pouët.net

Yes, and that's why I don't consider myself a scener. I'm just a guy who's been lurking online communities and writing effects on the side for 6 years.

Even though pouët is a good place to keep in touch with the community, I'm afraid I won't be part of it until I attend my first party and release my first prod :)

The reason why there is hardly any demoscene left at The Gathering is simple: When TG tried to attract sceners, significant parts of the demoscene saw this as an attack and acted accordingly. It wasn't TG that changed, it was the demoscene that did.

Isn't that a bit of a contradiction? Why would TG have to attract sceners if it hadn't already changed from its scene origins?

TG never was a pure demoparty. It was basically attracting a broad swath of youth related to computers, which included both the demoscene and people playing games right from the start.

just to share some personal experience: I'm no longer "young" (early 30s), never grew up with a c64/amiga, but as a kid in the '90's I did have DOS/windows (3.1 and up) pc's around and game consoles (SNES is my first love). When I discovered the demoscene in the early/mid '00's, I was introduced (via pouet) to C64, Amiga, etc. and fell in love with them in retrospect through that lens. I got my first C64 in 2009 or so, well after its mainstream relevance, but at an excellent time to get one for cheap in good working order. The latter can still be done today, the former, well, a good excuse to brush up on some basic electronics skills :) .

Anyways, this is all to say that, as others have said, I had a similar experience - coming in "late", falling in love anyways, and I'm still doing demos many years later, and I still have a feeling of wonder and awe at the depth that still remains to be explored. I'm very happy to see that others can still have this experience, and I'm looking forward to whatever you come up with in the future!

Also one more thing: In my time in the scene I feel like I've heard about a "golden age" in the late '80's/'90's, but I can also say with confidence that I feel I've witnessed at least two more time periods that from a certain perspective can also be seen as additional golden ages (as long as you ignore all the primarily gen-x "scene is dead" bullshit). So keep an eye out for opportunities and things people haven't explored yet (there are many!), don't be afraid to bring in modern cultural elements from outside the scene, and have fun - there's no shortage of opportunity left for all of these things!

yeah same, IMO this "the golden age" nonsense is just nostalgia old people and old people always everywhere tend to get nostalgic sometimes. i feel like it's ridiculous to tell young new sceners that they somehow missed the boat.

for most people "the golden age" was then they were old enough to do cool stuff and young enough to not have to worry about getting food on the table, kids to grow up right, house not to fall apart etc. it's got nothing to do with "the amiga was new" at all. there's new cool stuff all the time. people run DOOM on pregnancy tests. people made a minecraft clone run inside minecraft. there's swaths of people not even aware of the demoscene doing, effectively, demos inside the level editor of a game called Geometry Dash. the golden age is right now. enjoy!

"The scene is dead" has been said since literally the early 1990s. The scene in fact has phases. Every 2-5 years there's a noticeable paradigm shift due to change of technology, coming and going of persons, general cultural factors outside of the scene, and so on and forth. An old Amiga scener from 1987-90 would frown upon the PC demoscene around 1993-95. Then a PC scener from the same era would find the early 2000s unnervingly un-sceneish.

Remember when it was said that real coders shouldn't use 3D acceleration? When VESA modes were seen as an abomination? The first Windows demo at was shown out of compo at The Party 7, as a quirk. Demomakers were once super lame, but now we have Unity demos. And this is just the technology part of it.

Yes, the scene is dead. That's the whole point of it. We only realize how great something was when it's already over. That's why we remember the 1990s as a "golden age": because we have something to compare it to. But then, the 2000s was another "golden age", in many ways. It's not like we never had lows; I am convinced that we are currently in a valley. Still, we are here.

The true Golden Age of the Demoscene is yet to come.

as some wise people once said: teh futare si now

Well ferris, what you've said is truly inspiring. I've always felt like one of those kids who grew up in the wrong generation. Having wildly different interests hasn't been easy, since I've had pretty much no close people to share those interests with, but I must say that my interests have always been respected by my friends and classmates, and that I'm grateful for always having been respected as the "computer kid" in high school, not discriminated.

