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The Assembly In Review
codetalker writes: "Assembly 2001 ended on August 6th and it seems that the demo scene hasn't died yet. Head on over to their ftp and download the latest marvels from Helsinki's massive annual programming and digital art/music competition.
Wired also has a couple articles on the subject here(1), here(2) and here(3)."
hey has anyone tried this? i want to do it but im afriad my mom would notice the missing spagetti
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=99
.. its 'sequel', 'nine fingers':
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=100
An excellent repost from an outstanding source.
The line that I most take exception to:
Europeans are driven by ideals, not greed.
America is driven by an ideal, much more so than Europe. That ideal is not greed. The quintessential American ideal is the value of the individual and the pursuit of individual excellence. Granted, this has been much muddied and softened by time and various PC and group efforts, but the fundamental culture is based on individual liberty and individual responsibility. What does this mean for business? Hard work and excellence are rewarded. Sloth and incompetence are punished. That is why America by far the most productive nation on earth. That is also why we work too many hours, have less job security and have too little free time. Everything comes with a price, even freedom. I'll leave it to you to decide if the price is too high.
Curious to know if you got this to work... I installed AIAB and setup lapsuus, but running the program in workbench brings up a black screen... I checked the requirements and Lapsuus needs a 68060 processor (and aga and 16mb mem)... WinUAE afaik only supports up to 68040. Were you able to get the demo to run? if so, how? and is aga (advanced graphics adapter?) handled by UAE as well?
4000 euros isn't that much (about $4000) - you can make more winning a local UT match.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
The people who hosted the old school competitions have a web site of their own and regularly hold their Alternative Party, where the odd (mc6800 evaluation board), rare (Vectrex video console) and retro (anything 8-bit and early 16-bit!) computers fans produce demos with real originality and raw talent in exploiting the hidden resources of their admitedly limited hardware. Check them out!
Actually, it makes me wonder how Java can slow down a computer so much it's considered impressive when you can almost match the stuff they did back in 1993.
All right, I'm done trolling for now...
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
check out the Unreal Fortress site too at http://www.unrealfortress.com/
UnF beta 2 is due to be released in the near future (this month?).
I attended this year's Assembly's music jury with a few others, and got to witness the manic mood of a group of people, trying to evaluate about 200 MP3 songs and a bit under 100 multichannel module songs. All this in under 10 hours.
But the point is - many of the "big names" of the past were still there, in the jury. Most of them were too busy with their real lives to take part in the Assembly music contests, but it was glad to see that they were still kicking, and still able to drop those "th1s 1s my f1rst s0ng, t3ll m3 wh4t u l1ke!!" -lamers from the thick bunch of contestants.
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
Although I do have to admit the stuff he makes looks really handmade. Well, if you like that kind of thing...
I hope you are beginning to see why demo scene, as witnessed today, sucks. It's not demo anymore, it's money scene. A small business. It's only running because people want to cash the prizes from corporate-sponsored demo parties and their competitions.
This is simply NOT true. Allmost all of the sceners doesn't give a damn about the money. I'm beginning to think your NSHO should be a bit more humble, you are obviously out of touch with the scene.
I don't know, the Unreal demo (1993) has always been my favorite. I think it has more to do with the fact that it was the first demo that ever really blew me away.
:) Ahhhh.. boot disks.. DOS 5.0... memmaker... *sigh*
Funny enough.. at 700Mhz and 192M, I still had to make a boot disk to watch the demo
Although its not quite as large as the USA/Canada... Check out, http://coma.absurdus.org The date hasn't been announced yet, but it is the largest (and only) party in North American. It will be held in Montreal.
I admit there are still a small group of people who call themselves "the real demoscene", and I would categorise myself belonging into it.
But what nowadays is considered to be "the scene" is not the same thing as that minority group I'm talking about. Even the Assembly organizers call these people "the old-skoolers". And for a reason. Because they have a totally different kind of values.
Strip those monetary rewards from competitions, and let's see how many contributions we'll have. I'd say people's motivations drop drastically.
Besides, this issue was already being made at around hmm.. 1995? The "real" scene was having a heart stroke already at that time.
But, you must remember, that each generation has it's own values and times. What is perhaps to some people as the real, modern demoscene is to me merely an untalented show copying the past.
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
..Which is kinda interesting but a totally different subject. From an old-skooler point of view, though, 4000 USD is a big load of money. For a demo.
Someone quite well said at around 1995, that what scene old-timers wonder is how much time and effort people are spending on the demos and competitions. As if the competitions would be the number one and only reason to have a demo party.
Naturally, this all makes sense to a modern demo scener, since the competitions are why people come to the party place. Actually, I was going to use the words "come together", but that wouldn't be true. People just sit tight in front of their own computers, play Quake derivatives and watch competitions from the big screen. Atleast they can say "I was there, I saw the demos, I played, I didn't vote though".
We are witnessing a gap between imaginary generations here.
Demo parties at the late 80s and early 90s had a totally different atmosphere. People would go around and meet people, because the party was meant to be as a social event, where contacts would meet each other face to face and groups could finally sit around the same table and have long good chats.
That's not the case anymore, atleast not at Assembly. It's a multiplayer warez event.
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
What's the point to of all what I'm saying? Well, Mature Furk is of course a simple anagram of Future Mark...
Major scene news site: ojuice
If you want to have a very good glimpse at what the scene is producing / as produced:
http://www.pouet.net
It's an everything2-type site..
For a music radio broadcasting solely scene music:
nectarine radio,
(Those three websites are very well integrated..)
and finally shameless plug on noerror. (scene music news)
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
mainly because it was an amigademo, if the same demo would've been made on PC it wouldn't been as cool. imo the only really cool stuff in lapsuus was the music and the tree-scene. if the exact same demo would've been made on a PC moppi would've probably won instead. you just don't seem to understand how the scene works. we like amiga, and if someone makes something cool on amiga, that is cooler than something cool on PC these days. a lot of us are oldschoolers you know (although I'm not, I've just been a scener since 93/94)
I remember when I used to follow the demoscene back in 1992 or so. At the time it was becoming clear that there was a stifling lack of creativity. Some of the tech was nice, but there were endless, endless, painfully long shots of tunnels with plasma on the walls, and rotating geometric shapes. Earlier this year, when I was bored, I went and downloaded some of the most highly reccommended demos. Bleh. Except for using 3D hardware now, nothing has changed. It's like looking back on MAD magazine when you're 20 and realizing "Wow, was this magazine always this unfunny?"
:)
The technology side of demos has gotten much less impressive because every game already includes flashy 3D coding. only they're more impressive because of the _game_ side of things. Goofy rendering tricks just don't cut it any more. But there doesn't seem to be anything to demos other than techology--and techno music
those would be: Juice by Psychic link and
303 by Acme
I'm softwave, 22 years old, Belgian and involved in the demo scene since approx. 1992. I'd just like to say thanks to all you guys for still showing some interest in the demoscene. I've read quite a few replies on the original article which made me get a warm feeling inside. It feels so good to hear from people that they share the same interest. You made me shed a tear... **sob** Thanks :,-)
Oh boy, I loved Cubic. In fact, even when Windows 95 came out, I didnt feel like upgrading, and stayed in dos for the longest time, and had the computer in my room running Cubic playing mods the entire time. Someone port it to linux. It cant be that hard.
Jeff Knox
D
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
Anyhow, Skaven is also releasing music, check out www.mp3.com/skaven, as well as doing art on Max Payne for Remedy.
Oh, and what do you know?! Purple Motion has more tracks up properly at www.mp3.com/purplemotion. Cool!
But when you think of Carmack being id, and Sweeney being Epic, you should also think of Psi as being the Future Crew. He was the genius who did all the really cool coding. Real name Sami Tammilehto, he also wrote the famous Screamtracker MOD trackers.
Last I heard he was working at Bitboys (or was it Pyramid 3D?) doing a new chipset. Slashdot even did a story on it here. I'd love to see an interview with Sami, he was a real genius. It seems sad that these demo guys didn't get the recognition they deserved in the USA, probably because they weren't making a product they could sell (like games).
Mental Surgery, Panic, Unreal, Second Reality. Ah, incredible memories :) (..foBik/CyberSquad)
I've been participating in a demo that became #5 its class at MK2k-1. It was a PC-demo a friend of mine wrote with fpc and I made the sound on my Amiga. I has been real fun!
I can only recommend watching the c64 and Amiga demos too, with a fast box and a good emulator they should run in about realtime (although, the originals sound much better). When you really know what good coders can get out of such "old" machines, you really wonder why our GHz-GForce-512MB RAM boxes are so dog slow.
best known scene music act is surely brothomstates.. got signed recently on the famous uk label warp!
