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There is also the Finnish demoscene event Assembly.

Nothing breeds trust better, right? Assembly is almost as well known as assembly in programmer circles; and the first one is also an assembly in the dictionary sense. I think this slashvertisement might not end up as well received as the advertiser wished.

Reminds me of the wild demo comps they used to and still do have at the big demo parties through out Europe, the ones where thousands of people would turn up for a few days. The idea was to code a demo at the event itself during the party. http://www.assembly.org/summer10/compos/realtime/demo contains a good example of recent rules for one of these.

It's crazy enough watching people attempting to finish their entries for the regular demo comps, I can only imagine the energy at a big demo party with a wild comp category.

When I go to an event like ASSEMBLY I join the appropriate IRC channel of about 500 people. Not only do I not know most of them, I don't know who is dating who, who is friends of who, which of them have similar interests with each other, how active certain people are in interacting with each other, etc. before I explicitly get to know them and find out things like this manually... And this is all OK, as IRC isn't a social network.

I can't easily monitor my social circle (friends, family, co-workers, etc.) through IRC: Even ignoring that most of the people I know aren't on IRC, IRC is built around channels, not around social relationships. Not all of the people I frequently interact with are on the same channel (indeed, I would need to be on all the channels they're on)! I would need to analyze the backlogs of 30 different channels to piece together the data about the people I'm interested in, etc. which simply isn't practical (or possible).

Like all communication mediums, IRC can be used to build and maintain social relationships. However, it obviously isn't designed for the type of stuff that social networks are designed for. It's mind boggling how someone could not see this difference. :)

No problemo! It just came out over the weekend due to Assembly 2010. :) Now, if /. editors would post my story for everyone to see. [grin]

I submitted this to /. a few days ago, but I guess no one cares:

"The Demoscene Documentary, with an embedded video that seems to show English closed captions/subtitles overlay correctly, and Pouet mention a seventeen minutes and 10 seconds Finnish YouTube video (turn on its "Transcript" option to read the English texts to go with the video) showing a "documentary episode about the world famous Finnish demogroup, Future Crew. First presented at Assembly 2010..."

I haven't been to Iceland but I forgot about Finland. I think I'm still slightly bitter about having my booze confiscated by security outside Assembly :)

As one of the many organizers for a large demoparty, Assembly I have to say, that each year brings more suprises in the 64k and 4k intro competitions, where groups create programs with executable sizes of 64kb or 4kb.

As already pointed out, second reality is worth seeing, and after that 1998 by Kewlers & MFX will show where we have gone from that.

Not just Defcon, but Assembly as well.

Ah yes... I was thinking that too. Especially when half the screenshots on their main page are all demo effects. ;)

I wonder if we're going to see an XGS category at Assembly next summer?

at Assembly (www.assembly.org) there is already a sports competition series involving floppies...check them out

Assembly 2004 just got out a couple days ago - check it out if you're at all interesting in the graphics "Demo/Intro Scene" or just really cool computer art of all sorts.

One of the most amazing things to come out of these parties/competitions has been the rather amazing 64k intros. If you have any modern 3d hardware, and haven't heard of them - definetly have a look. The things these folks can pack in under 65536 bytes is nothing short of amazing. Even if you don't have the hardware, you can download the .avi versions and wonder how they can do it.

Ryan Fenton

you speak of the scene as if it was past tense ... i think you'll find that you are wrong!!

the scene is still going quite strong! :D

Demoparties do take place in the USA, but not with the frequency nor large attendance that one would find at such spectacular events as Assembly or The Gathering.

The next North American Demoparty is going to be held in Salt Lake City, Utah on August 5-7. Refer to pilgrimage.scene.org for details.

I've never been to the Gathering but I try to attend Assembly, which is held in Finland every year. It's not quite the same as it used to be during the early nineties when Amiga still ruled the demoscene but the PC's were already coming. I still remember in Assembly '92 when a really cool (can't remember the name) PC demo got a standing ovation from the Amiga crowd.

