pouët.net

demoscenebooks

category: general [glöplog]

are there any new books related to demoscene coming up?

added on the 2009-09-13 23:56:04 by nosfe nosfe
i met tomcat a few weeks ago and he sounded rather regretful on not working on freax 2, which he should.
added on the 2009-09-14 00:28:10 by Gargaj Gargaj
freax 1 was nice
Nosfe: apparently there is no point in making demoscene books, because nobody would buy them anyway. ;)
added on the 2009-09-14 12:59:07 by gloom gloom
yeay Freax 2 is delayed due to private issues in Tomcat's live..

Here you can read a preview of Freax 2

http://hugi.scene.org/online/hugi34/hugi%2034%20-%20demoscene%20reports%20magic%20sneak%20preview%20freax%20volume%202.htm

and perhaps some didn't purchase sceen#2 ?

http://www.sceen.org
added on the 2009-09-14 13:08:16 by magic magic
The problem for me with these demoscene books is so that, all of them talk about how it appeared and usually these are just concluded with "then came the second reality" and, the end.

I'd have loved to see something that mentions the nowadays of the scene. How about Debris? Lifeforce? Panic Room? Elevated? Their effects to the scene in general, or how about the legendary coders of nowadays? Mentor, Iq, Smash, Pantaloon and countless others. I think we have too much books on the origins of the scene and the "goold old eras", but seriously, there is a scene nowadays too and a book on the actual thing might also get the up-to-date outsiders interested too. Because this is a very bleeding-edge art genre what we are constituting. Maybe for newcomers like me, like Ferris, or like Ized PC is the current tool-of-trade and not C64 or Amiga (even though there are youngsters like Knoeki and Aegis interested in those).

What I am saying is that, we have enough material on the origins of the scene and it might have been a very interesting and tasty crunch to have something on the ongoing affair as well. Besides it might make a great outreach material too.
added on the 2009-09-14 13:09:34 by decipher decipher
I'd like to see a book about the more technical side of things. Perhaps how to code some common effects, or how to go about design so that your demo doesn't suck. I'd buy a book like that.
added on the 2009-09-14 13:34:19 by xteraco xteraco
Quote:
how to go about design so that your demo doesn't suck

There is no one recipe to rule them all, it has nothing to do with how others do it, it is more about how well can you express yourself. Your demo won't become amazingly cool just because you copy a bunch of ribbons from Fairlight...
added on the 2009-09-14 13:41:28 by decipher decipher
Go write a book about it.
added on the 2009-09-14 13:52:05 by xernobyl xernobyl
decipher, i don't think that there's really too much books written about even the beginning of the scene (like, what else there is in english except freax & the book by tasajärvi?) there's definitely room for more books from different perspectives.

but yeah, having something written on the current scene would be nice to see too.
added on the 2009-09-14 14:53:18 by nosfe nosfe
Bringing up the topic again.
I am working on Freax Vol. 2. again. It's almost completed. 260 pages done, some 90-100 more to go. What is still missing is the PC's history from 2000 to present days (really not a bugger), consoles (also) and some little this and that... If nothing interrupts me again (like, another botched revolution turning me into a terrorist) it'll be finished during Summer and might be released for...
NAH! No promises. That never ends up good.
added on the 2010-06-16 00:13:24 by tomcat tomcat
Bringing up the topic again.
I am working on Freax Vol. 2. again. It's almost completed. 260 pages done, some 90-100 more to go. What is still missing is the PC's history from 2000 to present days (really not a bugger), consoles (also) and some little this and that... If nothing interrupts me again (like, another botched revolution turning me into a terrorist) it'll be finished during Summer and might be released for...
NAH! No promises. That never ends up good.
added on the 2010-06-16 00:16:47 by tomcat tomcat
just promise it'll be released before sceen 3 ;)
added on the 2010-06-16 00:55:38 by nosfe nosfe
When is Sceen 3?
Problem is that Cosowi is not replying my mail, I wonder if he's still alive? And also CSW Verlag?
added on the 2010-06-16 01:08:08 by tomcat tomcat
Brilliant!
added on the 2010-06-16 02:07:12 by xernobyl xernobyl
Meanwhile, you might want to check out Marq/Fit's 134-page licenciate thesis about the demoscene.
i'd write a book about current pc scene and technology if you pay the mere production fee which i have estimated to ~70.000 EUR.
that's only triple of what jscott raised. sounds doable!!
added on the 2010-06-16 09:45:57 by skrebbel skrebbel
I'm reading Freax 1 right now and it's a great read with a lot of interesting anecdotes and a great write-up of ancient computer culture history :) (so far I especially like the parts about the guys that developed the first Amigas and Commodores)

All you - as a reader - have to do to fully enjoy it is to ignore all the spelling and grammar errors, wordings that simply do not work in english (I'm sure they work just fine in the original language) and the general lack of sub-chapter structure. Yeah, the overall outline of dividing the book into parts describing different computers and scenes is nice and all but it would be nice to also have paragraphs and sub-chapters in-between (at least paragraphs that span less than hundreds of rows ;D). Yeah, I know, I shouldn't be talking if I cannot come up with examples of this but I don't have the book here with me right now.

General advice: When writing a book be sure to have someone proof-read and do run a spell checker.

I don't mean to sound so negative, it really is a great read for people interested in the demoscene and its history but when reading a book I tend to enjoy it more when I don't find a lot of mistakes everywhere that could have been avoided by simple proof-reading/spell checking.
added on the 2010-06-16 10:22:27 by elfan elfan
Unfortunately, there are no automatic checkers that would prevent any factual errors.
Tomcat, Cosowi should still be there (met him right at BP), including his CSW Verlag. Maybe you´ve used an outdated address? Or use the contact info given at www.csw-verlag.de
added on the 2010-06-17 03:07:07 by T$ T$
Ah, those stupid grammatic errors. Probably you noticed that the Amiga part is correct, only the C-64 chapters are not. This is because someone accidentally imported the draft version to the DTP app as Vol.1. was done in a hurry for Asm'95. Actually it was all proofread and corrected by Phoenix, I really don't know what happened. Why Cosowi left it untouched for the second edition is really beyond me.
added on the 2010-06-17 03:18:35 by tomcat tomcat
No worries, we still love the book! Mine is a treasured possession.
added on the 2010-06-17 08:46:25 by trixter trixter
Evrim Sen did a lot of research/outreach !

all in german, sorry, i cant for !

Hackerland
Hackertales ( click that freeBSDird ! )
NO COPY ( birdie, der vogel du vogel ! ;) )

Sorry, Evrim, but the scene needs free access ofcoz !
Thx for those links. The two latter ones seem to be under a CC license, but Hackerland is a bit vague, only saying "All rights reversed, reprint what you like". I guess that'll do :)
added on the 2010-06-17 09:36:53 by Marq Marq

login