pouët.net

Hi,
I was under the impression that at some point in the past thr compo rules stopped setting a maximum compressed size for demos. A long time ago this used to be 16mb, but now I see it is 256mbs!

I am surprised- is this going to change for next year (it has been the same limit for at least 3 years) ? I sure hope so!

What are you up to Navis? :)

Code a good video player. Release it with an embedded video.

I agree that demos as such shouldn't have any explicit requirements about file size anymore. It would be nice for compo organizers if they'd show sizes of productions so people can then determine if, for example, 512MB is a good size for a demo that looks shitty from quality perspective.

Without wanting to give away too much, I can say that the extra space could be utilized by captured data that may be in, ehm, more than 2 dimensions. Why not..

vr demo incoming!

But in the end you have a linear non-interactive audiovisual experience. Look, it's a video, just needs a top noch PC, is 10 times as power hungry and twice as big filesizewise!

our forthcoming (via the oculus store) vr "demo" with captured data in more than 2 dimensions is a linear, interactive audiovisual experience - and took just under 500mb of data. so yes, that space can be utilised..

(and it's pretty cool, *insider-cough-brag*)

xTr1m: that's an old discussion. Video-like or not, demos are l'art pour l'art anyway.
You (and me) obviously prefer compact creations (<=64k), but let others have fun with what they find valuable.

We did a "private" 2 mins demo in VR last year with 30 gbytes of data (I kid you not) , and it was quite cool.

But I was not talking of VR but normal 2D classic stuff

I'm not sure what's fair. Maybe just permit 1GB (arbitrary number) and show file size before showing. But we all know that if the experience blows people away, they're sure as hell not going to care what that number was. The freedom of the demo category on PC has always been not having to care too much about (read: spend time on) getting certain data in place for your purposes. But obviously we can't have people entering entire transport streams embedded in a custom video player ;)

If a demo consumes 10x storage space I expect it to be at least 10x better as well... Otherwise release it in the wild compo, that´s what it is intended for.

I recall having this discussion few years back, and I believe the last bumping on the size was done by me few years back as it was very low back then.. I can already say that this hasn't been strictly enforced either :)

How I see this is that in "demo" category you should have all the tools to create your vision without compromise on a high-end system. I do agree that sensible sizes are still something that should be considered however by being less strict on the size you can already start to provide things like a non/less-lossy soundtrack, good quality textures / other assets, while still keeping a realistic, practical size for 2017.

I agree that showing the sizes could be something visible in the slides, It's a good idea!
A c64 demo might have two double sided floppies and that's going to be clearly visible during flip parts, PC has nothing like this to give it away.
However! I'm pretty sure that this duty would fall for compo orgas unfortunately, so it would be yet another detail that needs to taken in to account when people give you "mydemo_v4_finalfix_safe" at the last minute on a USB stick :)

I keep hearing about the video stream argument but even with relaxed limits, I've only really seen this abused once or twice during all the parties (probably around +30 by now) that I've been doing compo orga for, and even then it was pretty obvious, to us and any viewer. I think it's more of an issue with limited systems where you can gain huge benefits from streaming pre-chewed frames for a smooth animation loop or similar. These days you have enough power to do a pretty design heavy demo without groundbreaking code or resorting to videos/wild. If you're going for something code-heavy & groundbreaking, you're only really cheating yourself if you decide to pre-render everything.
Pre-selection & Jury also kinda exists for weeding out stuff like this. Video stream is probably the least of my worries due to this. (of course now that I said this, someone will start entering video entries just to prove a point ;) )

As for sizes, 256MB is practically nothing these days and you could even fit more on a CD, a format which is pretty much dead. There is no true physical format to limit to.

Personally I'd abolish sizes and include some practical upper cap and communicate them better during compos.

Most of us are getting drunk together in 2 weeks to hash out ASM details, if there are wishes regarding this then we can of course check those out!

I'd go for @superplek's suggestion then.
Also, if demos exceed 256mb, it would be nice to torrent them :p

Good answers. For me, it s also unheared of to risk to enter a demo compo with what is effectively a large "wild" video, as this would break some other rule and concept of realtime performance. It would be a good production spoiled in controversy (" oh what great demo - nah now I read on pouet it was all made in maya, what lamers").
To be clear, we are talking about art resources that cannot be made procedurally or compress further than x, although thats always a noble challenge. For the guys who will push 200mbytes+, they will do it for a good reason, taking a bet on how acceptable this will be and knowing the balances. It would probably affect a) very experimental productions b) resource hungry unity/unreal 3d world sagas or c) "the new black" with something fresh that pushes hardware from like fairlight. But, imho, no video playbacks.




Breakpoint has currently no limit , but other parties do (evoke and function, although still plentiful).

From a past perspective Demo's alway's had limitations to participate with in a compo... even in the old days..

An amiga demo could not last for more than 15 minutes as duration for example..
40k intro's became 64kb intro's
floppy executed demos became HD only
The size of games grew within time..
It's a normal evolution.. also for the PC demo's of today.. I send a msg to Abyss/FC with the url to this pouet discussion.. Perhaps he can shine a light on Assembly 2018 demo compo size rule :)

I can remember a demo with really amazing 3D on amiga that turned out to be a video. At that point it became a really good video player...

There have been some great examples on PC too, with sequences of images presented as an 'effect'. And in some really great demos, with a lot of great realtime stuff too.

Point being: if people want to mix high quality 60fps video with realtime stuff, and perhaps have some animated volumetric stuff that takes a ton of space but is cool as hell, why not? This isn't an intro where size counts.

Size limits for (modern) PC demos are obsolete. One could set them to 1 gig, but in a couple of years time that would have to be bumped to the next arbitrary limit again. Best just to get rid of them altogether.

Function has a 64MB limit and noone has even gone close to in the last 5 years.

Outline has no maximum size for pc demos, other than practical ones such as the size of the largest USB stick in the venue at partytime perhaps. IMHO, demo creators should enjoy maximum creative freedom also with regards to file sizes, because there's nothing intrinsically wrong with using lots of data in this category in this age of supercheap storage. Also, we consider our audience smart/drunk/mature/intelligent enough to decide for themselves how to adjust their votes to the (size of the) productions presented in the compo :)

I'd like to point out that the latest Holon demo is is 230MB unpacked, of which 104MB is the actual demo itself, and the rest is just fluff.

I get the argument that we have all the capacity in the world (sorta), but at the same time it's the 8k problem, where that extra added capacity is just used for being wasteful.

Hah - wonderful, that you still call it "Breakpoint" even though it's been "Revision" the past 7 years :D

Next year there will have been as many Revisions as there have been Breakpoints!

Gargaj: Idk, 230MB for a Holon demo is acceptable enough to keep it on my harddrive, apparently. I think I'd be disappointed if I was attending (f.e.) Function and didn't get the opportunity to see such a demo in the compo because it had been disqualified for not fitting at least 500 times on a 10eur USB stick. But that's just my 2c :)