Don't forget, Denmark is also where they hold Assembly Organizing every year; which happens to be run by the few remaining members of the legednary demo-coding group Future Crew.

It must be something in the water over there.

I posted some of the reasons before this one appeared here and here, and followed up in the comments to this article here.

Basically, the problem is - no matter how good your intentions are, you're going to hose some machines and cause real problems. You won't have control over the code once it is released. Even if you just publish source for it, someone else will release it and you won't have control.

If you want to help people, write your firewall activation and configuration program as a tool that allows the user to control it and distribute it freely on a website. Advertise it. If it doesn't suck, people will use it and you'll help make the internet more secure. Popular magazines might even recommend it as a really easy fix for security, and you'll help even more people. And, if you screw up, you can fix the bugs in the next version and provide support. Added bonus - the police and corporate lawyers won't be hunting you.

If you just want to flex your coding muscles, try writing cool stuff that you can put on a resume without being arrested. Or go help out on something useful that people will thank you for. If you really want to pit your code against others, try CoreWars - kinda old school, but it doesn't screw up anyone else's day.

At the very least, please read this paper.

If you've got enough skill to write a worm from scratch, you've got enough skill to either a.) make real money with programming, and/or b.) write useful software that will help lots of people. Don't waste your talent.

Well it's over for this year. The results can be found here, especially the 64k intro winner was amazing:

http://asm03.assembly.org/News/Compos/CompleteResu lts/en

You are NOT allowed to bring with you

- weapons of any kind
- edged weapons such as knives, pocket knives Leathermans or similar tools with knives
- explosives or fireworks
- alcohol or any illegal drugs
- laser pointers, laser pens etc
- smoke machines

It goes on to say you can't: get drunk, sleep in cars, play loud music or (and here's the kicker!) "connect any kitchen equipment to the electricity plugs " ... Oh yeah, there is no public viewing of porn allowed.

Rekkaturvat is one of the 11 entries to this years Assembly demoparty gamedev competition. The party starts on the August 7th, but all the gamedev entries are already available for download.

Rekkaturvat is one of the 11 entries to this years Assembly demoparty gamedev competition. The party starts on the August 7th, but all the gamedev entries are already available for download.

Then why has hardly anybody ever heard of it? There are very, very few freeware games that ever become popular.

The demo scene is rather unknown to most win pc users. But us old Amiga users still keep track of the scene and the demo parties around the US.

What they forget to say, is Dismount Truck by rekkaturvat is a entry in the Assembly 03 gamedev compo.

BTW, if want to learn more about the scene, check out www.scene.org for news, and a good scene internet radio. Check out the demos and music.

BBL, gotta load giana sisters on the 64 (emu thou) :)

It's at the same date as Assembly, so I can't attend.

what? demo parties are dead?

• The Gathering - 2002 winners
• The Party - 2001 winners
• Assembly - 2002 winners

• Pouet - Has a big list of demos, intros, and lots of comments.
• 256b.com - If the 2-10 meg demos on pouet are too bloated for you, check these out.
• CFXweb - A community web site with forums and a magazine.

• The Gathering - 2002 winners
• The Party - 2001 winners
• Assembly - 2002 winners

• Pouet - Has a big list of demos, intros, and lots of comments.
• 256b.com - If the 2-10 meg demos on pouet are too bloated for you, check these out.
• CFXweb - A community web site with forums and a magazine.

http://www.assembly.org/
But at least the partyplace was bigger & bolder:

http://www.hartwall-areena.com/englanti/c/c_main.h tm

Usually the majority of demo sceners (the people who come there to participate in the art competitions) spend most of their time outside the party hall, boozing around open fire with other likeminded folks that they can only meet at parties.

When the Finnish equivalent party, Assembly (it is also one of the oldest demoparties along with The Gathering) is held, there is a shadow party called Boozembly going on in the nearby woods and you can find all the demo scene legends out there when there are no competitions running.

I hope that the quality of releases at TG will be OK, but I'm afraid that the majority of people will go to Breakpoint instead which is a strictly demo scene oriented party.

