pouët.net

;)

snoutmate, c64 demos are far easier to run :)

Splunge.

im as lazy as the next man,and youtube/demoscene.tv/capped.tv are a great way to watch something quickly at work when you dont want to run fullscreen or you arent on the best hardware. im totally guilty of this - i often just cant be bothered to watch the latest prods realtime and sit through the loading bar, unless i know its going to be good.

i cant help but lament the death of "watching demos" in terms of watching realtime on capable hardware, though. i grew up with a pc scene where you either had the hardware - and that meant you upgraded regularly - and could watch new demos, or you didnt and you couldn't. the only way to watch was via a binary. even then it was a lottery of getting the right drivers, config.sys settings etc.
while that could be a pain, it had some nice side effects. demo watching was an experience - you gave yourself and your machine over to that demo completely for a few minutes. there was no web browser on the other monitor or an msn popup or irc window to take away your attention - the demo took over, and as such you treated it with a bit more respect. afterwards you had the binary so you wandered through the data, checking out what was in it. you read the readme. you looked for hidden parts. you saw the effort that went into the setup box, the menu on startup etc. realtime meant something more impressive when it was actually realtime, not "kkaptured at 60hz". and that hardware you invested in sure came in handy when you were actually making your own demos.

call me mr conservative, but just perhaps the increasing trend to just watch the video has downgraded a lot of people from potential participating sceners to pure consumers. who just about manage to follow up their demo watching with a bitch on pouet or worse, youtube, before they skip on to the next entry on failblog or the instant message that popped up half way through the demo.

for all the hopes that more videos, easy watching and youtube exposure might bring in the new blood, the state of the pc scene is by and large pretty sorry right now - so something isnt quite working out. i wonder if asking people to invest less of their energy to watch has left them getting less out in return.

I can completely understand smash's point, and I never claimed realtime isn't hip anymore. In fact I too think realtime is the best way to experience a demo. Well I personally bitch about the close-mindedness for new platforms overtaking the mainstream. I think one of the biggest problems is Mac users can't really any demos... Really.

And I think in such a situation it's okay to depend on the videos of the Windows demos that we all love. But yeah, if there's a realtime version available for my platform of preference I'd certainly go with it no matter what. My "fresh blood" reference was towards the Mac being a new and yet-unexplored platform for many of us. Learning to code on it and porting not our already-released demos but our categories on it (4k, etc...) is a brand new challenge which I believe can keep us fed for some time.

Very well put, and I can agree wholeheartedly. I also click on the YT/dtv/capped links instead of the download link far too often.

(to smash, that is)

Smash: so true. Maybe we should try to find a way to make our demos not compatible with Fraps and Kkapture, hoping it would give us all a kick in the ass ;)

i thought you already did, keops? :P

hahaha, commercial software develops copy protection, crackers develop methods to remove it and add tiny intros before the product... can you see where this is going? :D

"demo videoed by Skid Row"

:'(

"nice release skid row, respect +1"

so long as it's a decent cracktro, maybe it's a step forwards ;)

0DAY VIDEOZ PROVIDED BY NAH-KOLOR!!1

The only stuff I still run in realtime are demos on sufficiently emulated platforms (c64/gb(a) etc.) that I own(ed) or care(d) for. Everything else will be consumed in video form. If it's good stuff, usually a hi-def video will appear for me to archive on my hd.

Convenience wins every time. :)

to be honest, the word "death" comes to mind.

Convenience shouldn't be an issue. You should download the demo in a few seconds as the file is small (even worst case, massively smaller than a video), double click on the exe, and watch.

I guess windows is a victim of it's own success here.. it's the only platform really where you have to worry about downloading the right drivers, dx version or some random vs redist dll. But the vast majority of the demos are on windows, so we're pretty much stuck with it. Guess that's a big part of why videos are so popular now.

Face the fact. Most of you(not all) are just being lazy to watch in realtime when you have your YouTube/DTV/Capped already open in your browser.

I'm mostly watcing demos in realtime if I own hardware that is capable to run the demo even if it's a bit laggy(later I could watch it from DTV or Capped without lag).

Back to the roots \o/

Disassembled and recoded by XYZ. Now runs in 60fps on your 386!!

not really. sure, it's the only platform with PRODS released for it, but...

For me, watching demos on video is currently *the way* to watch demos. Currently, I can see these faster, even the buffering time use to be lower than the demo loading time.

Videos made me lazy to buy a new graphics card, so I don't buy any. Also, I suppose I'm not the only one to think some 400 or 500€ spent on a graphics card is a bit too much for just watching some few demos...

By the other hand, from lots of years ago, I've lost the wow-coding-feeling from the origins. Currently, accelerators have a huge and extremelly fast increasing computing power, and I have no idea if a code is good or not by just watching a demo.

So, the only way to know if a demo is good or not in code, is just to compare to other demos. And this is the same for video or realtime.

And in any case in videos, music, direction, design, modelling and so on, are not changed from the realtime version...

second sad fact: videos enable us to fast forward rather than put up or press esc.

another fact: They are great to avoid random crashes, or elude excesive precalc time, in demoshows or seminars about demos.

knos: not if they are encoded "properly" (i.e. without keyframes ;)