ModPlug IS better than WinAmp's standard MOD plug-in, but if you download a plug-in called OldSch00l (I believe) WinAMP does every bit as well as ModPlug, and better in some ways. Plus it removes the need to have two seperate players so you can have your favorite mods in your playlist with MP3s.
You should be able to search for it at WinAMP.com.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
The guys who are in the main hall have nothing to do with the scene. Sceners are hanging up everywhere in helsinki during assembly, in parks and are organizing sub-pre-party events there. Of course coming back to the hall for the compos.
The assembly itself may suck, but the scene is still here and profiting of those gamers to show their productions on the big screen.
ansi combo was dropped, because there are tools
that generate ansi escape sequences from GIF and PNG images.
Not fun anymore
http://www.google.com/search?q=boozembly
oh well, sceners usually can't stand being in that big ice hockey hall filled with 15 years old gamers, so typically meet in a small place outside the party hall where alcohol and other substances are (ab)used and come back to watch the compos if they are not too wasted to enter the party.
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
You know, I've been out of the scene for awhile now, but I recently discovered Nectarine. It's streaming demoscene music radio, so for all of you who need your oldschool fix (or who simply want to find out what we've been listening to all this time) check it out. it features a nice requesting system which is lightyears ahead of any other shoutcast station I've used.
-Darius (Rayn) / Outworld
Please moderate this down with a suitable downmod.
Thank you,
CmdrTaco
malda@slashdot.org
...and unlike your mother.
I'm kinda sad there's not more of a demo scene in the us. It is amazing what a good coder can do. The 4k demos always impressed me. I remember back in the 80s on the atari st platform if you wanted games, you looked to the uk. If you wanted programs that made the computer do what it wasnt even suppose to be able to, you looked to germany. Is germany software still like that? I have a great deal of respect for assembly coder. It seems today that not enough people want to take the time to learn it though.
to be the world's booziest drinkers. Or have the Russians overtaken them in the last couple of years? (quite likely)
But you still have smart boys like Linus and nice strong boys like Jouko Ahola (http://upcomingmovies.com/invincible.html) (http://www.dlc.fi/~gold-cam/jokke.html) so we'll let you have your vodka :-)
I guess you're talking about the two winning AMIGA 4k intros... of course you can't run them in windows. The only real way to watch those is to run them on an Amiga but if you don't have an amiga then you must download a DIVX version or try an Amiga emulator.
The demo scene is much more important than people and Americans generally acknowledge. It is, truly, the last subculture where people code for the love of it. This explains the strength of the scene in Europe, and its nonexistence in America.
Actually, there are many people who are coding for the love of it here in the US and Canada. Just look at the modification seen for games.
Look at the mods for games such as Quake (and its breathen), Half-Life and Unreal. Some have gone commercial, much like Remedy Entertainment went commercial and produced Max Payne. From what I understand, a lot of the people at Remedy were from the european demo scene.
I didn't build ThreeWave Capture The Flag for Quake for money. I built it for the sheer joy of writing a fun game for people to play. Later on, it got me a job and changed my career for the better, but that was simply a perq. Even when I was employed I still continued making modifications to CTF and supporting it because it was FUN.
I imagine Gooseman didn't make Counterstrike for monetary gain either. I'm sure he did it because its fun to make and watch people enjoy. It's the same feeling demo coders get when they watch people get wowed by the demos they make.
So, you're wrong. There is a THRIVING community of coders and content developers who are doing it just for the fun of it here in the US and Canada. Just a slightly different focus between doing a standalone non-interactive demo or a modification of a game. People build them for exactly the same reasons.
/// Zoid.
For those of you still suffering on a modem connection, you can buy large collections of these demos (ostensibly legally, because they say they asked all demo writers' permissions first) from any reseller of old Walnut Creek stuff (am I right that Walnut Creek went down?). Look for Hornet Underground vols 1 and 2, which feature the best (and not so best) of Hornet.org.
I still have a shrine to Second Reality. My 486DX2, with 4mb, and a 1mb Cirrus Logic graphics card. Ahh, the old days....
We did an almost 80 hour television broadcast from Assembly for the second year running. Somehow posting it to Slashdot slipped my mind this year. On the other hand Soneras servers would have been hopelessly Slashdotted
Quite a few clips of our material are available for download at www.assemblytv.net and we'll try to get more posted in the next few weeks. Unfortunately there isn't as much material in English as one could hope for.
I was made next years editor-in-chief for demoscene related programs yesterday, so I'll try to get all our scene material done in English for next year if we manage to gather equipment and funding for a third full scale production.
If everything does go well, I'll really really try to post to Slashdot next time
Check out this demo, the only linux demo at assembly: (it came 5th)
mfx - dose2 (on pouet.net)
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
Anybody remember the amiga demo, state of art... that was a classic, completely different to any over demo. It featured all these people dancing, plus some other very cool effects. I have never owned an amiga, but i still remember watching it on my friends.
Please elaborate about this 'Boozembly' you talk about...
Rumor has it that Id was shitting in their pants when they saw the demo
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=129 non stop ibiza experience
That "fancy-smancy-socialist-touchy-feely exposure" is just the thing that allows the whole society in whole to keep up conversation using other values than BOTTOM LINE.
Besides, who says you (and your pals) need to live in California. Life is much cheaper just some few hundred KM from there. Maybe you would not have many of the things you enjoy now, but at least you would not starve. Maybe your current company would even allow you to work over internet.
P
and all of the "megademos". (Except the ones that I couldn't extract - who the @#%$@#% uses LHA these days?!?) You couldnt run lapsuus or the mwi demo even if you could extract them. You know, different hardware platforms and such? Amiga ring a bell?
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78 we go
FWIW, xmp claims to support hardware reverb and chorus on AWE cards under *nix, using OSS's /dev/sequencer.
I haven't yet tried that end of it. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to start collecting mods (and relatives) again, and I'm just too thrilled at the way they sound when played with xmp through a good external DAC to bother making an AWE32 work. Last time I heard most of this music, I was using an SB 1.5 on a slow 386SX. The difference is striking.
OTOH, the AWE32 cards do have an SP/DIF output straight from the Ensoniq DSP... =)
Kid-proof tablet..
>Isn't it just a tad ironic that these people can do things with amigas and peecees that no sane person would ever require of them, but can't make a web page that validates.
:)
Isn't it just a tad ironic that the person pointing this is out can't do it either?
- Join the EFF today.
Dude, you're missing Estella Warren!
After you've watched the original you should definitely see the C64 version of Second Reality (I'm not kidding) to help put things back into perspective. 1MHz/64kB should be enough for everyone. You can download it at ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/1997/theparty97/c6 4/smash_secondreality_d64.zip and it should work on any good C64 emulator. At least Vice works just fine.
Um, somehow I can't see coding blitter routines in assembly while getting drunk as being very... um, practical. Hic... hic, we @ m$ always have a few jack d's before coding our security routines hic, never caused a problem :)
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - ONLY HARDER!
Funny, as a MS programmer, I find going in hungover works out a lot better than going in drunk. All checkins from this particular coder are going to be tinged with the aftereffects of a bottle of Washington red.
;-)
Besides, we sip Johnny Walker, not Jack D.
Posting anon so as to keep my job...
too bad Max Payne is total crap
it is fun in the beginning but gets old
quckly, and those "dream" levels make me want to puke
2nd Reality was indeed like a wakeup call for the scene. Demos got better, some of them more content (away from pure effect coding to some content). It is kind of sad that too many kids are turning their talent to destroy things (read hacking), drawing satisfaction from this. I used to be in the cracking and demo scene for many, many years, unfortunately never winning a big competition, only scoring 3rd place at The Party in Denmark once. People should remember that it was the Demo Scene innovating many of the effects that people are oh so used to in Games these days. As mentioned before, you should have a look at www.scene.org or www.theparty.dk for some more info on the good ol days. Hope the scene will continue.
- Friday of The Coexistence (and TSI, The Damned and others)
http://equinox.planet-d.net/
also don't forget hornet.org - still loads of stuff there thats not yet on scene.org
cheers, spiny
torment.atari.org
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
I just love the "oh, I don't have enough time" posts.
You will always find the time for really important things, which in your case semms to be money.
Dear Demo Fellows!
Some of you might remember the famous first Demo Maker by TRSI for the Amiga, enabling many people that did not have the skills and/or time to learn coding to make their own Demos on the Amiga. Some of you might also remember the PC Version of it. It was published by Data Becker in those famous 90s. The Author, Andreas Schwaab, died about 6 weeks ago after a long sickness. I hope that you have some good memories of him and his work. I will for sure miss a very good friend!
i know it's no longer updated, but still loads of good stuff there,
spiny / torment
torment.atari.org
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
I'm just saying that there are places where you can have sufficiently high standards of living regardless of how many tons of stuff you own and buy.
