pouët.net

took me a while to find the 3dsmax2010 sdk tho!

Tut tut tut!

True though...except maybe the Cintiq tablets they have access to and I don't. But totally agree on the man power issue. Makes a massive difference.

not to mention the plenty of better alternatives to showcase your graphics from a graphician point of view, on sites like cgtalk, deviantart, behance, etc ... it's even more likely you get a job at Sony/EA doing a decent mod for rand() popular shooter than a decent 64k intro, cos that's quite apples and pears where the fruitbasket was less sophisticated in the 90s.

Been there, done that, got the tshirt, want to give it back. :P

Personally I'm pretty happy the demoscene exists as an antidote to games. Blockbuster games are great big clumsy beasts that wish they were movies, and not good movies but Hollywood action flicks with scripts I wouldn't wipe my arse on.

I play games. I enjoy them a lot for the mechanics: shooty jumpy fun times, but the scene is where technical artists exhibit their creativity unfettered by commercial interest. It is a unique canvas for realtime expression and most of all it is as wide as it is deep: anyone can contribute.

Demos are made by three or four people out of a love for the medium and a desire to show off something really cool. Games are made by hundreds of guys on a payroll, and the desire to make money makes them risk averse and conservative. The disciplines are so utterly different it makes little sense to draw comparisons.

Oh and as for progression I really don't see a stagnation in the scene. It's easy to look back on the past and selectively remember all the great demos you saw and wonder why we're not drowning in amazing demos now but seeing the past through rose tinted glasses is almost as foolish as mistaking Pouet prod comments for a genuine example of scene spirit.

Very insightuf posts in this thread. We may not be in position to be compared with professional industry, but the freedom to express ourself is the strenght of us.

All I ask is to give advice and support for new sceners, ones whitout any production released yet. Same dudes who released their first prod, which sucked. Second sucked aswell. Most wont get this far.

I guess this is yet another nostalgy trip, and I shall adjust my rose tinted glasses to see more clearly.

Trying to beat the video game industry in their own standards (overall maximalism, wanna-be-photorealism, icky Hollywoodish "bigger is better" attitude and shit like that) is totally futile. If you want to shake the world, think about something where the individual vision weighs more than the manpower or consumer demand.

Still, I've also been thinking about the future of the demoscene recently. Mostly from the point of view of "how to keep the demoscene relevant during the 2010s" or "what is the most effective way of channeling our unique creative potential". I'll be writing more once I reach a nice conclusion.

im pretty sure that the game and movie business is pretty hostile towards newcomers - especially when it comes to the typical: "i have the bestest idea for a demo/game/movie, will you make it?"

I'm starting to like this thread actually.

One thing that boggles my mind is how exactly the demoscene is supposed to be on par with the games industry? Or rather, on par considering what? Games today are aimed towards realism, but if you look back at demos, there are very few that even try to employ a human(oid) character, let alone realistic scenery.

Sure, a 30+ artist department can produce an amazing shootout scene, but how would that work as a demo?

It might be, that demos were ahead of games, however gamers were never interested in demos.
Demos still have a great technological level. And people outside the scene still wont give a flying monkey about demos.
Yeah, demos shown great effects in the old times, that weren't in games, as they were not applicable at the field. Now the thing is the same.
Yeah, games have better textures. Or more detailed modelling. And?
I don't think demos and games are playing the same league. They never did. So everybody go back and keep on doing you did so far.

btw.: scene is dead. somebody killed it again this month. just like the month before. and so on.

Wade: I beg to differ and I actually agree with Kb, we have the same technology and software as game developers. And honestly, I believe we have more passion and love for what we are doing than most of the guys working on those AAA titles. But in the end, a few tens of people over a period of a few years will likely to perform better than a mere few passionate friends with a lot in common :).

This again?

Do you really think most hollywood producers and directors don't live under the gun as well? Heck, even Peter Jackson had a hard time finding the money to do two movies (yet he got lucky with new line cinema to make three). If you take into account all his previous work, do you think that was a walk in the park? Maybe he just deserved to get a breakthrough after all that work...

A game software also always lives verty much under the gun to produce results quick, and if they fail with one title good luck getting funds for the next.

Na, I rather much like not having any pressure at all and doing this shit for free, even tho it's not cutting edge (which it often can be, just look at 4k). If you wanna be cutting edge, do something different. Don't aim for total perfection in your shaders, let them fuck up once in a while and make something cool. I'm not for noise demos, but they do have a good point in my argument :-)

Games vs Demos?

