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Being impressed

category: general [glöplog]
The last things that really impressed me? 3DMark2001 as a demo and all the newer 4K intros by Freestyle and Kolor ( ... must .. kill ... muhmac ... ). But that kind of was it.

Of course there were many many really cool demos in the last few years, but real jawdroppers? Only the mentioned above, as they were really pushing the limits and/or trying out something not too seen before.

As fas as the artistic side is concerned - some MFX and Satori prods were really refreshing there. Everything else is IMO just recycling of ideas or moderately funny, but nothing else.

Still, there is hope :)
added on the 2002-07-24 11:42:22 by kb_ kb_
raver: trust me, i mean what i say. it's probably different for you though :)
sesse: i don't think so. the lighting techniques used in doom3 are all pretty much well-known, and all the interesting stuff (visibility/scene management/content creation) is pretty much a non-issue due to the linear, short, non-interactive nature of most pc demos.
added on the 2002-07-24 12:31:32 by ryg ryg
As we all grow older it's getting harder to impress us. As kids, we were much easier to amaze, because we didn't know much (or anything at all) about how all those crazy flashy things that happen on our monitors work. Today we all have our own demo-making experiences and we have seen hundreds of demos, most of them composed of the same effects and concepts.

And about the old demo debatte:

good demo = code + music + design + originality.


If you're bad at coding, you still have a faily good chance to produce something kewl. Just emphasize more on the other components of that formular.
added on the 2002-07-24 12:32:44 by tomaes tomaes
see I can be impressed by how the hell some ppl come up with great ideas.. amazed.. that's how I think sometimes... like damn that's brilliant wish I came up with that.. how the hell did x come up with that idea it's great...

that's what keeps me interested I guess...
added on the 2002-07-24 12:44:22 by violator violator
ryg: well-known, yes. But there must be something wrong when nobody seems to implement them in demos, then :-) (I've seen stencil shadows in a few demos, and bumpmapping in a few older ones, but I've yet to see a demo pushing 150k polys/scene with bumpmapping _and_ stencil shadows with respect to multiple lights...)
added on the 2002-07-24 12:59:09 by Sesse Sesse
"but I've yet to see a demo pushing 150k polys/scene with bumpmapping _and_ stencil shadows with respect to multiple lights..."

those things have been done before in tech-demos and the like, and are *not* impressive.

what impresses me are clever new twists on old ideas...that's usually the most you can do on pc hardware.

I'm impressed at the moment by the XBox specs. not only is it easy to code for (heck, you get Visual Studio integration) but it's a fixed platform and the unified memory architecture means you can do all sorts of freaky shit with your textures. render-to-texture and then do an oldskool software-rendered textureplasma using that texture. which is not the most innovative thing to do, but it should give you an idea of what's possible.

who cares anyway.
added on the 2002-07-24 13:31:30 by sagacity sagacity
sagacity : sounds good. i'm tired of this "slow render to texture" limitation on PC
added on the 2002-07-24 14:08:19 by dake^cdx dake^cdx
dake: render to texture isn´t slow...
added on the 2002-07-24 14:58:59 by Inopia Inopia
inoop: render-to-texture on the PC is *WAY* slow compared to the speed the hardware is actually capable of.
added on the 2002-07-24 16:10:54 by sagacity sagacity
its not faster on xbox , atleast what i heard you still have to take a linear surface thingy for doing it wich should result in more or less same bottleneck as on pc..
added on the 2002-07-24 18:14:11 by Hatikvah Hatikvah
just let me add, with dx9 we will hopefully see new demos using parhelia and other NEW cards technology, pushing vertexbuffers seems kindof old , doesnt it? ;)
added on the 2002-07-24 18:14:49 by Hatikvah Hatikvah
Crystal Dreams II / Triton
Planet M / Melon
Dope / Complex
Stars / NoooN
Stuff / Xtacy
Reanim8r / Rage
fr-08 / FR
Planet Potion / Potion

those left me standing allright :)
added on the 2002-07-24 18:44:10 by Shifter Shifter
sagacity: Then, if nothing else, make a demo that does all that _plus_ is cool on the artistic side... I mean, if it isn't impressive, you could just as well spend the five minutes to do it ;-)