Another example. I'm slightly neurotic person. If I lived in US, I would have to pay (or work) for a huge health insurance. Here I can be sure (at least for now) that whatever exotic disease I get caught up with, I can have the treatments I need. Even if I don't work 10h/day for a give all, take all tech firm.
P
Isn't it just a tad ironic that these people can do things with amigas and peecees that no sane person would ever require of them, but can't make a web page that validates
It seems to me that demo crews would be more interested in writing for Linux than they are. It just seems like the two cultures would mesh well, but apparently they haven't very much.
Why are most of the demos these days for Windows? Is it a cultural thing, or a technical thing? Are there multimedia limitations under Linux that are not addressed by SDL, etc?
Sigh. I used to run a BBS dedicated to Amiga demos. The stuff back then was some amazing shit. I've still never seen anything on a PC that impressed me as much. It would be cool if a free OS someday became the demo platform of choice.
I have to say I was very dissapointed of the demos at Assembly. You might wanna check out Future Crew's 2nd Reality from -93 Assembly. It run smoothly on my 386-33 and the 3d-city in the end of the demo was almost similar to the one in the best PC-demo at Asm'2001. And worst of all Amiga demo won the whole democombo (even PC-demos). What does this tell you? To me it says these kids who never saw operating systems before Windows(tm) don't know anything about optimizing code.
Has Windows(tm) made people so lazy they don't even want to try lower level coding? Is it so easy to write drawTextureFilledObject() via D3D interface that you don't wanna try to optimize the method? Is it the end of era of real coders?
"loading and decrunching..."
second reality... that was a different era...
no sig for you
Second Reality was the demo that for the first time allowed PC sceners to feel merely inferior to the Amiga sceners, rather than completely pathetic. I mean, if you want to talk about 1993, you should be talking about "Arte" by Sanity. Go on, you can even find a DivX of it at Amidemos. Arte on a 7Mhz Amiga 500 kicked the arse of Second Reality on your 486..
Still, opinions are funny.. some Amiga sceners liked "Jesus on E"..
If you want to see what Chaos/ex-Sanity and others have been impressing with recently, check out The Product, from The Party 2000.. win32 64k intro, the most impressive 64k of demo I've ever seen!
..because of the original poster's a bit troll-ish views. The point is, demo scene - or the activity they dare to call demo scene - is concentrated heavily on the European grounds. I don't really know why. Perhaps the weather in US is so much better that the geeks spend more time outside playing ball than their European counterparts. The point is, that if there's a demoscene in the States, the Europeans have only heard there isn't.
Then, I have to disagree with the writer about the current state of demoscene. If the coders are doing their demos "for the love of coding", then why are the prizes for winning such competitions (usually with uttermost crap) so high? Why do we need all this money? For example, this year's Assembly had the following prizes for demo competitions:
1. 4 000 euros
2. 2 000 euros
3. 1 400 euros
4. 1 000 euros
5. 750 euros
Those amounts make you think that you could actually make a demo just for the profit..
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
AIAB is ofcourse leechable from: http://aiab.emuunlim.com/
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
who cares, only americans did ansi... the ansi compo was well replaced by all the oldschool (demo+gfx+music) compos.
Stuff from group tAAt (lego-animation, demo, intro, ...) was very amusing. http://tAAt.fi
DIdn't know the emulator ran on Unix too. If it does, you don't have to dive into windows ofcourse.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Of course you only had to go 500m to Boozembly which would supply decent quantities of alcohol + sceners.
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
Europeans are driven by ideals, not greed.
By this you mean to say all Americans are driven by greed?
I beg to differ. I don't consider myself particularly greedy, but I'm too busy at my job making money to pay bills that I don't have NEARLY as much time to code as I would love to.
I have a love for coding. I have a love for staying up for days at a time living off of Tea and Cigarettes, doing nothing but wearing the letters off of the keys in front of my computer. My bills have a love for being paid on time.
Unfortunately, my job lays outside of my interests and the two don't have much time to cross into each other. Add into that school, an attempt at a social life, and taking care of other needs, and it leaves little time to work on the mile-high stack of coding projects I would LOVE to dedicate weeks on end to.
So, this leaves me to wonder: Are you trying to suggest that I would magically have more time to code if I moved to europe? After all, I apparently wouldn't need to work so much, since I'm not greedy.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I think I remember that scene. I meant making a new version of the whole thing :).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Typical misinformation.
Future Crew != Remedy Entertainment.
Future Crew != Bitboys
Future Crew != Fathammer
Future Crew != Disney Europe
Just if a member of FC happens to work somewhere doesn't mean that the company becomes FC.
My fave was always a thing called (IIRC) "Juice". Was a bit later than second reality, maybe about 95? Anyway, it had a load of cool stuff (including a fantastic tunnel), AMAZING music (which was perfectly synced to the visuals), and the final couple of scenes blew your mind. The last shot has a 3d matrix of spinning tex mapped objects, stretching to infinity in all dimensions, like some "detector array" or somthing in star trek. Check it out if you can make it run, was a bit of a pain IIRC.
Oh and there was another one, forget the name, but it had "303" in the title somewhere. It was more of a live coded music video, very "raw" visuals, not a lot of 3d, but what was interesting is it advertised itself as being the first demo with full vocals in the music! Yes, in the middle of some demo party the music guy had sat there singing into his soundcard! Sounded pretty cool actually..
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
"Wired also has a couple articles on the subject here(1), here(2) and here(3)."
Gee.. i remember my ROTC NCO growling at three privates, myself included:
"YOU, YOU, and YOU! Both of you, drop and give me twenty!"
Unless, of course, a couple stories meant three stories...
Someone with too many mod points.
Christ, proof that moderation is broken.
good one wanna be geek. YUO LEET
If I recall correctly, mad onion's 3dmark 2000 payed a large tribute to this demo with the final bit. I think it was called "Final Reality" a google search will find it. The music was the same and it had a large 3d sequence from the original. It's not the whole thing, but it's still good stuff.
All a coder really wants, are fast cars, fast women and fast algorithms.
While you're off bellyaching about how grand the EU is and how the US is a complete greed-oriented-and-idealistically-bankrupt-society -of-unsophisticated-boors-who-leave-no-room-for-th e-demo-scene-to-thrive, I feel the need to point you to my favorite demo scene musician, Andrew Sega, formerly known as Necros of the Five Musicians, and now the Alpha Conspiracy. I've been in love with mods ever since they were just mods, and it was only recently that I discovered that my long-favorite it-tracker Necros was an American. What can I say? His stuff is nearly always amazing, both in terms of composition and innovation. And the important aspect about this is that he isn't slavishly devoted to just one type of sound or tinny dance format as many (ahem) European trackers are.
Incidentally, the movements of free software, open source, and a great host of others things aren't all dominated by the FSF ("strident political organizations?"), and can hardly be dismissed as idealistically devoid. Besides... what side of the ocean does the fabled linux come from (hey, no fair saying "the internet!" ...that's not my point!)?
Also, kudos to Slashdot for even mentioning the demo scene! I'm confident that geeks everywhere will enjoy this unrecognized genre of music (sorry demo-only guys, but as the animations die, the music stays...). To get a good start on all this brouhaha, jump on over to the Mod Archive, and start sampling away!
if you want CD of Scene music (of a more laid back ambient style) check out Audiophonik, put together
by imphobia. www.imphobia.org, if i recall.
i picked a copy up at coma2, at my friend's insistence. it's very good.
there are occasionally demo/gfx/mod CDs that get made. though i couldn't say what's available right now. (maybe dreams2? hornet cds?)
for scene mp3s, other than the mp3 entries for music compos, i know that the kfmf has become an mp3.com artist, so all of their music is available in that format. (unfortunately, i can't find links to the original mods anymore!)
---
mike
you do of course mean "uae amiga emulator"?
If you read through the FAQ on slashdot you'll see that the FAQ clearly says that slashdot very much IS US centric. The staff is mostly American I believe, and US news is more interesting to Americans than the rest of the world.
Anyway it shouldn't be too hard to make new topic like 'Europe' or even mirror the site in Europe.
how silly you are. there wasn't 5000 sceners at assembly. there was 4500 gamers or so, and 500 sceners, and you can know a lot out of 500 people
In case anyone missed this parody demo back in 1996. Search 14ndreal.zip on The Hornet Archive. Here's the info:
/demos/1996/0-9/14ndreal.zip (1455k)
:)
Sqrt(2) Reality by Future Screw
04 Dec 1996
ABD96:demo:15
Remember to have humor when you watch it since it is cheesy.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Right on!
