breaking news: 64k category killed, dancers happy
category: parties [glöplog]
Quote:
I found interesting to see that prizes weren't really on par with the difficulty inherent to the category
Not this shit again. If anybody is making 64ks for the moolah, they're idiots.
How could you possibly understand my statement in such a fucked up way?
Seriously, if people were doing 64k for that, well, there wouldn't be any 64k at all, by far.
Seriously, if people were doing 64k for that, well, there wouldn't be any 64k at all, by far.
indeed, it's all about the pootah instead!
it's all about taking 32k for the music because you refuse to use softsynths.
Moar softsynths!
softsynths are boar
Just to add to the stats about 64k intros - so far this year, 16 have been released. The peak-year for 64k intros were 1997, with 249 released. Last year, only 31 64k intros were released.
The genre -- as a self-sustained compo -- is dead. This is not to say that one cannot score insane brownie-points by entering a 64k intro into the "combined demo"-category.
The genre -- as a self-sustained compo -- is dead. This is not to say that one cannot score insane brownie-points by entering a 64k intro into the "combined demo"-category.
Lol, yeah, the 64k compo at Revision was only 11 entries that all ruled.
It might not work as a self-sustained compo at Asm, but "the 64k genre" is not dead lol.
It might not work as a self-sustained compo at Asm, but "the 64k genre" is not dead lol.
okkie, if gloom says it's dead, dead it is.
period
period
What's is a 64k intro and why do they exist? To really answer this, let's look back a bit further than just the past few years.
On the PC, back in the ealy days of 90s we were really only making demos. The 64k intro category didn't really exists in the very early days as a compo category in parties. For ASM (and through our influence to a lot of other parties) it was actually intentionally introduced by yours truly and the rest of the PC organizing team by copying Amiga's 40k intro compo. But it was impossible to do anything sensible with sound, not to mention to support Soundblaster and GUS at the same time in 40k, so we settled eventually at 64k (yes, there were years when if you supported both soundcards your 64k could actually be much bigger in file size).
40k intros on Amiga stood for technical excellence, different type of expression, condensed delivery, different aesthetics, and often more original, smaller concepts than the main demo category. We wanted to bring the same to PC.
So the 64k intro was established to put forward shorter, more technologically demanding category that looked and felt significantly different from the main demo category. 64 kilobytes on other hand was truly an arbitrary decision.
The 64k was (after a few very rough early years) clearly a success as a concept. More challenging, more interesting, different, and more fun for teams making those 64ks. It didn't need months of works like a big demo, and you could try out new ideas easier.
As Gloom points out, 64k as a category has since died. Why? I posit that it died because it no longer delivered on its original promise: challenging, but fun to make demos, that allowed for creating something substantially different from main demo category. During 2000s 64k intros improved rapidly in quality and started to look and feel exactly like demos, except they took a whole lot more effort to create. Fun was seeping out, design was becoming "just like a demo, but in 64k", and it was just much more harder to make - especially if you didn't have your own kickass intro tool.
From a compo point of view the key questions is what's the point of having a separate category for 64k and demos if they look the same? Smash & crew clearly showed at last ASM that 64k could have potentially won the demo compo. Even if you didn't know it was 64k, it would still performed well in the demo compo and could have won. The majority if not all of the 64ks from Revision could have easily competed and performed well in the Revision demo compo.
64k is today just a demo. The 64kb size limit isn't small enough to force the category to be innovative, fun and different. Because of this, 4k is the new 64k. Smaller, faster to make, innovative, fun, different.
At the same time, 4k is no longer a solo "coder's compo". If you recall, originally 4ks didn't even allow for sound to be played because it was supposed to be that solo. As 4k's have developed, it's time to push the envelope again. Enter the 1k intro compo, the coder's compo (and yes, you can play sound =)).
I was there when the 64k compo category was created. I'm here saying farewell to it because it's no longer stands for anything.
It'd be easy to do the popular thing and avoid a negative feedback like this. Hating on ASM is popular already, so why invite more of it? We are doing this change only because we believe this is the right to do. You can bet it's hard when its not popular. I love getting feedback (even negative), and I truly welcome ideas on how to move things forward. Please do stop with the forum warz nonsense of "gamers killed 64k", "zomg, assembly organizers are bunch of out of touch wankers".
As for other compo changes
- Oldskool demo: the goal was to move rules towards the very early days of the scene as we got complaints that folks making e.g. VIC20, C64 entries don't want to compete with 486 or Amiga 4000 entries. This is hard one and clearly we can't please everyone with this, so we are trying to deliver a category that's more equal and truly old.
