Put The Demoscene In Your DVD Player

Jason Scott writes "With the recent story on slashdot about a big demo party, it might be good to let everyone know about the absolutely incredible Mind Candy DVD, where a very dedicated group of people from "the scene" have spent two years painstaking recovering demos from obscurity, finding the old 286 and 386 hardware, installing the needed (obsolete) cards, and capturing them perfectly in full digital glory. They also have information on what exactly the "scene" is, in case you've missed this incredibly creative use of computers from the past 20 years. This whole process cost them thousands of dollars and untold hours. Check it out, see what you missed... or never forgot."

Comments

Seizure Warnings?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can just see the product seizure warning labels now. ;)

yeah right..

[Suppafly]

This whole process cost them thousands of dollars and untold hours.

sure.. like old 2/386 computers cost anything.. I might believe the untold hours, but come on.. this sure is some sensationalist hype.

Re:yeah right..

[Sparr0]

Do you have any idea what it takes to connect a 286 to something capable of recording high quality digital video? I would guess at least one box and one dongle, both of which no one has made in 10 years.

Re:yeah right..

[willybur]

No. Many groundbreaking demos are weird. They have strange video modes, odd refresh rates, or require old hardware. To find ways to render these demos in a very professional looking manner, and then to convert it to DVD is difficult. Also, to convert the demos, with quirky framerates, to the DVD framerate without flickers or frame repeats or other mistimings required some work. The audio also needs to be synchronized with the video. Some demos might have needed to be edited for time contraints. Each demo had to be dealt with differently. I can easily imagine that they spent thousands of dollars on hardware, not to mention the money needed to actually manufacture these DVDs.

Re:yeah right..

[qwerty823]

Well, considering most of these were written in pure assembly and expected certain timings based on 286/386 instructions, running them on todays machine s would be difficult. Not to mention since most of them were DOS based and had drivers for sound and video builtin, and used old video modes that new cards might not support. Yeah, i'd say it might be tough. I remember lots of the demos were written to use a GUS ( Gravis Ultra Sound ) card. I wouldnt have a clue as to where to find one of those today.

Re:yeah right..

[tzanger]

Yeah, i'd say it might be tough. I remember lots of the demos were written to use a GUS ( Gravis Ultra Sound ) card. I wouldnt have a clue as to where to find one of those today.

I have two GUS MAX 1M cards at my office. I used to do some tracking with Scream Tracker (2.2something and then 3.2) -- Hmm, time to find my old 386 now...

Re:yeah right..

[Angry White Guy]

I have one, sitting right between my Pro Audio Spectrum cards and my Ad-lib gold cards. The damed thing is twice the size of all the other cards, it looks more like a frat paddle!

Old hardware is everywhere, you just have to ask the right people. Ebay Has one listed for $4.30, 16 hours left in the bidding. Get your piece of history now!

Re:yeah right..

[rat7307]

I've got a GUS siiting in my drawer right now..
Memories......
Actually was in a demo group in the early 90's... only ever made one demo... called LAMER... groups name was D.E.A
did a pretty cool triple swirl plasma.... revolutionary at the time..
cool... might get the DVD

Re:yeah right..

[Anonymous Coward]

*obviously* you have *never* gone near trying this. Most of the demos used some pretty intense low level trickery when talking to sounds cards and video cards.... There is *no* chance of emulating most of it. A lot of it won't even run on a pentium Dos box because the dos OS has changed too much (and it hasn't changed much), if you don't have a genuine sound blaster 16 or earlier, and a GUS, and an ad lib card, you won't get all the demos to run.

Re:yeah right..

[xingix]

you try using a moderm DOS emulator on those old DOS programs then tell me how easy it is---

Re:yeah right..

[SuperDuG]

sure.. like old 2/386 computers cost anything.. I might believe the untold hours, but come on.. this sure is some sensationalist hype.

And I suppose you're some type of computer selling expert. Here's one for ya, I need a 286 right now. Wait a minute I can't go to the local computer store and buy one, nor can I order one from any big name computer dealer. That would mean I'm at the mercy of garage sales flea markets and the public school system. I would say that a 286 is worth thousands of dollars just like any piece of crap deamed old at a antique mall is worth thousands of dollars.

Perhaps you should think about starving children in the artic before you just spout out crap like this on a reputable site like slashdot.

You insensitive clod ...

Re:yeah right..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe, this is kind of funny. Took a little to realize why and is in italics. Stupid AC.

Re:yeah right..

[Trixter]

Actually, we had to buy a DVD burner (a year ago they were $500), a dedicated computer with 240 Gigs of space for capture and editing (two-years-ago prices), a dedicated capture card that supported both PAL and NTSC 4:2:2 (Matrox RT2000, again two years ago)... THAT is what cost us the bucks. The hardware I had in my crawlspace :) and some of the other hardware was donated.

Re:yeah right..

[Dolly_Llama]

Reputable....Slashdot....does...not...compute...

Re:yeah right..

[roynux]

Yeah !

My huge red Gravis Ultra Sound (1Mb of RAM),
My own,
My precious...

Re:yeah right..

[198348726583297634]

trixter, you old dog!!

man, i haven't seen your name in years and years.. probably getting close to a decade now. since the last time i hit the old hornet archives, looking for something that ran decent on my crap hardware at the time.. those were the good ol' days, when computing was still fun. before windows demos, before linux demos.. when a 486 was high-powered, and when a GUS was key to having your demo run as fast as possible, on account of its hardware mixing capabilities.

man.. does anyone else remember how many different .MOD mixing libraries there were, some for real-mode, some for protected.. everyone had their own. and then .S3M came along..

i wonder if i still have any of my old .MODs. too bad winamp's visualizations can't hold a candle to the old players.. sixteen little oscilloscope views, one for each channel. my motherboard's onboard audio no longer needs to preload the samples to the GUS ram, either (anyone else have 8mb in their GUS pnp pro?)

i miss those days. everything's changed. the barrier to entry is in some ways so much higher. no more MOV AX,13h; INT 10h to get your graphics on.. no more PC speaker music. yeah, things are more pleasing to the eye, but i miss it. i'd go back in a heartbeat if i could.

(sorry about the rambling..thanks for the memories)

Re:yeah right..

[tevman]

i dont know, but isnt there hardware that will take any vga signal and convert it to... uhm, something else viewable on a regualr tv... correct me if im wrong

Re:yeah right..

[Negatyfus]

I used to hate it when these things required a GUS. It seemed like a very cool card, but I didn't have one. I always stuck to Creative's cards. Heh, I remember having to put down the equivalent of like, 400-500 bucks for an 8-bit SoundBlaster.

I wonder if Panic and Crystal Dreams (?) are on that DVD... What was it... Future Crew? Weren't they called Triton later on? Or is my mind just too warped? Oh man, that chessboard scene at the end of one of those demos... Must've been the very first dynamic lighting I ever saw.

At one point I was a composer for some lame unknown group. Of course, I couldn't compose for shit and never contributed anything. Did get a mention one time in a BBS intro scroller...

Ahhh, and then we go even further back. The Commodore 64! The stuff I ripped from others... :) Never got to be any good at assembly on that thing. How can you, at that age... Probably never heard of math or anything like it before. Still had loads of fun, though.

Sometimes I regret never having really been part of the scene...

Re:yeah right..

[nmg196]

Do you have any idea what it costs to master a DVD and have all the packaging designed and made up?

It's going to be a few thousand just to get a single disc ready to test.

Since it's on the DVD in video format, they would also have needed a video editing suite (stand alone or PC based) which are never cheap unless you pirate them). They would also have needed come DVD authoring software to produce all the menus and stuff.

This is aside from all the hardware required to capture all the video output from these old computers (you can't do it in software as most of them write straight into video memory and/or put the graphics card into an undocumented video mode).

I think basically, you have no idea what you're talking about if you think you can knock up a DVD like this for less than a few thousand...

Nick...

Re:yeah right..

[Slamtilt]

Dumbass AC. *This* is bold, /this/ is italics. Obviously.

Re:yeah right..

[orangesquid]

And if you've ever spent less than $1000 on one of these converters, you know they are definitely not up to par with said "DVD quality" and can't handle all the unusual resolutions and refresh rates used.

Re:yeah right..

[Garion911]

I'm lucky enough to have one of these old cards.. Someone was throwing out an old computer that was fried and snagged it...

I currently use it in an MP3 machine... Sound 10x better than the SBLive I had in there before..

Re:yeah right..

[Sesse]

Panic (by Future Crew) is there, same is Crystal Dream II (by Triton) -- the last one is the one with the chess scene, yes. But Triton != Future Crew. :-)

/* Steinar */

Re:yeah right..

[Sparr0]

Yes, of course there is. But I dont recall ever owning a 286 with a VGA display. Not to say they didnt exist, but I never had one.

Re:yeah right..

[Negatyfus]

Ah, thanks for refreshing my memory. :) Those good old times I'll never quite relive the way it felt back then.

Re:yeah right..

[Andrewkov]

Perhaps you should think about starving children in the artic before you just spout out crap like this on a reputable site like slashdot.

I think I just found my new sig!

Re:yeah right..

[Reziac]

What exactly do you need a 286 for? Offhand, I can't think of anything 286-specific that can't make do with a 386SX, or scrape by on an XT.

I've got a working 286 that I won't part with (it's my last-ditch emergency machine, plus has sentimental value :) but I might have others in various states of body parts (I know there's a complete working PS/2 Z50, and maybe a couple motherboards). I'd have to look in The Closet. I still have MFM adapters and Herc mono cards but I think I'm out of MFM hard drives.

Now, if it's 386 parts you need, I've got 'em by the ton!

Oh yeah, I do have one working XT yet too. Was trying to find it a good home, but then needed it to test a Y2K patch for an old app still in wide use, so it's earned its keep. :)

Re:yeah right..

[Suppafly]

thats more along the lines of what I was thinking.. I can't possibly imagine anyone spending any amount of money on obsolete hardware as it can be had for free of internet forums all the time.

Re:yeah right..

[stickb0y]

Since it's on the DVD in video format, they would also have needed a video editing suite (stand alone or PC based) which are never cheap unless you pirate them).

Not to say that it's cheap to produce DVDs, but the software doesn't necessarily need to be that expensive.

Video editing: Avisynth. Since it's a script-based NLE, it's not the most user-friendly thing around, but it's powerful and free.

