Some thoughts on 4k competition rules
category: code [glöplog]
iq: considering today's experience for most people is "Press play on YouTube", the process has indeed become problem free for most audience members.
When the demos started requiring hardware more powerful than what's needed to play the video capture, something went wrong. Size limits somehow make up for it, but with huge hard drives and fast internet connections nowadays, they don't matter anymore, besides the "challenge".
So, the PC demoscene is now as silly and pointless as the 8-bit one. I fear there's no way out. Either you build hardware that can't play videos (be it a vector display, not enough CPU power, ...) and set that as a fixed platform, but people will not bother to install it at home and will just watch the video. Or, you use whatever hardware people have at home, but there's no standard machine these days, so for most people it will not run and they'll still watch the video.
So, the PC demoscene is now as silly and pointless as the 8-bit one. I fear there's no way out. Either you build hardware that can't play videos (be it a vector display, not enough CPU power, ...) and set that as a fixed platform, but people will not bother to install it at home and will just watch the video. Or, you use whatever hardware people have at home, but there's no standard machine these days, so for most people it will not run and they'll still watch the video.
Of course there's a standard machine these days. Amiga 500. You just chose a Windows 3.11 avatar and everything went wrong from there. Hehe.
Seriously though, what's needed are what I call 'enablers' - an interface for the platforms to whatever the media the oldskool demos are released on (files or floppy image) - and it's really just a matter of downloading and putting the demo on a card.
Sad to say, enablers for the Amiga 500 specifically aren't that common, but mine is. So far, I haven't had to watch a single A500 release as video or in emulator. It's easy :) But it would be nice with an expansion-port-to-CF direct enabler.
On PC I've had to, but only when the demos have been partyversions or incompatible.
Don't forget that watching it properly is a bit about laziness/caring also.
Seriously though, what's needed are what I call 'enablers' - an interface for the platforms to whatever the media the oldskool demos are released on (files or floppy image) - and it's really just a matter of downloading and putting the demo on a card.
Sad to say, enablers for the Amiga 500 specifically aren't that common, but mine is. So far, I haven't had to watch a single A500 release as video or in emulator. It's easy :) But it would be nice with an expansion-port-to-CF direct enabler.
On PC I've had to, but only when the demos have been partyversions or incompatible.
Don't forget that watching it properly is a bit about laziness/caring also.
Pulko: videos would be utterly irrelevant if the demos were interactive of course :)
I was wondering, how much time would it take for a, say, 386 DX 33, to compute/decrunch/prepapre a demo such as elevated? Too lazy/unable to do the math and just genuinely wondering...
Also, watching demos on Youtube... Yeah... Then, wouldn't a movie such as "Brave" have to be considered a fairly advanced demo? I mean, considering there are huge gaps between a cheap PC and a high-end machine, isn't "power" a bit irrelevant? Why not code a demo that wouldn't be decrunched in an entire lifetime by a computer far more powerful than what one can imagine (and funnily enough, running Windows) and claim it is the best thing anyone will ever watch? Yeah, sounds crazy, I know, but once again, the limits of machines nowadays are blurred by the "variety" out there. Challenges ain't no longer what some can make a machine spit, rather in what makes the consensus...
Except maybe for categories like 64Ks or 4Ks, maybe even 1Ks... Which put a new kind of constraint, leaving room for impressive things to be done... again... What next? :)
Also, watching demos on Youtube... Yeah... Then, wouldn't a movie such as "Brave" have to be considered a fairly advanced demo? I mean, considering there are huge gaps between a cheap PC and a high-end machine, isn't "power" a bit irrelevant? Why not code a demo that wouldn't be decrunched in an entire lifetime by a computer far more powerful than what one can imagine (and funnily enough, running Windows) and claim it is the best thing anyone will ever watch? Yeah, sounds crazy, I know, but once again, the limits of machines nowadays are blurred by the "variety" out there. Challenges ain't no longer what some can make a machine spit, rather in what makes the consensus...
Except maybe for categories like 64Ks or 4Ks, maybe even 1Ks... Which put a new kind of constraint, leaving room for impressive things to be done... again... What next? :)
[quote]Challenges ain't no longer what some can make a machine spit[quote]
smash proves you wrong
smash proves you wrong
It seems like what people don't understand is that a high end pcs power is still very much finite, and its still a huge technical challenge to squeeze something really cool into realtime.
It takes technical knowledge to understand the difference between a low end and high end pc, sure. But for me the point of realtime is still to do something at 30hz that previously took an age to render out as video offline.. No matter what config, the difference between minutes and instant is understandable.
Maybe the bigger issue is the audience not understanding what they are looking at. Oddly enough the best feedback and interest i get for our demos comes from cg artists and games people who get the technical challenge involved, having compared it to offline etc.
It takes technical knowledge to understand the difference between a low end and high end pc, sure. But for me the point of realtime is still to do something at 30hz that previously took an age to render out as video offline.. No matter what config, the difference between minutes and instant is understandable.
Maybe the bigger issue is the audience not understanding what they are looking at. Oddly enough the best feedback and interest i get for our demos comes from cg artists and games people who get the technical challenge involved, having compared it to offline etc.
Quote:
Maybe the bigger issue is the audience not understanding what they are looking at.
I see that in other fields as well, not just the demoscene. People don't understand enough of the technology to get what the challenges are. They especially underestimate the effort that goes into making things, be it software or hardware. It becomes even worse when they've seen something before, but which you've implemented in an efficient way or under difficult circumstances (no lab equipment, heck .. no lab at all!) or, as you mention, under real-time constraints. Wrong assumptions made are: technology is cheap (i.e. worth shit), things take zero time and/or effort to implement/debug, a designer can work with any piece of software (just RTFM), etc etc etc. Yes, it pisses me off - sorry for preaching to the choir.. kthnxbye.