Actually, I believe you actually *would* have more time over in europe. From what I understand Europeans do not work as long hours as americans do incl. overtime, etc, etc... Now back to your point though, yes, the other guy seems a bit silly to me, one can't generalize like that. I bet it's more due to a cultural diff rather than a money-based one... tada
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
I agree Second Reality was a very good demo but the best? No way. It's the best demo only for those of us who were new to demos back then and who had never owned other computer than PC. The truth has to be said... every idea for the effects were taken from older Amiga demos, the style of the demo were taken from Amiga demos and even the style of the so highly praised music was taken from the Amiga scene. Or perhaps, those were the only styles and effects existing at the time? Sigh. The only original routine was those Gouraud shaded trees at the 3D city scene that made me go WOW when I saw the demo at the party place. Otherwise, I was just a bit surprised somebody managed to do an Amiga demo on the PC but that was it. Nothing too special. A pretty good ordinary demo of it's time.
:-) Still a nice watch.
:-) From many places that is.
If you want to see some of the old Amiga demos then check Red Sector Megademo (1989) probably the best demo of the 80's. Voyage by Razor 1911 (1990) this demo has a fab soundtrack, better than Second Reality has, and some fab coding like multicolor texturemapping and fading textures, those so much used elements of today's demos. Enigma by Phenomena (1991) has sort of the same status on the Amiga that Second Reality has on PC. Some like Hardwired by Silents (1992?) a lot. World of Commodore (1992) and Arte (1993) by Sanity has the best code on Amiga 500. There's just so many excellent demos on the A500 and A1200/020... hundreds and hundreds. Demos by Virtual Dreams, Anarchy, Melon, Lemon, Spaceballs, Andromeda... a tear rolls out of my eye... oh what a time it was... go figure yourself.
If you wanna see as good demos as this Second Reality on the 1Mhz 64k 16-restricted-use-color synth-sound COMMODORE 64 then be sure to get the three winning demos from MekkaSymposium 2001 and the Deus Ex Machina demo by Crest from The Party 2000. And don't miss Second Reality for C64 by Smash. Very nice replicate. Those blow your socks out if you know anything about the hardware and demo coding. Probably you don't know much but I don't blame you not being a freak
Use WinUAE and CCS64 or WinVICE or something. Where to get these and those demos I leave as a small quest for you to solve out
I suppose that was all. Breath in.
Actually, in Sweden there has been a radioshow for over a year that plays scene, game and console-music.
:)
The radioshow is called Syntax Error, named after the old good c64 error message
Check out the Syntax Error webpage (only in Swedish), all the broadcasted shows can also be downloaded here in mp3 format.
Hehehe.... ALL YOUR... what was that again?
I'm glad to see the demo scene finally mentioned in an article on Slashdot. I was starting to think that Slashdot was only interested in covering topics of interest USian readers.
If you read through the FAQ on slashdot you'll see that the FAQ clearly says that slashdot very much IS US centric. The staff is mostly American I believe, and US news is more interesting to Americans than the rest of the world.
It is in the third paragraph however where you get just a little bit too generalizing:
Coders in the US are too focused on monetary rewards or political posturing.
And later:
Europeans are driven by ideals, not greed.
I am a european (Dutch) who lives in California. I have met a lot of highly skilled individuals out here, people that I like to hang out with not only for their technical skills, but because they're often rather pleasant people to hang out with. Before you start talking about 'greed', you must realize that life here is:
- More expensive. California is one of those ridiculously expensive places to live.
- More competitive.
It's not so much 'greed' that prevails as it is 'survival'. Maybe a wolf is a greedy animal... I don't know. It survives though. When companies are given the power to work their employees over 10 hours a day and not pay them extra because they are exempt from Labor Law (sometimes I believe all of California is exempt) that does tend to shape the attitude. When everybody does it, you'd be strange and unwanted when you don't do it.Mind you, I have worked on both sides of the fence, so I know what I'm talking about. In Europe it's not unusual that people spend lots of time on hobbies. They have more free time. Their hobbies CAN and often DO trickle through in their work. To employees this is a good thing. To employers not always. Here in the US when you spend a bit too much time slacking, it can cost you your job IMMEDIATELY since everybody here in the high tech business gets hired 'at will'. This makes people more carefull, sometimes appearing more obsessed, or, as you wish, more 'greedy'.
So as you see, there are some good reasons why things are the way you perceive them to be. Your labelling is somewhat inaccurate though in my opinion.
Now, I do think that the USA has a lot to learn from some European countries. Wellbeing will beat Wellfare down the line. Really, feeling 'happy' with the little things you have counts much more than not feeling so 'happy' with your yuppy SUV because your supervisor has a bigger one. And happy people work better. And if you have a lot of unhappy people, they produce crap like Microsoft Windows.
What you fail to mention is that Europe can also learn a LOT from the USA. And then I'm not talking about DMCA crap or corrupted buyable governments; Those exist everywhere, also in Europe, whether they get bought by the maffia in Italy or by corporations in the USA (or by tulip growers in the Netherlands). Don't forget there is a reason many things fly over from the USA and set foot in Europe. This is because some of the things as they are done here plain simple WORK better. A survival of the fittest attitude tends to make companies lean and mean and competitive with others. And no matter what fancy-smancy-socialist-touchy-feely exposure some companies in Europe may have, their bottom line is to make money, and do it better than anybody else in your business. American companies are more agressive, so they beat European companies often. However, IMHO not often on quality. This, to them, does not matter. Think about the bottom line.
Sorry for my little rant :)
Mod this one down to fuckwad.
The more you waste on AC account, the better off we all are.
If it's using megabytes of Microsoft written code.
When the whole damn generation of old management that needs to see your body to know if you're working is dead.
Heh. I'm sitting at work, surfing the web and reading slashdot because my boss thinks my presence is sufficient evidence that I'm working. When I work from home, I MUST be productive - I must have a set of work product that PROVES I'm not goofing off. Funny world, eh?
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...
I remember that demos were the reason I started coding and the reason I still code is cause I litteraly get a buzz out of it. There is nothing more satisfying than having your own creation spinning and pulsing on the screen in realtime, pushing your hardware to the limit and knowing that the 3d object on your screen is something inifitely more substantial and real than a database. It's instant gratification, and when others see it and marvel, it is something to be proud of. I can't imagine getting excited about some sort of finance package, but I vividly remember that the first time I got output from my raytracer it was 5 am after a long night coding and I was shouting w00t! for about an hour, jumping up and down and bouncing off of walls. Man I wish I still had as much time as I did back then.
All a coder really wants, are fast cars, fast women and fast algorithms.
heck, it's just outdoors in the woods :) there's no ENTRANCE :)
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=11 moral hard candy
I think you'll find that a greater proportion of 4k demos work these days, than so-called megademos, because megademos load up huge sound and graphics systems...whereas 4ks just poke the same old addresses ...
Some of us run operating systems with actual memory protection. (ie. Anything with an NT kernel)
Won't let rogue processes randomly poke around the address space anymore ;)
The only win32 OS I run right now is W2k, and I couldn't get aaannny of the 4K demos to run. I got a coupla of the 64k demos to run, and all of the "megademos". (Except the ones that I couldn't extract - who the @#%$@#% uses LHA these days?!?)
... Okay, I give up - what does file:///c:/con/con do?
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
Linux d0rks think the demoscene is second reality. Would you morons _PLEASE_ go back to your corner and rot like you're supposed to. "Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the demoscene, wow they're still around, why don't they do more Linux coding"... isn't it OBVIOUS? Because you Linsux d0rks are fscking ASSHOLES!!!!
Dude, I still have my GUS. Too bad I no longer have an ISA slot to stick it in :(
I agree with you, FC kicked the most ass overall. But I still remember the demo from Into the Shadows. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, ItS was a game written by a group called Triton. Man, it rocked! Imagine a 3rd person action/rpg with 3D characters, non-orthogonal walls and lightning. The characters casted MOVING SHADOWS on the wall. Yeah, big deal, you might say... but try to do this at a decent frame rate on a 486/80Mhz. In software. To put in into perspective, at that time, Doom was the ultimate 3D engine on the market.
Unfortunately, the game was never released. Guess they stumbled when it came to business...
I hoped they would release the source code. I still haven' figured it out how they did it...
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3282 sonnet
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=115 h+
Ah, your wrong! The SB 1.5,2.0 SBpro all had an 8 bit DA. The SB pro had '16 bit' sound from the fm synth. The SB16 was the first sound blaster with card with 2 channels of 16 bit DA.
I don't think many 64k's today are written using much assembler. I won the TG2001 64k compo with this and it is written in 100% C++. Assembler is now usually used for tight innerloops in polyfillers and stuff like that, but with OpenGL/Direct3D you obviously don't need that anymore.
definitely worth being posted on slashdot. but even if "they" see it, they'll withhold it for spite
Why would you boot to Windows to run the Unix Amiga Emulator?