1500 drunk guys all trying to impress each other with real-time computer generated art. It might not be heaven but it's far from Hell.

Oh well, back to coding my demo for BP..

1100 guests??? bah!

Around here that's considered a failiure or good for your first try.

This easter the worlds largest lan party will be The Gathering with 5100 guests. Free tickets are still available if you are coming from outside Europe and normally priced tickets are available for people from Europe, but outside Norway.

I know because we sold the first 4300 tickets in 6 hours via PTN and there are over 1000 people on the waiting list for the rest of the tickets.

The worlds second largest party is DreamHack in sweden with around 5000 guests.

Assembly in Finland is also quite large with over 3000 guests.

Due to general anti-piracy hysteria in Denmark The Party (the worlds first large party) had less than 1000 guests this year, down from over 3000 a few years ago.

Try Assembly.org for some details about the 'demo scene' AFAIK. Two demo sceners' sites are; Byterapers (old group) and tAAt (new group).

Its too bad you missed the ASM Party 2002 BTW. It was cool and I had almost no English speaking demo-lovers to chat with! :)

Also, the 'intro scene' was where the fun was BTW. ;)

Yes, Assembly has lots of teens playing fps etc., but they still have the focus on supporting demoscene. That's not the case on The Party which once was a demoscene party but nowadays is nearly 100% gaming LAN party where they don't care about demosceners any more.

This used to be a demoparty, like Assembly, but it seems to have degenerated into a simple game even...sad. It is not too nice, however, that people seem to often mistake demo events for lanparties ("Yeah, it was a great party, but all those competitions interrupting our games really sucked") Why come to a demoparty if you don't like demos? Anyone else have similar experiences?

The demoscene is actually a pretty fascinating thing, and this is not really the way to present it to the slashdot crowd. I'd suggest you people go over to Scene.org and see for yourself what real demos are like. I go to Assembly every year and I have to say some of the stuff is quite impressive. See for yourselves. Text-mode demos are really a small part of the scene.

• Capitalize the first word of every sentence.
  
• If you use an abbreviation, you should put it in CAPS .. for example, it's "IMHO" not "imho".
  
• Capitalize the first word of every name .. for example, "Sweden" not "sweden".
  
• Do not merge words together. It's "as well", not "aswell" (and you used that wrong, too). It's "demo scene" not "demoscene".
  
• Don't add your own linebreaks <br>, Slashdot will wrap your lines for you if you let it.
  
• Know the difference between "has" and "have" .. for example, "events that still have some sort of respect". Note, HAVE not HAS!
  
• Do not write out decimal numbers when they're lesser than twenty or so .. for example, write "two", not "2".
  

• LAN parties sure as hell are mostly for enthusiasts (I will not use the word "nerd", it means something else than what you meant in your ill-worded posting) - most "normal" do not consider spending three+ days in front of their computers a fun activity, especially when this includes being depraved of sleep and regular meals.
  
• When you say "looked down upon", you are referring to the attitudes of the elitist "hard-core" scener fucks who consider gamers the scum of the earth. In the gaming community (which is about 20 times the size of the scener community), DreamHack is certainly not looked down upon.
  
• While we're on the subject of commercial events, take a look at the Assembly homepage. Note the massive sponsor graphics on top. And those are no small companies. Assembly is way more of a commercial event than DH, though DH still attracts more people.
  

in scandinavia we have a long tradition of large parties

dreamhack in sweden had 5000 attenders last winter
the gathering usually has about the same amount aswell, taking place in norway

lanparties isn't for nerds at all tho imho.
even if dreamhack and tg has roots in the demoscene
they are looked down upon nowadays as just another commercial event.

there are 2 other alternatives among the bigger events that still has some sort of respect
them being assembly in finland
and theparty in denmark
with stronger roots and better connection to the demoscene still today,
thus being accepted even by most hardcore people

there are a bunch of events all around europe aswell,
but for the really big stuff,

welcome to scandinavia

/jonas

Or The Assembly in Finland.