Well it is quite difficult to compare. Games are what Demos aren't and Demo's are what Games aren't. Games are made basically for money, on the other hand demos are not made for money.

To be a little more specific, games and demos, as notions, are quite different indeed. For me the basic difference between them is the passion and devotion per category. Take, for example, one of Picasso's paintings and a landscape picture of a professional photographer. Picasso put his whole heart in creating such masterpieces, the photographer shot that picture just to sell it to one of his employers. Not quite accurate example but surely a well-comprehended one.

Demos vs Games?

Demos codes are full of poetry, imho, sceners are real artists .

indeed! i've not been making demos for quite some time now because it pays really well! :)

cybernostra said it better than I did ;-)

i for one consider videogames as an artform.

yes, videogames is an artform in the global sphere of digital art, with a point of view outside the industrial market and the mass market.

Art (in classic sense) begins and exists when the artists have a place to show off their prod to people ;

"Art for art's purpose since no purpose perverts the art." <---- This summarizes my above baffling.

Back in the 90's, we often compared demos to games because demos where in a better position... now the comparison doesn't work because games obviously win (both technically, and in many cases, as an "artform", if you want to call it that way).

I'm not saying that they should (or not) be compared, I just want to state the bias of oppinions when they involve "you not winning", which looks kinda funny :-)

I am trying to code a few demo-related things lately... and just 2 days ago I brought tolemac / unknown to my house, launched up Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and basically told him i would NOT be doing a 3D engine again... 3D engines today are up to a level where if you don't work on anything 3D related (or have plenty of free time :-) ), it's basically impossible to reach a decent level of "wowness" (except if you are after doing sizecoding, which i am not) to make anything seriously impressive.

Many sceners (i'm meaning coders here) DO work on 3D-related things so they can use their work hours to further study 3D stuff to use in demos... but when that's not the case, trying to do it in a limited free time, is just useless: by the time you get to code a 3D engine of acceptable "todays" quality, it'll already be tomorrow and your engine will more likely be obsolete.

PS: and no, i'm not saying "using work's engine to code demos", that's a pretty old debate already, i'm just saying that your findings and research time at work, serve a purpose for demomaking.

PS2: yes, 3D engine was just an example, but watching today's demos and games, it basically sums it all up

It made a sense in the past. Back in 1993/94 you wouldn't see all those special 2d effects in games as regularly as in demos. Most games were 2d and the artists just did some animations and backgrounds, they didn't do demolike games. If they needed a fire in a pit, the artist drew three frames of fire animation or something like that, they didn't have a true fire effect to also eat speed. Then Doom and later 3d stuff came and things have changed a bit.

Now you can't compare. What impresses me in games for example is something that doesn't fit in demos. For example, Crysis or other 3d games impress me not for the single special effects, but because for a 3d world as a whole is a rather big thing that works well together. You blow up stuff, trees are falling, buildings are destroyed, great physics and everything. It just works and it looks so complicated that I am scared it will crash. You won't create a massive 3d world for a demo. In demo you still do effects, maybe sometimes 3d flybyes or simple small scenes without the complexity and the generality of games and then great style, ideas or design. That's why nowadays games impress me in a different way than demos. They are different things.

if your only problem is lacking 30+ team of artists and a state of the art 3d engine, then reuse models from the internet throw them at udk and do something creative out of it. you have the whole internet and still lack resources? amazing.

then again, machinima already exists as a creative medium. which - and going back to the original point of this topic - is interesting to notice that machinima itself has been disregarded / ostracized from the demoscene in itself. wasnt true demoscene enough for the demoscene. much in the same way animation in itself has been getting set aside from the demoscene (comparing nowdays with early nineties for example).

demoscene is not _the_ creative digital artform, its just one of its comunities.

also: i've seen alot more creativity in some indie games and design studio trailers than in most demos / intros. commercial doesnt necessarily imply lack of creativity or lack of artistic touch; it always depends on your employer. i conceed that most game studio positions consist of capitalist driven factory monkey work though.

uhm... i think i actually missed my own point when wiriting, which was quite what you say ps. I was saying i'm starting to try to code demo-related stuff... but i'm NOT aiming for a state of the art 3D engine, and instead will look for different and creative ways of doing stuff :-)

Demoscene approved? who cares... wasn't this supposed to be fun? :)