pouët.net

Hello there!
I'm a brazilian computer science student and have a massive interest in demos.
I'm also a member of game design group at college, and I'm interested in having demomaking as part of our activities, alongside make a comp inside uni (like demosplash).
What can we do to learn demos, and what tools/guides/programing language do you recommend for people with 0 experience with the demoscene?
What are the guidelines and other unwritten rules that a demoparty should have to run smoothly (fees, test machines, party venue, ...)?
Also, are there any brazilian demosceners that I can contact and ask some questions (preferably located in the São Paulo metropolitan area)?
(This is my first pouet post, so I also do not have any experience in demos, so please be kind!)
Thanks in advance!

Hi. One easy way to start making demos (for PC) is using a realtime graphics tool like Tooll3 for example.

And of course –> Teach Yourself Demoscene in 14 Days

Are there any guides for tool3 (as I'm planning to use some of these recommendations as learning tools, so some instructions on how to use them would be nice)?

Also, does anyone know of brazilian demosceners on here (particularly those who live in São Paulo)?

Also check out https//cables.gl, it works directly in the browser and has quite a big community

Here are the tools which we use for and a manual on how we run demoscene competitions at deadline demoparty.

The manual (sorry my bbs-linking skills are sub-par today)

I'd say the best way to get people interested in the scene is to organise regular "viewing sessions" of demos, group them by machine, era, limitations etcetc. Motivations for many sceners to join the scene (not only "as coders") was to first watch demos and be like "wow, that's cool, I want to do that"

I actually showed them "the sheep and the flower" yesterday, and i reckon the results were positive, so I'm very optimistic about this.

any recommendations for music software for demos?

@v3nom it seems the partymeister link isnt working

There’s a whole Youtube-Channel and a growing Discord-Channel. And of course the documentation.

Hey! I live in São Paulo. Ping me on WhatsApp, I can introduce you to other people I know: 9 8250 0040
Cheers

thanks, i'll get in touch

I'm eagerly waiting to see demos from the land of huge fake butts

I *think* European demoparties are all similar because they cross-pollinate a lot - people go to different demoparties and expect them to work like the last one they went to. That won't be the case if you're starting a new one far away with people who've never seen it before. Instead of trying to exactly copy a European demoparty you should treat it as inspiration but do whatever makes sense for you.

For example, you're a group of university students, right? It shouldn't be hard to get the university to let you use a room for a day or a weekend - ask some of your professors for advice on that. And if you don't need to pay rent, then do you actually need a fee and tickets? That should make things easier, although you probably still need to know how many people are coming and how many demos. You could put up posters around your university for people to sign up and come for free; see if some of your professors will mention it in their classes. Of course in a university room things would be a bit less party-like, but maybe you decide that's fine.

Perhaps it could be a more long-running "extracurricular activity" to build up interest - you could have a recurring demo show and/or coding workshop for an hour or two every week for a semester, get to know the people who are regularly coming, and each time you remind people to make their own demos to be shown in the last session. If you can actually do that. I don't know how much work is involved in organizing something like that. That's how my extracurricular activities usually worked when I was a university student. Of course, if someone doesn't want to come to the regular meetings but still makes a demo, you'd still show it at the party.

First demoparty I visited was "On Track 2023" ( https://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=2021&when=2023 / https://on-track.camp/ ) which took place in the middle of Chaos Communication Camp. Campers with nothing better to do came and sat around watching the stuff on the big screen. Music first, so the sun would be down by the time the cool graphics were on the beamer. No tickets, no fees, no venue, not even seats for everyone - half of us sat on the grass. There wasn't any party-specific socialization going on since the rest of the entire camp was for socialization. This was obviously designed around how things work at the camp - they didn't try to perfectly copy other parties - they just did things in ways that made good sense for a camp, as I think you should do things in ways that make good sense for a university.

Several things *were* standard copies from most demoparties: participants got "vote keys" (i.e. random passwords to log in to vote), music was shown first, then graphics, then demos (i.e. saving the coolest categories for last); categories with very few entries got combined, at the organizers' discretion, to make big enough categories. This meant go been combined with others at the organizer's discretion (I'm not sure whether they did); they had a "wild" category where anything that can be displayed is allowed (usually as a video file); the top 3 winners of each category got a cheap 3d-printed plastic or laser-cut wooden plaque to take home. These are things that I think have evolved because they make sense, and you should probably copy too.

