Maximum file size for demo (esp. @Assembly)
category: general [glöplog]
Quote:
If "anything goes", and there are no more "borders" - then nobody knows anymore what the demoscene differentiates from other artsy fartsy stuff.
Oh the horror, having to make sure productions are actually interesting to watch!
Navis: so intro making is kart racing? ;)
I love and respect 64ks, but its a different story
The idea that big demos take more time than small ones is flawed anyway. Do you think you can just download blender, make a 100 polygon model and call it done? No, you usually start by writing your own tools :)
Navis: ok, but I wonder, if you really care about artistic value and creating something "legendary", why submit it as a competing entry?
Quote:
[...]But what sense does it make to do that if you're already comfortable with another one that does the same thing; [...]
Another point that seemed to get brought up here a lot is that most people don't need the extra size (for artistic purposes). This is of course true, but are we really going to limit some people's creative and technical possibilities at the expense of some weird democratic majority rule? Similarly to the previous point this is just an example of actively preventing some kinds of demos to be made categorically.[...]
That´s bullshit: We´re not talking about 20 or 30 MB which actually affects quality as well as tools but about several hundred MB and above - even unity releases hardly need that much space.
Quote:
No, wild compos are not equal and you know this. They're almost universally held at worse time slots and don't attract as many viewers and attention as the main demo compos.[...]
Outstanding releases will be memorized and reshown anyway. And it often happened that a compo was shifted to a prime timetable spot if there was a good reason for it. Your argument is invalid.
Quote:
All it says is that your value system doesn't think demos going over some arbitrary size are allowed to be presented alongside the others. It's just an indirect insult towards the creators that might very well discourage them not to make the demo in the first place.
The other way round: Ignoring max size at all is an indirect insult towards any scener who does care.
Or let´s just drop the whole "realtime" thing, nowadays demos are mostly played on YT anyway...
@tomkh: content size doesn´t relate that directly to time spent, both optimizing content for best size/quality ratio as well as improving/extending content consumes time. And at least some minimum effort should be expected for both.
I gave a practical example of the kind of data that would require 100mbs+ that has not been used, yet, in a demo: volumetric capturing. If we stick to the 20mb (or 64) limit then the possibility of its use is gone. Why? I would have thought that this is a once in a while production anyway.
Quote:
And it often happened that a compo was shifted to a prime timetable spot if there was a good reason for it. Your argument is invalid.
Make wild compos great again!
OK, that's just getting ridiculous.
Is there really a problem or we are making it?
Some parties have size limit, some don't (like revision).
Isn't it kind of rational to simply release your demo during a party that does not impose any restriction?
Is there really a problem or we are making it?
Some parties have size limit, some don't (like revision).
Isn't it kind of rational to simply release your demo during a party that does not impose any restriction?
From my point of view it is an integral part and the real attraction of the demoscene, so to speak the characteristic and at the same time criterion of demoscene, the exhaustion of the limits of the respective hardware. I think it is logical to think that there are limits. If the hardware no longer sets any limits, as is increasingly the case in the area of PC demos, then such limits would have to be artificially set, e. g. by specifying which libraries may be used or, in other words, how large and with which runtime a demo may be. Otherwise, a "demo" is no longer different from any other animation, which has existed before, and for what there are Wild Compos. And to my opinion, the another essential feature of the exhaustion of hardware is that real-time computations in demos have to be the focal point, otherwise it is just a more or less hardware-independent animation. This is certainly also attractive and demanding - but I associate it with a homework for an art school rather than a release for the demoscene.
TheMechanist: to be fair, real-time is an artificial restriction you are looking for.
Actually, I am not against the idea of making real-time demos without size limit. That would be indeed patronising (without even having a patron status;P).
he thing is - I guess some party organizers might impose size-limit for whatever reason (to limit ue3 entries for example). But so what? You just release on Revision and Assembly organizers will realize that Revision has better quality productions and maybe change the rules. Anyway, sorry for going into this discussion. It's not really my problem.