By 1988 you would pretty much get laughed at if you were still running a C-64 machine.

And people in demoscene still make really cool demos for C64! Recently I watched through some of the demos from Assembly parties of recent years... I have one word: wow. =)

Yeah, by early 1990s the games couldn't quite beat the games that appeared on, say, Amiga - but I still use C64 for the games that were produced before those times. Those are classics, dammit.

And sometimes the PC folks can't make better games, even when they have vastly faster graphics and processor and more memory. Shame on them... =)

And they still haven't made a cooler sound synth chip than the good ol' SID...

Since this is really not a 'LAN party' but a 'demo party' and this is Slashdot, something about the demo scene and linux is in order....

Check out Lnxscene for some Linux demos. Linux and demoscene haven't really mixed (yet?) so most of the stuff there isn't that good but I recommend checking out at least the linux-only (!) Dose 2 demo by mfx that placed 5th at Assembly, a very respectable achievement. Slashdot had a story about asm, too.

Some others work checking out are Astral Blur by TBL (they have a really cool system called Ixalance which lets them distribute the same files for all platforms it supports - all you need is the Ixalance launcher (only few hundred kilobytes) and you can run any of their .ixa demos), State of Mind by Bomb and Alpha 2 by Astral. Finally, if you've got Java installed , you can enjoy the show right inside your browser window: Cyboman 1999 by the Komplex folks. This one's actually a java remake of an old 64k intro.

Surprisingly many Windows demos even work under WINE.

I greatly respect Sam Lantinga/Loki for giving us SDL, looking at the non-SDL demos/games on the Linux platform I'd say that only SDL has really made Linux a viable alternative for the demoscene to develop on.

Demoscene - Music, Gfx, DEMOS!

The largest computer artforms is the demo. These demos are music and gfx wrapped into a small package.

There are contests around the world called "Demo Partys" which give awards on best gfx, best music, best demos in sizes (64K,etc), 1 hour to compose tunes with a set of samples, best mp3, best Gfx, most genuine.

Many of these artists and musicians are working in the game industry or entertainment industry. Many of the older 64/apple/amiga game musicians are working for the largest game companies, creating tunes for your games you play today.

Assembly - The largest Demo party in the world
OrangeJuice - Demoscene information center
Google demo directory.
Nectarine - 100% scene music radio!
Crystal Melon - Famous cracktros (minidemos) many converted to Shockwave so people can view them. (They were on a c64 and Amiga!)

If you interested in video game, demo music, mods (4 channel) music, is like a midi with the wave files included.
Check out
Nectarine - 100% scene music radio!
Mod Archive
Google Mod directory
Aminet AmiNet mod archive.
C64: Back in Time CD Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Ben Daglish, Chris Hülsbeck, Peter Clarke - Music Game Gods.

I think this is an excellent idea, and one of the best things about it is that we can do this, legally. (Which is not to say that we shouldn't fight the DMCA.)

How? When you're spending the your money on music, make sure you get it into the hands of real people (via Fairtunes, for example). There's loads of great stuff out there being created by individuals in their garages (or whatever). The kids at Assembly completely blow me away.

If you must listen to Brittany (ugh), tape it off the radio.

--Mike

The Gathering isn't meant to be so much a "gamer" party as it is supposed to be for the Demo Scene .

Good examples of what demos are are here if you have a win32 or DOS box around.

More parties like Mekka, Assembly, The Party and others exist.

• CFX Web
• Scene.org - especially the viewing tips section
• Assembly 2K

assembly '2k
SE '2k
dream hack
Scene

There are more..
I only wish that NAID (Montreal, where I live) still existed.. ):

but obfuscated code still doesn't seem as impressive to me as a good ol' 4k intro.

Maybe it's the pretty pictures. . .

Here's some links for you interested:
Assembly demoparty
tAAt demogroup (the authors of LeGorso)
General demoscene news and stuff
Site dedicated to scenenews and game/demo development

Those should keep you guys busy for a while ;)
- Mik\tAAt

Ok, what follows is slanted opinion. Treat it as such.

