Good demos more or less "killing off" a platform?
category: general [glöplog]
In the comments to the excellent Megadrive demo "Overdrive/Titan", loaderror made the following comment:
(the PSP demo references is of course Suicide Barbie)
That got me thinking, is this the case? Can a demo that raises the bar too much kill off a platform, making people think "meh, no use even trying"?
In an ideal world, of course the correct response would be "What a great demo, I'll make an even better one!" but in real life, this is not always the case, you might not have the skill, time or resources to make something better.
The larger platforms like PC and C64 seem to be pretty immune to this, people release tons of productions of varying quality on those, but on less popular platforms the "killing off" scenario is probably more likely, because people have a tendency to compare everything to that ONE well-known blockbuster.
If you do a PSP demo, people will say "Eh, not as good as Suicide Barbie".
And now if you do a Megadrive demo, people will say "Eh, not as good as Overdrive".
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There is a slight risk this demo will kill off the platform (like that tbl demo killed off psp).
(the PSP demo references is of course Suicide Barbie)
That got me thinking, is this the case? Can a demo that raises the bar too much kill off a platform, making people think "meh, no use even trying"?
In an ideal world, of course the correct response would be "What a great demo, I'll make an even better one!" but in real life, this is not always the case, you might not have the skill, time or resources to make something better.
The larger platforms like PC and C64 seem to be pretty immune to this, people release tons of productions of varying quality on those, but on less popular platforms the "killing off" scenario is probably more likely, because people have a tendency to compare everything to that ONE well-known blockbuster.
If you do a PSP demo, people will say "Eh, not as good as Suicide Barbie".
And now if you do a Megadrive demo, people will say "Eh, not as good as Overdrive".
It's not like the PSP had a massive torrent of demos before Suicide Barbie - I would imagine the 1) availability / spread of the platform and 2) [lack of] ease in homebrew development were two much more considerable platforms.
That being said, I wouldn't say the syndrome doesn't exist or that some platforms are immune to it.
That being said, I wouldn't say the syndrome doesn't exist or that some platforms are immune to it.
*considerable factors
Well, certainly our intention was primarily to drag more interest to the system. If you have even better democoders than us notice the platform, great things should follow. It would be sad to kill off a platform with as much potential as the Mega Drive. It is just waiting for more dedicated effects -- one of the hurdles of tilebased-systems (screw your bitmaps!).
So dear demoscene: Make more demos :P
So dear demoscene: Make more demos :P
PS: Feel free to ask us about tools and documents. It's all open :)
Someone eventually will, just look at Batman Forever and then what happened with Vanity's Still Rising on the CPC, for instance.
I guess people who would be put off by such things would only be more encouraged to come up with something better, and then there's the section of people (to which I belong, for instance) that just wants to do stuff regardless of the good stuff that's been done before.
I guess people who would be put off by such things would only be more encouraged to come up with something better, and then there's the section of people (to which I belong, for instance) that just wants to do stuff regardless of the good stuff that's been done before.
*will make more demos
Don't cancel any Noice Megadrive demos out of fears that it would be compared to "Overdrive". There will always be some people who don't like what you do, but the important question is whether you're happy with the result yourself.
Plus, there are many different styles that you can make a demo in. Just look at "20 years is nothing" on the C64 and compare it to "Edge of disgrace". Both are really good, but they look nothing alike.
Plus, there are many different styles that you can make a demo in. Just look at "20 years is nothing" on the C64 and compare it to "Edge of disgrace". Both are really good, but they look nothing alike.
I am not sure if such a syndrome actually exists, in fact I could not pick any specific production killing off its platform. In the "perfect demoscene", good prods should be platform boosters instead, raising the bar for the other groups to compete. In the "real world" demoscene people just don't give a fuck and release for whichever target platform they feel like.
Also, do you really think that no one in the demoscene could do anything better than Suicide Barbie on PSP? :)
Also, do you really think that no one in the demoscene could do anything better than Suicide Barbie on PSP? :)
Sdw: i think the c64, spectrum and cpc scene have proven otherwise. people tend to do demos on a niche platform because they like the platform, only a few of those folks are doing it because no one has done anything decent there yet. yes a good demo can be temporarily demoralizing sometimes, but sceners arent known to just pack up and go home that easily. also, assuming it's all about technical prowess is void.
all it does is raise the bar
so you'll get less kudos for crap
and the psp is just a grossly uninteresting platform to begin with
so you'll get less kudos for crap
and the psp is just a grossly uninteresting platform to begin with
Nonsense. When good demos appears it's time to make even more good demos!
WHERE ARE THE PSVITA DEMOS?
What Gargaj said. Though there's that case of Shitfaced clowns on GBA... :)
WHERE ARE THOSE PS3 DEMOS?!
I kept wondering about this, especially after Batman Forever which seemed the absolute killer. But it never made me loose my interest, since there are still effects not been done yet on the CPC and one can make a quite different style of demo too, not everything has to be a Batman Killer :).
In the same way, Overdrive is massive, but I still miss some more pixel per pixel effects in the console demos (maybe that's because of the limitations), there is still a lot to be done.
