UE4 engine vs. rendering quality of demos
category: general [glöplog]
AKA > DON'T BE A DICK.
Yes, don't intentionally try to be cute and obfuscate the credit so that apologists can later claim "well there's this very obvious T. Sweeney credit, so what's the big deal" :)
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If somebody took a Casio demotrack...
https://soundcloud.com/wurstgetrank/quest-for-coin-credits-music
original is better though :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnDiX6i1Ecc
baller track.
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original is better though :P
Lies!
Seems like you can do some nice looking realtime "demos" with Unity3D as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44M7JsKqwow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44M7JsKqwow
YouTube isn't realtime.
Well, supposedly it was shown running realtime at GDC on a GTX980.
not enough horses for a unity "demo".
At a recent demobeer an oldskool AGA/030 scener and I talked about things like this and how a 10MB limit would pretty much bring it all back to what we care about. Even with a simple 3 minute wav weighing in at 15MB, I couldn't help but to agree with him. I pretty much said as much about Photon last year, grr :)
photon: sure, looking forward to your version of flt-photon in 10MB. how about next weekend? it's only 10MB after all, not 74MB!
(and we care about making demos. not squeezing demos into 10MB per se, maybe some do. not stopping you. but i don't care!)
holy shit, I spammed the oneliner with the same videos, I guess you saw them too, NVM
I dislike ubity and ue for being toys made to trade and create assets for them.
They sure are greeat simple toys for creative newcomers. They bring great fresh artistic ideas.
But if You learned programming in basic or amos, these toys are just unfulfilling, as You Can better code something that creates assets in your own editor from subsets, or You make procedural content.
I make fractals for raymarching. Not unity assets.
Coding in f# beats boo any time. Though we van all agree that lua is aweaome.
They sure are greeat simple toys for creative newcomers. They bring great fresh artistic ideas.
But if You learned programming in basic or amos, these toys are just unfulfilling, as You Can better code something that creates assets in your own editor from subsets, or You make procedural content.
I make fractals for raymarching. Not unity assets.
Coding in f# beats boo any time. Though we van all agree that lua is aweaome.
The Unity guys released the binaries for their "Adam" demo now:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/11/01/adam-demo-executable-and-assets-released/
Nice tech, but *damn* 6GB!? I guess high quality resources really do eat space like crazy.
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/11/01/adam-demo-executable-and-assets-released/
Nice tech, but *damn* 6GB!? I guess high quality resources really do eat space like crazy.
Back in the day, you couldn't use engines, because they didn't exist. When they started existing they tended to be limited to creating the same demo over and over again (RSI DemoMaker?). Nobody used them seriously.
Demo making was about pushing the limits of the hardware, and typically you didn't care about disk space when doing so. "Odyssey" by Alcatraz has already been mentioned. It told a movie-like story on a home computer - something amazing for the time.
Nowadays you can easily fit a decent quality movie clip in the same space as many demos require. Demo making as a way of achieving visuals on a computer seems rather silly when you can just upload a video to YouTube showing the same thing, and more people will be able to view it. No, making demos has to be about something else nowadays. The physical restrictions are long gone, so we have to invent artificial ones - demos can't be bigger than 4 KiB, 64 KiB, 10 MiB...
Meanwhile the audience is dwindling. Back in the day you would pop in a disk with "State of the Art" and your friends would go "Woah!! I didn't know that was possible on a computer!". Nowadays if you show them the latest Revision compo winner they'll just go, "Looks ok I guess, I've seen prettier stuff on YouTube", and then you'll have to try and explain what's cool to them and well, if you have to explain it then it's really not that cool is it?
What's the point with making hyper realistic paintings in the era of the camera? Very little, yet still people are doing it. It's more of a niche thing nowadays though. Just like demos. So if you think it's cool that a demo looks like a decent CG reel except it's hand coded then that's fine and that's your prerogative, and then you can become upset if someone is claiming to have hand painted a hyper realistic drawing and it turns out they just took a photo.