MPEG2 encoding: Tsunami MPEG Encoder. MPEG1 encoding is free; MPEG2 encoding support costs $48 US. Considered one of the best encoders around for quality, especially for its price.

Of course, these tools may not have been available (or may not have been too usable) when this project was started.

If you want encoded Amiga demos...

[antdude]

You can go to Ami Demos for DivX versions. Hopefully, Mind Candy DVD will make a DVD version. :)

Re:If you want encoded Amiga demos...

[KodaK]

You can go to Ami Demos [planet-d.net] for DivX versions.

What I find incredibly humorous is that what was once a 40k intro is now a 21.7MB DivX.

Makes me wish I hadn't traded my Amiga away so many years ago. . .

Re:If you want encoded Amiga demos...

[StillAnonymous]

Check out UAE (Unix Amiga Emulator) or WinUAE and you should still be able to run most of these demos. Considering how complex the Amiga is, UAE gives amazing results.

Re:If you want encoded Amiga demos...

[KodaK]

Oh, I've got UAE. I even bought Amiga Forever so I could have legal roms, but it's still not the same thing as having a real Amiga in front of you clicking the drives every 10 seconds. :)

Thanks though.

Re:If you want encoded Amiga demos...

[Sycraft-fu]

I'm really not sure how that's humorous, just the nature of data. I do a similar thing all the time when I convert MIDI to audio. A 5 minute MIDI file is lucky to be 30k, but in the uncompressed 24-bit format my syth spits it out in it's 82MB. Just how it work when you go from a simple format that is descriptive of things to do (like a program or MIDI) and translate it with the help of some kind of hardware into something that is just a resresentation of light or sound.

Re:If you want encoded Amiga demos...

[Mr_Silver]

Do you have any particular recommendations?

I do. Although some of these aren't technically brilliant - just good to watch:

• Big time sensuality
• Interference
• Nexus 7
• State of the Art

Have fun.

Re:If you want encoded Amiga demos...

[Sesse]

For newer stuff, try "Little Nell" by TBL, or perhaps "Planet Potion" by Potion (one of the most amazing 64kB intros ever). :-)

/* Steinar */

Slashdotted at one post? Geez

[GlassUser]

Bah, Google has no cash. Here's the text. Don't mod me up, I have plenty of karma.

what is the demoscene?

The computer demo scene consists of programmers, artists, musicians and enthusiasts who enjoy creating and/or being entertained by computer graphics-and-sound demonstration programs. These "demos", as they are called, are much like music videos for the computer and are often created by people in their late teens to early twenties. Many of them move on to careers in the computer/video game industry, or professional electronic art and music composition.
demoparties

Every so often, demo creators and fans alike get together for a few days, inside places ranging from school gymnasiums to sports arenas. They compete head-to-head with new demo, music, and art creations, exchange ideas, and most importantly, to have fun! These are some of the most popular hotspots for demosceners.
The Gathering (Norway, Easter weekend) - Held inside a hall built for Olympic speed skating in 1994, with a roof constructed out of a giant viking ship! The Gathering has a reputation of being the largest LAN party in Norway, but many veteran Norsk sceners who were there when it started a decade ago still come back.
Breakpoint (Germany, Easter weekend) - Held at a large abandoned military depot, this new party is a replacement for the legendary but now-defunct Mekka & Symposium party. It is expected to attract visitors from many countries with many computer platforms, even old 8-bit machines like the C64! The party will have a social atmosphere and will try to keep out pure gamers.
Scene Event (Denmark, July) - Formerly known as "Summer Encounter", this Danish party is more known for its outdoor activities (tent cities, bbq) than indoor.. a Woodstock for computer geeks, if you will! Of course, it still has all the usual demo competitions.
Assembly (Finland, early August) - One of the oldest demoparties will run its twelfth year in 2003, and some of the organizers have been there since the beginning. It's been known to attract some of the finest talent in the demoscene, and these days it attracts some of the finest company sponsors as well. Add seminars, live concerts and their own net-broadcasting TV station, and you have one of the most popular youth culture events in Finland today.
demoscene links

There's plenty of sites out there for demo addicts. For this volume, we'll focus on PC-oriented sites, though you'll be sure to find stuff on some other platforms as well. Demos - The Story So Far - New to the scene? This will be a good read, and there are some pics and screenshots to look at too.
Scene.org - The largest Internet file repository for demos. FTP is available too, naturally.
Orange Juice - This is a great site to find demosceners and parties on, and is always updated with the latest news.
Pouet - A fully user-maintained site, with a huge database of demos and reviews.
Two-Headed Squirrel - A very unique demo review site, interesting to read.
Monostep (This is a demo) - Want to quickly grab some of the best and latest demos? This site has some good suggestions.
Nectarine - Features streaming radio of demoscene "oldies" (computer MOD music and 8-bit compositions!) - a companion site to Orange Juice.
GFXZone - For those interested in "pixeled" demoscene art, this site provides countless hours of gallery viewing.
No Error - All the latest demoscene music news - trackers, sequencers, CD projects, and more.
SceneSpot - A new site with news and forums, and home to the Static Line textfile magazine.
Demoscene Outreach Group - A group of people aiming to get demos more public exposure, through venues like SIGGRAPH and E3.
Freax - Another ambitious demo scene chronicle project - a giant BOOK (yes, the printed kind)

Flying donuts!

[alexandre]

woohoo, we can now enjoy full surround flying donuts on home videos... :-P

are there any future crew demos on this? :)

But where is Hardwired or Deep (Psylocibin Remix)?

[CausticWindow]

Fantasia,

having a party is not my idea of a fantasy.

Especially right now.

Google's Cache

[breon.halling]

Google's cache of the pricing page is here.

scene audio

[ergonal]

Fusecon also have an Audio CD of music from scene-related artists. You can also download and listen to track previews!

endless loop?

[Anonymous Hack]

Most of the demos i downloaded from BBSes back in the day were 64k intros, and before that on the 8-bits they were even tinier things usually attached to cracked games... And i seem to recall they were always on an endless loop. How can you make a DVD or DivX of demos without "fading out" after X repeats? How many repeats?

I remember listening to the music on one demo on my 8-bit Amstrad years ago... The Equalizer demo i remember it was called. Just the same three (!) songs repeating over and over playing three simple square-waves coming out of that old Yamaha chip... Ahh those were the days.

Re:endless loop?

[zsazsa]

And i seem to recall they were always on an endless loop. How can you make a DVD or DivX of demos without "fading out" after X repeats?

On a couple of the older demos (Spacepigs Megademo, Chronologia), they had to cut them short or stop them before they repeated. In one modern demo (The Nonstop Ibiza Experience, by Orange) they faded to black during the repeating endpart.

I don't know about this

[Stanley Feinbaum]

It's not very impressive watching a video of a demo. Half the glory of a demo is seeing how well it runs on your slow hardware. I was in awe the first time I saw a demo run off one floppy disk on an amiga500 and how AMAZING the graphics looked. But seeing a pre-recorded video would not have been impressive at all.

Re:I don't know about this

[naelurec]

Agreed .. definitely not impressive if thought of as a raytraced/3d modeled animation .. heck, not even all that impressive for the person being introduced to the DVD as their first glimps at the demoscene.. However, for some of us that have been active in/around the demo scene over the past 10-15 years, it seems like it would be a very nice collection to have for nostalga purposes more than anything.

Re:I don't know about this

[Trixter]

We wanted to do this for a couple of reasons, but the two main ones were archival and convenience. PC demos ran at different rates on different hardware, and some demos didn't run 100% properly on ANY hardware except the coder's machine (and maybe the compo machine). So we went through the trouble of "getting them all right" once and for all. In fact, some demos were captured up to 9 different ways/combinations and the results were edited together, so the demo could be seen probably as the author intended and not how it actually ran on any one box. A few demos were even interpolated across the time domain using motion vectors (I computed motion vectors for each logical grouping of pixels and synthesized frames based on their motion), so some scenes actually run at the full 60Hz when they never did on the PC. The best example of this is Second Reality's end spaceship vector flyby scene -- the original runs at 35 FPS no matter how fast a machine you run it on, but on the DVD it "runs" at 60Hz. Run the two side-by-side and you can tell the difference.

Also, I disagree with seeing them on DVD -- they were impressive running on your Amiga, why wouldn't a video of them running on your Amiga be less impressive? It's still the same Amiga that's generating the video...

Re:I don't know about this

[unixbob]

Sorry, but it IS impressive watching a video of a demo. It's impressive because these dudes have spent an exhorbitant amount of time and money and made sure that a really important piece of computing / geek history has been kept for prosterity for the future.

I'm not really into the demo scene at all, but I am mightily impressed with the effort these guys have gone to and out of nostalgia (I remember seeing demos in my 8 bit days) and curiousity, I'm probably gonna pick up a copy of this DVD

Re:I don't know about this

[tevman]

what software did you use?

Re:I don't know about this

[LS]

This isn't a satisfying answer.

I agree with the first poster - the main reason that demos were compelling is because of the implicit knowledge of what amazing next-level shit is going on in your computer that shouldn't be capable of doing what it's doing.

If you are going to watch it on video just for the groovy colors, then you might as well get a high quality ray-traced video which will blow this thing away, or download some of the cool-ass winamp plugins that use your ATI or Nvidea chipset.

I wouldn't be surprised if Slashdot is getting a kickback from the group selling the DVDs to post this story.

LS

Re:I don't know about this

[Jason Scott]

Well, as the person who sent the story to Slashdot, I can swear on whatever you think I need to swear on that there's no kickbacks for this posting of the MindCandy DVD.

This is answered elsewhere, but hey, the more answers the merrier:

What it comes down to, and what this DVD is for in the grand scheme of things, is a way to see some of the incredible demos of the past decade in a form and manner that's easily reproducable and dependable without dragging out old hardware. Fine, some people want to drag out the old hardware. That's why the original demos are on the mindcandy DVD site as well as at scene.org. Others, like yourself, buy into the newest gimgaws available for your specific machine and would rather view those than see these demos on DVD. Fine, excellent, it's not for you.

But the fact remains that myself, and many other people who heard about this project, have been amazed enough to not only buy copies, but evangelize the surrounding area into knowing about the project and buying it, to help the project leaders make back the money they dumped in (and it WAS thousands of dollars, and it WAS years of work).

Might as well not see those 1930s films on video, right? If you can't see them in the original theatre on the original film stock. Heck, get a match, save some time.