From my point of view as someone who converted from classic Amiga hardware + AmigaOS (with a bit of Linux/m68k every now and then) to ia32-Linux, I know it's hard to see why the Amiga-fan herd would want to use QNX as a desktop system. "It's a REAL-TIME OPERATING SYSTEM, for crap's sake! You're not SUPPOSED to run it on the DESKTOP!" I hear. Well, things aren't that simple.

As you probably know, the amiga herd was, in the 1990s, engaged in a bitter and one-sided war against the pc/windows crowd. Since the amiga hardware stopped being able to keep up with the speed that the PC was developing, the amiga fans had to use different arguments for why "the amiga REALLY is MUCH better than ANYTHING that Micro$oft keeps pushing you" than hardware superiority (which was true until about 1993, 1994...). Most of the arguments were based on these ideas:

• AmigaOS has a small memory footprint and no bloat to speak of. You can fit a working AmigaOS system on a single 880KiB floppy.
  Being able to fit a working environment on a floppy was important in the early days (1986-1990) because hard drives cost quite a lot of money and the most that people could afford was generally a 512KiB memory expansion and/or a second floppy drive. So-called "turbo" cards and the ability to take standard SIMM memory modules came later. As you can probably tell, the one-floppy feature is largely irrelevant today as there's enough memory to boot off one disk, then mount a filesystem on another or in the system memory.
  Additionally, the cost of having a small memory footprint was that the system core was extremely simple. There was no memory protection, and the virtual memory extension programs that came later were doomed to fail because of the inconsistent manner that AmigaOS programs allocated memory (i.e. the "should we use MEMF_PUBLIC for this memory that we're going to pass between processes?").
  (QNX paraller -- the web-station-on-a-HD-floppy demo)
• The AmigaOS is a real-time operating system; we don't need no steenking 32MiB audio buffers for audio that doesn't crackle! Also, the OS task-switches much better than windows ever can.
  All true, except that with the low context-switch time (that you get when you don't have to mess around with memory management; every process is king, remember?) you get major stability problems since every process can take the system down, in the middle of a disk transaction no less.
  (QNX paraller -- two magic buzzwords: "real time")

Because the QNX kernel shares many of the properties that they used for arguments in their war-on-the-PC, they now have a collective hard-on for a closed-source real-time kernel not designed for desktop use. Another reason why the amiga fans are now slinging more vitriol is that the sensible ones moved to Linux on either ia32 or PPC a couple of years ago, when it became clear to most that despite the many iterations of "Amiga bought, new owner plans resurrection! Film at 11!", nothing was going to happen, ever (the best that some could do was release a "support the amiga!" CD single containing some of the worst electro-pop I've ever heard; this was in 1998).
I present as evidence the incredible shitflingery perpetrated in comp.sys.amiga.{advocacy,misc} regarding Linux around when the current owner had announced[0] that the next Amiga incarnation would be linux-based; some even claimed that the SCSI support in the 2.2.x kernel was horribly broken based on a message they'd seen regarding a SCSI bug in a 0.x kernel!

I used Amiga computers from the year 1988 to 1997. I wrote quite a bit of code, including a primitive texturemapped 3d-engine and a port of Id software's DOOM (based on the source release a few years ago, not the GPL one). The only thing about the Amiga that's alive now is the demo scene, and that's being killed off by the mainstreamization of the demoscene by assembly.com (there's a demoscene around the old CBM 64 though, so don't lose hope yet.)

And that's all I've got to say.

[0] Well, they didn't actually announce anything. It's said that during a presentation flick that they did, the words "Linux" and "Transmeta" were displayed; I'm assuming they got a whiff of "open-source linux-licking betrayal" from there.

To my great surprise, there /was/ an Assembly 2k. I didn't go, but I doubt there were a lot of great new demos going on...

yeah horrible game design, and it has been implemented also.

Basic idea: you are a demo scener in a party, trying to improve your fame level. Each time you talk to some elite you gain fame level when you talk to your fellow lamer afterwards. But beware of the evil orgas!