The photo is still a legit way of achieving a similar looking result though, and the camera won't go away just because we wish it.
Demo making was about pushing the limits of the hardware, and typically you didn't care about disk space when doing so. "Odyssey" by Alcatraz has already been mentioned. It told a movie-like story on a home computer - something amazing for the time.
Nowadays you can easily fit a decent quality movie clip in the same space as many demos require. Demo making as a way of achieving visuals on a computer seems rather silly when you can just upload a video to YouTube showing the same thing, and more people will be able to view it. No, making demos has to be about something else nowadays. The physical restrictions are long gone, so we have to invent artificial ones - demos can't be bigger than 4 KiB, 64 KiB, 10 MiB...
Meanwhile the audience is dwindling. Back in the day you would pop in a disk with "State of the Art" and your friends would go "Woah!! I didn't know that was possible on a computer!". Nowadays if you show them the latest Revision compo winner they'll just go, "Looks ok I guess, I've seen prettier stuff on YouTube", and then you'll have to try and explain what's cool to them and well, if you have to explain it then it's really not that cool is it?
What's the point with making hyper realistic paintings in the era of the camera? Very little, yet still people are doing it. It's more of a niche thing nowadays though. Just like demos. So if you think it's cool that a demo looks like a decent CG reel except it's hand coded then that's fine and that's your prerogative, and then you can become upset if someone is claiming to have hand painted a hyper realistic drawing and it turns out they just took a photo.
The photo is still a legit way of achieving a similar looking result though, and the camera won't go away just because we wish it.
Music in the demoscene already went through that. Back in the mid-90s, all the prods used various module formats. Now it's mostly streaming like mp3 or vorbis, except in size restricted compos, and nobody even questions it. For some reason parts of the scene make a big fuss about watching demos on Youtube because it's not real-time, while the music in those demos hasn't been real-time for more than a decade.
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Music in the demoscene already went through that. Back in the mid-90s, all the prods used various module formats. Now it's mostly streaming like mp3 or vorbis, except in size restricted compos, and nobody even questions it. For some reason parts of the scene make a big fuss about watching demos on Youtube because it's not real-time, while the music in those demos hasn't been real-time for more than a decade.
What is your opinion on 2D graphics (aka pixel graphics) in demos?
absense: Even on C=64 people used Trackers already...music made with this got exported with own interrupt-replayer...all you had to do in your code was calling it. That was even easier than on Amiga lateron, where you had to put the whole Protracker-replayer-code inside your own code. (Mine was altered a lot btw, just had to add some nifty extras in, hehe!)
Not every coder wants to code an own synth or tracker first to be able to release his graphics-effects. The most of us aren´t into music (codewise) i guess.
All of this "discussion" here is of no need in my eyes...the Demoscene is about the Fun in making Demos...no matter how they are achieved.
Of course my respect goes towards the coders doing it all on their own...and little respect goes to people putting "code by XYZ" into their demo while it is done with a GameEngine/Demomaker or alike. I simply consider this in my votes! As long as it´s clearly stated that sth 3rd Party was used i am totally ok with it. Upvoted almost all the Stuff made with UE/Unity so far! Just because the Demos were fun to watch! In a compo the Demo with the selfmade Engine will always get the better vote from me compared to sth made with a 3rd-Party-Engine.
Music/Graphics are a bit different...
...Musicians tend to use different tools, so even tracked music often ends up being replayed as mp3 in the end...i dont care, as some musicians even make music analog with real instruments...show me the tracker-replayer to play this in your demo...mp3 is the best way to go in this case.
...Graphicians tend to use different tools, they always came with different data-formats/headers/etc. aswell...to show a koala-picture you had to read out the header and make use of the data in the correct way, same goes for the .iff-format (Deluxe Paint) ...for this coders came up with converters to have the data as raw images, still having to hack in the colors yourself in case of Amiga-Copperlists f.e.
Having music as mp3 is the same, just converting your music to some usable format!
