pouët.net

i design != demos as a reaction towards the elements in that list.

just leave

out... :)

sorry for all the crazy talk
i'll do some tests now, some drafts...
just so you now

0rel, my list was not a definition of what a demo is. At least not my conception of a demo.

It's a list of what a demo is usually made of, in terms of choices. I believe this list captures a few things which are purely historical, related to the background of demomakers rather than inherent to the medium itself.

Our scene is too small to make a big difference between the medium and the actual style. A bit like if by accident the drum'n bass scene was the only producer of long length albums.

your list is completely ok, it captures all the common features of the demo format pretty well... i know what demos are, i watched many of them ;)
i'm just asking myself what a demo should demonstrate NOW, 2008. how effective is it to show that spikeballs, dogs or millions of cube can be renderd even smoother with the new hardware than ten years ago. that's not that exciting anymore... media overflow is everywhere.

here a quote from polar by farbrausch:

when your demo is one static scene, well, it's kinda logical you do that.

ya, i'm shure there is a way with dynamic scenes too... some ideas popping up:
- triggering effects by location/time
- making parts variable in time and structure
- using objects in the scene as interfaces to change effects/location/sound
- syncing objects to movement
- construction of a building of scenes, you make the transition
- variable sequencers in the demo, effects change the sequence (eg. by collision) and the sequence changes the effects as well
- use of experimental tools similar to weapons in games in the demo to change the scene

but i don't say demos should like games, certainly not! i'm aware of the fact that things like collision detection make the code a lot more complicated... that's the main reason to make demos. you're always on the save side. you can do what you what without to care about multiple cases...

to keep it more demoish there should be some kind of time based restriction to provide a buildup, something that isn't variable, like a non-interactive linear background that defines the duration of some of the parts. it's shouldn't be like an endless sandbox toy nor an general tool, nor like a game... but i don't know... just thinking around

It's kind of a difficult boundary between a game and a demo if you allow interactivity in the demo. I wanted to achieve the following: an interactive program, that features all the basic vocabulary of games yet its rewards, rather than being a progression or a question of numbers going up would be the look, the behaviour of the world .. "the effect" one have over the experience. I would still consider it a demo, however to others I'm pretty sure it would be considered a game. (after all, there *are* popular game genres whose rewards are almost purely in the aesthetics of the game: rez; rpg(s) when you're not into making "numbers going upwards")

However it's something that game creators are already playing with so I'm not convinced the game vs demo distinction is useful to make as long as you bring a rich element of interactivity into it. (Games' definition are being stretched all the time, see for example with such things as WiiFit or brain age)

yes, that's exactly this unclear zone i'm thinking around. games... what are games? 'the computer game' is just the most general term for interactive realtime software somehow. - that's a big bubble... it will burst very soon...
or did it already and the words simply can't get rid of their old meaning?

ah, too bad, i only played rez in the emulator...cause i have no ps2. overall it looked very cool, although not very playable in the emu... at the end it is still a real game where you have to kill all the enemies and make highscore.
recently i found a like to the LSD here on pouet, the video game... that one was very exciting, altough the graphics was of rather poor quality... a very demoish game

knos: i dont necessarily see Wii Fit or Brain Age as anything new though - at least not when you compare them to some educational C64 stuff or even Sudoku; but they're still games.

the reason why demos are non-interactive, at least the way i see it, because determinism allows the author to ensure that amount of precision and artistic setting he or she demands. sure, of course if the artist would want entropy, the chance is there, and i think a lot of prods use very fine randomness that's hardly noticable - because it's really not something you should wear on your sleeve unless that's the whole concept. (see: tomthumb)

interactivity of course is a whole different animal and while i can see some tricky uses (Debris could've had a 5-10 second scene where you run from the cubes, Lifeforce could've had the mouse cursor perturb those ... things when the tree falls into the liquid... something) i think it's generally shunned on because they feel "filler" compared to what a demo's flow should be.. at least how i feel about it, most demos really focus on what's seen and heard instead of what can be done at that given moment. interactivity requires a different kindof direction, and it narrows the audience considerably.

pop-up: why not make tools that allow us to PLAY A DEMO... (real realtime in realtime) sound/gfx all generted but played by hand. the show would be almost the same for the audience, and the control would be there too... but the product would be open, everyone could play his own version of it afterwards (!=werkzeug, cause predefined algorithms/data + !=vj?). kind of a demo jam, demo imrpovisation...

I always thought performing a demo live would be cool once but it would be a life in hell to get the flow running properly.

I .. gargaj, people already do that. (?)

