiga.

The 3D scenes are composed of realtime and non-realtime parts (typically background and 3D models, respectively). When scripting the demo in Rocket, everything is rendered in realtime. Since this work is done in an emulator, it achieves a workable framerate (around 5fps IIRC).

To build the demo, it is run in a special recording mode, where every frame of the demo is rendered with and without the non-realtime elements. The two renders are compared in 4x4 pixel blocks, and all the blocks that differ are compressed using a jpeg-inspired compression scheme and stored in a data file. The parameters for the compression (four of them) are also controlled in Rocket, so that the size vs. compression artifacts tradeoff can be adjusted on a scene-by-scene basis. Remember, this was for a size-limited competition: the demo archive had to be at most 20MB.

When running the demo proper, only the realtime elements are rendered, and the non-realtime elements are decompressed on top.

It would have been so much easier to just throw in the usual, plain texture mapper on a few hundred polygons with slightly buggy z-sorting. But that would have been extremely boring, both for me and for the audience.


So here's a challenge for you, Photon: release a demo (for a constrained platform, of course) containing a substantial amount of pre-rendered content that blends (reasonably) seamlessly with the realtime content. Then come back here and say that it was easy. :)

Let's not also forget that Photon considers every effect he doesn't understand (or effect that isn't shown for minutes on end) to be an animation.

Last but not least, Photon's next post (if he doesn't find the wisdom to crawl back under his rock instead) more likely than not will bluntly ignore the obviously valid points you just raised and instead pointlessly reiterate his own

Game set match.

lol

or make it yourself easy and release a demo riddled with animations!

I disagree personal attacks is the right way to discourage discourse - even emphatic such from admins. (The act of moving this to a category that isn't featured on the front page is much more effective.)

The reason is that this topic has nothing to do with me, but with "how far from a Demo can you get?" (compare: cut scenes are as far from a game as you can get - what is running is not a game).

Well, we've been finding out ever since a few groups tried to impress us by writing datalump export loops in BASIC since ~1990, so this is nothing new.

What is important is that this desperate move should take nothing away from all the others, who were and are still interested in tech and want to explore the limits of the platform, and with them all those who appreciate that.

If this brand of cynicism is opted into, anyone asked must now answer truthfully, and say that tech is somewhat appreciated, but the surest way to win a Democompo is to animate.

(I hasten to add, such a declaration hinges on votes on record from compos and on websites - as is certainly going by those when deciding sharing what you love.)

The nub as I see it is that this appreciating animation the most conflicts with the foundations of the Demoscene and any plaudits it receives, so that those interested in exploring the limits of a platform find no reason to join or compete.



But this is a slight extrapolation from the topic, which is:

The Democompo sticks out from our other compos, which have quite strict rules and formats. Something could be done there to make our explanations of what we're about not ring false.

And again, this is just one idea, more ideas are welcome.

Jesus Fucking Christ

Indeed...

the best way to win a demo compo is to hit that sweet spot in the majority of those who end up voting. but there is more to that equation than code, visuals and music. euphoria and for many more or less beers 'n' stuff. maybe that's why sometimes prods place higher at a party than getting positive feedback here (a.k.a. should have ranked higher comments). thank god the world is not only black and white.

Photon, while in my opinion there are demos around winning compos that I'd call anims or fakes, you are missing one point. Parties are rare, especially with compos that don't lump all performance-restricted platforms in the same basket. How many parties are there left that even have an Amiga compo at the moment - two, three? We should be grateful for each and every party that has got one, and we need to take care of and support these parties until there is critical mass that hopefuilly allows for more compos to emerge. Also consider running your own party, then you can set the rules. It may be not so easy. Until then I wouldn't consider the anims a problem. They're welcome.

I'd love to know (not really) what Photon thinks of 8088 Domination, which is an animation player where every frame loaded from disk is actually x86 executable code that draws that specific frame. So, no animation, but a demo with about 10,000 different executable parts.

I think I've found a loophole here.

To be fair, the original post had more holes than a Swiss cheese.

Sorry for bringing this thing up again... you can count me in as simple "customer" of demo scene prods. I still think the original proposal is way to much biased. I recently made myself a demo playlist (thanks to my son, most of it is Excess) ... but:

1. Technical achievements are so 1699
2. I prefer a visual pleasing demo over an achievement
3. See point one

I watched every demo from Photon with my son (6 year old now) - and his mantra was simple: all that stuff sucks, please one more time Excess - he somehow has a crush with them - I personally think their demos are achievements in a simple way: our eyes and ears were so damn happy :-D



The point is, nobody takes something away from you. You can continue shaving cycles here and there. But the focus has shifted - if you made some awesome rasterbars back in the days when I was 15 - you can count me in as impressed. But today: Congratulations, you spend your life on taming old hardware (fucking 20 years later). And that may be nice for you - but the rest of the world simply don't give a shit. And that's why I like stuff like Zener Drive or Smoke and Mirrors - leaving the old times behind and doing something that is simply well executed and amazing.