Coding was always the magic behind all Demos...now that Engines are used some of the magic is gone maybe...but all these Engines do is the same an ownmade engine does...just without having it done yourself, which is kinda lame as we all know...where´s the fun in that? But as said: i am totally ok with it, the final outcome is what counts nowadays that we all have that small amount of spareTime for making Demos at all.
The Optimus in me is strong today it seems, sorry for Wall of Text! :/
Not every coder wants to code an own synth or tracker first to be able to release his graphics-effects. The most of us aren´t into music (codewise) i guess.
All of this "discussion" here is of no need in my eyes...the Demoscene is about the Fun in making Demos...no matter how they are achieved.
Of course my respect goes towards the coders doing it all on their own...and little respect goes to people putting "code by XYZ" into their demo while it is done with a GameEngine/Demomaker or alike. I simply consider this in my votes! As long as it´s clearly stated that sth 3rd Party was used i am totally ok with it. Upvoted almost all the Stuff made with UE/Unity so far! Just because the Demos were fun to watch! In a compo the Demo with the selfmade Engine will always get the better vote from me compared to sth made with a 3rd-Party-Engine.
Music/Graphics are a bit different...
...Musicians tend to use different tools, so even tracked music often ends up being replayed as mp3 in the end...i dont care, as some musicians even make music analog with real instruments...show me the tracker-replayer to play this in your demo...mp3 is the best way to go in this case.
...Graphicians tend to use different tools, they always came with different data-formats/headers/etc. aswell...to show a koala-picture you had to read out the header and make use of the data in the correct way, same goes for the .iff-format (Deluxe Paint) ...for this coders came up with converters to have the data as raw images, still having to hack in the colors yourself in case of Amiga-Copperlists f.e.
Having music as mp3 is the same, just converting your music to some usable format!
Coding was always the magic behind all Demos...now that Engines are used some of the magic is gone maybe...but all these Engines do is the same an ownmade engine does...just without having it done yourself, which is kinda lame as we all know...where´s the fun in that? But as said: i am totally ok with it, the final outcome is what counts nowadays that we all have that small amount of spareTime for making Demos at all.
The Optimus in me is strong today it seems, sorry for Wall of Text! :/
What is your instrument? What is the instrument's natural expressivity? In size-unlimited demos, the "instruments" can be anything, and you can use game engines, recorded PCM music, video, anything. And where's the demo in that?
IMO, demos have to be limited and restricted. Size-limited or computing-power-limited. "Big" demos are the same as wild demos. Pointless.
IMO, demos have to be limited and restricted. Size-limited or computing-power-limited. "Big" demos are the same as wild demos. Pointless.
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What is your opinion on 2D graphics (aka pixel graphics) in demos?
Since 2D graphics aren't necessarily pixel graphics (except in the way that everything on the screen consists of pixels), I'm not sure what you mean.
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Not every coder wants to code an own synth or tracker first to be able to release his graphics-effects.
Not everyone wants to code a graphics engine to release their audio either, when they can just use Maya or something. Is it still a demo?
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i dont care, as some musicians even make music analog with real instruments...show me the tracker-replayer to play this in your demo...mp3 is the best way to go in this case.
Some artists make analogue graphics with real physical items. Show me a graphics engine that can do that. H.264 is the best way to go in this case. Is it still a demo?
Love,
The Devil's advocate
PS,
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the final outcome is what counts
Agreed!
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computing-power-limited
Sooo all computers then? :)
Not that I agree. I just like to use code as a means for visual expression. If it happens to run in realtime or be small in size is just a plus.
wtf. unreal4?
they look good. for screenshot building. if you ask them about animation they still don't deliver.
they look good. for screenshot building. if you ask them about animation they still don't deliver.
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if you ask them about animation they still don't deliver.
yeah, right, because all the demoscene productions are full of advanced animation systems that are much better than ue4. right.
Because everybody has that very simple toolchain to import correct bone animation and skinning information from major 3d packages. right.
Because demoscene's invention of procedural animation (sinus _all_ the polys!) is so much more advanced. right.
