pouët.net

i do not have numbers but it feels like the amount of comments declined constantly over the last couple of years (as ps already mentioned). priorities change. i am also not sure how far creative input goes within a community in general. that might have been different in the past though. but if you only listen to hip hop you miss math rock ;)

Anyone knows how active things at csdb are?

Again regarding comments: I try (sometimes failing) not to slap a negative comment in there (except old stuff). Why? It does not help anyone. Sure that takes away the competition factor in some way to try harder but i guess many if not most are passed that point to proof something while still being in the game for the fun of it. All getting old and soft maybe :D


Might be the case. Not hard to run into. Have a good tea :)

yes, Pouet was cool 15 years ago when most of the sceners at least were a MAU!

The roots of the demo scene are 80s/90s teenagers, whose only chance to see anything resembling video on their beloved computers was to run a demo. Once you remove the novelty of seeing videos on computers, and indeed the novelty of computers altogether, what is it that makes running an executable to see video encoded in an funny way so essential? Real-time rendered graphics? I don't think anyone has found a compelling way to show off the real-time nature of demos, and games have been doing real-time rendering better for decades anyway. Therefore I don't find it strange that even people with Windows computers capable of running Windows demos prefer to watch them on Youtube. It's just more convenient.

hugs to pixtur, it's that time of the year again for a lot of people.

Pouet indeed won't attract a lot of newcomers because of the aforementioned "single screenshot" and the overall oldschool aspect of the design making it look like… well… an old web community? (and no dig at what the pouet team has been doing in the past decade, trying to hold it all together, kudos on that)

I see how musicians communicate "nowadays" on social media: short videos of their snippets and WIP, well presented, execution is flawless (you can rerecord afterall), it's all about the moment as well, share your bedroom sort of attitude, show your 10k debt-oriented rig, content flooding.

I'm not saying the scene should do the same, just what the current offer and demand is.

Now don't tell me "kiddos" don't like oldschool stuff or just creating stuff, have you seen the number of 20'something into chiptune, sharing their LSDJ (or m8 tracker) screens? Have you seen the number of musos showing their renoise screen for their new indie game project?
And there's a lot of people dreaming about indie games.

There's probably something more attractive about doing what they do compared to doing stuff for the scene.

p.s: I met that young (2x younger than me eh) texan guy at my local pub, he knew of shadertoy but never heard of the scene, funny how things work.

heh, i understand...

Just that in this way we end up watching on smooth capture video without check out the size of the demo, code optimization ... Yes, it may not work at all, or be buggy. But everyone will be applauded just by watching youtube.



Disagree

Pouet is still the (only) place I use to check new releases. I'm really glad Gargaj and the others keep it running, thanks for that guys.

Each prod has a screenshot, a download link, a Youtube link and comments, which is enough for my needs.

I sometimes take a break from work to visit Pouet to find a new Amstrad CPC, Amiga or ST demo. I click the Youtube link, get my 5 minutes of demoscene dose, leave a comment and I'm happy.

I'm old, that's probably why I don't need more than that.

We've been bamboozled into making demo content for the scene but in the end, it was all for keops!

Kaneel :D

<3 but I'm sending you an invoice!

Not dead at all, and Pouet is very good. The thumbs concept is great, you can't vote without a comment. Compare that to the csdb 10 points system (0-7 crap, 8-9 don't you love me anymore? 10-12 good). You have all links handy, download, video, you have commenting, you have discussion, the site works without Javascript. What else is needed? Demozoo doesn't spur writing reviews in the same way, but it has its merits for archival purposes. It would be nice if people would write more reviews here instead of "great as always, as expected from ..., instathumb" =)

The number of people who care enough about the technicalities to actually run the productions is a subset of the already small and dwindling demo scene audience. One can argue about losing the soul/essense of demo making, but there's also a question about relevance if one wants more than a middle-aged double digit audience.

absence, come on, relevance. What's the relevance of music, sculptures, color perception. People are doing this because they have to do this. For some people its value lies not even in the final product, but in the making itself.

I don't believe that saying the scene is not relevant enough deny you the right to create and make one. It's a good thing to know where you stand and say "fuck being relevant"

This. Thx Keops.
Apart from that is pouet the main info and drama source, kinda the last bbs.

Thanks to the pouet team for all the work during allbtjese years.

First BBS post here ;)

This is an interesting point, because as someone relatively new to this game, I've definitely found myself posting comments that are short, pithy, and often dispassionate. On reflection, I guess this was just an attempt to align with the "commenting culture" here, but it's also a bit silly, because I absolutely love demos and have a strong emotional connection to those that I particularly like. So my dispassionate responses have a self-consciously dishonest air to them, when I actually think about it.

Maybe I should try writing something a bit more engaged as a comment, to reflect times that a release feels more engaging. It would be interesting to see if it sticks out like a sore thumb. But at least the makers would then know that I give a shit.

Threads like this, taking the temperature of the scene, are unique to Pouet. I can't see this sort of discussion happening elsewhere.

The issue of short pithy 'undescriptive' comments on prods may be partially due to the available method of text entry. How many of us are using suboptimal phone based minature text entry which my fat sausage fingers struggle with, as opposed to proper full sized keyboards?

Also what Keops said!

There isn't much constructive feedback. Thumbs are pretty much entirely meaningless, and comments don't offer much more. If I made complete crap, I already know it before entering. And if I made something that I find interesting myself, it's unlikely that anyone knows what it was about. Pouet feedback cannot be the reason for making something, IMO. Maybe it is for some people.

@yzi you listen to comment? Like, you make something and you're proud to make something and someone say: omfg this is crap… you listen to that? Even if it were constructive feedback, I mean… you need it?

Man, if I had to stop at pouet's people feedback… I'd be a lamer.

I tried my best to say it clearly, but I failed. But it's ok, I don't need you to understand.

lol

exactly, no need to be butthurt.

@yzi thumb up, keep going, love it! yey scene

I'm working on a browser extension to enhance Pouet by showing production lists as a grid of videos like YouTube, complete with five second mouseover previews. When viewing the production page itself, it replaces the screenshot with a larger video, which when clicked redirects to YouTube (this functionality I have partially working now).

I've already generated around 20,000 preview videos and uploaded them to CloudFlare - here's an example:
https://pub-2f463dc538924541aa4c21dfce0027c8.r2.dev/tactical%20battle%20loop%20-%20Fairlight%20[7mEJgG9FR5w].preview.mp4

The previews are generated when a YouTube link is present on the production page (Pouet data dump -> JSON -> grep Youtube IDs -> yt-dlp -> ffmpeg -> s3 put to CloudFlare R2) . I've still got to write the script to add new video thumbnails.

I did float the idea with Pouet admins but rightly they said it would add another administrative burden and you could anticipate someone not liking it.

If anyone wants a chat with me about it feel free to DM me on Discord.

(I'll share all this with Demozoo of course and could make an API or collab with anyone interested).

Well, at least the quick comments with thumbs up help to generate a reasonable "top of the month" list which is convenient to quickly check through if you otherwise don't spend much time browsing this site. That's how it works, right?