pouët.net

Filesizes and nonsense

category: general [glöplog]
Didn't want to continue flooding Pain0202 comments anymore with this nonsense...

I just find it amusing every time a new sizelimit, a big release or similar is released people start the same old endless complaining. Back in 95-96 de facto limit was 4Mb but o'boy the amount of complains when someone released anything near to this.

Nowadays we're in 10Mb which is still rather reasonable. And suprisingly there aren't many people around who complain if one big 3d flye-bye (tm) show gets released and takes about 10Mb or even more. Then a diskmag celebrates its 50th issue (a milestone that none of you whiners will never make for sure) and o'boy we're back in -95 and nearly hanging each other throats.

Should everything be **cking 64k? Actually now when I got into this, nowadays it seems to be trendy to release 128b or even 16b intros which are so pointless and ugly that I could puke on them. Several times.

It's nice that there are people that value small size over quality. Is 10Mb full of small crappy intros better than one good demo? Hell not! And what comes to diskmags, yeah sure it's nice if it's downloaded within a minute or two to your computer but then again I have nothing against for waiting something that I'm going to read much longer than any average intro or demo.
added on the 2002-02-26 09:27:49 by melw melw
16b intros? 64b at least. keep your facts straight. the fact that sizecoding compos are becoming slightly more popular these days is nothing but positive.. it's pretty cool to compete in one. (ok i agree that they should be released in packs or something instead of being placed on pouet.net standalone..)

anyway people who complain about filesizes are wankers.

added on the 2002-02-26 10:19:28 by superplek superplek
just don't let future file size match video file sizes ... except if you provide a lot more than a single thread of output
added on the 2002-02-26 10:54:49 by _-_-__ _-_-__
one disk demos forever!!!1 ..be it cd or whatever:)
added on the 2002-02-26 11:24:08 by 216 216
pain0202 is not worth a 10mb download. 2MB, ok. 4 MB maybe because of the popularity. 10MB no way.

perhaps as a musicdisk... but not as a diskmag.
added on the 2002-02-26 12:23:01 by chaos chaos
what is important for a diskmag? the text or what ... ?
added on the 2002-02-26 14:23:30 by Fzool Fzool
just to come back to the first point: actually I do complain alot about demos bigger than 7mb (if they are not *really* worth it) and I hear quite alot of people complaining also. it's not only because of enourmous downloading times (actually I do not download such demos at all until I get them on cd or by network) but also because it's not really in the original sense of demos (after "using the machine to the max" is obsolete these days with GHz pc's and 3d accelerators)
of course, not everyone must do 64k's or below, but nowadays I respect those dudes even more.
added on the 2002-02-26 14:45:22 by styx^hcr styx^hcr
I bet they could've included some modules instead of mp3s as music, even though its a milestone release, its gay to make releases bigger than they could've been.
Just some thoughts:

- Communication technology has not advanced as fast as CPUs and graphics cards. In fact, the speed of my Internet connection the last 8 years has multiplied by 3 times, whereas the speed of my CPU over 11 times :-)

- The biggest problem with demo sizes today is the music. Most musicians today prefer using mp3. This adds up to the total size of the production by 3 to 5 megs. Put the code and some bitmaps and it's no wonder why most demos become 6 to 7 megs. That's why demos with tracked or synthesized music rock in my opinion. With 2 mp3s, it's actually nice that Pain is only 10 megs :-)

- As always, different people like different things. I personally love 64K intros, because they are both challenging to make and you still have enough room to be creative. Normal demos are OK, but must be really good in order to impress me. 2b-4b-8b coder-show-off intros are fun sometimes but are most appreciated among... coders. All in all, if there are people who don't mind downloading 10megs worth of a 3 minute eye-candy, let them, and go watch amiga demos. It's a free world :-)
added on the 2002-02-26 15:39:53 by moT moT
*applause*

Very well said, melw and moT.

I don't like the opinion that larger size = better production, which seems to be a little rampant these days. They can be cool at large sizes, even really cool, but there's not as much respect to give in that case.