- Music: with one music compo you end up with wildly different types of music and judging because hard. This is an experiment to provide a more equal footing by splitting the compo into two. We'll see if it works or not.
On the PC, back in the ealy days of 90s we were really only making demos. The 64k intro category didn't really exists in the very early days as a compo category in parties. For ASM (and through our influence to a lot of other parties) it was actually intentionally introduced by yours truly and the rest of the PC organizing team by copying Amiga's 40k intro compo. But it was impossible to do anything sensible with sound, not to mention to support Soundblaster and GUS at the same time in 40k, so we settled eventually at 64k (yes, there were years when if you supported both soundcards your 64k could actually be much bigger in file size).
40k intros on Amiga stood for technical excellence, different type of expression, condensed delivery, different aesthetics, and often more original, smaller concepts than the main demo category. We wanted to bring the same to PC.
So the 64k intro was established to put forward shorter, more technologically demanding category that looked and felt significantly different from the main demo category. 64 kilobytes on other hand was truly an arbitrary decision.
The 64k was (after a few very rough early years) clearly a success as a concept. More challenging, more interesting, different, and more fun for teams making those 64ks. It didn't need months of works like a big demo, and you could try out new ideas easier.
As Gloom points out, 64k as a category has since died. Why? I posit that it died because it no longer delivered on its original promise: challenging, but fun to make demos, that allowed for creating something substantially different from main demo category. During 2000s 64k intros improved rapidly in quality and started to look and feel exactly like demos, except they took a whole lot more effort to create. Fun was seeping out, design was becoming "just like a demo, but in 64k", and it was just much more harder to make - especially if you didn't have your own kickass intro tool.
From a compo point of view the key questions is what's the point of having a separate category for 64k and demos if they look the same? Smash & crew clearly showed at last ASM that 64k could have potentially won the demo compo. Even if you didn't know it was 64k, it would still performed well in the demo compo and could have won. The majority if not all of the 64ks from Revision could have easily competed and performed well in the Revision demo compo.
64k is today just a demo. The 64kb size limit isn't small enough to force the category to be innovative, fun and different. Because of this, 4k is the new 64k. Smaller, faster to make, innovative, fun, different.
At the same time, 4k is no longer a solo "coder's compo". If you recall, originally 4ks didn't even allow for sound to be played because it was supposed to be that solo. As 4k's have developed, it's time to push the envelope again. Enter the 1k intro compo, the coder's compo (and yes, you can play sound =)).
I was there when the 64k compo category was created. I'm here saying farewell to it because it's no longer stands for anything.
It'd be easy to do the popular thing and avoid a negative feedback like this. Hating on ASM is popular already, so why invite more of it? We are doing this change only because we believe this is the right to do. You can bet it's hard when its not popular. I love getting feedback (even negative), and I truly welcome ideas on how to move things forward. Please do stop with the forum warz nonsense of "gamers killed 64k", "zomg, assembly organizers are bunch of out of touch wankers".
As for other compo changes
- Oldskool demo: the goal was to move rules towards the very early days of the scene as we got complaints that folks making e.g. VIC20, C64 entries don't want to compete with 486 or Amiga 4000 entries. This is hard one and clearly we can't please everyone with this, so we are trying to deliver a category that's more equal and truly old.
- Music: with one music compo you end up with wildly different types of music and judging because hard. This is an experiment to provide a more equal footing by splitting the compo into two. We'll see if it works or not.
Ok, now we dance, yeah?
Quote:
64k is today just a demo. The 64kb size limit isn't small enough to force the category to be innovative, fun and different.
With all due respect, did you just say demos cannot be fun to make?
Gargaj, I certainly didn't mean that. If demos weren't fun to make, what would the point of them =).
abyss: i actually get that.
in recent years, 64k has for many people become "make a demo (cos we didnt have gfx anyway) but use a synth track and enter an easier compo". i can totally see why that would get canned and we just focus on demo, or 4k where a totally different approach is required.
in recent years, 64k has for many people become "make a demo (cos we didnt have gfx anyway) but use a synth track and enter an easier compo". i can totally see why that would get canned and we just focus on demo, or 4k where a totally different approach is required.
I've always enjoyed 64k intros and made some over the years, but while I will miss the 64k compo, I totally understand this decision. I've been thinking of doing a 64k intro again, but haven't really bothered because of the required technical effort. Most of the demos that I've done in recent years could pretty easily be squeezed inside the size limit (stuff like 2019 and Spring Brought Us... at least), but I don't want to go through the process of writing a synth, getting a musician to use it and then fighting with antivirus software that flags my code as malware and stupid Windows libraries to get the filesize down to an artificial limit. To me the fun is elsewhere: in the concepts, in the self-expression and in creating the visuals for the show. Making a demo gets me all of this with a lot smaller hassle and allows the musician to do his part with proper tools.