Re:I don't know about this

[Sycraft-fu]

Then I have something for you. Go and get fr-019 from www.farb-rausch.com. It uses (and requires) 3d hardware, however it is still amazing since it is only a 64k executable. 64k compos have been around forever but these guys really take it to a whole new level. I feel that this is their best work, but they ahve other impressive 64k peices too.

Re:I don't know about this

[Stanley Feinbaum]

I loved the music disk one, the fact that they packed that much into 64k boggles my mind.

Re:I don't know about this

[LS]

Exactly, that's my point:

Many films from the 1930's had great stories, so they transcended the medium. They are good stories whether in book, play, film, or other form. With demos, THE MEDIUM IS THE TRANSCENDENT. While some demos had artistic merit, the true artistry is found in the code. If you want real art, go to a museum and see some contemporary multimedia collage. If you want eye candy, check out some recent high-end professional rendering or modern demos on hardware graphics cards. If you want old-school scrape-the-metal-for-all-it's-worth demos, run them on your computer and examine the code to find out how they work.

This is not a troll, and my original message was never intended to be a troll. I admit the "kickback" comment was a little harsh. I'm just a bit jaded by how many stories are pointers to things you can buy.

LS

Re:I don't know about this

[WWWWolf]

We wanted to do this for a couple of reasons, but the two main ones were archival and convenience.

Convinience! Just what the doctor ordered.

Yesterday I tried running some DOS demos in Win98. *boom*. They usually work fine, but many still work with pure luck.

Then, I got this crazy idea. I got Bochs, made it run DR-DOS 7.03, and painstakingly transferred the files through floppies to a 100meg hard drive image (Dosemu doesn't work for the demos, and Bochs can't mount host machine directory tree reliably. Argh.) Typed "second", and *boom!!!* virtual machine panics. The technology isn't perfect...

Now, if only I had any money left, I'd get this DVD right away =)

Re:I don't know about this

[Jason Scott]

It's like you didn't hear a word I said, and focused on the last line. Therefore, you are a human version of the comment 'tail -1'.

What's being said here, by me and by the work of the group who did the DVD, is that these demos DO transcend the medium for which they were on. A painting done 500 years ago could be easily reproduced so that you'd barely know it wasn't the same painting, using modern materials and methods. It would be quicker, too, considering how far they used to have to travel for just the right dyes, and the costs of making the right kinds of brushes. But as the centuries have passed, the amazing efforts to just have the materials ready to MAKE a great painting have fallen by the wayside except for a small percentage of scholars/viewers. What remains is what that artist was trying to say.... the "art" itself, so to speak.

Compressed by the same amount that all of computer history has been compressed, we are saying that yes, these works of "early" PC Demo days of a decade ago have transcended the amazing leaps they did to run and function on PCs of the time, and stand on their own. Obviously, you do not. You don't even listen. But there you have it, maybe I'll buy your copy for you.... and give it to a better suited person.

Re:I don't know about this

[LS]

Ok,

You resorted to insulting me twice. I'm sorry that you feel that you need to go there to get your point across.

Anyway, it appears that you and I have different opinions on what is art, and also on what we find entertaining in demos. I think I am in the minority on Slashdot here, hence my "troll" status.

Of course, this is a community that loves to send pictures of gaping assholes to each other and pontificate on when technology will allow one to build himself a girlfriend, so I don't feel too bad about not fitting in.

Bye.

Re:I don't know about this

[BigJimSlade]

Half the glory of a demo is seeing how well it runs on your slow hardware.

I think it would be more nostalgic if there was a "party version" of each demo, where the demo crashes about half way through.

On a serious note, it would be cool if there was some "making of" info on the disc, even if it's just text. And maybe a DVD-ROM track with all the demos?

Re:I don't know about this

[Jason Scott]

I said you don't read messages properly, and that you shouldn't get this DVD and likely don't deserve it, if that wants to be classified as an insult.

Meanwhile, you basically implied that I (my name's on the story, right up there, first two words) paid Slashdot to put the story up because the story/work didn't stand on its own merits. That's an insult I find a few fathoms deeper.

Maybe there's some sort of Slashdot Payola system I'm not aware of. I'm sure the admins get accused of a stunning spectrum of crimes and misdemeanors, and their motives and personalities questioned constantly. But you drop that kind of accusation, you better back it up. It's obvious you can't, and it shines a light on anything else you say.

By the way, the DVD has a small featurette explaining the demoscene with interviews with a representative set of folks. You can't download that and run it on your 386 either. (Just wanted to mention so this post isn't completely devoid of information.)

Re:I don't know about this

[White Shade]

All but a very small few of the demos have an audio commentary, where a group of sceners talk about the demo while it's running, describing it's history, why it was important, and occasionally details about what a pain it was to capture...

There is also some information on the disc about the actual making of the disc as well, with a lot of detail and moving diagrams.. It's really quite interesting...

Re:I don't know about this

[Sesse]

Why get a boring Winamp plugin, when there are lots and lots of interesting demos that use 3D acceleration as well? =) (And yes, MindCandy contains a full DVD side of those too, so you can watch them in all their 60fps full-antialiased glory, without having to buy the latest and greatest GF4 or Radeon9700 card.

/* Steinar */

Re:I don't know about this

[Trixter]

Actually, you have touched on the Great Demo Debate, which is what people have been arguing about for about a decade: What is the art of the demoscene? The code, or the design?

I am still astonished that people don't realize it is the *combination* of the two that is the artform.

Re:I don't know about this

[LS]

Hmm, I don't know why I continue this. Let's see:

"you are a human version of the comment 'tail -1'"

Sounds like an insult.

"these works ... stand on their own. Obviously, you do not."

Sounds like an insult.

And back to my original comment:

"I wouldn't be surprised if Slashdot is getting a kickback from the group selling the DVDs to post this story."

I never claimed that you paid Slashdot. Only that I wouldn't be surprised if you did. As clarified by my next reply, it's commentary on the state of this site, not accusation towards yourself.

Anyway, don't reply to this. This is wasting both of our time.

LS

Re:I don't know about this

[Jason Scott]

"these works ... stand on their own. Obviously, you do not." Sounds like an insult.

Read it again. The actual two sentences were "Compressed by the same amount that all of computer history has been compressed, we are saying that yes, these works of "early" PC Demo days of a decade ago have transcended the amazing leaps they did to run and function on PCs of the time, and stand on their own. Obviously, you do not."

And as for the hilarious sentence "I never claimed that you paid Slashdot. Only that I wouldn't be surprised if you did. As clarified by my next reply, it's commentary on the state of this site, not accusation towards yourself."

Nope, that insults me. Telling me that by consorting with Slashdot (who have helped bring over 7,000 people to the Mind Candy DVD site in the last day) I'm automatically suspected of bribery, I don't care how you saw it in your mind, that's what came out.

But don't worry, I'll make sure the last line of this message is positive, so you don't feel like I'm being negative.

Trixter, you're very correct, it's one of the primary conflicts when a demo is doing something new or exciting with existing hardware, how much of it is "look at what's being accomplished here" versus "look how great it is". The sign of a solid demo is it does both; a number of Amiga demos hold that attraction for me personally, where I can still look at them and be impressed because I know what hardware they came from, but they also just absolutely rock.

To me, the example of Citizen Kane shows how an artistic piece stands on its own, but is even more amazing when you know all the stuff that went on behind the scenes. I won't fill the database with all this trivia about it, but you can show Citizen Kane to many people now and never tell them of Orson Welles' "Making Of" trivia and they'll enjoy the film.

Re:I don't know about this

[Hast]

The idea is naturally to bring the "art" to as many people as possible. Just like how paintings are often reproduced in art books so that you don't actually have to travel to Paris to see Mona Lisa.

Now you might argue that the point of demos is not at all to "show pretty colours" but to do weird shit with your hardware. You can also argue that there are a lot of old demos which are more or less not worthy of being reproduced.

I could in the same manner argue that the point of a painting is not to "show pretty colours" or "show pretty images". The point of paintings is to show what wonderful things a master painter can do with just a faint brush stroke. Since these details are not seen in a print reproduction of the painting such reproductions are a waste of time. Any art magazine which cover reviews of such literature are obviously getting kickbacks from the authors who have produced them.

Or for me to put it in a slightly less satirical way: Apparently a lot of people liked the idea (they were Slashdotted mere minutes after the post). So if you feel it's pointless then go ahead and don't get a copy.

Personally I think it's a commendable effort to save some modern history.

Google has no cash?

[KPU]

What did Searchking do to them?

286 and 386?

[Malc]

What a joke! As I recall, people who were in to demos mocked PC owners as they had nothing that could match the demos available at the time on the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. I was glad when Xenon II Megablast (yes a game not demo) looked good on the PC as it finally shut my friends up who mocked the PC because it couldn't do any scrolling. Well, it didn't completely shut them up as I didn't have an Ad Lib soundcard. Oh yeah, those demos sounded good on decent hardware too.

Re:286 and 386?

[Afrosheen]

Those old machines, including 486's, were even mocked by the old C64 sceners as well. To this day, almost nothing beats the SID chip's qualities (for it's day), and it takes mountains of CPU power just to emulate it. It was an odd hybrid and is still popular with some people (ever hear of the SidStation?), and created by some genii at Ensoniq.

I still haven't heard a fatter pulse wave or nicer high and lowpass filters done on a chip since then.

Re:286 and 386?

[Anonymous Hack]

I've long wanted to write an "old sound chips emulator" in software, because they did some really wacky stuff back in the 8-bit and even early 16- and 32-bit days of computers that they just don't have any more. The SID in the C64 was actually an analog synthesizer on a chip. The Yamaha thingy in the Amstrad CPC (and possibly ZX Spectrum) was completely crazy... it only had square waves with no filters or anything... but the DCA envelopes could loop, so you could create different timbres by having very fast looped envelopes "chopping up" the original square wave. Definitely something unique that we haven't seen recently. Even the old OPL chips on the AdLib and early SB series were interesting - just 2-operator FM synths i believe, but while they sucked for emulating real instruments they could make great bubbly bass sounds if they were programmed right.

I would really like to see an esay-to-use BOX that just emulated these synths... Or even used them! A SID-station but with 10 different old chips that you could switch between. That would rock my socks.

Re:286 and 386?

[doofusclam]

I disagree, the POKEY chip in the Atari 8bit blew it away. It was even used in Atari arcade machines. The YM2419 in the Atari ST was awful though...

seany

Re:286 and 386?

