pouët.net

I think beginning demo makers - are there more or less of those today? - should have their own section.

Thus they'd avoid all the thumb-downs and the not-looking-so-hot compared to the pro demos.

Everybody needs motivation and audience! Especially if the general niveau of "arrived" demo makers is quite high.

How about it?

Stuff like this has been discussed earlier, at that time related to a 'beginners compo'. Couldn't find that thread at first glance, I'll have a look once I'm back home. One of the core problems is defining the essence of what a beginner is. Or more precisely, when one isn't a beginner anymore.

I'm not sure which prods you had a look at but so far with most beginner prods, there were almost always "motivational thumb ups" in the comments, no hate and thumb-downs.

On one hand, I don't think the scene is discriminatory, neither it should be - a demo is a demo, and quality should always be measured subjectively to that certain group. In that respect, I'd say most people have no issue being more forgiving towards someone's first demo, or offering balanced criticism. (Example) Separating the newcomers kinda feels like we're patronizing them and not letting them play with "the big boys".

I would say the considerably more interesting problem is how a newcomer won't be able to tell apart criticism coming from a seasoned demoscener with dozens of acclaimed releases under their belt, from a random nobody who never did and never will do anything to gain the perspective of work invested.

i still think the beginners compo at altparty was a good thing however most of the folks were never seen again.
but a pouet category? dolan, pls...

Well, it's nice when commenting on a prod to know if it's a firstie or some some group that's been making demos since the c64. But then I'd kind of expect them to make it obvious somewhere on the prod page, demo or nfo if that's the case ;)

The scene has never had a special 'beginner' section, and I don't think we need to start now.
The demoscene is like the 'premier league' of coding/graphics/music/etc. Competition has always been a part of it.
A lot of people have spent years perfecting their skills before they released their first serious work (I think this is especially true for coders, most of them probably have lots of unreleased effects/intros/garbage from their early days). I don't think we need to have some 'dumbed down' section where every random idiot can post his first crappy NeHe copy/paste garbage, if you know what I mean. The recent influx of .js rubbish is bad enough already.

As they say, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Not everyone has what it takes to be a demoscener. Being able to motivate yourself, having a decent understanding of what your position is among your 'competitors', being able to push yourself to the next level, and being able to deal with criticism, it's all part of the game (the point where you decide that your work is good enough to release to the world says a lot about you).

So yea, if you release your first work, and it isn't all that good, some people will just bluntly say that. Most of us have been there. There are also people who will give you constructive criticism, and who will support you in making another, better production.

pouet!=scene&&scene!=pouet

also, opinions on pouet shouldnt steer your demoscene career. (both in a positive and negative sense) i'm sure back in Rembrandt's days a lot of people found his paintings too brown :)

Scenepoints or glöps suddenly start to get more meaning.

When a demo sucks it sucks no matter how it was created or by who. There are several great firsties out there and also crappy stuff by well known groups. And if you get offended/discouraged by some thumb downs or some more or less harsh words then well ... don't release stuff :D

A own sections would look like nursery school to me.

And what Saga Musix said.

if i don't like something i simply don't comment/vote. (except for some very certain things).
so in my belief, the downvoting is really just an option for expressing negativity.
in all the places i have seen biased voting, it always fades into the typical noise eventually, and doesn´t say anything at all. except that it frustrates.
if there was really a discussion on changing things, i´d totally go for removing the downvotes. a noob section feels too much like separation and like others said, could cause an outbreak of insignificance.

then again, it's pouet. i wonder why comments and posts don´t have an up/donwvoting option :-D

... wait, are you implying something there?

Yep, that is my view as well. I reserve thumb-downs for two occasions:
* Prods that seem to be made just to agitate/annoy people
* Prods that have a large number of upvotes, but where I personally absolutely fail to see what the great thing is (Emperor's new clothes scenario).

Now, people are free to thumb down as much as they like, but if you don't like something, why not go with a piggy and try a bit of constructive criticism?

tomoya is implying that smash should watch way more demos!

what Sdw said

tomoya is implying that smash should make way less demos!

There is a demoscene programming forum out there catering for beginners and vets alike, it also runs a mini-demo challenge every so often with small cash prizes ( http://www.dbfinteractive.com/forum )

Obviously Pouet has a huge wealth of people with experience who once you get beyond the basics can be supremely helpful, but when just starting out somewhere like DBF has a very friendly, helpful environment. Their old posts there have a wealth of info on coding "traditional"/old skool effects.

There are two main types of "newb" demo coders, people starting from scratch and people wanting to "relive their youth". I fit into the 2nd, but I'm also a full-time programmer used to modern O/Ss and tools.

In particular I think Its hard to get the 2nd type engaged in the scene as their view of the scene is "old skool" and they want to do 'bare metal coding' on their win7 box which isn't that easy these days. (I have some ideas about solving this, but I'll save that til its more than just a pipe dream..)

IMHO, the technical challenges or techniques or options are the least of the problem. It's 2013: there are more libraries and tutorials and sourcecode released than ever, it's really not that hard to learn how to rotate a cube in any setting if you take a weekend off to learn it.

Motivation, on the other hand...

Indeed it isn't hard.

I know I'm making a few sweeping generalisations here, but I'm confident that my opinion on this is very close to the bone.
The problem is, some of these "returnee's" scoff at libraries and want to go "bare metal" as that's what *their* old world view of demos is. They want to just be doing a POKE or writing direct to 0xA000.

I wonder if there's a way to ensnare them?

I've spent my time, read up I feel like I have a grasp of how and why the scene has changed.

Yes motivation (the DBF challenges I mentioned helped get me jump-started), and the other killer, time. I've had no time since the weather here went good. I doubt I'll touch my code properly again before October unless a cold snap hits. I spent 10 years thinking about wanting to write stuff again, now I have done that, I think about my next move instead.

sdw: sorry but i believe the 2nd reason is a terrible reason for a thumb down and its something i see way too much of on pretty good demos. it's basically "i expected more" - it's about your preconceptions (from the group name, seeing the compo placement or indeed reading the pouet comments) not the demo itself.

for me a thumb down is deserved only by a demo that's objectively "bad" in the overall scheme of things. if the demo you're about to thumb down is still objectively in the top 50% of demos released this year, please think twice about pressing ok. :)

I don't see why we need a beginners section here. This is a demoscene production database. If you enter your first scroller experiments in a PC demo compo at a party and it gets added to pouet, what do you expect?!

Nothing is stopping them from doing it on their previous platform.

This.

Do we have actually examples of beginners who were offended by pouet comments ? And would have prefered to submit it in a "sandbox"?

Also, I think that's why smaller demoparties are important: beginners can submit there without feeling patronized ("this is the beginner compo") but without feeling out of place either.

thats very true, its not like the demo's of old they admire run natively on the platforms they want to run on.

one returnee i've seen did actually make queries about coding directly for dosbox.