[nova]

If that's the case, I need your help..

I picked 'Demo scene' to be the topic of my final paper for my media technologies class at school, and I need some info This 'info' would consist of the purpose of demo scene graphics/programming, how it's done [the basics at least], how is it used and how those crazy crazy parties are like.

..but any information at all is appreciated. Any links or other people I could talk to would be helpful also.

Thanks!

[Pat]

http://www.machinima.com

That kinda of demo scene?

-Pat

[Sumaleth]

Nova: those are some indepth questions, certainly more involved than what can be answered here. I'd recommend loading up google.com and spending a week reading all the web pages you can find on the subject.

I can go through some basics;

. Demos started on the C64 and Spectrum computers, in the form of "intros" to cracked software (the cracker would add the intro to say who cracked it).
. Over time intros grew to be quite elaborate, with "groups" of people involved in their making.
. Eventually the people making the intros found it more interesting just making 'demonstrations' of what they could could do so the 'demoscene' split off from the 'cracking scene'. An element of crossover between the two scenes continued for years, but generally the demoscene became it's own thing.
. Small demos, even to this day, are still called 'intros'. But there are many different forms of demos, from the '4k intro' to the multi-disk 'megademo'.
. The demoscene has been the leading source of talent for the game industry for years. Although the advent of game-mod'ing (introduced by id Software games, but it's now standard practice for most big games to be mod'able in some way) has given the game industry another source of talent.
. The biggest demoscenes were; C64, then the Amiga, and now the PC. Although pretty much every computer that has some ability for user-coding has, or has had, a demoscene of some description.

Anyway, thats a good start i hope. I've been researching the demoscene for a book about digital art, and I can tell you that there's a lot more involved than you'd ever guess.

Row.

[java]

I agree with sumaleth, there is sooo much stuff one could tell you so you would probably drown in all the information If you need some input feel free to mail me ([email protected]) or add me to your icq, ive been involved in the scene for about 10 years doing 2d and 3d stuff. Good luck!

[ToastyKen]

I'd like to briefly add (I'm certainly no expert) that part of the appeal is generally to use as few rasterized images and sounds as possible, and procedurally code in most of the graphics and music, and thus minimizing file size. This is mostly to demonstrate hacking prowess.

[Pongo]

try here for some info.
http://www.scene.org/

[aquamire]

Our good old pal Loki was part of the scene for awhile. Has some info on his page as well I believe. http://www.vigilante.net/~loki/

Perhaps if you email him kindly he'll be able to answer some questions for you.

[lel]

Well, I did some demos on both the c64 and the amiga, and I'd say the early driving force of demo programmers was to overcome hardware limitations through software hacks. Nothing was better than doing a visual trick no-one ever saw or tried before.

A simple example of this would be the sprite-trick. It was a known fact that the c64 could only show 8 sprites simultaneously on-screen. The specifications in the manual stated it, and most early games would never show more than 8 moving objects.
(A sprite is a small graphic object put on the screen by hardware. Think 2d-acceleration of graphics. The slow 1MHz processor didn't have to put/remove every pixel into a bitmap in order to move them around, just set the coordinates of the object).

By synchronizing the program code with the rasterbeam drawing the screen on the monitor/TV, it was easy to change the coordinates of the sprite once it had been drawn and put it lower down ahead of the beam. Then it would be drawn again in a different position, and once the beam reached the end of the screen the sprite was moved back to the first position. Repeat.
All sprites could be reused like this, and more than just once. As long as there never were more than 8 on the same line, the whole screen could be filled with moving sprites!

Impressive to see the first time, "- how did they do that??!!".

[wayfinder]

dont forget us scene musicians

[s4murai]

http://www.hugi.de - biggest german diskmag

http://pain.planet-d.net - swiss diskmag

http://omr.planet-d.net/amidemos - Amiga demos in DivX format

http://www.gfxzone.org/ - site dedicated to scene gfx artists + pics database + forum

http://www.ojuice.net/ - scene news/portal

http://www.theparty.dk - one of the biggest demoparties

http://ms.demo.org - mekka & symposium demoparty

http://www.buenz.li - swiss demo-/lan-party

http://www.chscene.ch - swiss demoscene news
http://www.asmparty.net/ - another demoparty
http://www.radwar-enterprises.de/ - unusual scene-party

[ October 28, 2001: Message edited by: s4murai ]

[nova]

Thanks for all the replies .. they were really helpful. I know I'll be including this thread in my bibliography!