After the rush and warm feelings you got inside by re-facing this screen of joy from the old days, go to the harddrive you assigned the lapsuus dir to (f.e. dh3:) and run the demo. Enjoy :)
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Ya, Fairlight releases game iso's in the warez scene. Pretty much the #1 Game ISO releaser in the warez scene. I know many Fairlight people. Although im sure they are different people than are in the demo division.
Jeff Knox
> who the @#%$@#% uses LHA these days?!?
:)
Amiga users. Demos in LHA archives are mostly Amiga binaries, so you couldn't run it anyways...
> what does file:///c:/con/con do
That was an old exploit for IE 4 (maybe 5.0?) that caused Windows to lock up completely. Kinda funny to put on your webpage and hide it with a little bit of on mouseover Javascript
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=302 different engine
Hey all I like very much people saying things like "scene is dead" without telling anything else about what make them think that. How can you imagine people earning money with the scene ? Making demos takes weeks (even months) of hard work, travelling to the party place (and entering into it) costs a lot, and you have to divide the (eventual) price by the number of sceners in your group (except for musicians and graphicians). Even if a scener win $500 for a demo, how much it is compared to the hard work (and to the $100 of entrance fee, travelling costs and at-place living) ? Better work in an IT compagny, even with a small income you'll earn more money. For sure hudge "demoparties" like Assembly (Finland), The Party (Denmark) or The Gathering (Norway) is a big (non-profit) money business because of the number of persons involved. But why only look at thoses 80-percent-of-gamers-parties since there is many more 80-percent-sceners-parties like the Mekka-Symposium (Germany), The Takeover (Netherlands), LTP (France), and lot of other ones (more than one per week) ? Does the first Assembly or the first The pArty involved more than a thousand of sceners ? No. The problem is hudge demoparties seem too big for the demoscene. Anyway, that's not a reflect of the current state of the demoscene. Just have a look to the Mekka prods, they are better and in a bigger quantity than the Assembly ones. And all theses reasonable-size parties don't give that much of money as price. So, the only way to make demo is to have fun with it. People telling it is for money have never make a quality demo (ie a winner demo). --- Chandra / Orange Juice
FYI, LHA still very much in use, however not so common in those Wintel-boxes you see everywhere. It's again the matter of different platforms: when owners of other (inferior) systems want to see cool intros from other platforms they just need to see it prerecorded.. :(
This story:
h _s upercomputer_dc_1.html
/. anymore.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010809/tc/tec
Has been out for all most *four* hours. The story talks about how Linux is going to be used as the OS for the *biggest* *cluster* *of* *super* *computers* *in* *history*
It is the greatest news I have heard in months and it "matters" if you ask me. The Super computer(s) will be funded by the National Science Foundation(NSF) and it is reported that the super computer(s) will be able to calculate in one second, what it would take a hand calculator ten millions years to calculate. In addition the total disk space will be enough to hold all most one and a half million full-length novels.
In other words, the Linux OS is going to be used for the largest computing grid in the history of the world.
This story has been availavle on Yahoo!(TM) LinuxToday, Newsforge etc for hours. I submitted the story 2 hours ago and nothing...
I used to read slashdot for the news and told myself I could ignore the mindless trolling and moronic comments, now I realize the news service is garbage and I have no reason to read
Looks like it is newsforge or LinuxToday for me
:-)
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=451 paimen
Methinks I know not of what you speak. I have a bucket of 4k demos (of which my favourite is Animate! by... ok, so I forgot, and I don't want to boot M$ just now...) and it runs perfectly on my 333mhz 98 box (ok, not cutting edge, but a little above the 486 DOS machine the demo expected).
:-)
I think you'll find that a greater proportion of 4k demos work these days, than so-called megademos, because megademos load up huge sound and graphics systems which are very kludgey, whereas 4ks just poke the same old addresses that have been around since the dawn of time.
If that was what you were referring to...
who the @#%$@#% uses LHA these days?
The LHA file is actually an Amiga demo. It won first place. I wonder if it would work in an Amiga emulator. I also wonder why they combined the PC and Amiga compos. They used to be separate.
What are you talking about, aren't the slashdot guys from Holland? That's in Europe isn't? Here comes my George W. Bush imitation: Huh?
>>There's no alcohol and few girls.
>Oh, I see why..
You do know the price of alcohol in Finland right? They go all the way to FL 300 (that's flightlevel, not Finland$).
nosig today
Another whining lamer who probably can't do anything creative himself. Why don't you write your own demo so we can see what you'd like to see from us who do the stuff? We would very much like to see it. Honestly! Hint, we do it for fun and a little competition. It's also nice to make progress on something. Why you even bother watching demos when you don't like them in the first place? Every scener knows demos are based on the same principles - the pixel, the line, the polygon. These can be generated in a few different methods - by drawing, by raytracing, by creating a 3D world or object and so on. That's why demos don't differ that much from one to another. It's only natural but you don't seem to understand it. You want a freak show from outerspace. You give that to us, please. I don't get people like you who have nothing else to say but complain. I wonder what you're doing here. Been there since mid 80's, don't reply.
Players? Players? There's TRACKERS!! Modplug tracker is probably the best Windows old-school type tracker (although some people still swear by Impulse tracker. Also out there is a new school tracker called Buzz - at www.buzzmachines.com. It combines a tracker interface with a wide variety of software synths and effects that can be connected in a modular fashion. Oh, and it's free! To find out what music software is being offered online that's of use to trackers or computer musicians www.maz-sound.com is what I check out to keep up on it. This site also offers a 2 cd set called "Mazzive Injection - tracked work '2k" - it sells for around 35 bucks and has nearly 1100 tracked songs and the software to listen to them. It's well worth the money - my copy's right on my computer desk as I write. Some of this music is equal to the electronic music being released commercially - and some isn't. All the songs are in the original source code format so you can not only hear them, but see how they did it.
Free open source music is great.
IMNSHO,
The scene never really wasn't as small as you are describing. I have been "in the scene" since 1989, and that was the time when we traded C64 demos etc. with floppy disks, in snail-mail. That was truly something, waiting half a week for an answer from Germany or something like that.. "Yo buddy thanks for the stuff, t'was great. Keep sending mate!" Oh, nostalgy.
But.
What I think has ruined the scene is the networking phenomenon and it's peripherals. Quake, for example. Assembly has been lately overcrowded with kids playing multiplayer games over the LAN. This year, from a special request, only a handful of "old-skool" hard-boiled veterans decided to show up. That's a bit lame.
But the worst part of networking is, that acquiring demos etc. has become anonymous! In the old days, we had this thing called "swapping". I would send a few floppies full of new, local groups' demos and intros, and get about the same amount of demos and stuff from my "contact". Usually, a long letter with personal handwriting, jokes and news would follow. That was friendship, and friendship is the key in the scene.
And what do we have now?
We have a group, say, Orange making a demo. After it's finished, someone uploads the package to few FTP sites. And then people start downloading it. Dude, where's my human contact?!
I hope you are beginning to see why demo scene, as witnessed today, sucks. It's not demo anymore, it's money scene. A small business. It's only running because people want to cash the prizes from corporate-sponsored demo parties and their competitions.
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
For Amiga music, I'd recommend DeliPlayer, which plays tons of old Amiga formats (190 according to the home page) very accurately. Newer PC formats (such as Impulse Tracker) are best handled by the ModPlug player.
It would be nice if someone could take the 1993 demo and make it a newer version. Higher resolution, works in the newer versions of Windows, compatible with today's sound cards, resampled music, etc.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Yeah, well, at least Americans don't have their noses in the air. Hey... wait a second... a "spork" user ID? This is an obvious troll. I bet you're from the Bronx. Nice troll though.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I read somewhere PSI changed his name to epsilon and wrote the first N64 emulator ultraHLE
That is how exactly I felt with Second Reality demo when I first got my 486 DX2/66. However, I didn't get a GUS sound card though. I had a SB 16 ISA card. It still sounded great. I even showed this demo to a few geeks and friends at my university. Most of them loved it. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Hey! I dunno about you, but the soundblaster pro in my 486/33 had 16-bit playback buddy, and don't you forget it! :-D
Woohoo! 16-bit playback, 8-bit recording! rockin!
Life's a buffer; you can only get out of it what you put into it! C:-)
In my opinion, ModPlug Player sounds better than any of the other players for MOD, S3M, XM, IT, etc. I have a small collection of my favorite tunes on my personal Web site. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
go here
hehe would you believe that deep down in my heart I'm fiercely opposed to capitalism in the extreme? I think it shows through in my original post, but you may have missed it. Anyway, I agree.
Besides, who says you (and your pals) need to live in California. Life is much cheaper just some few hundred KM from there. Maybe you would not have many of the things you enjoy now, but at least you would not starve. Maybe your current company would even allow you to work over internet.