Actually, I am not against the idea of making real-time demos without size limit. That would be indeed patronising (without even having a patron status;P).
he thing is - I guess some party organizers might impose size-limit for whatever reason (to limit ue3 entries for example). But so what? You just release on Revision and Assembly organizers will realize that Revision has better quality productions and maybe change the rules. Anyway, sorry for going into this discussion. It's not really my problem.
Quote:
That´s bullshit: We´re not talking about 20 or 30 MB which actually affects quality as well as tools but about several hundred MB and above - even unity releases hardly need that much space.
There were a some posts earlier that lamented this. Additionally people who actually have a need for several hundreds of megabytes of data have voiced their concern. There is a legitimate issue here that's affecting productivity and creativity for some people. This is a practical concern of having the scene stay interesting and creative, as opposed to stagnate due to some ideological bullshit.
Quote:
Outstanding releases will be memorized and reshown anyway. And it often happened that a compo was shifted to a prime timetable spot if there was a good reason for it. Your argument is invalid.
Not at Assembly, and often the wild compo is at a relatively inconvenient time so that it could be reasonably bumped up all the way to be the main event. But that's beside the point anyway. Really what I'm getting at is that these are demos just as much as anything else and they deserve to be shown along with the rest, in the main demo compo. I'm not going to make a PC demo so that it can be shown among miscellaneous calculator productions. This is a disrespectful and harmful passive aggressiveness. It's not mandatory to like such demos, but fucking let people release them, in their rightful compos.
Quote:
The other way round: Ignoring max size at all is an indirect insult towards any scener who does care.
The juxtaposition isn't person who cares vs. person who doesn't. This is person who wants to make a demo vs. person who complains on pouet. You're not gonna come out as a winner in the comparison.
Quote:
Or let´s just drop the whole "realtime" thing, nowadays demos are mostly played on YT anyway...
(Not really part of the topic but fine by me. I'm not particularly interested in the realtime aspect anyway, I just like to make visuals by coding.)
--
Quote:
From my point of view it is an integral part and the real attraction of the demoscene, so to speak the characteristic and at the same time criterion of demoscene, the exhaustion of the limits of the respective hardware. I think it is logical to think that there are limits. If the hardware no longer sets any limits, as is increasingly the case in the area of PC demos, then such limits would have to be artificially set, e. g. by specifying which libraries may be used or, in other words, how large and with which runtime a demo may be. Otherwise, a "demo" is no longer different from any other animation, which has existed before, and for what there are Wild Compos. And to my opinion, the another essential feature of the exhaustion of hardware is that real-time computations in demos have to be the focal point, otherwise it is just a more or less hardware-independent animation. This is certainly also attractive and demanding - but I associate it with a homework for an art school rather than a release for the demoscene.
Imposing limits on your medium does feed creativity, this is undeniable. This is why I like making 4k intros, and I'm sure in large part why some people in the scene in general work with restricted platforms and categories. But this absolutely shouldn't be imposed on everyone. Making a full fledged PC demo in the current ecosystem is a daunting task, and frankly such a demo that actually uses the current capabilities to the maximum effect is not even just "rare" in the scene, it's out of scope for the scene in general. Not to mention actually displaying and doing something interesting with a huge data set in realtime is a technical challenge of its own. Point is that it's fucking hard to make a genuinely impressive PC demo, much less trivial than just making an animation.
Besides, say 256 MB vs. 1 GB (or unlimited) doesn't really limit your creativity in the sense you're talking about. It's a limitation for the kind of data you can use (for more info refer to Navis' earlier posts in this thread). You can't impose this arbitrary limitation to work around a practical issue by "creativity". In other words this is a moot point.
(Also a good chunk of oldskool platform visuals run off of precalc data and LUTs anyway so I'm questioning what kind of demos are animations here exactly...)