I'm happy that I keep grinding code to this day, and I'm also happy to see that people in this community accept young newcomers with enthusiasm; not prejudice and arrogance as I've seen in other related circles.

I do think that the demoscene is timeless and that there's really no excuse to not participate in it, regardless of age or anything else.

@ferris: well "the scene is dead" is mostly a second degree joke and a kind of catharsis for people who endured the bankrupt of Commodore in 1994 and had to move to PC.

but honestly I think all of us are loving all different era of the demoscene :D

And yes, I made a demo about it.

that's like um... debatable ;)

Personally, I vaguely remember communism, c64s in Pewex stores for rich pretentious kids, my dad hand-printing circuit boards with acid to make me a clone of zx-spectrum, playing with electric motors from a broken home-made cassette player, and the dream of having PC - am I nostalgic about it? not really.

Prejudice and arrogance was an integral part of the demoscene, but particularly the warez scene of old. You couldn't just walk up to an elite cracker team at a copyparty to pat them on the back and ask them how to do reset-cracking. Chances are, you wouldn't even be at that party. It's not like the scene was not friendly to newcomers, but one really had to earn their place. This is sort of still a thing, but way less important than 30 years ago.

Maybe that's because "reset-cracking" was considered kinda lame, and that "elite cracker team" would think you're trying bullshit them. =)

I must second that. When I was starting, I thought technical aspect of demos (or at least intros) is most important. For example, old Conspiracy and FR intros were ugly as hell, but everyone was amazed. And then somewhere in the middle of 2000s, everyone was all for "designer demos". And whenever a coder would do something cool on his own, everyone would comment: "get yourself a msx/gfx artist". And then, coder would just make a super basic node-graph tool (like poor man's Huodini) and a narcissitic artist would do some abomination with it, like a glitch, and the whole designer-scene would be drolling all over it. Also, their hypocrisy has no end, so now the same designers/artists are fully onboard to just use Unity/Unreal/Notch, cause f.. demoscene spirit. I think it's only fair, if now they should receive a comment "get yourself a coder".

Demos are rightfully expected to excel on all fronts, so it's just fair to call prods out on missing gfx/msx/design, or code. :)

I understand. Demoscene used to be coders’ playground exclusively. “The art of code”. I get it. But the final output of a demo is not code, the output is audio-visual. Not everyone is Cypher from the Matrix that can literally see in code. Also, there is no real function of a demo, it’s all about form. So, yes, of course graphic design became increasingly crucial element. If someone understands form, it’s the artists and designers.
I do understand where you’re coming from. For example, I always write displayers for my artwork. If I want to use a gfx mode I don’t know how to code, I ask a fellow coder to do it for me. This is the nominal way of the demoscene I think. I never use express tools that take image files as input and churn out executables. But that’s a strictly personal decision and I’d never expect it from everybody. I do it because I have my own intimate definition of demoscene spirit. And of “user friendliness” of computers that’s diametrically opposite to that of Steve Jobs. But I do see the hypocrisy you’re talking about. I even think perhaps some of the coders are dismissive of artists’ cries against prompt-to-art machines because of this perceived hypocrisy. But then again, all the “express” tools were made by none other that coders, so…

So the other day, I was participating in some gently demoscene introduction seminar for younger, uninitiated audience. And comments from the audience were really interesting. The perception was that demoscene is really cool oldschool sh*t, where, unlike in modern times, computer resources were really used efficiently - not just size of the executables, but also everything had to be optimized to the last CPU/GPU cycle. Moreover, everyone was convinced that demoscene was at the fore-front of discovering real-time rendering tricks back in the days and foundation.
One question/comment was: if those guys were so skilled back then, imagine what they could do today with modern hardware!
Unfortunately, I couldn't give any optimistic answer to this :/

Errata: gently -> gentle, remove "and foundation" ;P