Well, since you speak KM, I'll assume you're European or something like it. This also shows from what you say. Ever been to California? I wish you luck living a few 100 kilometres outside of Los Angeles, hehe. There's dessert. Or is it desert? Anyway you know what I mean. Seriously, that's in many cases not an option. And although in Holland I would love to live a long way away from the cities, here.... well.... hmmm... I'm not sure if I should remark on average intelligence.. ehr... well, ever seen Jerry Springer? if so, you may know what I mean.
And the 'allow to work over the internet'... that's a nice illusion. I'm sure one day it will work, when the whole damn generation of old management that needs to see your body to know if you're working is dead.
There's no alcohol and few girls.
Oh, I see why...
Um, somehow I can't see coding blitter routines in assembly while getting drunk as being very... um, practical.
Back in the day, it *WAS* all assembly. That was the only way you could get any amount of speed out of the hardware in use at the time (486/33 or less!!!).
Well, the winner demo was for Amiga.
What about all the artists and musicians? Coders alone are hardly the scene...
they only have a part in the democompos.
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1439 elran
Future crew actually eventualoy changed their name to Remedy and have joined 3dRealms to work on games. To see their latest work, check out their newest realease, Max Payne... its a pretty awesome game.
Q: Can anyone attend boozembly, or do only sceners qualify?
Do you own a car? yeah, I thought so.
yo
:)
.. really old ice and acid packs.... .. and maybe black maiden as well :)
ok you guys should better stop talking about things you dont understand at all.
its pretty normal for demo-sceners NOT to know about ansi, but lets make some things clear:
a) ansi is drawn with painting programs like aciddraw and various others and not "CODING WITH ESCAPE CODES"
we arent THAT insane
b) after 98 american did less and less ansi while european artists got really active and produced highquality-releases
c) there has always been a tool called GIF2ANS, but the general scene ethos simply says: dont use it or you get kicked in your face
d) after the death of the bbs-scene most ansi artists slowly stopped painting, but still there are people who love the blocks and paint and paint.
e) ansi art is - in contrast to the public demo-scener-impression - not only drawing nice chicks with giant tits.. thats even very boring after youve seen the 50th one.
in case youre interested in some nice stuff
check ftp://ftp.artpacks.acid.org/ (OLD archive but still a lot of nice packs) and www.acheron.org (news site)
great groups were samsara, fire, everglo, poffelipoff, eclipse
cheers
avenger/black maiden . www.blackmaiden.de
Right, and the people who went to Assembly are all the sceners in the world, eh? There are a couple of other continents out there, and not everyone can make it.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
What's disappointing is that this kind of flamebait crap troll gets modded up insightful. If it's insightful to say that America sucks, well then make me +5 Interesting, baby!
Skaven's music still absolutely rocks.
I still look at the "chaos clouds" sequence in 2ndreal written by wildfire (or maybe it was psi) and I still have no idea how he coded that. You figure out how they did all the other scenes, but that one sequence is still a mystery. It looks so smooth and chaotic and complex. I suspect that he is using 3 different plasma fields drawn separately on neighboring pixels in such a high resolution that your eye blends them together. That still doesn't explain how he draws each field though. It doesn't look like your usual Perlian noise, and it certainly isn't as ugly as a typical recursive "plasma" function, so how does he do it!??
That's the beauty of demos. If you've ever tried any graphics programming before, then you appreciate how tricky it is, and you ask yourself "How did he DO that?!!".
Tragically I can no longer hear the music for the demo because SB emulation doesn't seem to work under DOS for my Vortex2 chip - probably some conflict with my i815E chipset mobo. If anyone has suggestions on how to get that working again, I'd be really grateful to hear it.
-OzJuggler
Life's a buffer; you can only get out of it what you put into it! C:-)
As the title says, I recommend that any C64 fan watch +H2K by Plush. One of the best C64 demos I've seen.
FC Closer
#include "troll.h"
#define COUPLE 3
readArticle();
/* funny, I thought "couple" was two */
Follow me
This story: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010809/tc/tech_s upercomputer_dc_1.html
Has been out for all most *four* hours. The story talks about how Linux is going to be used as the OS for the *biggest* *cluster* *of* *super* *computers* *in* *history*
It is the greatest news I have heard in months and it "matters" if you ask me. The Super computer(s) will be funded by the National Science Foundation(NSF) and it is reported that the super computer(s) will be able to calculate in one second, what it would take a hand calculator ten millions years to calculate. In addition the total disk space will be enough to hold all most one and a half million full-length novels.
In other words, the Linux OS is going to be used for the largest computing grid in the history of the world.
This story has been availavle on Yahoo!(TM) LinuxToday, Newsforge etc for hours. I submitted the story 2 hours ago and nothing...
I used to read slashdot for the news and told myself I could ignore the mindless trolling and moronic comments, now I realize the news service is garbage and I have no reason to read /. anymore.
Looks like it is newsforge or LinuxToday for me :-)
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=353 metamorf
> Packed into an ice-rink in downtown Helsinki, thousands of youthful programmers from all over the world [snip]
I quess Wired tries to make things sound cooler that they actually are. The fact is that 'the programmers' were a minority among those 5000 people. Most people went to Asm2k1 to play games and to download stuff from the internet and those people didn't have essential programming skills. There were probably only 500 programmers on that party.
Keep a close eye on those fucking kikes.... they're after your money!
fp?
Whee free downloads of stuff I will never be likely to use. Joy.
As 5,000 kids gathering in Finland on Thursday will attest, the European demo scene is alive and kicking.
Only 5,000? That's a little small for a convention...
There's no alcohol and few girls.
Oh, I see why...
Dancin Santa
Maybe one of them can create a schmancy #D demo to teach you HTML, you whipper-snapper!
um yeah... you might want to look at that mailto link there.
I see,> c odetalker writes:
HREF="mailto:obersnelm@nospamplease.sympatico.ca"
Is that a mistake on the article header, or a bug in my Netscape 6.1 ?
- sigs are for wimps.
http://www.holymac.com
HREF="mailto:obersnelm@nospamplease.sympatico.ca">
Is this assembler? I'm so confused.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
HREF="mailto:obersnelm@nospamplease.sympatico.ca wth is that?
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Unreal Fortress 04.08.2001
We got the special preview version of the Unreal Fortress beta 2. This is a special opportunity; this version of the game is not available anywhere else!
please dont slashdot it yet! at least wait until my download is done! 40 megs to go, and it's already dropped from a steady 100 KB/s to about 80! Please, you bastards, leave the site alone for another few minutes!
The scene has exploded so large that you just don't see the edges anymore. It's no longer a small group where everyone knows everyone else's name; the attendance at Assembly is a perfect example.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Is this some kind of meeting to discuss the New World Order? If so, buy all the gold you can right now...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Got to watch those 's guys.
Gee, slashdot's tandards are slipping. Next thing you know, they'll be using XP's smart tags. Or not.
Soothing and peaceful. Is this what geeks do instead of taking a real vacation? http://www.holymac.com/
Reload the front page a couple times, it changes every couple of reloads... Is it just me?
"He who laughs last is usually the dumbest kid on the block." - John Lennon
That slashdot's moderator interface doesn't bother to validate HTML handed to it. Just how did that mangled HREF make it through, given the ">" in the text?
If you like those eye-candy demos, you can download from this repository at: www.scene.org Browse their archive!
They have all sort of demo collections from various groups and various fests. Cool! Gigs of download. Don't forget to check out the Java demos too. It will make you wonder how can they make such a cool (and very fast) demo like that in Java.
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
Judas Priest - Breaking The Law
(R. Halford, G. Tipton, K.K. Downing)
There I was completely wasting, out of work and down
all inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town
feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
so I might as well begin to put some action in my life
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
So much for the golden future, I can't even start
I've had every promise broken, there's anger in my heart
you don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue
if you did you'd find yourselves doing the same thing too
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
You don't know what it's like
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law
I will be reading through this site, because i think assembly demos and people who code in assembly are interesting. However, i wonder if someone could tell me ahead of time: Will i find *any* executables on this site that i will be able to run, given that i am sitting here at a computer with a PPC g4 chip, do not have easy access to any x86 machines, and do not feel like installing bochs? Or is everything of true note from this conference in x86 ASM only?
goatsex!
Lnxscene for Linux demos. I am not sure if any of these demos are from Assembly.
...
Calodox Demology Exchange for user reviews. You can submit your own reviews. This is for PC demos (Windows and DOS).
Amidemos for Amiga Demos in AVI video format since most of don't have the classic Amiga computers and emulators don'twork well. Check out 05.08.2001: Assembly 2001 winner demo Lapsuus now online
scene.org -- I believe these are for all systems beside PC and Amiga.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
OHHHH YEAH! Mod me harder!
For the PC platform. If you still haven't seen it, then go to Hornet.org and search Second Reality to download the two demo files (don't need the S3M music files). Obviously, you will want to use MS-DOS boot and configure your EMM386 for EMS (if I remember correctly).
