pouët.net

I've always been greatly attracted to the demoscene, as one of my parents' friends would always delight me with assortments of early to mid 90's demos running on his (now and even then old) Pentium 100 machine; and even on his actual work computer (some DELL tower) he would show me recordings of other Amiga, C64 and Spectrum demos. It was an interesting experience for me as a child because my basic cognitive systems not only told me that what I was watching was cool as fuck, but also told me some demos seemed to degrade a lot in quality compared to the previous ones I had been shown. This was no fluke however, as I later learnt that of course some systems I had been shown thru demos preceded the Amiga and DOS PCs, and thus came equipped with hardware that demanded more human magic to get involved into the production of these demos, not hardware acceleration magic.

Later in life (when I was 12-13 years old) I really started to look into the culture or different sub-cultures of this form of art; how it originated, which countries seemed to take it more seriously, the evolution of parties, &c. I had to jump through some hoops and scour among piles of dead links and lost information but I did start downloading demos exactly from this site, one which I would end up forgetting years later and wouldn't stumble upon again till last year.

Anyway, my discovery of the scene and starting to download and watch demos run on emulation in my dad's computer is something I'll be forever grateful for, since it's what pushed me towards my first (and almost always failed) attempts at disassembly, reverse engineering, and programming.

I now stand atop the giant clock of our universe, which makes time tick for us all. Standing at age 18 myself, I think I've become sufficiently skilled in assembly programming for 68k and Z80 based computers and consoles thanks to my contact with the demoscene. Most people I've talked to online are much older than me, and that makes sense, since this story was part of their youth, not mine.

But I still cannot help but wonder if there are more people my age that love what this scene does and represents so much; be it in the technical, artistic, musical, storytelling or even historic aspect.

2 much text. shut up NOW

Here's a relevant article for you, published last February. It's in Finnish but you can read it with Google Translator etc. (assuming you're from elsewhere).
https://yle.fi/a/74-20141193

This resonates. I'm 27 now, but I started to become active in the scene 10 years ago when I was your age, and most sceners were already considerably older. I first fell in love with the PC 64Ks like Zoom 3, Insert No Coins and .fr-08, but then also discovered C64 demos and frankly watched them almost daily during recess on the early smartphone that had just become affordable in the early 2010s, but also at home on the Raspberry Pi. The Commodore 64 was definitely not a story from my youth, but I just made it mine anyway and sort of emulated it (literally and figuratively!) with my Raspberry Pi.

I feel kinda nostalgic for the era when most homes had actual computers instead of everyone using pocket touchscreen slabs and online big tech services for everything. It probably wasn't any better, but I remember the vibe, the aura of technological excitement that PCs used to have before everything got mobile-ized, appified and webified.

There are some young people in the scene - minebrandon, epoque, Team210, ScriptKidz come to mind.
Overall however I'd say the median age is well above 30, maybe even 40 years.

Depending on where you draw the line between scener and non-scener, that's quite generous. =)

Anyways, it warms my heart to see that some young folks still keep coming in. <3

As a fellow 18 year old, I'm in it for the complicated in depth lore.

from what i can tell at demoparties there are a definitely some, i guess most of them don't use pouet tho...

So fucking good. I thought I was a kind of rare breed lmfao

All my friends spend time playing Fortnite and GTA but nah fuck Fortnite I'd rather write 68k for Mega Drive and Amiga. Also scouring through the scene's lore is amazing.

I would like to attend some party some day, there's only one local party I know of (Euskal Encounter, formerly Euskal Amiga Party) and it's in my nearest city, so I might try cooking some little intro or something. It starts 20th of July though so I'd need to start now.

Yeah, me too. The excitement of Amiga coming etc. in those "dark times" before the internet we've come to know now.

Yes! 68000 king :D

I watched a few demos at quite early age and thought this stuff was interesting (but why were they not playable?), however I think the coolest thing was going to my first parties and finding a group of merry men. It's like having a dwarf and an elf and a mage and a barbarian going off to compete with their new magic demo in the great tournament in a far away country for the glory of Rank'Or.

What I'm trying to say is that I think that the real fun starts once you visit a party :)

This thread makes this old fart very happy

I was so taken by how much better even most of the crack intros looked and sounded compared to the actual game loading after it. And demos, man!
How did they do what, how was it done? I also wanted to make music with computers too, the sounds from SID were the first seriously better ones I heard.



I laughed way too hard to this! Meeting the group members you interacted via mail/phone/modem was an eye and mind opener the first time. Seeing the person behind the voice, connecting better, great times! Some of us also played CP2020, Rune Quest, Call of Cthulhu role-playing games together (emoji of your choice here).