In the same way, Overdrive is massive, but I still miss some more pixel per pixel effects in the console demos (maybe that's because of the limitations), there is still a lot to be done.
Hello there.
Here's the thing, this is especially a problem on oldschool platforms. This is because people tend to use traditional effects like rasterbars, raycasters, tunnels, palette scrolling(eg. bump mapping), scrollers, stretch effects, rotozoomers and twisters. (btw. I'M REAAAALLY TIRED SEEING TWISTERS, please stop) People don't come up that much with new effects these days so we tend to have a limited amount of effects to do on a platforms. After all those effects I mentioned have been done these guys who don't want to create new innovative effects just try to improve the effects, make them faster, more colorful or have a small twist; once those effects have been done the best they can be done then those guys who are not trying to come up with new effects just leave that platform because they cannot do those traditional effects in a better way. Sometimes there are just guys who break all the records with those effects on that platform in one demo, in a swoop and those tend to be called platform killers.
Now how come the Speccy and C64 are still anyways big names in the scene? They have a lot demos with these effects? Well, Russian Speccy guys do come up with a lot of new ideas and effects and ways to tell stories(but IMHO, this years CC 2k13 was somewhat boring) but there are still some traditional effects that haven't been done the best they can be on Speccy so that might be one reason. C64 guys do a lot of scrollers, palette scrolling and twisters but they put a lot of tricks and twist to them and also are able to put them together into a more coherent trackmo way. Also on C64 you do see at times some smart new ideas in design so that helps a lot.
Theres a one big reason(apart from the fact that I tend to break my hard drives real fast) that I don't get a oldschool demo done is that I try to come up with less common or new effects, but it takes a lot of effort and optimizing to make them work well enough.
Here's the thing, this is especially a problem on oldschool platforms. This is because people tend to use traditional effects like rasterbars, raycasters, tunnels, palette scrolling(eg. bump mapping), scrollers, stretch effects, rotozoomers and twisters. (btw. I'M REAAAALLY TIRED SEEING TWISTERS, please stop) People don't come up that much with new effects these days so we tend to have a limited amount of effects to do on a platforms. After all those effects I mentioned have been done these guys who don't want to create new innovative effects just try to improve the effects, make them faster, more colorful or have a small twist; once those effects have been done the best they can be done then those guys who are not trying to come up with new effects just leave that platform because they cannot do those traditional effects in a better way. Sometimes there are just guys who break all the records with those effects on that platform in one demo, in a swoop and those tend to be called platform killers.
Now how come the Speccy and C64 are still anyways big names in the scene? They have a lot demos with these effects? Well, Russian Speccy guys do come up with a lot of new ideas and effects and ways to tell stories(but IMHO, this years CC 2k13 was somewhat boring) but there are still some traditional effects that haven't been done the best they can be on Speccy so that might be one reason. C64 guys do a lot of scrollers, palette scrolling and twisters but they put a lot of tricks and twist to them and also are able to put them together into a more coherent trackmo way. Also on C64 you do see at times some smart new ideas in design so that helps a lot.
Theres a one big reason(apart from the fact that I tend to break my hard drives real fast) that I don't get a oldschool demo done is that I try to come up with less common or new effects, but it takes a lot of effort and optimizing to make them work well enough.
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People don't come up that much with new effects these days
I think it's been quite the opposite, at least on the C64.
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(btw. I'M REAAAALLY TIRED SEEING TWISTERS, please stop)
Have you noticed, when there is a twister, people always cheer!
Preacher, Yes and NO.
There are some coders on C64 that do new things and some who don't. BTW. I didn't day that c64 scene is very unimaginative but you can see some of the same symptoms in some coders(i don't want to mention names in the fear of getting a fist in my face) but mostly c64 scene is quite imaginative and that might be one of the reasons for the success of the platform. Other oldschool platforms like CPC, VIC-20, Amiga 500 and Atari XL do suffer from repeating effects syndrome and suprice suprice there are not that many new productions for those platforms.
There are some coders on C64 that do new things and some who don't. BTW. I didn't day that c64 scene is very unimaginative but you can see some of the same symptoms in some coders(i don't want to mention names in the fear of getting a fist in my face) but mostly c64 scene is quite imaginative and that might be one of the reasons for the success of the platform. Other oldschool platforms like CPC, VIC-20, Amiga 500 and Atari XL do suffer from repeating effects syndrome and suprice suprice there are not that many new productions for those platforms.
day=say*
I think he has a valid point there, most prods feeling way too similar is a big reason I don't follow oldschool releases that carefully.
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...since there are still effects not been done yet on the CPC and one can make a quite different style of demo too...
There will always be effects that haven't been done on CPC or any other platform. ;)
Yes, please people let's make different demos.
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WHERE ARE THE PSVITA DEMOS?
there's no native cfw for it.
I think it's a natural thing to feel demoralized whenever a good demo comes along - especially on the PC certain things can feel so advanced and the difficulty curve of getting there is relatively steep. I certainly feel Numb Res killed the scene for me a bit because it's exactly the type of demo I would want to make, so now that it has been done I need time to figure out what exactly is what I want to reach. The problem is when this level of demo-ralization (hyuk hyuk) lasts long enough to kill someone's entire motivation start working on something.