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Is the demo scene dead or does it just smell that way?
category: general [glöplog]
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This was when parties were not exclusively about demos, though. I think that makes quite a difference.The biggest parties attracted thousands of attendants several times per year, and teenagers hauled bulky CRT monitors and Amigas all across Europe to visit them.
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This is a bit ironic, considering the theme of your own NDS demo :)
This is getting a bit off-topic, but I do want to address this: roughly 3 weeks before Revision, I figured out how a weird edge-case in the DS PPU worked, and wondered if a quick entry using that trick could be made. The thing is, the trick/edgecase does not give you any advantage to make "even more special" graphical effects (unlike, say, VIC-2 trickery, which is a somewhat analogous case here). So the only good way to present this at all (that I could think of) would be the side-by-side comparison. As I've already made clear before, it's never been my intention to denigrate melonDS (I've even contributed some ~4kLoC to it).
Anyway.
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I found your post to mostly be a list of grievances that aren't really the fault of "the scene"
Yes, it is true several of the factors aren't really something we as the scene can do much about. It's of course nice to see that some older sceners are donating some of their Amiga machines to the younger generations, but of course sadly that cannot scale up.
Though re: H0ffman's videos: they are of course very nice to have, but I expect there to still be an extra mental barrier for "get into the scene as a hobby and get into a new computer platform" compared to only the former. (Or, to put it more crudely, it's kind of ironic how most of the boing balls seen at Revision were in the PC demo compo.)
Meanwhile, with me also being active in Nintendo homebrew/hardware hacking scenes, I've noticed there's a sizeable crowd interested in the demoscene (you'd have the opportunity to meet many of them at Evoke, if it didn't conflict with Eurofurence), but I'm afraid not many of them will pick the Amiga (ok, except maybe the one guy who configured all his machines to use Topaz as the font used everywhere). Similarly, if there were a speedrunning community or something (who themselves produce highly technical knowledge) around the Amiga, and you had one or two sceners also interested in speedrunning being able to do some cross-pollination to get other speedrunners interested in demoscene stuff, I'm pretty sure you can get a fair amount of newcomers in. (But maybe there isn't much of an Amiga speedrunning/homebrew/... community among young people, because 10-15 years ago if you wanted to do that while young you'd mainly meet older amiga-persecution-complex type people who'd be less open to new things? This is pure conjecture on my end, though.)
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Looking through the sparse SNES and Genesis releases from the last few years
For Nintendo consoles specifically, off the top of my head, there's Molive and BinaryCounter on the SNES, the Marmot/SVatG/FCCCF on the Wii and Wii U (granted, the latter is hardly "retro" or oldschool); Marmot, Macau Exports and small64/n64brew on the Nintendo 64, CONFED on the original Gameboy; and AYCE and Otomata Labs pushing out prods for a whole breadth of platforms. As far as I know, the only "Steffest-like case" is Arleka of CONFED (and other groups), the others are younger people. Meanwhile, I can't think of many "new faces" in the Amiga scene.... (my first thought was Almagest, thanks to their 'atypical' demo at Revision 2019, but it turns out that group is also 30 years old by now). But hopefully someone can correct me on this!
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there really wasn't much point in having a home computer if you weren't into coding, graphics, music or swapping - they weren't appliances for watching Tiktok, if you catch my drift
I'd say that, if you wanted tiktok-like entertainment 30 to 40 years ago, you'd turn on the TV. Meanwhile, nowadays, TV watching has tanked, it's mainly an old person thing now, and most people get their entertainment through personal electronics (I'd loathe calling some of these things 'computers') instead of watching TV. So of course the "percentage of power users" back then was higher, simply because the total population of computer users was smaller, and those interested into the whole deal got a computer first.
.... meanwhile, while typing the above paragraph, someone in a Nintendo homebrew discord I also happen to be in (via the IRC bridge) shared a Tiktok video of Circumvent, with watermark and all. Maybe the kids are actually all right.
bifat> It's not entirely tongue-in-cheek.
I know it's not meant to just poke fun at something, and as I replied in that thread, I like the concept. What I mean is it's not to be taken as some gatekeeping attempt, but a way of challenging yourself if you're up for it. As for being an AI proponent in the context of tooling, "giving AI a try" is IMHO the opposite of holding dogmatic views on old-timey demomaking. So my position stands ;)
krill> This was when parties were not exclusively about demos, though.
