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Can you share your experiences with the demogroup you are/were into?
Did thinks always worked fine? How did you organized stuff so that several people into the group worked well together for the same project? What happens in case someone is not productive or simply when just about anyone is busy with his own personal life or just unmotivated? Unofficial group meetings, which of you were into these and how much did they motivated you or the other members of the group? Quarrels in groups? Do you have stories?

I thought of opening this thread oneday when I was thinking of what worked and what not in the groups I belong to, what should I do in order to motivate members, if we could organise things elsewhere or how should I be more in contact and discuss with enthousiasm on some project or share code.

As for my personal experience I am in Dirty Minds(CPC), Nasty Bugs(PC) and Anubis(C64).

Dirty Minds was probably the best for me, since Antitec (the main coder and who introduced me into the CPC scene) is one of my best friends and we meet frequently since he lives also in Thessaloniki (or very close todays), we had our best times and sometimes he helped me optimize the effects in a step beyond and we both shared crazy ideas. Though, he is not interested much in CPC anymore and I am coding alone with the label of Dirty Minds todays. The other members (Sice and Rex) are productive when needed, even if they live far away and I rarely see or talk to them. Though, I feel well in this group and even if we are hardly productive (CPC scene is not productive), I will continue with the Dirty Minds label and produce CPC stuff even if alone.

I am in Anubis lately, I met Exile in BP04 and he is a nice guy and helps me esp. by giving me some hardware I really needed to develop on the C64 (Action Replay, monitor). I also know Factor6 who is a good CPC mailswapping friend too. All seems fine, though I should be coding now cause I have now to produce more than what people send me.. ;). It's promising even if all of us look a bit busy with their real lifes. First time to be in a group with foreign people btw and it's quite nice :)

Nasty Bugs. I have some of the best greek friends from the PC scene here, like Bad Sector and Ment0r. And other nice people like Cybernator (who got married recently) and Apomakros for gfx and music, Though, this group has the worst scenario from all three above, cause we never could synchronize our activities. Several times, from Digital Nexus 2001 till Pixelshow 2005, we did one man's work with a bit of help from the others, esp. in the last parties it was dissapointing for me that instead of cooperating with Ment0r, I finished CloseGL alone and Ment0r did his own demo which was not finished properly as he'd like, it was a bit of a failure. I was asking myself why not helping him or make something together with both our parts? And we were sitting on the same computer next to each other. Now, I think of making a self made OpenGL fastdemo for Pixelshow and I hear Bad Sector brings his own selfmade demo and Ment0r makes a demo perhaps too. Unfortunatelly I think it's my mistake that I didn't try to communicate much with these people (at least if we lived in the same city, I would have the opportunity to meet them frequently and even make small group meetings, but this doesn't happen). And of course the gfx and music guys aren't motivated when they see we are so unorganized and there is no good planning here. Of course I don't write this to blame anyone, everyone of us lives in diferrent parts of Greece, we had real life issues, unmotivation, etc. I was doing other demos in CPC, C64 and other obscure stuff in basic, instead of trying to do a good demoengine on PC and try actually to communicate more with these people. And I wish we had the opportunity for group meetings as some foreign groups do/did in the past. I am thinking of either releasing demos under Nasty Bugs or joining/forming another group, though I have to first check my time/period of life and check if that's realistic and how to organize it so that it works..

So, what can you suggest to me? And what are your own group experiences? And what about group meetings/strange/funny stories/quarrels..

p.s. I have heard some strange quarrel stories about Oxyron, they were posting in mags back in the times that one member kicked the other members, each member kicked the other members and who the hell was Oxyron back then? Group meetings and uberactive Coma 12 demos in a year, that would be a group to be, ahhh.. what can you tell me about that story?

p.p.s. Too much, but sorry. This is a serious thread btw, and pure scene subject that you might like discussing about :)

Traction is friends, and friends of friends, and acquaintainces. I've known all members for years.

Darkness Unknown Force (or Dawn3, or The Digital Artists) was founded about 12 years ago and it was the pioneer of the demoscene in Portugal. My friend at the time asked me to make some music for this intro - it was my first time with a music tracker - and they liked it so much that I was part of the team almost immediately. We went camping together, we were playing football for entire afternoons, and making small lan parties (there was no lan back then) with the 3 of us. One day, they decided to use someone else's music for the intro they were making - it really rocked - so I was out of the working flow. After that, I never worked with them, not by choice, but because they were in another stage already.

InérciaProductions was born as a need to make a portuguese demogroup affilliated with inerciademoparty (don't forget to come). Members were, of course, part of the organizing team, which by then had 2 and a half sceners. Now it has 3 and a half. After some very unsuccessful attempts to produce invitation demos for inerciademoparty, I decided to work alone for the group. Now that I've quit the group, I would say that it's pretty much dead. Unless some of the other 2 and a half sceners wants to do something, but one is in tpolm, the other one in scoopex and god knows what more and the one half is virtually inactive.