Right now we have stuff like Adrenalin, with high polycount but dead slow almost no matter what you run it on. :-)
added on the 2002-07-24 18:56:49 by Sesse Sesse
rendertotexture speed somewhat depends on the chipset..
added on the 2002-07-24 19:23:47 by superplek superplek
and thats kindof the point
added on the 2002-07-24 19:35:37 by Hatikvah Hatikvah
wake up people, "everything was better yesterday" doesn't help. there's no way to invent the wheel over and over again. stop whining, make better demos!
added on the 2002-07-24 21:23:13 by rp rp
About "make better demos", I have to explain why I'm doing ORIC demos... I could perfectly code demos on PC, using hardware acceleration since I'm using this kind of things in my Job (well, I'm a videogame console programmer).
The realy problem is _time_, and the fact you need a _team_ of people that work _well_ for a _long_ time.
Point.
My small Defence Force team can manage to make full Oric demo in something like two full weeks. We could not afford more time, because of all shitty things like "social life", "working for living", and other concepts I still do not really have well integrated :)

Most of french groups I know have really difficulties to find the time to produce something of quality.

Today, you will not make a killing demo by ripping a font and a music, and designing few 32x32 sprites in 8 colors moving on a sine wave.

Doing a great pc demo really takes too much time today, so I prefer to be a small vip on the oldskool scene than a pc coder struggling to produce a demo every two years.
added on the 2002-07-24 22:19:52 by Dbug Dbug
there are things that will definitely continue to impress me in demos:

-detailed, long, interesting demos in 1k, 4k, 64k (256b is kind of boring in the long run)
-as-yet-unseen effects on legacy hardware
-hardware accelerated 3d with a unique look (few demos succeed at that), or, alternatively, approaching photorealism
-stories. easter egg told a story and that 4k moon demo at ms2k did (forgot the name).
-concept, design, atmosphere. raving tomatos had that.
-good, fitting, synched music.
added on the 2002-07-24 22:36:23 by jazzman jazzman
*sigh*
added on the 2002-07-25 00:47:32 by psenough psenough
some additions:

-elysion/origo dreamline
-oneder & dawnfall / oxyron
-krestology / crest
-crest/oxyron C128 demo at ms2k1 (nice hardware hacking)

-g-force/pygmy
- ??? / union (3d demo at TP4)
- optimum fuckup/sanity
- nexus 7 / Andromeda

And "nonstop ibiza experience/ orange" must be the last pc demo with interesting non polygon effects..
added on the 2002-07-25 03:18:13 by Azure Azure
Well I think it is still possible to do codewhise interesting effects with todays hardware. To name a few:

- proper light: reflection, refraction, caustics. (How about using photon mapping to find coordinates in a lighting texture ? Probably possible in realtime).

- proper shadows: nice self shadowing, soft shadows. (I know - easy using a shadow buffer. Just why is nobody doing it ?)
- kinetics: elastic body, fluid (do this in realtime: http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/water-sg02/ ;) )
- LOD. I have yet to see a demo with a good LOD engine and a matching scene.

... and why is nobody doing nice bumpmapping anymore ?

added on the 2002-07-25 03:30:41 by Azure Azure
bumpmapping looks ugly in hardwarerendering.
Dbug : i'm agree with you ! :)
added on the 2002-07-25 09:51:02 by u2 u2
Really impressed in recent yerars by:

Planet Potion/Potion
Gift/Potion
Concrete/Ephidrena
Brus/Ephidrena

added on the 2002-07-25 12:10:53 by z5 z5
"bumpmapping looks ugly in hardwarerendering." only macaw can say something so lame >D
added on the 2002-07-25 12:13:13 by Hatikvah Hatikvah

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