I am bit tired of blobby things, though

February 24, 2005 10:32 PM

The Demoscene is still going strong. It's been awhile since we last discussed the scene, and it's still cranking out tons of great stuff. The new home of the scene has categories and ratings, which sure beats the old standard. There's a bit of everything, from legos to disco, from 256 bytes to 64k to fairly large, and from Amiga to Mac to C64. All of the videos that require weird or new hardware have videos on the site, so everyone can enjoy the incredible programming, art, and kinda cheesy music.
posted by JZig (18 comments total)

I didn't realise ACiD was still a going concern - I missed their C-64 demos.
posted by FormlessOne at 10:44 PM on February 24, 2005

Anyone taken a look at demoscene.tv? The HQ stream is fantastic.
posted by kuatto at 11:02 PM on February 24, 2005

Ooo, thanks for the tv link, that looks awesome
posted by JZig at 11:04 PM on February 24, 2005

Weird hardware you say?

#pricks up his ears.
posted by krisjohn at 11:50 PM on February 24, 2005

Wo - some of the old demos on the Amiga used to be awesome; the stuff that they could cram onto a floppy or two (or just even a bootblock) was incredible.

Nice to see that the tradition is continuing, but I can't help but feel slightly cheated - the demo scene used to show off what they could achieve with the limited processor/RAM/storage that was available... but on modern systems these things aren't constraints.

Can't RTFA whilst at work...
posted by Chunder at 1:42 AM on February 25, 2005

I downloaded and unzipped the file in the recommended legos link above.

I run a program called dsd_lm.exe.

My monitor goes black and my pooter and chugs and whirrs away for a while.

Then I get an error message saying I'm out of virtual memory, and then I get a cheesy joke error message that can't be closed except thru Processes in Task Manager.

What the hell happened? What was I supposed to see? Have I been p0wned?

(I have a slow pooter.)
posted by uncanny hengeman at 2:56 AM on February 25, 2005

i <3 future crew
posted by ori at 3:11 AM on February 25, 2005

uncanny - welcome to the demo scene!! Demos tend not to be the most bug free of productions, but never let anyone say they lack a sense of really really geeky humor.
posted by atom128 at 3:44 AM on February 25, 2005

and i <3 statix
posted by atom128 at 3:45 AM on February 25, 2005

and tpolm. ahhhh i shouldnt post to metafilter this early.
posted by atom128 at 3:48 AM on February 25, 2005

Future Crew 4 life!
posted by falconred at 6:22 AM on February 25, 2005

none of them will ever improve on the first sight of Wild Copper. Feels like 1988 again.
posted by scruss at 6:48 AM on February 25, 2005

I enjoy the demoscene, but as some people have mentioned, some of the some of the thrill has been taken away by the sheer graphical power of modern PC hardware. I almost enjoy modern demos on hardware like the gameboy or c64 more than the PC demos these days.

The mindblowing quality of early demos came not only from incredible visuals, but also the fact that many were doing something that had never been done on a computer before. Today's demos are very pretty, but really we've all seen polygons at this point.

I do love how much gets crammed into a 64k intro though.
posted by benimoto at 7:26 AM on February 25, 2005

Let's not forget SLAY Radio the C64 remix radio station, which has about 100 listeners at any given moment. Lots of demo remixes.

You can download most of these remixes at RKO, the definitive guide to C64 remixes.
posted by furtive at 7:38 AM on February 25, 2005

The DemoDVD people are (slowly) at it again, and are making a compilation of Amiga demos on DVD. If you can get ahold of a copy of their PC demos disc, it's very highly recommended.

A couple guys I know are among the very few people in the United States actually making demos these days. If you have a higher-end graphics card (Geforce3ti, GeForce 4ti, or higher), check them out.
posted by zsazsa at 7:53 AM on February 25, 2005

Despite my growing up in rural Kansas and not in Finland at all, the demoscene was my first exposure to electronic music. This post makes me happy.
posted by squidlarkin at 8:40 AM on February 25, 2005

Is this the same as assembly art (where people make video art by writing in assembly language)? Maybe I've got my terminology wrong -- a friend once showed me some assembly pieces in college.
posted by plasticpool at 10:33 AM on February 25, 2005

The demo scene's responsible for both my career choices ( Game developer ) and hobbies ( electronic music production ), blame for which I lay squarely at the feet of Alex Evans/Statix and Lassi Nikko / Dune / BrothomStates - geniuses, the both of them. Their new stuff's still good - Alex has made some wonderful generative video / art software at www.bluespoon.com, and Lassi's Claro album (available at www.bleep.com ) is a thing of beauty.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:40 AM on February 25, 2005