Okkie: well, no. :) Not "all of them ruled", and even if they did, it wouldn't make much of a difference, given that there were two major 64k intro release-parties every year -- Germany during Easter and Finland during Summer. Now one of them is gone. Do you think an entire genre will survive by being showcased once a year? Highly unlikely. And, yes, the term "dead" might not be technically accurate, but "lying still on terminal life support" is more more like it :)
yep, let's reserve the size-optimizing craze for platforms where it's actually a hard limit. IMHO.
also what Preacher said.
also what Preacher said.
My initial reaction was that I wasn't too happy about discontinuing a nice category but then I realized that it's good to let scene and demo parties evolve freely!
I'd personally like to see more heterogeneous demo parties. So iterate and create new ideas by changing compos etc. Keep up the good work Assembly! :)
I'd personally like to see more heterogeneous demo parties. So iterate and create new ideas by changing compos etc. Keep up the good work Assembly! :)
I'm pretty sure that if people start making awesome 64k intros, there will be compos to release them in. I wouldn't hold my breath though...
Does this mean Smash won't ever make a 64kb intro again ? :)
magic: there doesnt seem any point at the moment really. :) if someone else came in with a bunch of new ideas and ways of doing things, not just rehashing the same old same old we had in the mid 2000s, it might be motivating enough to do it again.. :)
Magic: why don't you interview him for Hugi and try to find out?
(and i dont mean to sound arrogant with that comment, its just that the genre is now heavily stagnated between essentially copies of the techniques fr pioneered 10 years ago, upsized 4ks, or a few demo fx with a synth track)
Gloom: you really think so? :)
i agree with abyss and smash on the 64k's. the problem with them is, it's quite possible to do stuff that can compete with demos (to an extent), and it's possible to do 64k music that is close to being "real music" (to an extent), but a) making a quality 64k is just shitloads of work for relatively little reward, and b) because making a quality 64k is such a pain in the ass, the category has also became a sort of "easy way out" for the reasons smash mentioned above.
regarding the oldskool demos etc,
for instance, the extreme music compo (basically combining newschool executables, oldschool executables and small amiga .mods) and the extreme graphics compo (which originally combined 4k executable graphics and oldschool pixel graphics) were probably the most retarded concepts for compos in the history of assembly (sorry) :) fortunately the extreme graphics compo was first changed into a 4k exe graphics compo, and then dropped entirely. the extreme music compo also died a silent death this year, which is a good thing.
basically, if the compo can't provide a common ground and a common baseline to judge the entries against (i.e. if there aren't enough entries to keep the compo alive), in many cases it's better to just drop the compo altogether instead of bundling it together with some other compo with different restrictions. especially in size-restricted categories (aka the geek categories) the voter needs to have some kind of criteria to rank the entries against. if there is none, the outcome of the compo might become, erm, unpredictable, and then you'll get complaints from geeks who know their shit :) of course, in essence, the voters are always right and you always need to "play their game" in a way if you want to win. and of course from a organizing point of view you can never please everyone.
regarding the oldskool demos etc,
Quote:
to be honest, the same argument can be applied to any artificially combined compo with radically different platforms or methods of creation competing against each other :)we got complaints that folks making e.g. VIC20, C64 entries don't want to compete with 486 or Amiga 4000 entries. This is hard one and clearly we can't please everyone with this, so we are trying to deliver a category that's more equal and truly old.
for instance, the extreme music compo (basically combining newschool executables, oldschool executables and small amiga .mods) and the extreme graphics compo (which originally combined 4k executable graphics and oldschool pixel graphics) were probably the most retarded concepts for compos in the history of assembly (sorry) :) fortunately the extreme graphics compo was first changed into a 4k exe graphics compo, and then dropped entirely. the extreme music compo also died a silent death this year, which is a good thing.
basically, if the compo can't provide a common ground and a common baseline to judge the entries against (i.e. if there aren't enough entries to keep the compo alive), in many cases it's better to just drop the compo altogether instead of bundling it together with some other compo with different restrictions. especially in size-restricted categories (aka the geek categories) the voter needs to have some kind of criteria to rank the entries against. if there is none, the outcome of the compo might become, erm, unpredictable, and then you'll get complaints from geeks who know their shit :) of course, in essence, the voters are always right and you always need to "play their game" in a way if you want to win. and of course from a organizing point of view you can never please everyone.