Sure, but is, say, 2500 visitors at The Party 1992 just a measure of people copying games? I was a bit too young back then to visit, so it's a genuine question. My own experience is that "games leeching" was more of a way into the scene (at the very least to the point of enjoying demos as a pure consumer), precisely because it wasn't as niche back then as it is now. Of course, that changed some time around when the PC started to dominate (and introduced networked gaming and leeching) in the latter half of the 1990s, and we ended up with the LAN/demoparty split.
porocyon> Emulator Examination
To be clear, I was just trying to illustrate that when some old-timer makes an offhand remark about how "emulators suck" or "I always work on real hardware", it's not necessarily an attempt at gatekeeping or scaring away youngsters, but more of an observation. When I sometimes suggest that people should try and work on a real Amiga it's because I think it's a delightful platform, and I want as many as possible to share that experience. Of course, it may seem daunting to someone who have only ever used modern PCs but hey, it's optional. The important thing is to have fun.
porocyon> Consoles and the scene.
What I was trying to say is that if there is a decent-sized cohort of twenty-something console aficionados who are interested in the scene, there is ample opportunity for releasing console demos. The apparent scarcity of such demos leads me to believe that there are fewer young console coders interested in the scene than what's being suggested.
As for why old consoles are more popular than the Amiga, I can only speculate, but I'm not sure grumpy gatekeepers is that big of a reason. Photon, for example, has very strong views on what a demo should be like, but has also graciously spent an incredible amount of time on his Amiga coding series on Youtube.
One big factor is probably marketing and brand recognition. Sega still sort of exists, and Nintendo is very much alive with a meaningful chunk of the console market. They both pushed their Marios and Sonics really hard, and they're still a huge part of pop culture through these modern consoles, movie tie-ins, etc. The Amiga never had a specific game character mascot, for many various reasons, and Commodore went bust quite some time ago now. A lot of this pop culture and streaming content also seems very US-centric, and the Amiga was far more popular in Europe.
There's also an issue of approachability. Even simple emulated Amiga gaming has a steeper curve than consoles, because suddenly there's a game on three disks, or it doesn't work on an ECS chipset, or it's actually for AGA, or it requires a hard drive install to be enjoyable, and so on.
I can see how the Amiga can be a more cumbersome platform to get into, but I think that's mostly because it was a more complex, short-lived and less popular machine than consoles.
I know it's not meant to just poke fun at something, and as I replied in that thread, I like the concept. What I mean is it's not to be taken as some gatekeeping attempt, but a way of challenging yourself if you're up for it. As for being an AI proponent in the context of tooling, "giving AI a try" is IMHO the opposite of holding dogmatic views on old-timey demomaking. So my position stands ;)
krill> This was when parties were not exclusively about demos, though.
Sure, but is, say, 2500 visitors at The Party 1992 just a measure of people copying games? I was a bit too young back then to visit, so it's a genuine question. My own experience is that "games leeching" was more of a way into the scene (at the very least to the point of enjoying demos as a pure consumer), precisely because it wasn't as niche back then as it is now. Of course, that changed some time around when the PC started to dominate (and introduced networked gaming and leeching) in the latter half of the 1990s, and we ended up with the LAN/demoparty split.
porocyon> Emulator Examination
To be clear, I was just trying to illustrate that when some old-timer makes an offhand remark about how "emulators suck" or "I always work on real hardware", it's not necessarily an attempt at gatekeeping or scaring away youngsters, but more of an observation. When I sometimes suggest that people should try and work on a real Amiga it's because I think it's a delightful platform, and I want as many as possible to share that experience. Of course, it may seem daunting to someone who have only ever used modern PCs but hey, it's optional. The important thing is to have fun.
porocyon> Consoles and the scene.
What I was trying to say is that if there is a decent-sized cohort of twenty-something console aficionados who are interested in the scene, there is ample opportunity for releasing console demos. The apparent scarcity of such demos leads me to believe that there are fewer young console coders interested in the scene than what's being suggested.
As for why old consoles are more popular than the Amiga, I can only speculate, but I'm not sure grumpy gatekeepers is that big of a reason. Photon, for example, has very strong views on what a demo should be like, but has also graciously spent an incredible amount of time on his Amiga coding series on Youtube.