[spongman]

unfortunately the PC version of Xenon II (one of my favorite games) didn't have the sampled music, high quality sound or multi-plane scrolling backgrounds that the Amiga version did. It was still a good port, though.

Re:286 and 386?

[master_p]

Xenon II's scrolling was 4 layer, but it was at 25 frames per second, and the bottom layer was a starfield. Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga had 25 layers of scrolling and it was a steady 50 frames per second. There was no comparison between the Amiga and the PC of that time.

Re:286 and 386?

[andyt]

Xenon II's scrolling was 4 layer, but it was at 25 frames per second, and the bottom layer was a starfield. Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga had 25 layers of scrolling and it was a steady 50 frames per second.

Shadow of the Beast, I remember it well.

Pros : Stunningly beautiful, free T-Shirt
Cons : Played like a dog. A dog that had been run over by a truck, had all it's legs crushed, been buried, had been decomposing for six months, been dug up and converted into a video game.

Xenon II, on the other hand, was great. I remember one particularly whorish game mag giving it a rating of 100%....

Future Crew, ST3's, lsd and erm, other stuff..

[felonius]

WOW I hope to get my hands on this. I remember thinking things could not get any better than the Timless demo. That was a good time for me, as I was too young to drive, old enough to have mind altering substances and a rockin 1 meg vga card hooked up to the ole 386. And when I was inspired by one of those demo's, I'd just crank up Scream Tracker!

I gotta find the floppies now.

Re:Who profits?

[StillAnonymous]

I highly doubt they're going to make a lot of profit (if they make ANY). The target audience is small, to say the least. Considering the effort involved in what they've done, I'd say they deserve all of it.

These demos were given out for FREE years ago, you can still get them for free today and watch them for free (if you can run them). What you're paying for is the convenience of watching them on DVD instead of trying to configure old hardware to do it.

Re:No offense...

[Jace of Fuse!]

Everybody knows that the real Demo Scene was on the Amiga. Hypnautic Hammer. State of the Art. Substance. blah.

If you were there, you know. If you weren't there then no words are going to properly express the concept.

Yes, you can emulate and run the demos now days, but they won't impress you like they did back in the day. The best of the best PC scene demos sucked by comparison to what was typical on the Amiga.

Blah blah blah. Like I said, you had to be there to fully appreciate it.

list of demos

[glob]

from http://www.mindcandydvd.com/demos

side one: transcendental vistas

Title / Group
Wonder / Sunflower
604 / AND, Sly, SynSUN
Kosmiset Avaruus Sienet / Haujobb
Further / Moppi Productions
Chrome / Damage
Volatile / Addict
Tesla / Sunflower
Broadband / T-Rex
Mikrostrange / Haujobb
Moral Hard Candy / Blasphemy
TE-2RB / TPOLM
Le Petit Prince / Kolor
Energia / Sunflower
Gerbera / Moppi Productions
Lapsus / Maturefurk
Enlight the Surreal / Noice
Experimental / Wipe
Live Evil / Mandula
The Nonstop Ibiza Experience / Orange
Codename Chinadoll / Katastro.fi
Art / Haujobb
Kasparov / Elitegroup
Total Time (h:m:s) - 1:42:05

side two: kickin' it oldschool

Title / Group
Second Reality / Future Crew
Megademo / The Space Pigs
Cronologia / Cascada
Unreal / Future Crew
Amnesia / Renaissance
Panic / Future Crew
Crystal Dream 2 / Triton
Show / Majic 12
Verses / Electromotive Force
Dope / Complex
X14 / Orange
Stars: Wonders of the World / Nooon
Reve / Pulse
Paimen / COMA
Inside / CNCD
Megablast / Orange
303 / Acme
Saint / Halcyon & Da Jormas
Square / Pulse
Riprap / Exceed
Total Time (h:m:s) - 2:05:19

Re:list of demos

[seppyk]

All of the demos listed as on the DVD are worthy. I spent the early to mid 90s in the demoscene as a enthusiast, organizer, and a dabbler in music, so finding out about this was a pleasant surprise.

It's still interesting that all but one of the demos, or atleast I'm fairly sure, were made by European groups. The exception being Amnesia by Renaissance, a US group. It was such an interesting community, then and now, I'm surprised it never took shape outside of Europe.

The compilation looks excellent, as it should be since it was formed by _the_ demoscene organizing and maintainance group, Hornet. I can only think of one demo from the oldschool category that didn't make it to the DVD but should have. That being Ninja 2 by Lemon which was the first impressive and entertaining cartoon animated demo to be released on the PC. I'm still geeked about receiving this in the mail though.

Re:list of demos

[poot_rootbeer]

Needs more Twilight Zone. Demos like Jungly Kitchen and the Monty Python one may not have been as graphically dazzling as those from other groups, but they were funny and had a distinctive style.

I also like(d) Orange because I can never figure out what the hell is going on in their intros and demos.

Re:list of demos

[G-funk]

I must have this cd.... second reality and crystal dreams 2 are quite simply the most stand-out "holy fucking shit" memories I have of computers ever. Dope and Amnesia also rule. God damn there's some phat old demos, I'm getting that disc!

idm

[shellac]

There has been incredible use of computers in the last 20 years in electronic music, from Kraftwerk all the way down to the likes of Autechre and Marumari. Unfortunately, none of it is represented on this dvd. Glancing at the contents, 95% of the stuff on this dvd is cheesy dance music.

If you have a real interest in electronica, check out warp records for starters. Their artists are of the idm genre, which (for the uninitiated) stands for "intelligent dance music". Snobby as that sounds, it is good stuff.

Now if you just want trance or Paul Oakenfoldish type stuff on the other hand, kudos to you, cause you will have an easy time--that stuff is a dime a dozen.

Ok, that's enough cocky music snob mode for today. :)

Re:idm

[Anonymous Hack]

Snob is right. (IDM is shit.) But "troll" is more appropriate, especially considering this DVD isn't about music per se but about demos, which is the whole package. And most demo music is in a unique style of its own, quite different to techno (in spite of it being electronic).

I always found demo music fascinating... It sounds a bit like the musicians are trying to recreate Joe Satriani or similar instrumental metal/rock artists from the 80s in an electronic fashion. I always wonder what the inspirations are for these musicians... and i wonder what they do after they leave the scene... game music stopped being written in that style as soon as CD-ROMs came out.

Re:idm

[Afrosheen]

What the hell does this have to do with old demos? Remember, the 'cheesy dance music' that are in these was as pioneering at the time as your 'idm' may be now. Also, if you've ever tracked in your life, you'll know just how complicated some of those tracks are and how difficult they are to compose.

Bust out with an old C64 and the JCH composer sometime (if you can find it and the english documentaion I wrote for it so long ago). Let me know when they haul you away in a straightjacket after you stare at the green numbers for long enough. :)

Re:idm

[Cuthalion]

Okay, well, maybe you should check out the demos on this disk with music by Dune (X14, MegaBlast, Square, The Nonstop Ibiza Experience), who about a year ago put out music on Warp under the moniker Brothomstates. Though my favorite is md (Moral Hard Candy, TE-2RB), now releasing on Miami's Merck records (sorry, Lassi, if you're reading this :D)

Re:idm

[zsazsa]

Hi, Cuth. Lassi actually didn't do music on Square, he did some coding (Statix explains the parts Dune did on the commentary track.) The music's pretty good, though.

Re:idm

[Knos]

yeah the music on square is by shad

Re:idm

[seppyk]

On the same topic, lots of old scene musicians have released a bunch of CD projects throughout the years.

Necros (Alpha Conspiracy)
Scorpik and Falcon (Aural Planet)
Jester (Oddjob)
Dr. Awesome(Bjorn Lynne)
Probably lots more that I can't think of (MD, Muffler, CNCD).

It's interesting that the more experimental demoscene artists, Dune (Brothom States on Warp) and Karl/KFMF (Bogdan Raczynski on Rephlex) have caught more attention though. Obviously, someone at Warp is paying attention to demoscene music artists.

Re:idm

[Cuthalion]

Oops, I was just running through the liner notes and not paying enough attention. Thanks.

Re:idm

[shellac]

Yeah, I admit that I missed the main point, about demoes and not about music. Apologies to the makers of this DVD for this. I have not seen the videos myself and they could be really great for all I know.

It was kind of a knee-jerk reaction when I didn't see what I expected at the website. I think it was the term 'electronica' in the main story.

The Demos Listed

[Jason Scott]

Here's a list of the demos that are on the disk, from their website (now slashdotted):

Side 1 - Transcendental Vistas

Wonder by Sunflower (1999)
604 by And/Sly/Synsun (2001)
Kosmiset Avaruus Sienet by Haujobb (2001)
Further by Moppi Productions (2000)
Chrome by Damage (2000)
Volatile by Addict (2000)
Tesla by Sunflower (2000)
Broadband by T-Rex (2000)
Mikrostrange by Haujobb (2000)
Moral Hard Candy by Blasphemy 1999)
TE-2RB by TPOLM (1998)
Le Petit Prince by Kolor (2001)
Energia by Sunflower (2001)
Gerbera by Moppi Productions (2001)
Lapsus by Maturefurk (2000)
Enlight the Surreal by Noice (2000)
Experimental by Wipe (2000)
Live Evil by Mandula (2000)
The Nonstop Ibiza Experience by Orange (2000)
Codename Chinadoll by Katastro.fi (1999)
Art by Haujobb (2000)
Kasparov by Elitegroup (1999)

1:42:05 Total Time

Side 2 - Kickin' It Oldschool

Second Reality by Future Crew (1993)
Megademo by The Space Pigs (1990)
Cronologia by Cascada (1991)
Unreal by Future Crew (1992)
Amnesia by Renaissance (1992)
Panic by Future Crew (1992)
Crystal Dream 2 by Triton (1993)
Show by Majic 12 (1994)
Verses by EMF (1994)
Dope by Complex (1995)
X14 by Orange (1995)
Stars: Wonders of the World by Nooon (1995)
Reve by Pulse (1995)
Paimen by COMA (1996)
Inside by CNCD (1996)
Megablast by Orange (1996)
303 by Acme (1997)
Saint by Halcyon & Da Jormas (1997)
Square by Pulse (1997)
Riprap by Exceed (1998)

2:05:19 Total Time

Extras
Featurette: Demographics (2002)

4:39:00 Total disc time (approximate)

Re:The Demos Listed

[random735]

I presume they're selling this? Did you see a price before the site went down?

thanks.

