pouët.net

I thought some here might like to see these old demos running in real time again. I've tested on my desktop and mobile browsers, they work pretty well.

https://treylorswift.github.io/demoscene-recomp

The originals were made to run at 70hz which is kind of an unusual rate these days, so they look best if you can force your monitor to 70hz or 140hz or higher. Viewing at 60hz is ok but not great because it must consistently drop frames to maintain correct sync between graphics and sound.

There is an "AI Remaster" of Crystal Dream II which will run at whatever refresh rate and resolution you use, with some routines expanding to fill beyond the original 4:3 aspect ratio. This is obviously a reinterpretation that tries to stay true to the original while bringing a few modern aesthetic choices. You can hit the "o" key while it runs to toggle between the original and remastered version while it plays.

I have a similar "AI Remaster" in progress for Unreal and Second Reality but there is more tweaking to do before they are worth sharing. In the meantime there is a "Smooth City" option for Second Reality which lets you view the final city fly-through sequence at 70Hz rather than the original 35hz along with some other visual updates.

Cheers

i'll let my agent watch it as soon as I pretend to care!

Yeah, better invent stuff to run the old demos as faithfully as possible, 70 Hz, 4:3, original binaries, warts and all.

I watched it. Really liked it. No scene playback glitches here, unlike those ports that were discussed in the other thread.

"Smooth city" - is pretty funny. I’ve always wanted to see something like that. :)

The AI-remaster in CD2 looks pretty nice overall. Though that part is a bit more questionable, IMHO. Especially adding stars to the scene with the 3D Earth.

P.S. Can someone explain this to an old man - how the hell does this actually work? :) Is there some kind of library that emulates the timer, sound card, interrupts, VGA adapter, etc.? But unlike DOSBox, it’s all built right into the port itself?

I’m especially curious about all those VGA hardware tricks. How do they reproduce those? Do you basically have to emulate the entire video chip architecture? Or what the fuck is actually going on here? :)

Can we go back to interesting decomps yet?

@bitl I'm glad you enjoyed them - or some of them at least

Re: the AI Remaster and the stars I added to Vector World - I went back and forth on that choice. IMO the higher res perfect 3d texture mapping kind of hurts that scene because it cleans up all of the crunchy pixel aliasing in the original low res version. So the stars are there to create a greater sense of movement.

Anyway as far as how it works: it is 99.9% vibe coded with Claude, and what Claude built was more or less what you described: software that emulates the timer, sound card, interrupts, VGA adapter, CPU, OS, etc. All of those specifications are well documented which makes AI well equipped to reproduce them. The VGA architecture is not really that complicated. There was some effort that went into correcting visible tearing in the output, but that "effort" was just pointing AI at the problem, which it fixed after examining the program traces and correcting the VGA implementation.

The real complexity is in the demos themselves. What the programmers, artists, and musicians were able to conceive of and build 30+ years ago blew my mind and still does - they deserve all the credit!

I mean, of course I know it’s AI doing this. But it’s still pretty amazing that it’s already capable of things like this. :) Not that long ago, people were spending years busting their asses trying to get accurate DOS-machine emulation :)

I wonder if Claude could handle porting Show/Majic 12?

As much as the ascii gui might look cool, this whole thing depresses me.

what optimus said.

What NR4 said.

What depresses me most about this btw is that AI itself is already a giant regurgitation machine, and how is it getting used? Even more regurgitation. Another Second Reality port, another "look it's the 90s again but thoroughly corporate-washed this time".

I got into the scene in those very 90s because people did new and exciting stuff with computers, and now we neither get "new" nor "exciting", let alone "people do". Instead we get $SOMEONE who actually thinks anyone should give a fuck about how they ran $TIRED_NOSTALGIA_BAIT through $BUNCH_OF_MATH and "improved" it in the process.

Speaking of tired.

Exactly my feeling. This necromancy.. there's a nihilistic death drive behind this

So it's completely unrolling everything?
In a way a bit like Leonard's light speed player but for x86 code instead of MODs... :)

what kb said.

oh my god, at least waste tokens on fixing PC prods which don't work anymore

also fuck all of the now anti AI grifters who were into it before and have no shame

🫵 yes, you

For preserving things, AI is not bad i think but i share the thoughts from kb and further more, will this replace "us" by time ? Will people still craft things on their own or makes us this overhelming AI to an outdated species ?

AI might be ok for "internal" things but i am not a big fan to give it a stage or a competition on a Party as it just feels like an empty soul.

I hope, this AI will not replace one day our art and the love to craft things because its easy to make, easy to show and people dont care anymore about the ones, who create art by human skills and creativity.

Still have mixed feelings with AI when it comes to scene releases...

popcorn time

I’m so tired man

@kb: Have you consider porting second reality to 8-bit microcomputers?

If one day I start talking about doing "AI remasters", then please kill me with a flammenwerfer.

This is the demo-scene. Of course we will. We don't climb the mountain because it needs climbing.



I think most people agree that it should not be part of demo competitions. That would be like adding racing as a track & field competition when the car was invented.

Go “feel things” shill.

Go retire.