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TMDC5
TMDC Organizing writes "There's less than two weeks left to the fifth pseudoannual text mode demo compo submission deadline. The web-submission system is finally online, and you can also chat about TMDC5 on ircnet #tmdc5. Even if you haven't started on an entry yet, there's still time!"
A few references for everyone wishing to see something created earlier or just for inspiration:
(mostly win32, sorry)
on pouet.net
<shameless plug>
kvasigen.demoscene.no (80x25, Hangover in Halden, Textmode 3)
</shameless plug>
mats
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
What on earth is a "text mode demo compo" ? Even after clicking the link i have not much more information than that.
That's the library you'd want to use. Also, check out "bb", which is a very cool OPEN SOURCE text mode demo, with good music, and playable on any terminal out there.
Maximum file size is 1440000 bytes in a ZIP file
(approx 1.4 megs), and 3 (THREE) megs uncompressed.
Their intro demo is a 2.3Mb zip
I remember seeing my first "loader" back in 1992, I had just started drawing ANSI for a local 206 art group called RaT. I remember it quite clearly, it had an ANSI logo that faded in and out and text that scrolled from right to left that faded from dark grey (or more accurately, bright black) to dark white to bright white then back again with really horrible fire effects at the bottom.
I've always loved textmode demos, they bring me back to a world before the internet was the gargantuan beast it is now, when I called 64 BBS's a day (and would have called more except my modem program only supported 64 entries).
It's great to see people still doing this.
sig.
Okay, so I tried a few (the intro from the story and a couple from an earlier poster's link).
I thought the demo scene was supposed to be about efficiency - doing amazing things in small space and with other limitations. It is depressing to see that decoding an audio stream and bouncing some characters around an 80x50 display can't be done with less than 100% processor.
A proper MP3 player can decode an MP3 stream with about 1-2% of avaialable cycles (on my 600MHz athlon) - I can't believe it takes the rest to calculate 80x50 at 50-odd fps.
There should be a catagory for algorithm efficiency - then I might vote.
Additionally the demo authors will not have any hardware-assisted rendering, forcing them to do their own rasterization methods
Well, I can certainly imagine the thrill (not) of implementing all the fundamentals from scratch.
There's certainly the point that this will make people write smart algorithms, but there are certain things that everybody will do anyways. Bresenham line drawing. Cohen-Sutherland Line-Clipping algorithm. Crack open your CG textbook and find many more.
Doesn't the ascii demo scene have any libraries to put the emphasis on smart implementation of ART, rather than the art coming second to a smart implementation of pixel pushing?
It all goes downhill from first post
Alright I was both interested and bored so I decided to download a couple of these demos and see what they are like.
I have a couple questions.
1) What kind of drugs are best when coming up with the ideas for these things. Specifically what were your influences when coming up with the idea to make a scene about a psychotic looking little girl who chases around a bunny rabbit with a meat cleaver and removes it's testicles?
2) Where can I acquire said drugs.
Thanks.
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
The demoscene is very much alive -- it has changed, yes (some would say to the worse, some claim it has changed so much it's dead), but it's alive.
Try the viewing tips on scene.org for a taste of what it has to offer nowadays. If you're more interested in Amiga stuff, there are DivX captures of a lot of new and old Amiga stuff on Amidemos (most of it probably won't run on your A600 :-) ). There's a Unix-specific demoscene archive out there, for those who want native Linux/*nix demos -- in any case, pouet has a wide range of demos for almost every platform you can think of. :-) (The "top10" list is slightly debatable, though ;-) )
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
I tried the TMDC4 "Super Killer" on a Windows XP (Pro) machine. I pressed alt+enter as instructed, and the thing took over in full-screen mode. Well, not exactly my taste. Fine. So, I assumed the following rule (according to the contest site) was implemented: "User must be able to quit the demo at any moment by pressing ESC". I pressed ESC. Nothing, it just kept running. I pressed ALT+F4. Nothing, it just keep running. I pressed CTRL+ALT+DEL and nothing! It just keep running, taking over the entire computer. Finally I just got p.o.'ed and killed it with the power switch. After rebooting, thankfully, it was no longer running. (BTW the CTRL+ALT+DEL problem seems to be common on this XP with other runaway apps too. It seems if an app uses 100% CPU time, the lame multitasking model never lets the Task Manager start, or maybe it will if you wait an hour.)
There is a good explanation why the banana could be used as a pejorative when it comes to programming.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Useless? Useless my foot. Being able to play quake on my vt320 serial terminal is what I call usefull. Also, being able to play movies with it (with mplayer) is useful too. VGA cards are way to expensive for me :)
They should limit sound in these demos to carefully timed sequences of 0x07 character only. The demo should be fully playable on a dumb terminal!