Re:The Demos Listed

[ahaning]

Thank you for posting this. The second side has the exact demo I was looking for:

Amnesia by Renaissance (1992)

And, here, those of you unlucky enough to have never seen this demo on a PC may listen to the nice music that went with the demo. In this case, the tracker used was rewritten by Tran and the music recorded at 44.1kHz and encoded as 128kbit MP3s. The music is only half the treat, though. If you can find a 486 of some sort and a SB Pro, I think you'd really owe it to yourself to check out what they were doing in '92 on 386's.

Since I appreciate the service the site linked above provides, I've mirrored the music on another host: http://www.osuweb.net/~ahaning/stuff/amnesia/

Enjoy!

Re:The Demos Listed

[Trixter]

Actually, you'll be happy to know that not only did Charles (it was daredevil, not tran, who rewrote the tracker) re-record the Amnesia music for me, it was using even more updated code and it was also done at 48KHz. The Amnesia music on the DVD, encoded as Dolby AC3 2.0, is easily the very best version of the Amnesia music you will ever hear.

If you watch the DJC tribute on the oldskool side, there is another 670 tune in there, previously unreleased, that was composed and played back using the same FM+Digi process.

Re:The Demos Listed

[stewartjm]

Thanks for the link. I've wanted to hear the Amnesia music many times in the past few years. But I never bothered to dig out ye olde 386. Now I don't have to :) Great stuff.

Re:The Demos Listed

[ecote]

16$

Re:down already, new world record!

[adamruck]

finally, --everyone-- has an excuse for not reading the article.

Must haves

[bLitzfeuer]

Second Reality - Future Crew (aka Remedy, aka MadOnion)
303 - Acme (Statix & Vic)
Jizz - The Black Lotus
KKowboy - Purple & Blasphemy

Don't forget about flying snot and flying text.

Re:Must haves

[bLitzfeuer]

Finally got to see the content list.

Yes! I can finally watch Square again. One of the finest 256 color demos ever produced.

I'm also glad to see Moral Hard Candy (my personal favorite), that makes up for KKowboy's absence.

I would have prefered to see more of the stuff from the glory days when Hornet.net was up but I'm still definitely going to purchase this.

Screw that "Sound and Motion" MTV crap. This is real mindtrip material by real artists, musicians and coders.

Re:Must haves

[shplorb]

Statix released the source for Square and it's been ported to Win32.

You can find it at Pouet

Re:Must haves

[Sesse]

BTW, that source was used for the rendered version that appears on the DVD :-) Slightly easier when you've got a 100% noise-free .avi file ;-)

The Win32 version is slightly buggy, though; the DVD uses captures from the DOS version in the parts where the Windows version is incorrect. (I started on a Linux port once, but there was just too much assembler and stuff everywhere that gcc and nasm didn't like -- it runs fine in WINE anyhow.)

/* Steinar */

Re:Must haves

[Deamos]

The fact that Second Reality is on that DVD is the reason I bought it.

I recently spent more hours than I care to count or admit to in an attempt to ressurect some old hardware to run that demo on.

I have fun memories of being uhm ... intoxicated while watching that demo. Nothing like those effects that make the screen look like its melting!

I have gone as far as going out on the net and finding a .mod player so I could listen to some of the tracks from the old demos, talk about nostalgia. I can't wait to get my copy of this.

Other Questions People Will Have......

[Jason Scott]

Here's some other questions people might have. I'll do my best to head them off:

What are you, Jason Scott, getting out of all this?

I am working on a Documentary about BBSes and run a site about 1980's BBSes and have a soft spot for anyone who dedicates so much time to bringing back computer history, as I'm doing myself. I know how much they spent in money on this (equipment, DVD pressing) and they went for tip-top quality in all of it, and I think this should be rewarded. Slashdot brings people to a site that might otherwise be overlooked.

What about the Amiga, C-64 and other machines?

I know they have plans to do those machines as well for the next in the series; that's why it's Volume 1. If this one sells well, they can afford to do another one. Therefore it's important that everyone who could want a DVD like this know about it. I know they're working on the technical issues of taking video output from these machines and making them look good.

Big deal, they hooked a VCR to a PC

No, that is not the case! When the site lightens up, and you read all they had to keep track of to make the demos look decent on a DVD, you will understand what a massive undertaking this is. Flicker, color-quality, even the problems of general radio interference across the video cables.... they had to handle all these problems, find solutions, and deal with them.

Who are these people?

If it means something to you, these folks are the driving forces behind the Hornet Archive and Mobygames. They care. They care a lot.

Re:Other Questions People Will Have......

[Jason Scott]

Talk about abuse of karma...

You're right. I should have used that karma to feed a kitten. Although as people on fark will attest, I'm probably much better at killing kittens.

Well placed.

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

I don't know about you, but this is the sort of marketing I enjoy. I can't blame the slashdot editors for knowing what I like.

Real coders used Ataris, not Amigas!

[tamnir]

Ah, we have the opportunity to restart an old flame war! ;^)

<flame>
The real hackers were not working on Amigas but on Ataris: you had no blitter chip and such on the Atari ST, you had to do everything "by hand". so making demos on an Atari, equivalent in quality to the Amiga ones (and they were), was much more of a challenge!
</flame>

/me ducks to avoid return fire

Re:Real coders used Ataris, not Amigas!

[Jace of Fuse!]

so making demos on an Atari, equivalent in quality to the Amiga ones (and they were)

I saw some pretty good Atari demos, definately, but the Amiga and the Atari had more in common than many people are willing to admit.

Still, the best demos I ever saw were DEFINATELY on the Amiga.

Arte
State of the Art
Fullmoon

But for a real mindfAck you gotta get Hypnautic Hammer. Okay, that's one that MIGHT still be fun today. :D

"...finding the old 286 and 386 hardware..."

[Robber Baron]

...and hosting their site on it!

286 going a little bit to far back

[adamruck]

now I can understand the people who buy old 386's and 486's for 20 bucks each and salvage them for use, but 286's? 80286's were the first x86 attempt at a fully 32 bit machine, and it didn't come all of the way. 386's and 486's might be slow, but atleast they can run the core functions of more modern chips.

Only one Future Crew demo.. wtf???

[User 956]

They only have one Future Crew demo, second reality. Yeah, it was good, but wtf? What about Panic and Unreal?

Lucky for you, you can download their shizzle here

Re:Only one Future Crew demo.. wtf???

[bitrate]

Maybe if you read above, you'd see that both Panic *and* Unreal are indeed on the disc...from the list (somewhere) in this pile of comments:

Second Reality / Future Crew
Megademo / The Space Pigs
Cronologia / Cascada
Unreal / Future Crew
Amnesia / Renaissance
Panic / Future Crew

Sheeesh....people gotta learn to read before they go off, y'know?

Re:Only one Future Crew demo.. wtf???

[User 956]

Sheeesh....people gotta learn to read before they go off, y'know?

I was reading an alternate site, which only has the following listed:

Demo Group Year Party Place
Wonder Sunflower 1999 Gravity 1
604 And/Sly/Synsun 2001 Paradox 2
Kosmiset Avaruus Sienet Haujobb 2001 Proxy 1
Further Moppi Productions 2000 Assembly
Chrome Damage 2000 The Party 3
Volatile Addict 2000 Satellite 3
Tesla Sunflower 2000 Horizon 2
Broadband T-Rex 2000
Mikrostrange Haujobb 2000 Mekka/Symposium 2
Moral Hard Candy Blasphemy 1999 Summer Encounter 1
TE-2RB TPOLM 1998 The Gathering 3
Le Petit Prince Kolor 2001 Mekka/Symposium 1
Energia Sunflower 2001 Assembly 6
Gerbera Moppi Productions 2001 Assembly 2
Lapsus Maturefurk 2000 Assembly 3
Enlight the Surreal Noice 2000 Assembly 9
Experimental Wipe 2000 Ukonx 1
Live Evil Mandula 2000 Assembly 11
The Nonstop Ibiza Experience Orange 2000 Assembly 5
Codename Chinadoll Katastro.fi 1999 The Art Haujobb 2000 Assembly 2
Kasparov Elitegroup 1999 The Party 1
Second Reality Future Crew 1993 Assembly 1


I would have read the official site, but if you go it, you'd see IT'S FUCKING SLASHDOTTED.

Sheesh....people gotta learn to cut some slack before they go off, y'know?

Re:Only one Future Crew demo.. wtf???

[ninjadoug]

Can you please not use abusive language for no reason please, especially as you comments go on as Score 2. Thanks

Re:Only one Future Crew demo.. wtf???

[ninjadoug]

I am actually Welsh.

AFX

[bLitzfeuer]

I wonder if a collaboration between aphex and some coders to produce a demo would ever happen.

Eh.. probably not.

I wonder why Jega was never signed onto Warp.

Re:AFX

[whizzter]

actually there was a demo made by a friend of mine with afx music (with warprecords allowing it).
altho i don't consider it to be too fitting to the music but alot of people liked it.
detached - to cure a weakling child

And a few others....

[Jason Scott]

Sorry, forgot a couple.

Did they get permission to sell these movies of demos?

Yes, they did. That's why a couple are not on there. Some people didn't give permission. Most groups were very excited to be a part of this project, obviously.

Movies of demos suck, I want the originals.

Besides having copies on the Mind Candy site of all the demos, all of the demos exist in one way or another at scene.org. But be warned, a lot of the older ones won't work on your 2.5Ghz Windows XP box; that's why it was so difficult to get their hands on JUST the right hardware to get these demos in the first place. As time goes on, it will be more and more difficult, but now we have something to refer to. And man, is it tasty.

Ordering Them

[Jason Scott]

Finally, here's some URLs for ordering the DVD:

Maz-Sound
Fusecon

and they have a Forum on the Fusecon site to post messages about them.

I've had this DVD for a couple weeks now and it hasn't left the player once.

Forgot one..

[Ankka]

Also try kohina, the oldskool radio with 8-bit and 16-bit game and demo music. Unlike Nectarine, all tunes on kohina have been recorded straight from original machines or soundchips, NOT emulated.

Re:Slashdotted at one post? Geez

[necromaedian]

they also mention this:

If this site is unusably slow or does not load, you can get more information about MindCandy from Maz Sound. For ordering, check Fusecon's MindCandy ordering page.

