pouët.net

Coding frenzy!

drift: wait what? I get impression that procedural modelling/abstract procedural animation is a bit more advanced in demos that in commercial games as for today. I mean... lots of baked meshes with baked lighting, photorealistic materials, keyframed character animation and some realistic particle effects is not everything you know.
Maybe it's not true for shortfilm/movies though, when you have plenty of tools to do stuff like that (say houdini), and you can compose things easier, but game engines? It's improving yes, but as for today, it's not that great (like in this demo2).

Even good demos this year shows it nicely, like smash or Navis stuff. Good luck doing it with game engine.

Exactly what I should do instead of watching netflix and talking shit on the internet. Just feel so demotivated when I look at what some other people are making, like I feel I am starting from too far behind to catch up.

Maybe I should just use UE. :)

Perhaps because those are the roots of the demoscene.
It all started with crackers who made 'intros' as a form of digital graffiti. There was a strong competition about who was the best cracker/hacker.
It was a very coder-centric thing (music was often ripped from games, early intros also had ripped graphics sometimes).

I think it is like the difference between a painting and a photograph. They have similarities, and in some ways they can be judged on the same merits. But a painting also has the aspect of the skill and technique of the painter itself, while the photographer relies on other people's technology.

drift: you forget the perspective that modern day technology is far more complex to achieve industry-level results. not to mention that the game industry became a serious entertainment industry with big teams and high budgets. it's like comparing your son's football team with Real Madrid and wondering why they play less good :D

Ah I thought photographers had skill and technique as well, guess not. Apparently painters also make their own paints from scratch.

(Not that this is a discussion for this thread but the analogy isn't very good in the first place. Funnily enough visy's comment on the demo in question kind of dealt with this too.)

and my sarcasm was just saying that if there are no limitations anymore due to PC specs, where is your jaw-dropping demo? it's all about being able to maximize a good production out of whatever hardware within your limited skill set, so that is not much different to ye-awe-inspiring oldskool demos (that are much easier to make as the technology is less complex and you code in the same language the last 10 years already, and pixel pictures with the same restrictions, etc etc etc) :)

They don't have painting skills obviously. Or at least, their painting skills are not used in the production of photographs.
Point is, different types of crafts can not be compared, so perhaps there should be different types of competitions.

Look on the brightside. At least commercial engines know how to fall back properly.

Maali again I am confused because it seems like you think you are arguing with me but at the same time post things I have already said and I obviously agree with you on? I just hope that wasn't seriously meant to be a personal attack against me about not being able to make a good demo. Thats a pretty shitty way to try and have a discussion if that is the case.

i am not arguing, i'm just allergic to moot comparisons. also, Scali takes shit photos despite having a decent camera, so, there's that :D

Yes, but once they're converted to CGA, you don't notice the difference anyway.

If UE was made by Farbrausch, there would be no problem. But now it's just not invented here.

By the way, I think Demo2 is fun and worth seeing and hearing again, whereas Monolith is dark and not so much fun.

yzi: yyyyeaah, you missed the whole 'non-FR werkkzeug demos are lame'-discussion a few years ago then ;)

... and then Quite came and we were just like wtf is happening here.

Actually I meant, if UE was made by a well-known demoscener instead of a non-demoscener, it would be considered more legitimate.

What's an "engine" anyway. Why is using someone's music player OK. When the Midas sound system came I honestly thought it was extremely lame to use it, because you should have coded your own music player from scratch.

offtopic:
YMMV, your mileage may vary.

yzi: the "engine" itself aint the problem, but the use of its (free) assets. it's like you're a musician and record whatever song is under the 'demo' button of your casio, or well, in a lesser degree, rely very heavily on presets or public samples. i mean, you can make probably make a good sounding song, but fellow-musicians will go like 'yeah, you're quite the musician.. *ahem!*' and that's what this is about :)

well if someone would make a cool demo using a casio keyboard demotune id probably even thumb it just for the concept. doesn't mean i think hes a brilliant musician then, tho.

Most definitely we do!

If somebody took a Casio demotrack (or maybe a bunch of different Casio demotracks, i.e. 'stock assets'), layered them together, chopped, mixed, filtered, and arranged them into something creative and interesting that they took pride in making, I absolutely would thumb it up.

I think the important thing is to give credit for whatever assets/samples/tools you used? So people know which parts are your own work and which parts are borrowed elsewhere.

Of course its morally better to be open abut your assets, tools and sources.
But if you receive a ton of shit for it in return I think it rather endorses not to tell and try to come through with it...

Disclaimer: I have to admit that I did not read the complete thread post by post.
This is an old issue and I really appreciate self coded tools/demo engines.

I don't care much about how the assembly audience votes, it is some kind of democratic vote - so you have to respect that.

Regarding compo rules:
I would say that if you use Unity, UE4, werkzeug or $something from a third party you should have to mention it in the NFO + it should be visible on the beamslide during the compo & in the compo system (e.g. in partymeister where you finally vote on the productions).

If I'm not mistaken, people already do that anyways most of the time, thus there is no big deal.

E.g. If you use 4klang, well, put that in the NFO and the beamslide, some parts of the educated audience will notice anyways that it's 4klang and might become upset if you did not mention 4klang. Crinkler is even more common - as a compo organizer I almost expect that all 4k entries are compressed using Crinkler (There are exceptions, hi T$).

Giving credits where credits are due is a good move and should make everyone "happy".