:). You can easily find a better quality MP3 of the song.
In my opinion and others, this is still the best PC demo of all. Even the music was awesome at its time. I ran it on my 486DX2/66 and dang it was cool
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
PC Demo Fan Club. A bit outdated if you click on the old pages link at the bottom. However, it still has some good reviews from old PC demos.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The demo scene is much more important than people and Americans generally acknowledge. It is, truly, the last subculture where people code for the love of it. This explains the strength of the scene in Europe, and its nonexistence in America.
The culture in the US leaves no room for movements like the demo scene to evolve and thrive. Coders in the US are too focused on monetary rewards or political posturing. This is unfortunate. America really needs to pay attention to the Europeans here, and learn from them.
Europeans are driven by ideals, not greed. At the same time, they are sophisticated enought not to allow their valuable coding skills to be coopted by strident political organizations like the FSF.
Unfortunately, America is exporting it's culture to Europe at an alarming rate. Soon, Europe may even beging to enforce American software patents. Under these circumstances, the demo scene is in a precarious postition. For example, I can forsee a day when all the skilled European coders will have been bought up by American corporations. Even worse, once software patents go into effect in the EU, it's only a matter of time before the scene is forced underground by lawsuits from American game companies. I really hope the EU doesn't let this happen, but it may be too late.
KTS:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Utensil.
There is no contradiction.
In all honesty, this story was a snoozer. Like 5 guys care. Next to today's other, more exciting stories, this one really gives Slashdot a bad name. Please post something more interesting next time.
The other day I found an amusing and informative text file on some BBS or other, explaining how to make a lifelike, artificial vagina "out of common household products." Hey, I thought, I've tried that. (Bet you have, too. Be honest.) I was intrigued. The guy who wrote it calls his device Porta-Pussy. It involves a mailing tube, a string, and a balloon. Basically, you lower the balloon into the tube, stretch the neck of the balloon to overlap the outer edge of the tube, then use the string to stretch the balloon down the length of the tube. He suggests taping the tube to the edge of a table, kneeling down and licking it for a while, then standing up and fucking it.
I just tried fucking it. It wasn't bad. I decided not to try the advanced applications, though, which include sticking a dildo up your ass and drinking the cum as it leaks out of the tube. Another time, maybe. But I did admire his imaginative design; simple to make, reasonable facsimile, easy cleanup (throw away the balloon). His description made fun reading, too; "How I Spell Relief." I encourage others to download his file (called IWACK1.ZIP).
So, in a spirit of sharing, here's my technique. It doesn't look as authentic as his, and it takes more preparation, but I think it feels MUCH closer to the real thing. Close your eyes and the PseudoCunt (this name just occurred to me; snappy, huh?) feels just EXACTLY like a warm, wet, tight pussy. You think I'm kidding, right? Nope. Read on, if you're so inclined.
CONTENTS:
1- Registration
2- Materials & Ingredients
3- Construction
4- How to Use
5- Hints & Techniques
6- Troubleshooting
7- Why I Created PseudoCunt
REGISTRATION:
Ha, ha. Get it? It's software. Real soft. If you figure out who I am, send me some money. PseudoCunt is not shareware, by the way. It's recommended for use alone.
MATERIALS & INGREDIENTS:
* Cylindrical container (see below)
* Large pot (3-4 quart capacity)
* Butter or margarine (2-3 tablespoons)
* Vegetable oil (just a drop or two)
* Saran Wrap or equivalent
* Spaghetti or fettucini (lots; two boxes)
* Sturdy rubber band
* Several big, firm sofa cushions (optional)
* Your favorite masturbation fantasies in magazine, video, gif, or virtual form
CONSTRUCTION:
1- Find a suitable container. This is the tough part. The best one I've found is an overlarge Mason-type jar (about 11" tall), though these are hard to find. Second choice would be a length of PVC pipe sealed at one end, or a mailing tube, but it should be at least five inches in diameter. A half-gallon cardboard milk carton might work, with clever modifications.
2- In a large pot, bring two or three quarts of water to full boil. Add a tablespoon of vegetable oil and a pinch of salt. Boil spaghetti to aldente texture (about 8 minutes). Any pasta will do, but I find spaghetti and fettucini most satisfactory.
3- Drain spaghetti, but do not rinse. Mix in A FEW DROPS of vegetable oil (be CAREFUL not to use too much; use just enough to keep the spaghetti from sticking together) and stir well. Set aside in colander until cool enough to handle.
4- While spaghetti is cooling, melt some butter (not much; about 1/3 of one of those little butter pats you get with toast in a diner is enough). Don't let it boil; 15-30 seconds in the microwave should do it.
5- Stuff spaghetti into the container described in Step 1. Really pack it in tightly; as tight as you can cram it in. This is crucial to success. I use wooden cooking implements to tamp it down. When the jar is about 3/4 full, bore a hole down the center with something long and moderately thin (I use the long handle of a wooden stirring spoon) and continue packing spaghetti around it, up the brim. Remember to pack tightly; spaghetti will compress a lot more than you'd think.
6- At this point, remove the rod or dowel or whatever, and pour a SMALL amount of melted butter down into the little hole to lubricate it. (By the way, I've found that butter or margarine feels much more like the creamy inside of an aroused cunt than any kind of oil; and I've tried quite a few). Stick your finger in and work the lubrication down into the little hole. Feels interesting, doesn't it? Close your eyes and probe, slowly; does that feel just EXACTLY like a wet pussy hole, or what?
7- Now, use something wider and slightly tapered to widen the mouth of the surrogate vagina (I use the neck of a wine or beer bottle). Do this gently, and don't widen it to your full dick diameter; you want it to be nice and tight.
8- Cut a generous length of Saran Wrap and stretch it tightly over the mouth of the jar. Fasten it tightly with the rubber band. Now punch a hole in the Saran Wrap in the obvious place. (Use a pencil, or a spoon handle, not a knife; a sharp cut will make the Saran Wrap tear.)
HOW TO USE:
1- Pile two or more big, thick sofa cushions on top of each other. Make an identical pile next to the first, leaving a 12-inch space between the two piles.
2- In the space between the cushions, spread a towel (or newspaper) on the floor. If properly constructed, your PseudoCunt should not make a mess unless you really get carried away, but it's a good idea to protect against this possibility.
3- Position the PseudoCunt jar on the floor between the two cushion piles.
4- Lie across the cushion piles, chest on one, thighs on the other, dick dangling in the space between. Now, gaze lovingly at whatever fantasy object you prefer, tease the head of your dick against the warm, slick mouth and begin fucking.
HINTS AND TECHNIQUES:
* Before you get started, check with your finger to make sure your PseudoCunt has cooled to the proper temperature. You don't want to burn yourself. Optimum temperature should be obvious if you're a reasonably sexually active person. Push your finger in as deeply as you can; the bottom of the jar may be too hot even though the mouth is a nice, warm, cuntlike temperature.
* The PseudoCunt is not recommended for quickies. Choose a time when you're absolutely certain you'll be alone and undisturbed. PseudoCunt takes some time to prepare, and a fair amount of what's called in cinema and theater circles 'suspension of disbelief.' It can't be fully enjoyed if you're worried about your wife or girlfriend walking in and finding you fucking a jar of spaghetti.
* Size of the container is important. Make sure it is at least two inches deeper than your dick is long, and wide enough so that your dick is surrounded by a generous cushion of pseudo cuntflesh. You don't want to bang up against the hard sides or bottom of the thing at a crucial moment.
* Shape of the container is important, too. I like the jumbo jar configuration because the "shoulders" of the jar where the neck narrows help to keep the spaghetti in place when you withdraw on the out-strokes.
* Don't use too much butter. A very small amount should suffice. Remember that your own secretions will increase the lubricating effect. It's not generally recognized that grease and oils actually DE-sensitize erectile tissue. A thin coat of oil on your dick is like wearing a condom. I find that the absolutely perfect effect is achieved by adding just a *tiny* amount of butter, then slathering saliva all over my dick just before first penetration. The combination of butter, saliva and natural lubrication that leaks from your dick feels closer to authentic vagina arousal than any oil I've ever tried.
* Make adequate preparations. Arrange your favorite magazines on the floor in front of you, or display a particularly fascinating GIF, or make sure the VCR is cued up and the remote is handy. One of the real joys of using PseudoCunt is that it leaves both hands free to work the VCR remote or languidly browse through magazines, savoring the tight cunt sucking wetly at your dick with each slight movement of your hips. With careful preparation it's a damned comfortable position, and you can just lie there for as long as you please, indulging as many fantasies as your self-control will allow.
* For best results, fuck slowly and gently on first penetration. This allows the PseudoCunt hole to adjust to the proper diameter.