This *IS* cool!

[naelurec]

I'm really glad to see someone took the time to preserve the older scene demos. Just a week or so ago I was curious if someone was creating videos of these demos (found an mpeg of Second Reality, done really poorly) --- Can't wait to watch Crystal Dreams 2. . haven't seen that one in ages..

Design, Art & Music

[bLitzfeuer]

You're missing the three fourths of what the demo scene is all about. Even the grandfather of the modern demo, the C=64 scroller, wasn't about performance but about the creativity, skill and advertisment of the cracker who opened up a game for disk trading without the xeroxed manuals.

The demoscene now is a collaborations of multiple disciplines to make something that, ulitimately, is cool to watch. And that's what that DVD is. Something that will be cool to watch.

Re:Design, Art & Music

[Stanley Feinbaum]

the thing is watching a blob morph around at 10fps isn't as exciting on a dvd as it was on an amiga

Why not make 'em available?

[stratjakt]

Surely MESS could emulate the 286/386 era accurately enough to play them.. I don't think watching a DVD movie of them would capture the look and feel..

Frankly some of the coolest demos I ever seen were attached to bootlegged console titles from the NES through PSX (and DC and now PS2/XBox). Though I'd get more nostalgic remembering the C64 days.

Re:Why not make 'em available?

[Jason Scott]

In a simple reply: They ARE available, MESS can NOT emulate all of these demos accurately, and the point of the DVD is to make it so people can see the demos without having to go through the basement or spend days on ebay to be able to view them. Not everyone wants to keep a 286 around in their apartment just in case they need to see an old demo. Emulators can only do so much.

Re:Why not make 'em available?

[Trixter]

There is currently no emulator, including MESS or bochs, or VMWare, that 100% emulates VGA at the scanline level. Try to get a demo running under an emulator and you will rarely have success.

Re:Why not make 'em available?

[stratjakt]

And your DVD player on a lo-res TV screen better emulates VGA at the scanline level?

I don't buy it.

Why would you need to 'emulate' vga - it's still supported as the common denominator among cards anyways.

Re:Why not make 'em available?

[Big_Breaker]

You don't understand the hardware details that these demos relied on. You just can't emulate the combination of OS, VGA Hardware and timing.

Re:Why not make 'em available?

[Trixter]

You have to understand that these demos used timing tricks to do things like, say, displaying more than 256 colors in a 256-color mode. There are no emulators that work at the raster level in their VGA emulation, so demos don't look right on them.

As for a TV, these oldskool demos were mostly 320x200 or 320x240, so yes, your TV is fine for seeing them perfectly.

in-depth review

[Luxo]

There are a couple in-depth reviews in this text mag if anyone's interested.

ftp://ftp.scenespot.org/static_line/issues/sl-042. txt

Fellow

[antdude]

Fellow is another good Amiga emulator. :)

I received this DVD a few weeks ago...

[ron_aegis]

...And it's really good! The quality is great, all demos appear real good on the TV, they've done a great job of converting them.

The choice of demos is good. On the 1st side, the theme is "old era" demos running under DOS (from early Future Crew stuff to more recent like Pulse or Orange). And on the 2nd side, there is the "new" era demos, all 3D, which I'm not a huge fan of, so I haven't really checked them out but from what I saw, they look pretty good.

The documentary is pretty good too, it does a great job of describing the demo scene and how it evolved from 1992 to now. Some Future Crew members are interviewed in there.

Also, kudos for them for being able to correctly get the output signal for the X14 demo by Orange; this demo was using a weird refresh rate to simulate more colors.

Overall, I think the DVD is really worth it if you have been/are in the PC demoscene. Even only for the fact that you can watch some great old DOS demos (like 2nd Reality or X14) without having to set up an old computer for the task.

Re:I received this DVD a few weeks ago...

[Trixter]

"correctly get the output signal for the X14 demo"

Thank god someone noticed :-) This was very hard work as almost every method we tried (VGA TV output, scan converters, etc.) "interpreted" the 320x400 mode and the output was unusable. I eventually found a super-cheap scan converter that allowed me to turn off all filtering, and then I did some post-processing of my own to make it presentable.

Paying back the authors??

[tcc]

I am just wondering about the fact that someone gets into a lot of work of doing the recording and all, and It's a very cool idea, I thought about doing that myself with all of my amiga hardware, but I wanted something better than DVD since it's still crunches a tad, and I'd have to remaster the uncompressed footage to the newer standard...

but the main thing that stopped me, consideration of making money with other's work without being able to retrace everyone to get the proper permissions to do so...

any thoughts on that?

Re:Paying back the authors??

[Luxo]

You're exactly right. Andy Voss deserves major props for his sluthing in tracking down all the demo groups wanted on the disc. This was especially hard with the older demos, since most of those guys moved on to Real Life(tm) long ago, and to varying degrees lost touch with the scene. He even went to Helsinki in August to get a hold of a few stragglers. In particular, Dope and Stars were last minute permissions that almost slipped. Personally, getting Stars on there makes the whole thing worth while. I made the featurette, by the way. These guys behind the DVD project care more about the scene than you probably imagine. We're taking no profit from Volume 1; it goes straight into the Volume 2 budget. Jeremy

Re:Paying back the authors??

[zsazsa]

but the main thing that stopped me, consideration of making money with other's work without being able to retrace everyone to get the proper permissions to do so...

Bascially, what Luxo said in his post -- Andy Voss went to the ends of the earth to get permission.

Also, the Demoscene tradition regarding CD-ROMs (and now DVDs) of scene productions is if your work is on the disc, you or your group gets a free one. I believe that is the case with Mindcandy as well.

Why This Is Cool

[Myriad]

Ok, I know a lot of people are posting that this must be some kind of joke, that it's a stupid idea, etc etc.

Here is why I think this is cool: history, art.

To those of use who have been tinkering since the days before the PC will likely remember demos and what they meant.

They were the cutting edge, pushing technology to the max and sometimes beyond (Future Crew, in the first Unreal demo, came up with trick that allowed them to display a very large number of colours on the screen simultaneously. This was around the EGA and VGA 16 days IIRC. What they did, when they did it, was thought to have been impossible)

When you wanted to see what the next games would be able to do, you watched the latest demos. That was the ultimate demonstration of what the hardware could do.

It was also totally non-commercial. No sponsors, no ads. Just groups of people finding out what their boxes could do... artistically. That was the best part. It wasn't just a technical demonstration, it was art, with incredibly graphics, music, and animations.

One of the few commercial entities to get involved in any way was Advanced Gravis, who gave away Gravis Ultrasound soundcards to demo & game makers, no strings attached, then backed it up with great tech support!

So what does this matter now? It's a great example of what efficient coding can do. Some of these things were under 16k! Inspiration too, check out what can be done if you try.

And, of course, to those of us who remember it's a great chance to look back on something that gave us a lot of joy. I don't know how many hours I spent downloading demos on my C64 and PC... 'borrowing' access to Carleton Universities net access so I could download Second Reality when it first came out... it was fun. It's not really practical to configure the old hardware to play them again... it could take a lot of tweeking.

And hey, if anyone has the Circle A demo for the C64 drop me a mail!

(btw, I realize the demo scene isn't dead, but it doesn't seem to have the same following it once did. Besides, I'm referring to having a collection of all the old demos not just the latest ones)

Is it just me?

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

Or did anyone else think that the Demoscene came between the Pleistocene and the Miocene?

OK, just me I guess.

Re:hahah

[Anonymous Hack]

Damn straight ehehehhee right on :-)

something similar

[Superfarstucker]

i cant recall the URL, but after a hard night of partying i was clearing the flyers off my car when a certain one caught my eye it was about 4 inches tall and a foot long made out of thick gloss type posterboard, on one side it said in big 'arial' type font MIND FUCK except fuck was flipped (you could read it normal in a mirror). they had some really cool visuals on the other side and a website to buy their dvds of their 'trippy' visuals (which looked quite professional and well done).. i was interested but i lost the flyer shortly thereafter

Re:Who profits?

[Trixter]

We had to get permission from everyone who had their content on the DVD, so we gave them some DVDs. Past that, we're trying to break even. If we make any profit, it will get folded into the next volume. For example, most people want Volume 2 to be Amiga demos. If Volume 1 makes a profit, it will be the production and mastering capital for volume 2.

Aaaaahhhhh...

[JollyTX]

....that's so cute. PC people think they had a demo scene!

Of course, most people know that the only scene was the Commodore/Atari one.

Karma-Whore Mirror Update 12:54:AM EST

[Brendor]

Welcome Slashdot readers! We are currently under WAY HEAVY LOAD, which should not be a surprise :-)
The regular website is disabled until we can cope with the load.

Until then, you can get more information about MindCandy from Maz Sound.
For ordering, check Fusecon's MindCandy ordering page.
If you'd like to see the trailers, a mirror of selected MindCandy content has been provided by Jason Scott.
(You may know Jason as the curator of textfiles.com and the BBS documentary project, so check them out.)

My 386-25

[chunkwhite86]

I remember demos by groups such as "Future Crew" that had awesome real-time 3D graphics that displayed beautifully on my 386 and 486 computers. Man I miss the old demo scene!

Re:No offense...

[Trixter]

BTW, right now it is looking very good that Volume 2 will be Amiga.

Luminati?

[ClioCJS]

This is a bit off topic, and I apoligize.

But does anyone know where to get LUMINATI.exe? This was always my favorite. It had about 3 layers of graphics and did so by tinkering with the graphics card in such a way that it was impossible to run under windows.
Since I upgraded my (final) dos box to Win95 (thus ruining it), I have never been able to run it. Recently my grandfather died, and I inhereted his 486, but alas it is too slow to run it well. (His life's work fits on one cd, kinda sad.)

Anyway, if anyone could point me in the right direction it would be worth losing some karma over... :)

Re:Luminati?

[Luxo]

Pure brilliance.
http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=2880

Re:Luminati?

[Cuthalion]

Beh, Timeless is way better. ;)

Re:Luminati?

[ClioCJS]

wasn't luminati the sequal to timeless?
[which was in turn the sequel to something else]
??

Re:Luminati?

[Luxo]

The order goes Timeless -> Ambience -> Luminati
Luxo

Re:How Much?

[blixel]

How much does one of the frontpage /. ads cost? I would like to purchase one.

I guess that explains why /. never offers up locally cached copies of articles. They only get paid for the hits they send to other sites.