At Deadline (thanks v3nom) my vote key was given on a slip of paper when I signed in; at On Track I think it was given in a chat message when I asked to participate.

I can't guarantee any of this advice is good since I never ran such a thing - just tossing out my ideas into the world.

Extra note: many parties also feature non-demo categories for music and non-executable graphics, but you won't usually see them on pouet and this can give a false impression that they aren't there. Making a music track or a still picture, even with a computer, is easier than making a whole demo. Like shaders, you can have these competitions if you want to bring in more entries, or if you're running demo workshops, maybe you just want to keep it focused on demos.

Nobody mentioned Shader Toy ( https://www.shadertoy.com/ ) yet - you might not make an entire "demo" with it but it's got a rather low barrier to entry so it's a good way to play around with getting some cool stuff on the screen. You could even have a shader category at your party if you want to encourage more people to get into it.

私はブラジル人じゃないです。

I recommend watching a lot of demos to get the general idea of the (rather narrow) art genre people like in the scene. I recommend coding in any language you are good at first (you don't want to fight your tools when learning something new), and later, when you want to become sizecoders, start learning C or x86 asm and GLSL. Guides for the general code: Any Gamedev tutorial really, you might already know everything needed to make demos if you have a gamedev college group. Demos are easier, not interactive :) Guides for sizecoding: https://github.com/in4k/in4k.github.io, or the sizecoding discord with very friendly people. For learning shaders: https://www.shadertoy.com/, tech https://iquilezles.org/.

Also, if you want to win a big party at some point, stay clear of too much of the diverse demoscene memes - I know it's tempting, but it's the scene equivalent of shitposting :)



fees: Don't be greedy. "Compo Hardware": The best you can get. Don't cheap out here. Venue: Anything allowing loud music and drinking at 3 AM; with enough table space for party coding. Bigscreen: As big as possible. Don't underestimate compo organizing effort; people will submit broken stuff and you will need to work together with them to fix it.

also, make sure to submit your party to https://www.demoparty.net/ and to open a pouet bbs thread to let people know about your party well in advance. (I would like to submit an entry to your competition, but it takes some time to make those :D)

also, for learning how to scene, there is this tutorial: https://github.com/psenough/teach_yourself_demoscene_in_14_days

You can connect with sceners at https://discord.gg/jJvM3YPs and https://scenecity.chat/

Wrt fees: decide how many people you’re pretty sure will show up. Estimate the fixed costs you expect to make (equipment rental, venue cost if any, stuff like that). Divide those two numbers and that’s your entrance fee. Any additional people who show up are profit, which either go to form a safety buffer for your next event, or to eg compo prizes.

Don’t over-think ticket schemes. “Bring XYX amount of cash and give them to $name when you come in” can work just fine. Only worry about online (or in-person) prepayment if you need the cash to pre-pay stuff, or if you’re deeply uncertain about attendance numbers and need to know in advance.

If you want to provide drinks/food, which I would advise against if you’re a one man crew, then just price those a little over what it costs to buy. This way, kinda by definition, they don’t affect the entrance fee math. They’re pretty much “slightly profitable” by definition. Here in NL a supermarket will take back full boxes of beer or trays of soda cans if you didnt use them (tell them when you buy them, they’ll put some special sticker on them). Might be worth figuring out whether Brazilian shops have a similar service, because it means you can waay over-stock on drinks without financial risk.

Having two cash registers/wallets, one for entrance fees, and one for drinks/snacks is great because it means you can easily see what’s going on, plus you can get help for the food part without having to hand over the Big Box Of Cash to someone else.

Historically, most demo musics were made using trackers (and there are some good docos on them soundtrackers on YT to suggest to your people).
For oldschool platforms, you'll want to use the right tracker for the platform. Some cool kids are still doing incredible .MOD, some do fun AHX, YMMV, there's a tracker for everything, even for your PC beeper.

For PC demos you just use whatever you want, or can have, so open modplug is cool but many musicians relies on Cubase, Logic, Live or, when you're 100% cool: Renoise.

For size limited platform, there are other tools to learn that will allow the musicians to make really tiny songs, I'd come back to that later (but peruse, on pouet, at the likes of 4klang, and 64klang)

Fantasy consoles such as TIC80 and Pico8 are a good idea to show to your audience as well, they're fun and come with "all the stuff necessar", sprite editor and music tracker. I really advise the pico8 demos by jobe, such as https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=84959 (my personal favourite, check the others)