pouët.net

Long time ago I was the one that used to say that a demo wasn't cool because the visuals weren't cool, and because it wasn't entertaining. And obviously all the coders hated me because that.

Since a couple of months ago I've tried to learn a bit of code, doing some stuff here and there. Now I can say that I can appreciate much more the work of the coder, and isn't really hard to appreciate all the work that Duffman did for his FIRST demo.

Solaris / Brainstorm

So, how could it end up 8th? And what's in the mind of those people that is giving a thumbs down to a FIRST prod like this?! I mean, what's the deal? It's even worse to see who is giving the thumb downs... What was the demoscene again? I wouldn't ever thumb down a prod like that, not now not before I learnt a bit of coding...

I've been doing an article about the demoscene, but I think I'll have to change it all, and say that the good thing of it is doing Joke movies with OpenGL, and ART-ish-demos-with-no-innovation-at-ALL.

Oh! And yeah, I've seen the other entries.

It ended up (my guess) 8th for probably not fitting the party mood.

party mood?

i speak for myself. i thumbed it down couz it was more of the same seen before. plus i seen duffman's name around already. still gave him props for the work. but i wouldnt play the demo again. looking forward to seeing some of his new stuff.

as for the democompo results: they're fucked up, what else is new?

Curiously, thumbs voting system in pouët use to give a much better idea of the quality of the prod... And trace, maybe Solaris looks like hardware rendering even if it is not, and this way it would loose some points...

we got beaten by gay porn, so the votes are gay!

hehe. but seriously, the party was excellent.
the brainstorm prod deff. deserved better than eight, but small parties can have odd results.

Surprisingly enough, demos that amuse the party audience in some way gets more votes than those who don't. You are also likely to receive more votes for your demo if you are known to the voters than if you're not. This is hardly anything new, and shouldn't surprise anyone that's been in the scene for more than two minutes.
As for the thumbs on pouet the same rules apply. This shouldn't surprise anyone that have read comments for more than two demos either.

The language or platform you have chosen will attract some voters, and deflect others. Some will thumb up anything that runs on an amiga, an atari, a tamagotchi or whatever, while others will look at what's going on the screen and judge only by that. The fact that other people don't get their kicks from the same things that you doesn't say anything about the demoscene, except that other people than you don't think like you.

That being said, I would agree that this demo should have ranked better than other productions. However, I don't expect others to feel exactly the way I feel, and neither should you.

Damn straight.

So you don't expect others to respect the work from the people that spend a lot of time on this?

You don't expect others to support the newbies?

And honestly, was everyone voting there, I thought we already learnt that public votes doesn't usually work, there are a lot of examples of that. While making it private so each group that released has to vote will make it more fair and even easier to control, in case there is people doing friend-voting and disqualify them for doing that, or in case the voters didn't realise about something in a demo let them know, like, dudes, it's done in 100% asm!.

Again, I may be wrong, but whenever I organise a party I try to have the most fair results because I care about the people that releases on 'my' party. I prefer the people to say that the results aren't fair because me, than because the results are fair because the people was drunk. Shouldn't we start taking this a bit seriously?

*aren't fair because me/private voters, than because the people on the party was drunk.

"..I try to have the most fair results.."
Does this mean you manipulate the results if the audience doesn't vote the way they should? ;)

But seriously, seeing ones hard work being beaten by someone elses flash/amos/scatporn/whatever 10-minutes-partyprod can be demotivating&frustrating, but that's something you have to be prepared for when entering a competition like this.
The demoscene is not a serious place, and anyone expecting everyone else to behave "like they should" are in for a tough surprise (and no, we shouldn't feel sorry for them...)

No, I don't manipulate the results. I do my best to have them right. So if an entry was also released in another party, I let the voters know about it, if a prod is using demopaja, I let the voters know about it.

Voting only for what you see on the screen isn't fair, you need to know a bit of the background of each prod. Public voting doesn't suppor that very well.

Sorry to crush you trace, but the demoscene is a bunch of elitist dicks that only vote for friends and porn and don't give a shit about newbies! I mean, dang, can you believe there are guys that keep on entering this stupid 'Rob is Jarig' demo to compos? It's fucking nuts, that is!!!

And yeah, it's very easy to say.

"Fuck it, I won't bother to spend my time so we have fair results, I think I'll blame the scene because they always vote for the funny shit, and then say that the demoscene is rude, so be prepared, yeah.. that will Take me 1 or 2 posts on pouet instead of, maybe, spending now 3 hours speaking with the people."

Atleast using experienced sceners to do the votes if you want, or you're going to say that scene.org awards approach is wrong?

C'mon! It doesn't take that much time to make sure that the results are fair.

Trace: I'm all for giving people extra info (and at KG it was announced that Solaris was a pure asm demo).
However, a mediocre demo doesn't stop being mediocre just because it's coded by a blind 2 year old with no arms. If the demo doesn't entertain me in any way I still won't vote for it (unless it's made by one or my friends.. or I'm drunk...)
My main point is; the world is a harsh and unfriendly place, and those who can't handle that most people don't agree with them should just stay at home, under their bed...

and "using experienced sceners to do the votes" would effectively leave out all the promising newbies... making the scene seem elitist and patronising.... oooh, wait...