It's like web design. Someone can make an information and table packed 80 KB HTML homepage in Frontpage that looks awesome in two hours, or make the exact same (looking) page in hardcoded HTML in six hours, but in only 25 KB.

...And who gets called the lamer?

Respected are those who take time to optimize for the sake of others.
i'm happy that this pain edition has NICE music for a diskmag ..
usually most diskmags have some crap diskmagpop, so i'm just happy that this edition is a lot bigger, then i would listen to the tunes while reading the mag instead of playing an mp3 from outside, just because the tunes suck.

talking about demo limits is nonsense,
any commercial windows software is compiled without being compressed, including bmp files ..
64kb is an interesting limit, requiring everyone (coders, musicians, graphicians) to make something great with allmost nothing ..
make a demo that fits on a floppy disk is a challenge for a demo, and few demos manages to do it.. i just love freestyle/ condense which was a quality demo with content in 1.4 mb.

then you would prefer 5 mb over 10 ??
it's just stupid, i mean large limits like 20 mb still make sense, but, well if people worked a lot on a demo, making tons of graphics and music, then when it's to compile, the coder says "ok, the demo is somehow nice but it's 11 mbytes, it's too gib, we need to remove half of the datas".
will you be ok to remove half of the work you did ??
definetely not,

yeah, same again discussion mp3 vs tracked music ..
just read the first sentence of my post.
what's important is how it sounds..

oh yeah, it takes time to download the demo..
who cares ?? even with the worst modem ever, ppl spend more time chatting than downloading demos ..

yeah, a bit agressive post
i'm just pissed to see such stupid readctions..
added on the 2002-02-26 16:14:53 by florent florent
Melwyn, a lot of people still live in backwards conditions when it comes to Internet connectivity, like (shudder) dial-up. If it takes people longer to download pain than to read it whole, i find it quite understandable that aforemention unlicky people would be whiny about a 10Mb diskmag, or demo for that matter. Personally I think it was worth the size, but can't shake myself from the idea that it could have been smaller.

Then there's the matter of 'is it really necessairy to make things this big?' I personally have difficulties with slap-together demos: duplicate data, unused textures or other clutter.

Apparently the final of Haujobb's Elements is 7 instead of 20 Megabytes. I think that's something worth thinking about, especially when they alledgedly compressed/ruined the quality of viualice's pictures to save space. Odd.
added on the 2002-02-26 16:20:34 by Shifter Shifter
ok ok so how about
if you think it's too big don't leech it.
added on the 2002-02-26 20:48:31 by skrebbel skrebbel
nonsense is good. more nonsense please
added on the 2002-02-26 21:00:21 by _-_-__ _-_-__
knos, you know i just love nonsense...

shifter, yes i've heard of modems and dial-ups. with a modem it takes almost.. hmm.. one hour (?) to download latest pain. after downloading i read it at least another hour which is not a bad ratio in that sense. but when downloading elements (party version!) you have to wait almost two hours and after that there's only a bit less than four minutes of joyjoy. if we follow this logic pain0202 is about 30x better than elements by haujobb!!!

and yes, like lot of people pointed out already: you're really free to do whatever you want. it's a free world. if you think something is too big for you to handle just don't download it and in the meanwhile, stop whining please. :)

ps. i have yoghurt in my beard.
added on the 2002-02-26 23:46:19 by melw melw
one hour? More. More like three on a crappy phone line such as mine. That's not counting random disconnects and such, heh.. but yeah, I'm not going to go on whining for all eternity, I just won't download the thing. If it goes back down to a sane size after this I'll download it again.

I still think MP3 music goes against the whole point of the demoscene.. I mean, you prerender the music, why not prerender all the visuals as well? Hell, just make a giant MPEG movie.

