pouët.net

Insanely true, and that's the point: you shouldn't care! :) You should just make whatever you want to make and call it whatever you want to call it. That's the point. YOU decide what YOU make and how YOU label it.

My issue with some of the people in this thread is that they seem to suffer from a massive reality disconnect which makes them look at anything out there in the world and apply the demoscene label to it as they see fit. Since the demoscene is way more of a cultural than a technological movement, especially these days, this is just all kinds of wrong.

Despite what seems to be quite deliberate and ignorant attempts by some really smart people to misunderstand mine and other's statements in this thread, trust me when I say that what you and others are doing online is the future of the demoscene.

I think you're ready to run for president of the USA now.

Indeed, i must have misunderstood you guys because for a moment, i strongly believe you were a bunch of stuck up close-minded ones... Hopefully, everything went better than expected.

knos: since the last 7 pages were spawned from a few sentences from the two of us, and you apparently have no intention of taking _reality_ into consideration before slamming me for whatever reason, let's do a quick recap to get everyone onto the same planet:

Me: That thing was a little dull.
You: Well, it's his first demo, so can't you forgive him that?
Me: Since the "first prod, okay.."-leniency only applies to people actively entering the demoscene, then no.

That's the core of the thing. Anything else has been attributed to either of us by someone else, and on Pouet, the rest of the thread is the result of that. Hopefully this makes it all clear once and for all. :)

I can see no end to this.

I had a long reply written but deleted it because I drew the same conclusion.

Well, it's pretty hard to come to a conclusion with non-answers such as that one. My opinion is stated above. If you disagree with it, then please let me know why. Usually, these threads spin out of control because of misunderstandings (deliberate and otherwise), and I'd like to clear them up.

mrdoob: I'm especially surprised that you of all people seem to buying into this picture being painted that I, for some reason, am this guy who only accepts certain things to be "proper demoscene", when you know for a fact this isn't the case -- in fact, the opposite is what's true -- and again: you know this already, which is why I'm baffled by your statements.

I don't think there's any end to this discussion because I see a group of people that consider this to be a demo and another group that don't. Both groups have different mindsets even if they come from the same place.

Somehow it reminds me to the oldschool vs newschool discussions back in the 90s. I don't remember anyone getting any conclusion out of those discussions, they just learnt to live with each other.

newschool won, of course.

Ultimately this is all pointless because the scene is not a closed secret society, its an open meritocracy. It follows trends based on good stuff people make.
If there is a number of good webgl demos at some point, im sure webgl
demos will get more popular. If they are in a different format, released in a different way etc then that will get accepted as norm. Good demos are what changes the scene, not pouet threads. The acceptance of anything in the scene is taken on merit. Maybe this webgl demo was so divisive because it wasn't actually that good?

personally I dont want to make webgl demos cos I like my c++ DirectX engine too.much, and the demos released so far are too weak to make me want to change to compete.
That situation can always change.

Agreed.

Oh and on a side note, one of the biggest differences between the scene and the other creative coding worlds is attitude/criticism.
We in the scene have always been harshly critical of others work. Its always been a rivalry, way before pouet existed. In other scenes there's generally only a like button - negative comments and open critique is rare, everything is "cool".
On one hand I value our tough environment, it pushes us to be better. On the other hand I can see why those from other scenes looking in from the outside dont want to be on the receiving end of it :)

I say the best thing we can do is make WebGL demos that makes Smash want to complete. Then we all win.

Totally agree with you Smash. It's an excellent way to progress. However the topic and spectrum of criticism is narrowed by the homogeneity in our midst. I believe we don't argue enough about content for instance (whereas tech is discussed about)

Still searching for some kind of definition what "good demos" means?

Art is something you learn, not an instinct. Many of you have done this for 10-20 years and your taste and expectations have evolved. Is Catzilla with 2 dozen ppl involved seriously the desired "next gen" of demos?

Or is it more like that a good demo gives you some "Aha", "Wow!", "I didn't see (think of) it like that before" effect, that gives you something that lasts beyond it's runtime? (This could be anything, a painting, music or code - even a poem)

I can't help but think that what both Gloom and Smash is saying is so obviously true that they shouldn't have to spend this amount of calories repeating themselves. The length of this thread suggests otherwise.. Or maybe it is true what they say about pouet and trolls?

Kusma said it in the most effective way: no greets, no demo. :)

(not sure if he was kidding or not, but in a sense he is dead on.)

a change to WebGL is unlikely to happen for sceners. it's not only about "i want to see a good demo first", there's more.

from a realtime 3D developer standpoint (and that's what many sceners are in their real lifes), WebGL technology is almost 10 years obsolete. in a time of _real_ shaders, multiple render targets (deferred!), tessellation, compute, ... going back to make demos like in 2004 with shaders 2.0 is not really that attractive. i don't see Smash playing with alpha blending and variance shadow maps yet again, for example. why would he do what he already did 10 years ago.

and while it's true that but not all sceners love learning and abusing the new technologies (mostly the PC coders) but some love sticking to old technology and hammering it to exhaustion till eternity (amiga coers!), the thing is that WebGL is not old or retro enough to be charming enough developing for, nor up to date enough. instead, WebGL lays right in the middle, in a grey zone where things feel "obsolete and boring".

of course, the benefit of the Web as a distribution platform is huge, and perhaps things will change for sceners when we see a cool WebGL demo, as Smash said. but "cool" not as in "cool, look it's pretty good and beautiful and it's web!", but as in "fuck, how did they do that?".

of there isn't a "how did they do that" when you watch a demo, sceners won't really care. a sceneres process is "ohh, i think i know how they did it. i can perhaps do better, let's try!". if they see a demo and they say "oh sure, the old shadowmaps. so what", there's no challenge.

that being said, i'm a close follower of the WebGL world, and I do have seen some pretty "whooo" tech demos, which were technically cool (for scener standars), but where not in "demo" format. i have seen many demoscene-like demos but they are not made by 3D people, so they are cute but technically weak. so it's a matter of time somebody does both things at the same time and evangelizes us. i think WebGL will eventually penetrate in the scene.

would be nice to see webgl grow out of beta

...and to have OpenGL ES 3.0 level functionality...

and to have it working outside chrome

actually, the best platform that i have found for WebGL shaders is not Chrome, but Firefox ^^

iq: I concur on that. Chrome has actually grown _less_ WebGL stable over the last year. :/

not to mention compatibility issues where stuff works in chrome and not FF or vice versa, plus it's shitfuck slow and bloated as hell to watch a 2004ish demo in a browser running at 1/3 the framerate as it would have, had it been a regular GL .exe :P