There is absolutely no point in doing a whole demo in pure asm, as it does not result in significant speed gains over writing just the critical parts in asm. Furthermore, it slows down the demomaking process unnecessarily. 100% asm is something the scene luckily got over in the 90's, or so I thought.

And about software rendering.. We've seen polyfillers and whole 3d engines done in software and even in pure assembly many times before. I would like to see more well coded software demos in the future, but with more stuff than just the usual polys.

next time, try it.

"So you don't expect others to respect the work from the people that spend a lot of time on this?

You don't expect others to support the newbies?"

No fucking way. If you do so, you wont have to make an effort. Speaking of experience. Dont make it easy for a "newbie". I would have been pissed off if anyone would have voted for a demo of mine cause i was a "newbie". I dont expect people to respect my work either, that sound really lame. Why the fuck should people respect my work? even if i spent 4years on it, it could still suck you know..........Drop the attitude. It wont work, never has.

The brain storm demo itself rocked.

In my opinion: No, we definitely shouldn't be taking this more seriously.

Sure as hell, some outcomes of partyvotes can be considered demotivating for the creators of certain prods. However, in my puny opinion, the real core of the issue should not actually be the fairness of public vote results- I don't want to be a Quichotte- do you?

What really, really, really does matter is whether the creative process was satisfying enough to warrant another try. If that is the case, the rest is absolutely irrelevant.

Demoscene is an endogenous artform. Public appreciation of endogenous artforms is a fateful bonus, not a predictable outcome. Remember that, and you'll have many happy years to go in the demoscene.

:-)

trace: first of all, why the hell do you always start whining threads about everything I arrange, you got some secret grudge I don't know about? Second, the attitude of badmouthing the organizers of a party because the results are not to your liking is rather.. Well let's just not say what I think about that.

To the topic, lug00ber said it best.. But yeah, let's try to take a look at the situation here..

The democompo started at 03:xx Most of the people were shit drunk, some people (me included) didn't handle the tiredness and were sleeping or at least fading off for a while (I think "I woke up" at least 3 times noticing some 10 seconds had slipped by). There were 14 demos (including several hardware changes). The democompo ended at around 05.

At that point, people were supposed to be able to handle voting. I don't know how many people did that at that point, at least I went straight to bed. I assume several others did the same.

Then in the morning the rest of the people voted. I guess most of them didn't remember half of the stuff they had seen in the democompo, I still don't. Then what happens? You vote for the stuff you DO remember and you vote for the people you know. What stands out? Well at least in my case I remember the winning demo because it had info about a party 1 km from where I live, I remember the 2nd place because the coder was dancing on stage during it, I remember the 3rd place because it was Arcane's first demo ever.. And then I remember the porn and bad finnish jokes.. And that's it..

I didn't vote, but I'm willing to bet a lot of people did along the same lines (meaning, stuff that works as reminders for them). If you want to complain about the stupid guys who don't sit completely sober and serious at 5 in the morning rating everything, then I guess you should just stop going to parties all in all.

I thought we were lucky to get a rank at all. Nobody from our group was present at the party and the uncompressed demo size was > 15Mb.

I'm just glad I'm done with this demo, and that it got released.

For this reason a jury made of demomakers is suposse to be better than popular vote.

On the other hand, every system has imperfections and sometimes the results of a competition show this implacable truth.

And surely his next demo will be coded in C++/OpenGL. We will see... (or, perhaps, he will made a 4k intro 100% asm)

The real price is to make good demos.

I must take some of the responsibility for the Brainstorms low vote-count. There were several things about how the compos were arranged at kg06 that might explain a bit.

First of all, I scheduled the demo to be run earlier than perhaps it should have been. This was partly because I hadn't have time to actually SEE all of the demos, only verifying that they started, and partly because I wanted to have a bit of fun myself in watching as much as possible for the first time during the compo.

Second, as the beam-system wasn't working, we had the live-wordpad compo-system (wellknown from random parties all around the globe). After being stressed out and finally being able to relax with a couple of beers, you start to be a bit "creative" on the big-screen. So I might have mocked the bit about 100% assembly a bit ;)
(The rebels demo was stated to be written in "100% turbo pascal", and some other demo was "written" in 2% VBScript.

Third, (and I guess most importantly) our printer didn't work, so we werent able to hand out vote-keys before 1.5 hours before the voting deadline. The difference between the votes that had been validated with vote keys and those that hadn't been, was definitely noticeable in most compos.

To all of this I can only say sorry for the outcome, but this is reality. I probably wouldn't have done anything different if I was to do it all again ;)

Oh, wait, let me get that, we're not supposed to respect/support the people that spend time doing demos, or the newbies, but we're suposed to respect the people that organise the party? Why? Since when the demoscene is about the party and not the prods? Since when the demoscene is about the alcohol and not the prods?

Leia, I have nothing with you believe me. I mean, I really apreciate you guys organising the party, but hey, don't blame the people because they were drunk or whatever. If the people can't vote at that point, leave it for later, or even later the week. You don't have to give the results on the same party if the people is drunk. Don't blame them!

In intance, Euskal party (which I didn't organise) released the official results some weeks after, they had to clean some funny namevoting there.

Seriously, everytime you guys blame the demoscene for being such a rude place you're blaming a lot of people that isn't like that.