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15 megs for a demo

category: general [glöplog]
(Without reading any of the thread)
... and then I found a 25 Mb big prod, consisting of a 200 kb exe and a mysterious 25 Mb .dat file, that played suspiciously well in VLC ...
added on the 2007-07-10 19:00:13 by nitro2k01 nitro2k01
nitro1k01: if it's still looking cool, why not? the contents of most demos' data dirs play suspiciously well in IrfanView and Winamp...
added on the 2007-07-10 19:01:33 by kb_ kb_
if a 4k needs a ps3.0 card to run, a 64mb demo will clearly use 200gb of memory and need a geforce27 running ps9.0 to work properly, and im not due to upgrade my machine to that until november
added on the 2007-07-10 19:32:30 by psenough psenough
Quote:
ps3.0
Quote:
ps9.0
you just can't stop reinventing yourself, eh? :)
added on the 2007-07-10 19:38:05 by havoc havoc
When demo executables get larger than their video conversions, there's a real flaw in logic going on.

Personally, I don't mind how large they get as long as it reflects in the quality and detail.
ShaneTheWolfTigerTurtleFaggotSugar: that's why I don't like the concept of 16s demos (that and the fact that they take need more precalc time than their actual length)
added on the 2007-07-10 19:56:10 by keops keops
on a very selfish side i don't care, because my demo collection can't be backup on a DVDR anymore :D
added on the 2007-07-10 19:58:50 by Zest Zest
WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN
added on the 2007-07-10 20:08:53 by teel teel
won't all the children use fiber connection and 3d storage ?
added on the 2007-07-10 20:10:57 by Zest Zest
I think it was kb who once mentioned that since it is realtime, the demo is available for viewing in different resolutions. This is one important aspect of the discussion. Also, I don't beleive a video conversion would give you the same quality if it drops below the size of the exe (in most cases).

I think it's off the point to worry about exe-size if the prod downloads in reasonable amount of time. The days of floppies are gone: To me, the size restriction (which turned to some kind of demoscene fetish) was nothing more than a practical obstacle. I can agree that to some extent it's an "art", and I do enjoy the occasional 4k, 40k or 64k. But I do not see the rationale behind demanding obscure sizelimits on full blown demos. In case it should be regulated, the rules should be govern be practical concerns like bandwidth at the party sever and such.

I mean, optimizing the code is not going to help saving megabytes if you want high quality music and a couple of hand painted pieces of gfx.

I'm not saying one should bloat away, but the reason why we slaughtered our samples or cut the amount of bitplanes in logos back in the '90s was mainly so spare the rest of the scene from having to distribute two disks for one demo instead of one disk. And that reason is no longer valid today.

Keops is mentioning something I find very strange about the current trend in demos: Precalc time is allowed! Why the hell is this accepted today, while the size of a prod is a highly combustible subject? If any demo featured a 20 sec. precalc time on amiga, I think it would have been blacklisted immidiately. I should mention that I don't care much as long as the precalc time is reasonable, but it seems to be a non-subject (except from certain cases).

btw, I get the strange feeling this has been discussed before somewhere.. hmm.
added on the 2007-07-10 20:42:49 by Hyde Hyde
Hyde: so true. And yeah, realtime and smart precalc was the shit back then. Now people just throw a boring white loading bar at you during 30 or 45 seconds (ok for 4k/64k intros since it's all about content generation but not ok in demos imo).

I usually press ESC or kill the process after 20 secs when it's a demo :)
added on the 2007-07-10 20:50:06 by keops keops
some loading bars are part of TEH ART :P
added on the 2007-07-10 20:52:21 by Zest Zest
I think up to 5 secs precalculating per minute of demo is quite acceptable.
added on the 2007-07-10 20:52:58 by Navis Navis
I may be remembering this totally wrongly... but I seem to remember the worst demo for having a loooong loading bar lately was track one. And wasn't that something to do with having to compress textures to fit the demo into the compo size limit?

Anyway, what happened to the final? (Ahh... revenge for smash's constant bashing of my pride-and-joy gf5 series video card! =)
added on the 2007-07-11 11:53:28 by psonice psonice
psonice: oh, it went the way of most of the final versions we thought of doing - we just couldnt be bothered to do it.
it takes a long time to load and uses a lot of memory because we made most of the demo in 3 days without sleep, and we didnt have any time to fix it. although all the textures being jpegs and not dxts certainly doesnt help it's loading time or vram usage.

the cheques to cover the support work and patch/fix development never showed up, so we just got on with something less boring instead. ;)
added on the 2007-07-11 12:01:55 by smash smash
Hold on, what about that crate of vodka I sent in return for the final?! Don't tell me you drank it all and woke up with no memory of it?

Anyway, long live CBA! And where's limp ninja when you need a cracked and fixed version?
added on the 2007-07-11 12:41:03 by psonice psonice
fix smash's code? are you insane? nobody in their right mind would do that.
added on the 2007-07-11 12:45:32 by Shifter Shifter
25 MB HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
added on the 2007-07-11 13:00:05 by tobé tobé
HAHAHA (kuf kuf) HAHAHA !!!
added on the 2007-07-11 13:03:55 by tobé tobé
Quote:
kb, well, i think that 15mb is actually quite a lot considering all we need is a tune and 200k of code

\o/ A new Bahnhof demo at Evoke. \o/
Matzeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
amigaaaaa
added on the 2007-07-11 19:36:55 by psenough psenough
Hey... its the "big-demos-are-lame" thread again. How refreshing...
added on the 2007-07-11 20:08:41 by raer raer
So what`s the size of the biggest demo ever released?
added on the 2007-07-11 20:20:05 by Zplex Zplex
Dunno, but Suicide Barbie is over 100megs and it's for a handheld ;-)
added on the 2007-07-11 20:25:41 by Nezbie Nezbie
I think we can agree on the following rule: You can't make a prod where the size, counted in Kbs, times the area of a slice of a regular Granny-Smith apple is greater than the motherboard on the machine the prod is supposed to run on.
added on the 2007-07-11 20:31:04 by Hyde Hyde

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