Now let's have a DVD with Amiga and C64 demos!

[kobotronic]

The PC demos are really nice looking, and kudos to everyone involved with the production of this DVD. PC demos just don't interest me near as much as that which came before them.

To me, the real Scene flourished in Northern Europe back in the 8 and 16 bit days, and it peaked sometime in the early 1990s, just before the PC demos started to trickle in with chunky imitations of yesteryear's cool.

The "real" Scene hardware in those days were anemic, RAM cramped microcomputers with CPU clocks in the single-digit MHz range. The PC was still Dad's chunky, sensible spreadsheet processor, and the God Machines were the immortal C64 and the (for its day) multi-media rich Amiga.

Coders, musicians and pixel artists all had their share of the old school Scene glory;

The coders, because they had

The musicians, because they had to program their tunes and work miracles with 3 or 4 channels and make their own 8-bit samples with amazingly primitive technology and software.

Re:Now let's have a DVD with Amiga and C64 demos!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the real oldschool demoscene was that when you had a row of leds connected to processor bus, and then made those leds to have scrolling patterns (1D, obiviously). Those were the real machines...

Re:Who profits?

[JohnFluxx]

Well, I've just ordered mine.. :)

Never mind, cancel that post.

[kobotronic]

Bollocks, how retarded it feels to accidentally click the submit button before you're done writing. Now I'm just not bothered to write the rest of my dumb and irrelevant little piece. I'll just go away and play with WinUAE now. :)

Future Crew

[md17]

My #2 favorite interview question is: "Who is/was the Future Crew?"

My #1 (unrelated) is: "Did you take things apart a a kid?"

I didn't get real into the Demo scene, but the Future Crew put out such amazing stuff.

Re:Future Crew

[Reziac]

Skaven is still around, and has a site on MP3.com: http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/88/skaven.html "Ice Frontier" is a work of genius.

I never really got into watching demos, but I sure loved the MOD music that came from the same folks.

BTW, does anyone know if there's a mirror anywhere of the old Hornet archive, that used to be hosted on the late FTP.CDROM.COM ??

hmmm....

[Penguin Follower]

Not only is the site slashdotted, but I couldn't bring up the mirror site that holds the trailers! Killed to birds with one stone!

Hypnautic Hammer

[tlotoxl]

You sent shivers down my spine just mentioning Hypnautic Hammer. Despite its outrageously pompous preamble, the extensors actually did change my life with that demo.

Thought/ Observation:

[goingincirclez]

I remember when I got my fiorst pc (a packard bell 486 in 1993), one of my friends was all drool-faced and couldn't wait to run these "demos" on it. Of course I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but I was freakin impressed to say the least. Beautiful imagery, funky sounds, ray-tracings... wow.

I had no idea back then what kind of work it took to make those things. Seems like they did even more work to do it all over again, finding hardware and building bozes and all that.

So why didn't they use emulation? If these people were so damn good, to literally push hardware and programming skills beyond their limitations, surely programming an emulator to run the code thru today's harware couldn't be too much of a stretch. Heck, it would seem right up the proverbial alley: a logical progression, making the most of today's hardware and programming abilities to duplicate stuff that no longer exists. (Or would that be a regression, to take today's stuff and make it run like a 286? ARRGH I hate contradicting myself)

Of course I can appreciate that maybe some hardware had strange nuances just just can't be matched thru emulation. But has anyone ever given it a try?

Re:Thought/ Observation:

[Anonymous Coward]

You have no Idea how much work it would take to reverse engineer and emulate some of the coding tricks that were used. Much better to take the route that the producers of the dvd did, top job boys!

Re:Will they...

[DrunkenPenguin]

What about the early demos from a group called Sorcerers? Sorcerers was probably the first PC demo group ever their first intros being from March, 1989. First demo was released in May, 1989 at it was called Summer Holiday celebrating the fact that "School's Out" ;) Future Crew came soon after, but Sorcerers was first. BTW, they happened to be from the same city.

Some of the historical Sorcerers demos can be found here! Unfortunately the first intros aren't listed there.
---

WHAT I MEANT TO SAY: How to run under Windows?

[ClioCJS]

Anyone have ANY method for running LUMINATI.EXE under windows? I'd really like to see it again... Right now, I have an AVI of me pointing a camcorder at it with Misfits music in the background. I want something better than that. :)

Re:WHAT I MEANT TO SAY: How to run under Windows?

[jorlando]

I don't think that you can run it under windows. Doesn't all Tran demos use pmode.exe? You said that your old 486 can't run it (too slow) are you sure? I used to watch it with a Cyrix 486 DLC 40 MHz and I remember that was ok...

Re:WHAT I MEANT TO SAY: How to run under Windows?

[ClioCJS]

Oh, it can run it. But it's CRAP. Very jerky and non fluid. It actually looked good on a Pentium 75, but this is like a 486 20. Graphics cards come into play and my grandfather (whose computer this was) was NOT into multimedia. He died never having had a soundcard.

Re:WHAT I MEANT TO SAY: How to run under Windows?

[jorlando]

The DLC 40 was roughly on par with a 486 DX33, but I played timeless and ambience in 386 33 at work and they were ok.

what kind of video card that old computer have? maybe you are stuck with an old oak67... a cirrus 1M will do... and what sound card? you've got a old sb with straps?

oh, those were the days... no PnP, we had to configure cards by strapping them... and we were so poor that I had to cut wire and mold plastic to make my straps :-))

Re:WHAT I MEANT TO SAY: How to run under Windows?

[ClioCJS]

The point is that it doesn't work on this computer. Who cares what kind of video card it has? It's a 486. It's crap. I already have 3 computers, I don't need this one and am never going to use it. It's crap. I already said it had no sound card. I am not interested in working on a computer for one program. I am interested in making this program work under windows :)

Re:WHAT I MEANT TO SAY: How to run under Windows?

[msim]

Ah i've got an old ISA ET4000 video card thats just sitting here. reply to this and maybe i can figure a way out of getting this card to ya.

im in .au b.t.w. :-)

Re:WHAT I MEANT TO SAY: How to run under Windows?

[ClioCJS]

Well.... I suppose it would be worth a try. I have no clue what card is in the machine. I really want to run liminati under Windows2000 though... I wish there was a way to truly emulate the old DOS so that Luminati would work again! Grr!

If you are really inclined to send that all the way to D.C. USA .... I'd let you. :) :)

mega cdroms? wow, memories

[tevman]

When i was a kid i couldnt get the internet in my area, so i had to rely on these cd roms that would come out every now and again, they pretty much had everything on them that one could want...

I remember sitting there for hours listening to mod music and watching these demos that were amazingly *small* and ran very *fast*... i have to say my fave demo was 2nd reality by future crew, i mean the first time i saw that... well i just had to watch it over again and again, there was another one i really liked but i dont remember the name of it, it had lots of rendered 'balls' making objects, very nice...

i feel that the quality in these demos makes todays graphics look like a small dissapointing step from where things were then

oh one other thing, i was in germany a couple years back, and i walked by this closed computer store, and in the window.. was playing 2nd reality, i really wished that store was open.. oh well

Second Reality / Future Crew

[earthloop]

Wow! That one brings back some memories. It was the first demo that really impressed me on the PC. I kept seeing Amiga demos that always looked pretty cool and was miffed because I knew the PC could do as well/better. Then Second Reality came along. What a demo. Running it on a 386 with amplified audio was quite an experience in them days. Then the 486 came along and it got even better. Then the pentium came along and, poof, nothing. Wish I could see/hear that one again.

Re:Second Reality / Future Crew

[Sesse]

Uhm, I've run 2ndreal on a PIII/450. Sounds like a weird Pentium system you've got if you couldn't run it. :-)

/* Steinar */

love it

[rednuhter]

I have watched all the demos and hidden demos and features and I got to say I LOVE IT !
Just need to find 4 hours to watch them all again with audio comentry !
£15 so its cheaper than spiderman or any new dvd at the mo (in uk)

amiga capture= EASY!

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be soo easy to do an amiga video as they have native output of NTSC. just plug straight into any VCR or capture card!

Re:amiga capture= EASY!

[kobotronic]

Yes, but the vast majority of demos were PAL, not NTSC. The US Amiga scene was TINY compared to the European one.

Keep an eye on alt.binaries.emulation.misc for Amiga demos and download WinUAE : The newer versions run the old demos in full speed 99% perfect on my 1GHz PIII... at the most I sometime have to set it to skip every other frame, otherwise it's perfect. :)

Re:amiga capture= EASY!

[Trixter]

Merely plugging an Amiga into a capture card is not the solution because they only have composite out, which is EVIL. Only the CD32 had native S-video output, but the CD32 can only be modded to an A1200. I am currently discussing with people to make mods to a converter for proper S-video output of any Amiga, so if we go in that direction you can be sure it will be of the highest quality.

I wanted to use WinUAE, and a while back I rendered some sample .AVIs which looked heavenly converted to MPEG-2. Unfortunately, there have been many many people writing me telling me that no emulator runs the majority of demos properly. I find that hard to believe, but they're the hardcore Amigans, not me... So yes, we will be capturing from a live A500 (and A1200, and A4000, and PPC... ugh)

Re:amiga capture= EASY!

[bmfs]

My old A500 had a cable that sent RGB down a SCART lead - European audio/video connector (and still has it's gathering dust in the loft since I got sensi soccer on an old cd32). Now, couple this with an RGB to S-Video converter from http://www.rgbtosvideo.com/ and you have s-video output. Please please please please please... Some Amiga demos on the next DVD.

Quasar Soft

[l0wland]

Ow man, this gives me goosebumps ! Cool to see that this scene still exists ! In the late eightees I was part of the Quasar Soft demogroup in The Netherlands. We mainly used C64, Amiga 500 and MSX.

I doubt that any of the members ever saved those 5.25" or 3.5" floppies, which really is too bad. But what stunned me most is that I discovered the music that we created and used (using Rob Hubbard's Routine). For those interested, you can find some of our music here:

http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/HVSC/VARIOUS-S-Z-Selle s_Ward.html

You need a SID-player to hear it, and that's just what I'm going to do right now :-)

Man, I'm getting old....

Well done mateys!

[dotwaffle]

Yeah, I realise this is just wasting space, but hey, this DVD is cool, whatever anyone says. Hopefully it'll be on ASM TV this year (www.assemblytv.net) at ASM 03 (www.assembly.org) plug plug plug.

