pouët.net

Hello!

I'm assembling a seminar explaining the history of the demoscene for a hackerspace party: http://2014.hackover.de/. The basic idea is me rushing through the history of the demos and the scene in about 30 minutes of talk interrupted with about 90 minutes of demos. The milestones I want to cover are

• hacks in games
  
• early cracktros in front of games
  
• cracktros getting better and reaching the quality of the commercial software
  
• "removing" the payload (the game) and demos are now standalone software
  
• migration to "second generation of demo hardware" (e.g. Amiga)
  
• reaching the PC
  
• evolutiuon on the PC (creating "artificial borders" like 4k, 64k)
  
• the step back: demos on retro hardware
  
• demoscene parties
  

For each of those steps I want to show at least one example. So I'd like to have some suggestions. I'd also rather have two 5 minute demos than one 10 minute demo. If you think, I forgot a milestone, let me know as well.

I had a talk like this recently and I showed:

Berlin Bear cracktro (the beginning)
Eagle Soft cracktro (c64 crackro)
Upfront - Toaster (c64 demo)
Spaceballs - State of the Art (OCS demo)
Ozone - Smoke Bomb (AGA demo)
Noon - Stars, the Wonders of the World (PC demo)
Fairlight & Instinct - Sharp (modern C64 demo)
Ghostown & Loonies - Human Traffic (modern Amiga demo)
Haujobb - Youshould (modern PC demo)

You might get some inspiration from the book "Kunst, Code und Maschine" by Daniel Botz (it's his dissertation):

http://www.danielbotz.de/

In case you don't own it, I can take a look at the section on demoscene history to see what he considers to be important milestones, and why - just give me a shout.

If you're interested, you can have a look at my recent presentation about the demoscene on Slideshare.

It's a very broad overview but also covers some historical aspects.

1001 Crew - Amazing

It would be better to start with pre-C64 display hacks (especially for PDP-11 and Apple II) and hardware presentations. They had more common with contemporary demos than Berlin Bear or Eagle Soft cracktros.

Visually, sure, but that's not really relevant to demos as a cultural phenomenon.

you could show a trainer for hacks in games. also if you have the insight, you could try to take a look at how design evolved.

The book by Daniel is really good and I advise everyone interested in scene history to buy/read it!
However, the amount of crack intros/demos listed is too huge to use them as anything but inspiration.
Oh, and imho no talk about the past is complete without this famous future crew release!

Glad it's not just me that picks out Youshould as the definitive Demoish Demo That Demonstrates What A Demo Is :-) (It's just a shame about the tits+ass and the middle finger. I know that's part of the deal if you want to give someone a representative view of demo aesthetics, but I do worry that it's a bit alienating as the first demo they ever see...)

For a hackerspace crowd, I would definitely recommend showing Craft by lft. At my demoscene presentation at EMFcamp 2012, that was the one that got everyone's jaw to drop, not Debris or Gaia Machina. :-) It also fits nicely into a history-themed talk, since it's a neat visual way to show the contrast between historical oldskool demos and people working on retro(ish) hardware today.

Here are some milestones:

4k – Elevated (RGBA / TBC)
The first trackmo (?!) – Mental Hangover (Scoopex)
Cebit demo 90 – (Red Sector Inc.)

Red Sector - Mega Demo was the one which kicked it all off, if you want further examples of great demos The Silents DK had the titles which always turned up the goods. Also you will need to check Melon, a group which took design in a completely different direction, slick GFX and instead of the usual black background or navy blue, made their backdrop more funky, it had a big effect on the scene.

Gasman: +1, YouShould is very demo-ish, but it can set things on the wrong foot. I think 1995 works great as a the uber demo-ish prod to show to the uninitiated audience.

Craft was on my list, along with som oscilloscope and OHP demos to show the wide range of platforms.

Some ASD-stuff shouldn't be forgotten, like Lifeforce or Rupture.

there are usually too many milestones to cover them all, what i usually do is:

- a famous c64 cracktro (berlin bear, eaglesoft or fairlight)
- amiga osc (state of the art will do)
- early pc (second reality cut short if you're running on a tight schedule)
- 90s 'design over technical achievment' era pc (deesbab/orange 64k)
- rocking 4k (elevated/rgba)
- spectrum demo (weed/tkb or your song is quiet pt2)
- amiga 1200 demo (starstruck/tbl)
- alternative platforms (pokemon mini, osciloscopes, whatever rocks your socks the most)
- current pc demo (latest winner demo from assembly usually does the trick)

then add more demos here and there, whatever you like best or from local groups/parties

Stone cold classics..

Stag
Return of stag
Bride of stag
Son of stag
Bride of son of stag

BITS.

What djh0ffman said. Also, I would definitely not show State of the Art as it was hardly representative of (even the better) demos in that time, even if it got its share of imitators later on. Mental Hangover, Enigma or something similar would be more appropriate. Or something earlier. For early PC, how about going mad original and show ANYTHING other than Second Reality for once? :)

most amiga demos around 91 92 93 were better then what was being done on pc around that time, second reality was the big milestone that made the scene start jumping into the pc, as far as i been told atleast, i wasnt active back then. so it's kind of mandatory in my book, since pc is indeed considered the most active / current / modern platform of sorts.

You can't understand what a demo is, unless you know the context of its original audience. What kind of visual effects (and music) the people were used to seeing, at the time. None of the mentioned demos is better than the other, if taken out of cultural context.

By the way, State of the Art probably made a bigger impression than any demo ever. To me.

for me is "1d Destruction Kit"

Also what Preacher said. The demoscene is s cultural phenomenon, not a technical one. Display tricks from the 1970s may have been "demos" in a sense, but claiming that they are a part of the historical and cultural continuum known as "demoscene" will need some more concrete evidence. There were scrollers and vector graphics in the 70s, and some people have certainly proudly shown them to an impressed audience, but that's not a part of the demoscene.

Yes, as to what yzi says:



I think these two events are the 'birth' of the demoscene: when cracktros evolved into standalone demonstrations, and people started to organize gatherings and competitions.
Somewhere around 1987 or so, I guess.

My point with the context was, maybe you should have an idea of what sort of stuff there was outside demos. Why was this impressive to someone in 1991? Maybe it's not possible to communicate this in a few seconds. ;)