pouët.net

smash information 436 glöps

• general:
• level: user
• personal:
• first name: matt
• last name: swoboda
• cdcs:
• cdc #1: Paper by Psychic Link & Acme
• cdc #2: Square by Pulse [web]

• demo invitation Windows Rise and Shine by Aberration Creations & Logicoma [web]
• very pretty - but very static (and very baked). the same visual quality but dynamic would have really been something.
• rulezadded on the 2016-09-17 16:32:41
• 64k Windows fermi paradox by Mercury [web]
• very good! good direction and camerawork and some nice use of effects - i like the fluid / turbulence thing on the gas giant.
  
  but (oh dear.. here it comes): in my humble view, it doesn't have the magic and mystery needed to make it great.
  
  the first issue is that it's really slow paced - like galactically slow. that's a fine way to make things look epic, particularly on the big screen, but it also leaves nowhere for anything to hide. watching the exe at home it left my mind free to wander - and to start mentally dissecting all the individual scenes while watching them.
  
  and the scenes were too easy to dissect. on each scene i couldn't help but think "ok, so this is just this generator and that generator", "blob particles rendered into a texture for the crators?", "heightmap landscape", "i know that water simulation..", "those lens flare sprites look like a circle with a blob subtracted from it", "i wonder if it's this atmospheric paper or that one", etc.
  that's probably a lot to do with the theme (which is to be fair something i'm not a fan of - i didn't really care for beyond either). you're essentially talking about a lot of spheres - no great mystery with those - and a lot of natural effects: landscapes, water, the lighting & atmosphere rendering etc. they're all things that are quite well understood, and lend themselves to very well to generation and realtime rendering - which makes it hard to find the "mystery".
  
  so there's the problem for me. what you have here is a 64k with a lot of different elements, where every element is really really well implemented, but none of them alone seemed new; and it's put together really well but it still added up at most to the sum of its parts, not more.
  
  the conspiracy intro is the perfect foil to this one. it's much lower tech, there's fewer different elements in it, it's technically much simpler - but it adds up to way much more. it keeps your mind moving and focused and leaves you wondering how it was done. even if the answer was "its all fake", you still have to think about it for a bit. :)
  
  note that what i'm complaining about here is the difference between being a really good 64k vs being the greatest ever 64k, not being a good or a bad 64k. clearly this is a really impressive 64k with a ton of great work in it, everything is done very well and put together very well. to the point where complaining about anything is kindof ridiculous. sorry. :)
• rulezadded on the 2016-04-02 15:30:13
• 64k Windows Darkness Lay Your Eyes Upon Me by Conspiracy [web]
• brilliant how cleverly everything is implied. the direction and the inventiveness in the way the scenes are realised - often with quite little tech in places - is so clever.
  often, particularly in 64ks, your eye starts to pick up the signs of the usual generators, noise patterns etc as your mind starts to wander, but not here. way more happens in your mind while watching this than actually appears on screen.
  
  best conspiracy production and far and away the winner in this compo in my book.
• rulezadded on the 2016-03-29 16:16:39
• demo Windows instant god by Fairlight [web] & Carillon & Cyberiad [web]
• Hellmood: except that in the seminar it was all 2d and a totally different technique, this is 3d, emitting from 3d not video, and about 1000x more particles. But isn't that visually obvious? :)
• isokadded on the 2016-03-28 19:59:10
• demo Windows instant god by Fairlight [web] & Carillon & Cyberiad [web]
• Better, official capture : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JzG-Y3YOdk
• isokadded on the 2016-03-28 19:57:08
• demo Windows DEMO2 by Ekspert
• visy: because we're talking engines i'm going to make an analogy about cars. here goes..
  
  making a demo is like motor racing: the result is a combination of the car and the driver. in some motorsport, for example rally driving, the weight is more on the driver - the car is still important but its the skill of the driver that really makes it. but in other motorsport, like say drag racing, its far more about the car. every particular motor sport has that sliding scale between the quality of the car and the skill of the driver. and so it is for demos and the engines they use.
  
  i have no problem at all with commercial engines being used to make demos, but when it comes to rating the results it really depends what you do with it. for demos like jugi's unity-based productions, it seems like the driver did most of the good work and deserves the credit. but in this particular demo, lets say it's more on the drag racing side of things.
• isokadded on the 2015-08-04 11:20:09
• demo Windows DEMO2 by Ekspert
• the unreal bits (lighting, depth of field) are great, the rest of it pretty hideous.
• isokadded on the 2015-08-03 11:47:10
• demo Windows pb05: ZipHorse by Poo-Brain [web]
• what the actual fuck?
• rulezadded on the 2015-05-18 16:06:10
• 64k Windows Small matters of the heart by Approximate [web]
• magic : ...no.
• isokadded on the 2015-04-15 11:07:06
• 64k Windows on by Mercury [web]
• (thumb)
• rulezadded on the 2015-04-10 18:13:20