...my cat's breath smells of fish.
added on the 2002-02-27 00:33:30 by golrien golrien
The Scene has its own music formats, why not our own scene image format? Or movie format? Or OS? We just need our own OS. And braodband internet service. Then we'll all be happy. [/sarcasm-laced-with-a-bit-of-truth]

...my cat's breath also smells of fish.
I'm sure I'll get flak for this, but here you go.

pages.cthome.net/vossa/pain0202lite.zip

Minus the music, it's a mere 2.2mb. If you like it, support the authors and get the whole thing later.
added on the 2002-02-27 01:04:44 by phoenix phoenix
=)
<insert terrible chiptune & copperbars in front of a starfield>
** PHOENIX INC. BRINGS YOU: PAIN0202 -CRACKED- !! **

Settle down Melwyn =) I wasn't comparing Elements and Pain on a dial-up scale in the first place. A little consideration for the bandwidth depraved wouldn't be out of place. Calling those unfortunate bastards a couple of whiners isn't nice. Bah, I'm on a 1.5Mbit line myself ;)
added on the 2002-02-27 02:37:47 by Shifter Shifter
Now I am not a demo coder, or even a tracker for that matter (Creativly I am a DJ who produces). What I am though is an avid fan of the demo scene and tracking scene. I got into demo's and intros through an interest in "eyecandy", the type you used to be able to find on hyperreal. Eventually I found hornet and have been enjoying the demo scene ever since. Back then the thought of me downloading even a 4meg demo was pretty rediculous. I loved 4k's and 64k's because of how small they were and what they could do in the space alloted. I would find 64k's by a group and If I liked thier style and skill, Only then would I download something larger. Thus I found TBL, Bomb, Pulse etc.. Arguably some of the better known groups and entity's in your scene. Anyway thats kinda why I think my opinions semi valid. What I'm trying to say is. It's not how big the filesize is. It's whats done and how smoothly (fast) it does it in the space alotted. I think 4k's will always have thier place because they farely accuratly signify how good a group can be without filesize limitations.

To borrow a tradition from the coding gods here be the greetz.
TBL
Bomb
Pulse
farbrausch
mandula
Tran
Melon
Made
Angelo
Keith303

peace
added on the 2002-02-27 06:20:46 by Fidel Fidel
Shifter, yeah. I was just being ir.. ehm ironing my trousers.

Being an old sysop and a BBS fanatic I used to get all my demos from demoscene related BBS's until 1999 or so. Ok, back then there was no 10Mb demos yet but standard limit was something like 6Mb, perhaps 8Mb on few parties.

And yes, I remember surely how much pain downloading brothomStatesOrigami Live from Abduction'97 (42Mb) was with a modem. Took me whole night to finish that download. Hey, and know what - it really was worth it.
added on the 2002-02-27 09:32:15 by melw melw

I didn't wrote anything in pain pouet review, to not break my glop record ;)

At the beginning I was wondering why 10MB. I thought it was the 50th celebration issue, it would have some more bonus, more texts, too many images,. or other bonus taken so much. I don't know...
But I discovered it was because of 2-3 MP3s music! Ugh..
It would be a good point if it was more MB of text, images, bonus files,. something...
I think I will download it now, remove the MP3s, to zip it and fit it in 2-3 disks and go home read it..

And filesizes do matter for me. It's just a state of how hardcore scener you are (Even only in the brain). I would love 1 disk releases just for the sake of ;) I am a bit obsessed with code, optimizing,. this is an idea I had about the scene. Others are just having fun, enjoying with their monster computers.. Others like it, others not..
added on the 2002-02-27 14:20:54 by Optimus Optimus

Crying is a state of a scener too! =)
added on the 2002-02-27 14:29:28 by Optimus Optimus
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16 byte * 16 = 256 byte, called "256b".
256 byte * 16 = 4 kbyte, called "4k".
4 kbyte * 16 = 64 kbyte, called "intro".
64 kbyte * 16 = 1 mbyte, called "dentro" (?).
1 mbyte * 16 = 16 mbyte, called "demo".

See?
added on the 2002-02-27 18:13:36 by mados mados

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