pouët.net

grip said:


Yeah and this is hitting, I think, a point affecting the whole scene.
Basically the party crowd does not look like this anymore:

(credit: slim/equinox)
That is Lonestarr/Spaceballs at The Party 1992 surrounded by other legendary sceners. He won that compo with the demoscene-defining State of the Art, AFAIK while still a (very very young) teenager.

Now, major parties are attended by people on average well over 30 and compowinners are almost exclusively 40+ (at least in the old school categories).

Well, personally, I love love love what Cahir/Ghostown did. He made a demoscene course while working at Univesity of Wroclaw, Poland that netted 3 new college-aged Amiga coders all of them collaborating on compowinning prods (Amiga 500 prods)

I also personally know of 2 demosceners whose teenage kids are participating.
Is that enough? Should there be more? Is it all for nothing? I do not know.

Will demoscene events ever look remotely like they did in early 1990s? I do not think so.
Will the scene die off in a decade or so? Maybe, maybe not. Will 1980s platforms be relevant in the demoscene 10 years from now? I don't know.

But it's UNESCO recognized cultural heritage in Sweden, France, Germany, Finland, so maybe it means something and maybe it will carry over for centuries... who knows?

It remains in my opinion one of the most exciting ways of mastering a complex technology and media constraints inside out while keeping teams very small, passions high and motivations as truly non-profit as they can be.

Many public events will never look like they did in the 90s-2000s, with many entertainment fields moving online and separating into their own bubbles. Not to mention being public about your activities is unsafe and/or quite expensive.

Still, there's lots of young folks nowadays are making game mods, romhacks, fangames, animations and stuff. Unless we tell them where we are, what we can do and what THEY can do with what we know and have, that's where they'll aggregate.

For sure it dying, is only us that cares about this ... But we (hope for most) have another 20++- years or so to still enjoy the classic machines/technical interest together with parties and fun .... Even if in only do ascii stuff here and there i alays got Amigas running and watch the latest productions and it`s much quality and skills involved, so much cool stuff and cool peoplez still around ...

Btw: I`m talking about the Amiga freaks that are indeed age 40+ now.. I was always the youngest at demoscene (and Amiga in general) events around here and i am 44 now. N

Nobody else cares about our machine and that`s fine, trying to interest the younger guys and our kids to this hobby is almost impossible .. They do their own thing, as we do ours :)

Myo is right here. It’s little bubbles online; scenes are a thing of the past (until it all come back, who knows, in a decade or so following a post-ai diaspora)

Lots of young people talk about old trackers and videogame music or chiptune as well online. Tons of other into pixel art, emulations or look at live coding and other interests… but the goal is not to join a scene to find a group, coexist, and collaborate (and listen). The goal for them is visibility, content, attention.
A scene generally tries to aggressively gatekeep against people who don’t engage with others; and when wolves manage to infiltrate, they can destroy it from within.

Scene is well alive. What's the point with this endless self-flagellation? Are you some kind of hardcore fundamentalist christians?



I've always done my sceneing all by myself and I've never felt anything like this. No any problems.

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIght.

> but the goal is not to join a scene to find a group, coexist, and collaborate
> (...)when wolves manage to infiltrate, they can destroy it from within.

The demo scene of days long gone was elitist, tribalist and pretty mean spirited. But today we're older, (hopefully) wiser and do it for the fun. So today, we want to have a community going. You spell it out like we should not trust the newcomers. I hope I'm understanding you right here. But I beg to differ. All communities may occasionally attract rotten eggs, but that's exception, not the rule.

Shutting out the younger generations because they're "wolves" is not the right answer. The door should be open.

If you want an enemy, let me give you one: artifical intelligence.

I have no problems with demo sceners using AI in their work as long as it's not directly creating content they compete with. AI to help you build a nice website, documentation or help the orgas organize is fine, imo. But it should never create assets for demos and compositions.

The demos are by humans for humans...

Let me just step down from my soap box.. Thanks.

Back when we were kids, we were all about unlocking the full potential of our brand-new computers, using machines that were the best of the best at the time.

Now, looking back, to expect the new generation might be using old computers instead of what’s available today, which is just a bit of extreme wishful thinking. It won’t happen. If there are new sceners, they’ll mostly be on PCs or other high-end machines.

Think about cassette tapes. We won’t be using them to listen to music either. but they are retro as well.

Personally, I introduced my daughter to the demoscene because I saw that we share the same creativity and passion for creating art. But I wouldn’t tell her to stick to Pixel Art if she can achieve more with modern tools.

reading comprehension much

I don’t really understand wha do you mean meant by “modern tools” and “achieve more”.

There are “modern tools” for pixel art. In fact all pixel art that gets churned out these days, in and out of the scene is made with “modern tools”. Almost all code likewise. Hats off and an apology to those who still produce pixel art with a joystick on a C64 in Koalapainter, and save their work out to a floppy if they exist. That would be downrifght bifat level of dogma pixelling.

Perhaps this could help clarify: Do you think writers will/would “achieve more” with “modern tools”?

This is a bit off topic, but interesting nonetheless. Most authors probably wouldn't give up their word processing software and go back to quills and inkwells (in fact, both can still be acquired). Writing, like many creative pursuits, is an iterative process. A word processor is extremely helpful with that.

As someone who dabbles in both visual art and a bit of amateur writing, I'm not sure this is a good comparison. Nobody really cares if an author is a master of calligraphy: the end result of writing is a body of text, presumably published online or in print. That means someone else is in charge of how the letters are presented.

When it comes to visual art, the tools and medium have a much larger impact on the end result. You can achieve certain things with oil on canvas that can't be reproduced on a 16-bit home computer, and vice versa. This is also why we view paintings in museums and covet old CRT screens. The same is true of modern digital painting compared to pixel art, which is presumably why Amiga demo graphics today often display machine dithering and other signs of image downsampling.

Creating art should be a joyful experience. Personally, I don't accomplish much at all if the tools feel forced.

grip said:


It took a month, but so worth it to revive this 1084S, exactly for this reason:


I wanted the picture on the left, as opposed to the picture on the right:

Indeed.
I was thinking of chatgpt and such as a “modern tool” for writers. Word processors are a great help to writers. Although they don’t really affect quality IMHO, they just streamline writing somewhat, make it more convenient for iterating, speed up the process. I’m saying this because there are (very limited) all-or-nothing people claiming that LLMs are a natural extension of technology, and folks should either write with sticks in the sand or embrace LLMs.

please keep your AI discussions where the sun don't shine

Understood.
Please stop stalking me.

it's not stalking when it's a ~50% chance you are the person who yet again wiggles AI in an otherwise interesting discussion

Understood.
Please stop stalking me and spamming the thread.