* Don't ram your dick in to the bottom at first. Go slowly, and try to restrain yourself as long as possible, fucking a just a little deeper at a time. Each time you stroke a little deeper, the PseudoCunt is a little tighter, and incrementally warmer. The sensation is fabulous if prolonged. I like to keep the last inch or so unpenetrated until I'm just at the point of cumming, then grunt and howl and plunge to the bottom and blast my sperm into the tight warmth deep down inside.
* Sound effects, if authentic, can really heighten the effect. Porn videos just don't do it for me. Too contrived. I have a few audio tapes that do, though, and once in a while I'll put on the headphones while fucking my Pseudocunt. One is a tape I made by concealing the microphone in the headboard of the bed before fucking my wife doggy-style (you should consider trying this; it's incredibly arousing to hear the rutting grunts and screams of a woman you know). The rest are recordings of phone-sex conversations with two former girlfriends -- one in particular, whose panting and gasping and whimpering as she masturbates is truly phenomenal.
* Shed all inhibitions. Admit to yourself that, while this may seem truly bizarre behavior, it feels incredibly good. Get hedonistic. Get totally naked. Or wear leather, or panties and a bra, or clothespins on your scrotum, whatever makes your dick throb and ooze.
TROUBLESHOOTING
If you experience problems with your PseudoCunt, the fault most likely lies in your choice of materials, or lack of attention to proper construction techniques.
Commonly experienced problems usually have simple solutions:
Too hot for comfort
If too hot, allow to cool at room temperature. Don't get impatient and put it in the freezer, or outside in a snowbank. If it cools unevenly, you're in for a very unpleasant surprise.
Not warm enough
If too cool, place jar in a pan of water on the stove and simmer for at least 30 minutes. To spread heat more evenly, make sure the water covers at least 2/3 of the jar, and place a wire rack beneath the jar to raise it off the bottom of the pan. If a glass jar is used, you can heat it in a microwave oven for a minute or so. [This procedure is not recommended if using a waxed cardboard milk carton.]
These heating techniques, by the way, are handy for repeated use of your PseudoCunt between washings, unless you're too squeamish for sloppy seconds.
It's also occurred to me that a hair dryer might be a quick alternative, but I haven't tried this. I'm not sure I could maintain a hardon or a straight face kneeling there naked and blow-drying a jar of spaghetti.
Bits of greasy spaghetti cling to your dick on withdrawal
This is normal. While the problem cannot be eliminated entirely, the effect can be minimized by several means:
1- Make sure spaghetti is packed in VERY tightly.
2- Use a high-shouldered jar (see above) to help keep the spaghetti in place on the out strokes.
3- Make sure hole in Saran Wrap is not too large. Punch, do not cut, this hole to prevent tearing.
PseudoCunt makes distracting slurping noises
You used too much butter, or oil, or both. Or you've gang- banged your PseudoCunt one too many times and you need to clean it out and start over again at Step 2.
Of course, if you want to fantasize about oral sex, this could be regarded as a design feature rather than a problem.
Greasy stains on sofa cushions
My wife responds to greasy stains on upholstery by immediately dumping a big pile of talcum powder on the spill, letting it sit for a while, vacuuming it off later, then calling in a professional furniture cleaner to finish the job. I try to avoid stains by making sure the Saran Wrap is tightly secured with the rubber band, and by spreading a towel over the leading edge of the sofa cushion pile. I'd rather not have to explain PseudoCunt stains to my wife.
Fetid stench
Throw away the spaghetti and wash the damn thing. Unless mold and bacteria growth play an essential role in your sexual fantasies, repeated use of the PseudoCunt is not recommended beyond, say, 24 hours. Refrigerate after use.
WHY I CREATED PSEUDOCUNT
No, I'm not a social outcast or a phobic recluse. I have a normal sex life (pretty fabulous, actually) so I should explain why I continued to experiment with masturbation techniques in adulthood, long after abandoning the clumsy remedies most teens invent to draw off excess spunk. One reason is simply that I'm a very sensuous person with a vivid imagination. I've found that I can occasionally attain amazing heights of sexual arousal when I masturbate. At the risk of sounding immodest, I've induced some of the best orgasms I've ever had. Another reason is that I am aware of absolutely no physical or psychological reasons not to masturbate, and can't help wondering if the world might not be a better place if more people did. Whether they use fists or balloons or spaghetti.
Finally, it provides a fabulous way to indulge certain sexual fantasies that just can't be shared no matter how skilled and understanding one's lover may be. Know what I mean? If you're inclined to give this thing a try, I hope it enhances your own secret fantasies as much as it does mine. If you have a technique of your own, write it up and post it for others to share. If you find the whole concept disgusting, why did you read this far?
You know, squeezing code down to fit a 4k intro requirement sort of loses its point when the only way to see it is by downloading an 11MB DiVX..
Sigh..it makes you miss the old days, doesn't it?
Nope it happened to me too. Wonder what article the editors decided to yank. Probably someone with conclusive proof that CmdrTaco is the goatse.cx guy or something.
I got into the demo scene, like many others, after seeing Second Reality from Future Crew. I immediately went out and bought a GUS. I still have it, I recently plugged it into an Alpha but it doesn't seem to work...
Imagine my delight when I look under MP3-musiikki and find this. I downloaded it and I'm really impressed. They haven't done a big demo since Second Reality (a couple of mini-demos only) but I am totally happy that Purple Motion is still at it.
I'm going to have to try some of those demos at work tomorrow where I have access to a Windows box. If only they were all SDL like iXalance, which I found about a month ago...
When you're that rich I suppose you can afford plenty of jock cock. Ten bucks says her rectum is wrapped around a muscular guy's dick as we speak.
Too bad Angela is about to fall off that list for being so damn skanky. Still, I'd lick her muff like a cat at a saucer of creme if I could.
Module music in the "scene" carries samples of the instruments along with the file. Yet Discover magazine thought an MIT researcher's work in the field was so novel that he was a finalist in their 1997 Discover Awards (see "Bringing Music to the Web"). A project (whos name escapes me) combines audio data with the music to play it, and calls it a new format.
Anyway, there are plenty of players out there if you want to listen in. For MS Windows users, there's Winamp, although I personally prefer Modplug over Winamp, hoping that my favorite player of all time, Cubic, will be worked on again and make a comeback.
Linux users have their choice of a variety of players. XMMS has a plugin available with the engine from modplug. Several others also exist as well.
At least Europe had the good taste to start wiping out the Jews. Nice to know at least one continent used to have a positive vision for the future.
AHAHAHAHHAHAHA! OMG that has to be one of the funniest things I've ever read. God I wish I had moderator points, clever AC!! Bless you!
She used to be higher, but she's just too damned popular now. I've got no problem with the skankiness :)
See a-subject!
Look at the original photo (it should not be hard to find), before it was softened-up in photoshop. Natalie is very ugly. The geek-obsession with her is quite disturbing.
Do they also have C and perl parties?
Jon I'm glad you found my post helpful. Perhaps you could, after much experimentation, create a file called Artificial Fourteen Year Old Boy's Rectum? I'm sure many Slashdot readers would enjoy it. God knows it would be better than any of the other shit you've excreted on this waste of code.
Slow down cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each submission of comments.pl in order to allow everyone to have a fair chance to post.
It's been 1 minute since your last submission!
I've got something that will leak out of her twat when I'm done with her. Too bad her tits look like a couple of gumdrops on an ironing board.
On a side note, you know what sucks? When you post a particularly juicy troll and forget to hit that Post Anonymously button. Should I do that in the future, I hearby give you the rights to put my balls on a kitchen counter and whack them enthusiastically with a rubber mallet. Actually, if someone wouldn't mind, I think I'd kinda enjoy that now....Mmmm....then poop on me. Hey! I'd be just like Jon Katz!!
I wonder how many shitty offtopic trolls I can make before Cowboy Neal's homo filter blocks me. I bet Cowboy Neal is a very lonely person, so I won't troll him like I do Hemos, who loves it when I fist him long and deep. Hemos and I first met in the mens room of a gay bar. I was in the last stall wearing a black leather Nazi uniform. I kept my arm greased up to the elbow and I was calling myself the Tower of Power. The rest is history! Hi Hemos! I love you!!
Wired also has a couple articles on the subject here(1), here(2) and here(3)."
Pardon me for being nit-picky, but Wired News (owned by Lycos) is very different from Wired (the magazine owned by Conde-Nast).
What! NOOOOO! After ALL these YEARS ! ! WHY!??
Haha. Is it any wonder?
Coding pretty (ugly) pictures in ANSI terminal escape sequences has obviously gone way past "hardcore" and right into "insane".
-OzJuggler
Life's a buffer; you can only get out of it what you put into it! C:-)
Damn lameness filter
Anyone know where I could download this? I mean the actual demo not the mpg, so I could run it on my Communicator..