One big factor is probably marketing and brand recognition. Sega still sort of exists, and Nintendo is very much alive with a meaningful chunk of the console market. They both pushed their Marios and Sonics really hard, and they're still a huge part of pop culture through these modern consoles, movie tie-ins, etc. The Amiga never had a specific game character mascot, for many various reasons, and Commodore went bust quite some time ago now. A lot of this pop culture and streaming content also seems very US-centric, and the Amiga was far more popular in Europe.
There's also an issue of approachability. Even simple emulated Amiga gaming has a steeper curve than consoles, because suddenly there's a game on three disks, or it doesn't work on an ECS chipset, or it's actually for AGA, or it requires a hard drive install to be enjoyable, and so on.
I can see how the Amiga can be a more cumbersome platform to get into, but I think that's mostly because it was a more complex, short-lived and less popular machine than consoles.
porocyon said:
Hey, I immediately replied to your post and gave you pointers to modern Amiga coding, emulation and reversing resources:
Did you miss my reply?
Aira force has a pretty epic thread on EAB and so does Engine 9000.
Let me know what you think about these tools. I think they're pretty epic.
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Which is why I find it "funny" to see my post got basically ignored.
Hey, I immediately replied to your post and gave you pointers to modern Amiga coding, emulation and reversing resources:
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@porocyon and anyone else interested in tooling:
https://github.com/BartmanAbyss/vscode-amiga-debug
https://github.com/alpine9000/engine9000-public
https://howprice.itch.io/aira-force
^ These tools should be on your shortlist if you are interested in actual development on Amiga. They are very modern with tons of functionality and a breakneck development pace.
Did you miss my reply?
Aira force has a pretty epic thread on EAB and so does Engine 9000.
Let me know what you think about these tools. I think they're pretty epic.
...Thats a good question, Is the demoscene dead ? At least it has always evolved from "only" showing cracktros to demos, later on, music, ascii, ansii, pixelart was added. Also Art with "wild entry" devices were added.
Scene evolved over the years and included more and more digital artistic output. Maybe, the scene might move into other directions, less code focussed. It might survice as a mirror of that, what can created with computers and digital devices in general.
Will C-64 and Amiga stay ? on a longer term, it will mostly vanish with our generation. The question might be, what role might AI play in few years ? Will prompting become a regular competition and people will still accept this as art ? Hard to believe. On the other hands, people still painting and doing vernissages, going still to classic concerts. There is a good chance, that this electronic circus will stay somehow, maybe smaller, maybe combined with other kind of artistic stuff.
Scene evolved over the years and included more and more digital artistic output. Maybe, the scene might move into other directions, less code focussed. It might survice as a mirror of that, what can created with computers and digital devices in general.
Will C-64 and Amiga stay ? on a longer term, it will mostly vanish with our generation. The question might be, what role might AI play in few years ? Will prompting become a regular competition and people will still accept this as art ? Hard to believe. On the other hands, people still painting and doing vernissages, going still to classic concerts. There is a good chance, that this electronic circus will stay somehow, maybe smaller, maybe combined with other kind of artistic stuff.
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Maybe, the scene might move into other directions, less code focussed. it might survice as a mirror of that, what can created with computers and digital devices in general.
I must have dreamed the 2000s in some funny ways.
The demoscene is dead. So is the electric guitar.
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Did you miss my reply?
Oops yeah, I probably have, sorry.
Ah, youngling! :) Don't you know the scene died in 1991? 4 year lifespan.
And you must have missed every 4 years memos of it being dead again. :D
I guess every 4 years, new "tech" is offered to increase productivity and expand limits, and therefore reduce creativity, art and originality.
If the Demoscene is still about those things in 4 years, it will still be alive. And if you're creative and original and make art within those limits, others will care. Maybe not here, but here is not the Demoscene...
I think that's the answer.
And you must have missed every 4 years memos of it being dead again. :D
I guess every 4 years, new "tech" is offered to increase productivity and expand limits, and therefore reduce creativity, art and originality.
If the Demoscene is still about those things in 4 years, it will still be alive. And if you're creative and original and make art within those limits, others will care. Maybe not here, but here is not the Demoscene...
I think that's the answer.