Quote:
Quote:
If "anything goes", and there are no more "borders" - then nobody knows anymore what the demoscene differentiates from other artsy fartsy stuff.
Oh the horror, having to make sure productions are actually interesting to watch!
absence: yeah right, using 3GB content automatically makes things "interesting". And there are 0 interesting demos released up till now. They are all crap.
Of course you personally have done tons of amazing productions and know how to do stuff the right way and we don't.
I can relate to Navis' argument about the risk of negative connotations regarding file-size displays. When we arrived at RKLE this year, we heard the rumours that most other Amiga releases were OCS or vanilly AGA. I immediately thought that this would affect our chances when competing with a bigger AGA production. And so it came. The other productions were all one disk or less, ranging from 42 (!) kb to 880 kb. Our demo was 15 MB uncompressed, or 9.5 MB compressed.
This might or might not have influenced the voting habbits in this compo - we will never know. We are also perfectly fine with the 2nd place and love the winning release! In fact we stopped caring about winning the compo many years ago and care much more about delivering something of the quality and style that we like to do and see for ourselves. And then release it in a compo for the thrill of being part of it :)
When displaying file-sizes it should be communicated of and how that will be done. I would personally vote for simply showing the size of the compressed archive ("zipped/lha'ed/lzh'ed/whatever for ALL files (including readmes etc.)", as Revision puts it), so that we could continue to focus on demo-content rather than file-size reduction when the deadline approaches.
This might or might not have influenced the voting habbits in this compo - we will never know. We are also perfectly fine with the 2nd place and love the winning release! In fact we stopped caring about winning the compo many years ago and care much more about delivering something of the quality and style that we like to do and see for ourselves. And then release it in a compo for the thrill of being part of it :)
When displaying file-sizes it should be communicated of and how that will be done. I would personally vote for simply showing the size of the compressed archive ("zipped/lha'ed/lzh'ed/whatever for ALL files (including readmes etc.)", as Revision puts it), so that we could continue to focus on demo-content rather than file-size reduction when the deadline approaches.
His demo was bigger than mine
I felt sad
Lets have rules so that he can't compete
Anthem and a flag
I felt sad
Lets have rules so that he can't compete
Anthem and a flag
Quote:
Also a good chunk of oldskool platform visuals run off of precalc data and LUTs anyway so I'm questioning what kind of demos are animations here exactly...
And speaking of oldskool platforms, why is it ok to use up several disks on a 8bit/16bit platform, but somehow using up one damn CD on the PC is a big no-no? :)
Can we straight convert old measurements? In 1995 we made a 8 mb demo and I had 210 MB HD space in my 486.
Now I have 6 TB HD space in my PC, so that means I can submit a 256 GB demo? :D
Now I have 6 TB HD space in my PC, so that means I can submit a 256 GB demo? :D
I actually kinda agree with Tomkh, let parties decide for themselves what they want to do and as Oasiz and Rimina said, they'll discuss it for Assembly, so Navis' concern will be addressed one way or another.
Being a bit more conservative, the C64 has 64k of memory and two disksides take around 320k, roughly 5x the amount of ram. My old laptop has 2GB of ram, so a 10GB demo should be ok? :D
Quote:
My old laptop has 2GB of ram, so a 10GB demo should be ok?
It should. But will you feel persecuted when the organizers show the size on the compo slide?
Quote:
But will you feel persecuted when the organizers show the size on the compo slide?
Nope, because my tunnels and twisters will totes be worth it
Tunnels *and* twisters? Are you sure 10 GB is enough? :O
Quote:
I actually kinda agree with Tomkh, let parties decide for themselves what they want to do and as Oasiz and Rimina said, they'll discuss it for Assembly, so Navis' concern will be addressed one way or another.
I'm pretty sure parties are gonna decide from themselves no matter what the royal pouet court rules.
who gives a hoot about assembly anyway, demobit will allow 512MB demos!!! ;)
