pouët.net

Sure, but that's not the scene's responsibility to teach someone how to use a VCS. Same way, I don't think the scene's responsibility to teach someone about for-loops and file handling.

and why is it the scene's responsibility to teach someone the basics of graphics programming?

there are plenty of how to start making videogames books and tutorials around...

just saying that people who want to do demos and intros should already know a lot of things or they will indubiously struggle to get things rolling. if they don't even know what dev tools exist for their platform of choice, it doesn't look like a very promising future.

but i guess i'm more playing the devils advocate here. in the end any effort to help people get more into it is more then welcome. don't think it'll ever replace going to a demoparty and socializing with other sceners to ask what their workflow is like.

so perhaps, atleast in my head, it would be more interesting to have "exposés' of differnt work flows from different sceners doing things on different platforms. either written article collected in a small page/portal, or a series of video interviews with shared screens showing their dev environment. although ofcourse this would not teach anyone to code shaders, load models or put triangles on screen but it could be more valuable to the target audience imho.

your idea gargaj reminds me a little of this little game i did: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59664, just missing the window where you dump your javascript code and it evals into something on screen :)

I see what you did there ;)

there is a whole industry teaching people to code realtime graphics. don't see why we should be an alternative competitor. to me it makes more sense to complement the resources already made available by that industry.

but like i said, playing the devils advocate here, all efforts to lower the difficulty curve of participating in the demoscene seems like good efforts to me.

Getting started in doing Demos on PC was one big overwhelming experience.
Even once you are at a point where you know what you´ll need, f.e. C++ (Demo-Logic, making an executeable in an own process/window) & OpenGL (talking to the GPU, Graphics) & BASS (replaying Music) there´s that huuuge amount of learning in front of you.
C++ - Syntax, including 3rd-Party-Libraries (BASS, OpenGL), coming up with logic for Timing of the whole thing (plus syncing to music lateron), then learning all of the 3rd-Party-Code (Initialisation/TearDown of 3rd-Party-Stuff; How to playback music with BASS, how to stop it again; How to open a Framebuffer via OpenGL to put pixels; Shaders -> even more syntax to learn, some programming-language in itself; )
All of this needs to get learned first, else you won´t even have ANYTHING on your screen...this whole process will take quite a while, especially if you need to find Tutorials first that are about the current technology and not about how it was done many years ago (NeHe Tutorials, reading coding-articles in HUGI)...all of this can get depressing/cumbersome and will set most people back before they even got really started.
All this said: The general Idea of providing a Tutorial about how to get into making Demos would be really really nice. But on the other Hand lots of it will be obsolete in few years again already. Also theres so many directions/combinations to choose from (coding-languages, graphics-api, music-replayer, etc.), it will get one hell of a job to even provide tutorials for all of that now, not counting in all the time it´ll take to maintain all those tutorials.
So my guess is it´ll stay like it is and always was...who really wants to get into making Demos will find his/her way into doing so, the rest will suffer while trying to. Sad as it is! But only people getting that far are ready to Demo anyway...it simply takes this huge amount of passion and self-sacrifizing to get a Demo done.

It's pretty easy to make a demo these days, given that you have some programming experience or at least aptitude for it. The bottleneck used to be knowledge and tools, now it is willingness and time (mostly for choosing and testing the many options, and then gaining experience) and of course competing amusements & commitments.

Make a compo out of it: people showing off their guides / tutorials :)
This way we may get quality tutorials(due to the competitive nature) and more sceners may feel inclined to share their knowledge(I mean there's a trophy to win right?! ;) )

That being said, hardy is totally right, tutorials will become deprecated and there is a huge amount of topics to cover, making demos is not learned in a few days or weeks. However isn't this part of why we're doing it? For me at least this is one of the most intriguing factors of the scene: growing and seeing others grow in their respective scene related crafts, inspiring and pushing ourselves and each other to raise the bar.

Remember that banner at revision that said "face it you're elite", well if you(as a newcomer) want to count yourself into that you better have the dedication to acquire the skills necessary.

i like that compo idea

What hardy said, up to but not including "But on the other hand."
What LJ said.

While we are at it... isn't it you first learn how to program in general, do some small games, rendering/audio experiments and few years later you find yourself "oh, now I have enough skills to make a demo/intro"? ;)

But anyway, I don't deny tutorials idea for sure, I remember downloading on public hotspots and later my modern v.34 modem all possible resources available, such as:
ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/code/3d/docs/
especially zed3d was quite appealing (back then)! :D and in those "dark information ages" everything that you ever noticed in the book store / freely available comp.graphics papers / diskmags (Imphobia, Budyn lol) / usenet groups etc...

But yeah, why not make it easier for millenials ;P

tomkh: i did demos before i did any games.

LJ: Yes, but it can still be intimidating for a young person of today. I don't know how old you are, but remember when YOU were starting out? When was that, '80s? What if Dennis Ritchie had showed up one day, showed you Unix when you were just getting used to LOADing games from your cassette, and said "You'll never be elite, kid". Wouldn't that have been devastating?

only if you let it.

psenough: of course what we say here (including me a little bit) is cliche.
But I'm honest here when I say: let's make it easier for newcomers, because why not? It's not some sacred knowledge or special skills. It's just we had it harder to dig it up. There is no point to hide that my generation wasted a lot of time on "reinventing the wheel" instead of getting strong fundaments right away and built on top of them.

The question is: how to provide strong fundaments for young people, and prevent making them addicted to quick effect / intellectual laziness? But that's another topic of course.

<opinion aka flamebait>
It isn't the "scene's responsibility" to do anything. Isn't the idea that all sceners can do whatever cool thing they individually or collectively want to do? I am interested in making it easier to learn how to make demos, as I think we all are (or we wouldn't be on this thread ;) ).

Each of us will reach a slightly different target audience. If we have a flexible enough platform for finding resources, then we'll be able to accommodate sceners who want to write introductory-programming tutorials, sceners who want to write high-end 4xAA+caustics+hexagonal lens flares tutorials --- plus musicians or graphicians who want to write tutorials on those subjects! Also, I imagine 1x (just to name someone at random) could write some neat tutorials on direction and design.
</opinion aka flamebait>

How can we make tutorials accessible to a broader audience? As long as we don't lock anyone out, each scener or group of sceners can contribute whatever seems best to that individual/group. We already have content --- let's build discovery tools and see who comes!

Nah, you should do "demoscene masterclass" and charge sufficiently. Otherwise, you are losers ;P

90$ for exclusive pre-recorded videos and selected students will have a chance to get feedback from you (if their homework assignments will be good enough) - this is how you roll nowadays

curated youtube channel poking people to contribute should do the trick imho

but i really like the compo idea of LJ

A compo with only one participant isn't a real compo...

why would there only be 1 participant? if it's a new compo, and it's a matter of recording a video showing how cool your setup is for the better of mankind, i don't see why most people would shy away from it. well, ok, maybe some folks would be embarrassed that their setup is not that high tech, but the point is to show how you do stuff, not how good you are at it.

actually, being a competition might fuck with that logic... might need more careful phrasing to the point of the compo...

If it's "only" recording your setup then yes, such a compo might get more participants. But to me it sounded more about creating actual tutorials/guides (which would be much more useful). That requires a lot of work and time I'd bet most people would not be willing to invest. (Sorry for my being so pessimistic ;))

We need to write a book, Teach Yourself Demoscene in 14 days.

i think i could write that book. would need some feedback / revisions from other sceners though.