That's part of what excites me about the history of the scene. The people who lived the golden age of this underground culture got the delightful taste that was early on line communication, and most of their discussions existed through de-centralized services such as BBSes and IRC... It might've not been delightful in download speeds, security and stability; but it was at least a free medium, unlike today. When corporations try to shove money making platforms down our throats, with the sole purpose of squeezing capital out of people, not connect them.

That's the reason I love places like pouët. Scene.org might seek funding because you need to run servers somehow, but they do so in a reasonable manner, without the intent of turning the user into a piggy bank. Or that's my opinion at least.

Oh man I love the 68000. Register memory architectures are just so dope, gives you so much freedom and flexibility, makes writing assembly comfortable. Everybody seems to wanna go back to load-store architectures with RISC nowadays... what are we doing here? Going back to 6502?

I also like writing for 386 chips a lot, but the IA-32 instruction set. Not the mess Intel and AMD got nowadays.

This is the way.



Actually, it starts on 24th July but better start your prod right now!

And if you want a 100% Amiga party experience, then you should also attend to Posadas Party.

By the way, I'm going to both parties this year. So I hope to meet you there. :]

I had to log in to reinforce what Ham is saying. In my truly sad opinion, Euskal has degraded at an exponential rate over the last 15 years, last five have been really painful. It's an "encounter", and not a "party", and it's for people like your friends, not you. Get a train and attend Posadas and you will get the real deal. Trust me, if you want to get deep into this, Posadas is going to be your best bet.

leaq maybe you are on Telegram?

I can tell, they don't even have rigorous info about the demo compo in the current edition's website. They just list a "digital arts" section and describe it in a few lines. I didn't know about posadas, sounds really cool, unfortunately I cannot afford to go down to Cordoba this year, let alone write even a tiny intro in 17 days. I like to write good code and get it as stripped down as possible, so I'm not the kind of guy who gets something working in just a weekend.

But heeey thanks for letting me know about this one. I'd love to go to the next edition, whenever it is.

PS: I have no Telegram, no Discord, nothing like that. I'm thinking about self hosting a website to upload some of my side projects, but that's it. I used to be on Discord but I deleted my account when I found out their plan to go public is finally on its tracks. If Discord wants to go to shit fully; they do what they must, but I don't wanna be part of it.

Don't worry if you can't make it to Posadas this year. Euskal is not entirely bad as a second option but be prepared to be surrounded by mostly gamers.

Anyway, If you visit Euskal and release some prod you will feel amazing. Although it's true that this party is a shadow of its former self, and most attendees don't even know what a demo is.

Anyway, you will meet a few sceners there (like some guys of Goblins) that use to attend every year.

Rest assured there will be demo and intro compos but probably they will publish the timetable, compos and prizes almost the same week the party starts (this is another sign of their lack of care about the demoscene or other creative compos).

With each passing year, Euskal has been devoured for the gamer hordes. The moment a demoparty becomes too big and try to attract sponsors and money, they make it in the likeness of the gamers. Something similar happens to The Gathering, but (interestingly) not so much to Assembly... so I guess there are ways to grow with the gamers while not crushing our scene but the case of Assembly is rare. I suppose it depends on the orgos.

A tip: I recommend you to bring there good ear protection if you expect to need partycoding time because the place is quite noisy.



Try scenecity. :]

Just wanna say hi, too. I've dragged my kids (now age 10 and 12) to a few demoparties and they loved it. Made a few demos (with Scratch), etc. No idea whether their enthusiasm will survive after they transition from the "dad is great" age to the "dad is stupid" age, but just want to add another data point that there's more kids out there who are mostly uninterested by how their peers just want to play Fortnite and not make stuff.

At this point I'm slowly getting convinced that the demoscene is going to survive just fine even if increasingly many OG sceners are calling it quits. Demos are just too damn fun, and so are demoparties.

Oh, we have a newcomer? Welcome, "kid"! Why yes, you missed out on an awesome technical revolution, but can't everybody be born at the right time. There's still plenty of cool to be found here (on the demoscene, which is not Pouet.) The old platforms are still working, but new ones have their charm too. You came just in the right time to still catch a glimpse of the golden era. Yet it indeed depends where you look.

hoo that's kind of great news for all of us, having young demomaker is great

Not a demomaker/scener yet. I just have a LOT of spare effects programmed along the years, hidden in the darkness of my hard drive. One day all of that experience, product of countless sleepless nights will come together into one thing I can share to make people smile.

By the way, I might be the only one in my friend group interested in writing code, and they're largely unimpressed by the graphics in most oldskool demos (anything with a lower resolution than 1080p looks ass to them), but they do like electronic music, and I have shared many demo modules with them. For instance, they still state that h0ffman's bgm for EON is probably the dopest track they've heard in their lives.

To be quite honest from the experiences at demoparties I had.

Pouet is the Scene's 4chan or Reddit. Or both combined. It really isn't the scene at all. The real scene is the community you share with others, with a common love. Like talking about demos over a morning BBQ on a highrise.