TMI was created on a ferry boat. we were travelling from Assembly to Scene Event and we were bored, so we decided to make a demo. Later, we used the group name for the football compo - that we won - and for other prods. Recently, I was fired from the group because I forgot to include I don't know who in some prod. Well it was fun while it lasted. I don't know if the other members wish to continue working together or not.

Right now I am part (I think) of Glenz, one of the leading demogroups in Portugal. I didn't do anything yet (I think) except a .mod for an amiga intro that didn't come out.

Working inside a group is fun. Being part of a team makes you realize the importance of it. Groups is teh shit.

ddv is quite nice.. but im going solo for some time to get out ideas that are fucked up.

mostly i do stuff with lithis in ddv.. and we work quite well together. Most of us ddv people are quite nice friends and we talk shit and stuff when not producing.
imo a group should be friends and enjoy to do stuff.

Vollumetric Illusions (know as V.I. among the .pt scene), was formed in 2003, by me and my coder Filami, because we got tired of our Amateur Game development team (who never got the design docs ready). The main goal was just to make short Demos in order to learn and improve our skills, and after some time, I tended to like it more.
I guess I'm still lost when its time to plan a prod (that is prolly why they suck for now :P ).

Nothing that time wont cure :P

> Can you share your experiences with the demogroup you are/were into?
i'll try

> Did thinks always worked fine?
no

> How did you organized stuff
organizing stuff?

> so that several people into the group worked well together
working together??

> for the same project?
project???

> What happens in case someone is not productive
we are used to beg them from dawn to dawn

> or simply when just about anyone is busy with his own personal life
busy?? personal life?? life???

> or just unmotivated?
ah, ok. well... /me looks ahead and whistles some chiptune...

> Unofficial group meetings
the last one gave me a fucking fever hahaha

> which of you were into these
enough to be drunk just before passing out at home

> and how much did they motivated you
they almost failed at this

> or the other members of the group?
they talked about their ideas, yes

> Quarrels in groups?
pfff

> Do you have stories?
foolish arguments :)

with FAG we met up at the gayfistfuck festival held here in helsinki a few years back, we were doing some triple fisting and started to chat about demos and decided that it's time that some true national socialist gay propaganda is brought into demoscene.

:-)

with LOBSTARRS it went the other way around, actually. we were drinking beer at scene event and then god came down on us and told us to invent hypnoglow.

Oops,. I said Cybernator above, no no not Cybernator but Cybernoid :)

And something else, perhaps similar to my worries. The first time I was working together by exchanging code was with TeXeL (we still keep talking through MSN mostly about other matters and a bit of coding), probably the best case of exchanging codes and learning from each other (We wanted to make the best quickbasic demo, oh yeah ;). It worked well from a distance as an experience, even if we never did a demo together :). I don't know why I can't live the same experience anymore. Ok,. I hardly communicated for cooperating with someone else, and even if I did recently, it's me who has no time and communicates lately, not talking about exchanging small codes. I also don't know why can't I live these old times where I was really enthousiastic with the demoscene and had a great learning trip and discussions with several people. I don't write 33kb emails anymore :(

That was 1999, after I released the poor freak. TeXeL found me and we exchanged a lot of code, ideas, help each other for more than a year.

When I first met them in Finland, I had the feeling that the mfx guys were thinking I was very gay.
On the other hand, the mfx guys were convinced I thought they were very gay.
None of us is gay at all but, in order not to hurt anyone's feeling, we started dating. Then we made Super Luxus Lemmen Paketti.

whoaa Too many words per page for my tiny brain :(

we need e-kkrunchy that packs optimus' vivid monologues into 8 chars..

Easily done (8 chars follow):
USELESS!

i had BULLSHIT in mind myself.. but it'll do :)

maali: i wrote a ploygen grammar imitating optimus posts. you can use it and encode the "delta". then divide by pi and you have an optim-al kkomprezz0r

i just think you're drunk

i don't know why you are all so much complaining, but optimus' posts seem to me far more interesting than the usual bass pictures. especially since he throws up quite some essential questions for a sceners existance. a bit more objective thinking and less "follow the hater crowd" please.

i personally found optimus' post interesting and also the more serious replies.
personally about the subject i will only say jml4life

personally personally personally, would be a good idea to read posts before posting too ^_^

Well. We are all getting older and more serious with the time. So it's naturally that people marry, have kids & a job and less free time.

If you're beyond 20 it's becoming more important to earn enough money so that you can pay your bills instead of working for a scene project with which you cannot pay anything. That is not a reason to become depressive, it's just how it is. Scene projects can be postponed, to settle old scores cannot.