Anyway, on the topic of those semi-games, in the same fashion as LSD (which I mentionned about here) there is also Yume Nikki. (see http://zepy.momotato.com/2007/08/25/yume-nikki/ english version: http://rapidshare.com/files/104712976/yn0.10enginstaller.rar.html)

Or even that old amiga game: "Weird Dreams"

nice! ...currently rendering tomthumb... didn't know that one yet.
knos (or neq?): more such bordercase games i have on http://www.tigsource.com/. most of them are weak, but from time to time there can be found certainly some good stuff...

gargaj: you're probably right, interactivity makes a huge difference... maybe i'm just thinking about more experience oriented games, games without a focus on hard-fun - such as "making higher score" -, or on story telling. abstract, demoish games. games that make one more explorative/creative literally playful.
i've read about spore, little big planet, but unfortunately didn't played them. ok spore isn't out yet, but i'm not that much a gamer anyway... and i still think these new games focusing on user generated content are clearly games, and make not really a that big difference. simcity or mario paint was there long time ago for example.

for me 3 big categories of software had to be combined in a new way to make the new format ready:
1. player
2. game
3. editor
when all these three types of interactive software could be combined in well weighted manner, a new kind of software could appear... (tm, the vision ;) )

@live-demo: another idea would to be a networked live demo :). one group creates a demo containing a set of tools/objects/effects/commands running on big screen, and the audience can connect to the demo player on the server... the group has to create a simple interaction protocol + a proper client implementing it to play their demo over lan or event the internet. or a more general player for all demos would be provided...
some clear restrinctions would have certainly to be made:
- don't let too many people clutter the screen at the same time
- don't let always the same people show up, kind of a playerlist has to ve defined

to whole performance could be captured on video and release as a wild prod.
and to be still a real demo it could have cantain predefined elements controled by the creators
another approch would it to let some moderaters control the main cameras in the scene, and let the players trigger effects freely.

0rel: i personally enjoy two types of games - casual ones (without a plot and mainly for score - flash games, audiosurf, bejeweled, other popcap stuff) and narrative ones (stuff that gives a real beginning-to-end experience - portal, neverhood, monkey island).

i think demos are also go these two ways, there are demos that are focused on just concentrated impact (media error [kinda], starstruck, even fr025 - any demo where you could swap two effects timewise and not ruin the demo) and there are more directed ones (lifeforce, debris, masagin - demos where you have to remember the last ten seconds for the next ten seconds to make sense). and of course there are a lot of demos that bleed between the two, like Above where there is a slight (but important) narrative, but it's used as a design element, not something that defines what's shown.

remember this?

(thanks willbe for digging it up for great justice)

i think part of it is spot on, but also it's just one way of projecting the whole mess that is the scene.

gargaj, willbe, nice chart. it's easy to spot the opposites. but the triangle makes it hard to recognise the 3D-ness of the scene space.

i'm 50% oldschool ("midschool" (c) optimus), 100% hardcore code, 10% design.. but hhmm, not the jokeprod or fakedemo type, either. maybe this dimension doesn't count for me..

gargaj games: it's rather similar for me to what you said. on one hand, i like the more action-oriented, more brain-dead ones (shooters, platform games) and on the other hand there are the more narrative, explorative ones (like fahrenheit or rpgs). it's kind of a brain vs body thing, i think, which is also true with demos. there are the demos with more physical impact (like predator by mfx), or demos which trying to be narrative... (ah found it, halla by moopi). yea, that's true, there's a clear contraction. - i personally like the abstract ones more. with physical impact, but with some analogies, abstract things... narrative demos are kind of hard to do well, like with games too... it's harder to compute a story than to capture it with a cam, or write it down.
you mentioned audiosurf...? that's something fitting (probably) what a meant with this new-format-thing... if the graphics would be more controllable by the player and the sound would be generated for example by collision with the obstacles on the track, there would be exactly that thing i meant. you're editing the sound/graphics while playing it at same time... like a synthesizer you're flying through... an, not to forget in that genre: the creator of electroplankton, toshio iwaii! he did some pretty innovative stuff i think. not all of this works to good, like sadly had to realize, but the concept rocks...

oh, and thanks for that diagram, gives me some orientation :)

oh how could I forget to mention toshio iwai =)

oh, and not to forget that there already are some unique scene formats (besides demos)! such as:
musicdisks, diskmags, demotools
everything is already here! imo the biggest achievement of the demo scene. ...maybe can these formats be crossed in a new, striking way...
(eof)

"I wrote about myself in 3rd person" faggots

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