pouët.net

technological breakthroughs that came from demoscene

category: general [glöplog]
sagacity: checkerboards, well, uhh... I understand what you mean. It's more advanced than just a checkered board, and more advanced than like Pole Position. Pole Position used to only change colors per raster lines between white and red for a palette item, which in effect created some form of moving road, but there have been more advanced stuff on the 8-bit Atari.

I know the topic is not about games but I have to suggest checking out every game made by Lucasfilm for the Atari 8-bit line.

- The Eidolon (3D fractal caves)
- Ballblazer (yes this is a checkerboard kind of mode 7, but 1983 none the less)
- Rescue on Fractalus (3D fractal Landscape)
- Coronis Rift (3D fractal Landscape)

I am sure that the word fractal is overused in these games, but they are definately classified under 8-bit great achievements.

Somehow I feel I went off topic. I'll study scene stuff some more for the 8-bit and get back to ya, cuz all I remember was stuff like "cracked by ..." intro screen with an empty black background... :P
added on the 2003-03-14 22:58:22 by 33 33
Is it possible the scene created multimedia art ?
added on the 2003-03-15 01:55:20 by iTeC iTeC
Merou, your train of thought is a bit misguided. The demoscene did not make any technological breakthroughs, the demoscne is mostly about trying to apply the research done in graphics by the academics in realtime (of course usually a decade later or more when our computers allow it).
If you are looking for non-commercial innovation that promotes our knowledge in the field, try ACM SIGGRAPH and other organizations like that. There there are breakthroughs every year and all of them free for all graphics programmers to apply as they see fit.
added on the 2003-03-15 05:02:20 by Nuclear Nuclear
earx: AFAIK, the firs fire effect was done by Jare/Iguana [or Vangelis Team by then], called VTFire. However, i'm not sure if this was the first fire effect ever, or just the first PC fire effect :)

Someone tell me
added on the 2003-03-15 11:43:45 by Jcl Jcl
jcl: as far as I know, I was the first one to come across the nice combination of palette + cellular automata that is the fire. However, cellular automatas were invented quite a long time ago.

pete: I first saw the no-borders effect and the extra colors stuff in several Sinclair spectrum games.

Parallax scrolling was commonplace in C-64 games.

The technical side of the scene is not about technology breakthroughs, rather about using technology, hardware tricks and extreme optimization to produce cool realtime visuals.

Notice that the scene is also not about producing massive content, which is the reason that game visuals have surpassed the scene today.
added on the 2003-03-15 17:42:41 by Jare Jare
Yeah... like everyone said already (forgive the repetitious lamer), demos aren't about doing something no-one's ever heard of before... it's about doing stuff no-one thought could be done in realtime. At least, that's how it felt in the days of DOS. See, fast radiosity (for example) isn't a new algorithm. But, realtime radiosity in under 64k is quite the impressive.

And I would argue that game visuals (at least on the PC) are still primitive and lacking in expression. You may look at UT2003 and go "nice renderer" but I've never looked at it and said "nice use of color and negative space." A couple of game engines may be of demoscene quality, but the design for the most part is still lacking.
Yeah... like everyone said already (forgive the repetitious lamer), demos aren't about doing something no-one's ever heard of before... it's about doing stuff no-one thought could be done in realtime. At least, that's how it felt in the days of DOS. See, fast radiosity (for example) isn't a new algorithm. But, realtime radiosity in under 64k is quite the impressive.

And I would argue that game visuals (at least on the PC) are still primitive and lacking in expression. You may look at UT2003 and go "nice renderer" but I've never looked at it and said "nice use of color and negative space." A couple of game engines may be of demoscene quality, but the design for the most part is still lacking.
only a game like rez is comparable in my opinion
added on the 2003-03-15 19:26:11 by _-_-__ _-_-__

OH YEAH!
rez#1
muzik & motion!

added on the 2003-03-15 19:29:04 by raver raver
(BTW, sorry about the double post,.. netscape 6 glitch)

well, I'd compare 3 more:

MDK & MDK2: They have very HR Geiger like textures (like a lot of demos) and are able to create a great sense of scene with a minimum of geometry.

SSBM: menus reek of demoscene, and they used a subsample raytracer (or at least went for that effect) in the Fountain of Dreams stage.
What's SSBM?
added on the 2003-03-16 14:40:51 by sagacity sagacity
i presume it's some nintento game, super smash brother melee (though i have no clue where there's a raytracer in that, it's some fighting game)
added on the 2003-03-16 16:16:31 by _-_-__ _-_-__
Maus: the way you put it, only a couple of demo engines are of demoscene quality, either. :)
added on the 2003-03-17 07:25:39 by Jare Jare
http://users.auth.gr/~mkargas/cpcscene/cpcodach.htm

This is a very uncomplete list I wanted some time ago to start and has only few software effects first done on CPC. Normally, hardware tricks and who did them first would be the most interesting for CPC, but I am a new scener, I know hardly anything from old CPC history and 99% of demos have scrollers and unintedified dates, so I made only for the software effects till now, because they were very few and easilly to figure out..

I was dreaming of a big website with list of all effects and variations of them, which you can view with java applets, and then read who did it first in general, who did it first in Amiga, PC, CPC, C64, etc, etc... how to do it, resources, tutors, and everything. That would be great. I am hot for fx! :)
added on the 2003-03-17 08:46:43 by Optimus Optimus
Good lick, Optimus. Oops... I mean luck. :)

As for the rotozoomer. I'll check my TEX (The Exceptions, btw) stuffs I have, because I've seen almost all, but don't recall seeing a rotozoomer in any of them. However, with some help from Leonard of Oxygene, I've already found one that dates back to 1990. Very likely it's the first! But one is sure, the first rotozoomer was made on Atari ST.
We are still trying to find which was the one that inspired Chaos to code his one, seen in the World of Commodore '92 demo. Mr. Pink of Reservoir Gods suggested it was the intro for the Maggie diskmag's 10th issue, but Chaos said, it's not. However, that intro still contains a nice, one-frame rotozoomer, with similar blur effect like Chaos made, except that it is not a fullscreen effect.
added on the 2003-03-17 13:00:06 by tomcat tomcat
Hmm, no sign of rotozoomers in TEX demos before 1990.
added on the 2003-03-18 00:13:58 by tomcat tomcat
ATARI ST - ALL DEMOS FOR DOWNLOAD

http://pacidemo.planet-d.net/flash.html

added on the 2003-03-18 09:22:00 by 33 33
The page rules. Ages ago, I had downloaded ALL the AtariSt demos existing in this page, one per one and wrote them in one CD!
I have also downloaded ALL the A500 demos from the Warlock's ADF archieve and wrote them in another CD too!

Not that I have ever found the time to watch all these demos, except of tens of famous ones, but definitelly makes a nice collection for future watching and history learning ;)
added on the 2003-03-18 09:33:21 by Optimus Optimus
some old finnish diskmagazine had some c-64 records
i remember it was coded by topaz beerline member?
dunno...
added on the 2003-03-18 10:34:38 by uns3en_ uns3en_
yea, pacidemo's nice
added on the 2003-03-18 18:20:07 by tomcat tomcat
I'm not aware of any 'breakthroughs' on the PC platform, particularly since the days of HW accelerators. However, I have heard of things on the earlier platforms that were first done in the demoscene. I think it was C=64 or Atari hacks with respect to the number of colors on screen at once and fancy vertical/horizontal retrace hacks.
added on the 2003-03-29 07:39:40 by legalize legalize
I don't think raster bars were a scene breakthrough. They existed in the late 70's on Atari VCS/2600 games.

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