Ask Slashdot: Demo Scene - Game Industry

[KrunZ]

Many of the people from the demo scene went into the game industri. E.g. people from The Silents are behind the game company iointeractive (ioi.dk) that under eidos.com released Hitman 1&2.

Anyone how can list other connections between the demo scene and the game industry?

Re:Ask Slashdot: Demo Scene - Game Industry

[avatar-99]

Famoust should be remedy (http://www.remedy.fi).
They brought us Death Rally and Max Payne.

Also there are Triton -> Starbreeze (http://www.3dgamers.com/games/enclave/)

and many more.

Bye, avatar/blackmaiden

Re:Ask Slashdot: Demo Scene - Game Industry

[KrunZ]

I also found this: Future Crew formed bitboys, a graphic cards company.

But I have a vague memory of that they also made some games...

Re:Ask Slashdot: Demo Scene - Game Industry

[avatar-99]

Pixel from FC did the artwork for Epic Pinball IIRC.

Bye, avatar/blackmaiden

Re:Ask Slashdot: Demo Scene - Game Industry

[shplorb]

Digital Illusions (or DiCE as they like to call themselves now) was formed by ex-sceners. Right now I can't remember which group it was.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Demo Scene - Game Industry

[KrunZ]

The Black Lotus

http://exotica.fix.no/info/scenery/online/b.html

Most members of TBL are today employed in the games industry. Dutch
members Danny, Tim and Lowlife work at Eidos Interactive (
http://www.edios.co.uk), in the UK; Kalms, Offa, Eq, Rubberduck och Louie
all work at Digital Illusions Computer Entertainment (http://www.dice.se) in
Sweden. Rodney also works/worked on games.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Demo Scene - Game Industry

[seppyk]

Purple Motion, one of the musicians from Future Crew, also did the music for a racing game titled Death Rally. Nowadays, I think he does a little of everything from game music to side projects for himself.

Jonne Valtonen's web site (Purple Motion)

Re:Ask Slashdot: Demo Scene - Game Industry

[AltaMannen]

Except the question was the group that started DI, which was the Silents.

I can't really think of any game developer where I don't know scene people working, or at least have had sceners.

Demo codes - game coders

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people behind the game Max Payne are ex demo coders. For example most of the graphics are made by Skaven.. more known as music artist for Future Crew.

Some of you know 3D-mark? That company is also put up by demo coders. These guyz still make demos under alias "Mature Furk" (Future Mark now know as MadOnion)

Cache cow

[bLanark]

One of the mirrored files is coming from cache.cow.net. Made me smile.

UGH, Real Media!?

[autopr0n]

Why are the trailers released in Real Crap format and not something more geek friendly, like Divx?

Re:UGH, Real Media!?

[Sesse]

There were MPEG1- and MPEG2-trailers out once, but I guess they're down because they suck too much bandwidth. :-)

/* Steinar */

Re:UGH, Real Media!?

[Trixter]

I intentionally chose RealMedia because it has the widest playback platform support across OSes and CPUs. That, and I quite deliberately boycott DivX because it has done more to harm desktop video than help it.

I would not have a problem with a true, pure, MPEG-4 Simple Profile or Advanced Simple Profile video, but I refuse to wrap it in or encode it with DivX. I'll get to work on one and hopefully it will be available in a few hours.

Re:UGH, Real Media!?

[Abcd1234]

This is totally OT, but I'm wondering, why do you believe "DivX ... has done more to harm desktop video than help it"? Just curious...

Re:UGH, Real Media!?

[stickb0y]

Why are the trailers released in Real Crap format and not something more geek friendly, like Divx?

Or better yet, xvid?

Why do so-called geeks still recommend Divx, which comes with various strings attached, especially after the Project Mayo fiasco?

Overrated

[KrunZ]

Pretty good karma considering you are not able to count to three...

SID chip on PCI

[nickos]

Even better than a SidStation, the Catweasel MK3 PCI board can take a SID chip.

I'd love to know how much this did for them

[TequilaMonster]

Since I just bought a copy of the DVD from lynnemusic.com.

Wonder if any of the people involved would follow up and let us know how many ferrari's they're gonna buy? [bg]

Re:I'd love to know how much this did for them

[Trixter]

Ferraris, LOL! We're still trying to break even ;-)

idm indeed

[whizzter]

well if this makes you happier. mr brothomStates on warprecords did the music for 4 of the demos.

X14
The Nonstop Ibiza Experience
Codename Chinadoll
Megablast (the demo that opened up the world of non-popmusic for me))

He also did some code for Square and some quick 3dmodelling for te2rb (hey where's my dvd? ;)

/ Jonas Lund aka whizzter/woorlic&TPOLM

Re:286/386 is for lamers

[ecote]

next DVD is an Amiga DVD.. such is the word

Used computer stores?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are tons of used computer stores where they sell everything from 8086 and up, as well as many obsolete parts that nobody can ever use!
I'm sure these guys would have gone to a used computer store before bidding their life savings away on ebay for a relic from the past!

Re:Where to find it?

[ecote]

what are you on crack?.. its not like you're ripping off a major hollywood studio that stands to gross millions of dollars on their next DVD release. you're looking at ripping off a couple guys that did all the work from their basements and to think, I thought most people had ethics about things of this sort. pick up the DVD, i did, and its worth every penny.. and did they mention, its like 16$!?

Same story here... about scene, GUS and memories !

[forged]

I gave up using my GUX MAX (1MB of memory... woah) when people began massively switching from DOS to win95, which had the lamest drivers I can remember for this otherwise superb card. Shame on Gravis !

Have you ever played the original Settlers game with your GUS ? What a difference 1MB of ram made ! And still one of the best music output I have ever heard to this day. This is what made me buy the card in the first place (and the game).

The Linux OSS/free driver were exemplary compared to win9x, and I still used gmod to listen to modules until not so long ago. I was even using the Sony proprietary CD-ROM interface on the GUS, to connect to my double-speed CDU-33A, for crying out loud :)

Quite frankly...

[elixx]

I don't know if my DVD player could handle the beer. Last time it was at a demo party, it ended up with CSS all over the place.

Re:Why PC?

[jorlando]

I think that the PC demos were chosen due to the demodvd authors being from the pc scene and due to (possibly) more people are familiar with the pc demos.

I really don't know how popular the amiga demos were, since amiga is a plataform almost inexistent here in Brazil, but I watched some avi's from amiga demos and they really kick ass... mainly when you look at the release date and compares with a pc demo from the same year. The effects made with the amiga could only be done wih a pc years after, after the evolution of cpus and killer 3d cards.

but I'm waiting for a volume 2 with the amiga demos.

Buy this DVD. It's cheap, amazing, and furthermore

[2Flower]

...if you do buy it, it's one more purchase towards the break-even point, and that'll enable Trixter and his band of psychotic vidcap guys to make volume two.

The DVD doesn't cost too much, has no CSS encoding or region encoding making it quite geek-friendly. It runs demos you'll likely never be able to see again due to obsolete hardware issues. It runs modern ones you can show off to your less knowledgeable friends to ooh and aah them. The running audio commentary provides plenty of amusing anecdotes about the scene, some great background information, and in some cases comments directly from those responsible for the video itself.

In short, it's worth it. So very, very worth it. And if you want an Amiga or C64 disc, the best thing you can do is buy this PC disc; without profit from this DVD there won't be a v2.

electron beam rasterizing

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a very good point there ..
a significant number of older demos used various tricks (changing the palette while the monitor was scanning so as to create moving lines of color without having to waste the whole palette on a gradient) ... no emulator is that fast or even that accurate that you could even get close to that..

Other demos use tricks even more arcane than that ...

I hope

[ninjadoug]

They can cope with demand (if slashdotters ordered one) I did, because I cannot get the demos to run on my equipment. I remember having a load of boot disks for all the different memory settings. Anyone else rememeber the day when DOS came out with Multi config.sys settings you could choose as boot up. last useful thing microsoft done.

Re:I hope

[Deamos]

I hope they can cope with the demand as well. As soon as I saw that Second Reality was on the DVD there was no chance in hell that I was not going to order one. If that was the only thing on it I probably would've shelled out cash for it anyway. I have too many memories of being completely in awe of that demo.

I remember the multi configs.

I had several. One tailored towards using winblows 3.1, one specifically designed for my BBS, one for X-wing, one for running Second Reality. Yes I had one just for that demo. It was nice once I was able to place all the settings in to one file though.

There were others too that I don't remember now, though what I do not remember anymore would be how to setup one were I to have to go through that again.

Re:Offtopic

[GlassUser]

believe you when you say you're not Karma Whoring (I really don't have a problem with it anyway, I get to read the article and/or get other relevant info) but all you had to do was check the "Post Anonymously" checkbox. Takes less time than typing in a disclaimer.

Yes, but then it's posted below threshold, and plenty of people will miss it. Same reason I posted the disclaimer, the average moderator is not responsible (see moderation to the parent of your post for an example of this.

There is still impressive coding around...

[Man Eating Duck]

Check out this 256 BYTE intro for win32/intel. Unbelievable. The download insn't too big :)

The whole site www.pouet.net is great if you were interested in the scene 'back in the day'.

Re:There is still impressive coding around...

[pommiekiwifruit]

Mmm, impressive! A few more comments in their code might have been appreciated though, but that might reduce the mystique somewhat.

Re:How is this done?

[octalgirl]

I work in a school system and am surrounded by old hardware and software - but it's fading fast. So how exactly do you capture stuff off of an old 386 or AppleIIe, or TRS80? I still have a ton of 5 1/4 disks with things like the 'Game of Life' and the old Leisure Suit Larry.

Is this in Kazza yet?

[ColdGrits]

I hope someone uploads it to their favourite P2P network soon, I can't wait to download a copy of this DVD!

The most amazing 64k demo ever:

[WD]

Has to be Stash.
I think you need a GUS to get the full effect of the demo with sound, but with how bloated software is these days, it's incredible how much stuff is packed into 64KB here!

More reasons this is worthy

[speedbump]

In short: the geek factor on this project is off the scale.

Need another reason? One of the posters who have been answering questions here is "Trixter". I know this person from another online venue... the Matrox RT2xxx user's forum.

Anyone who ever spent extra $$$ so their computer could go faster/harder/farther/louder, just for the sake of it, would appreciate the Matrox real time video editing card product line.

My OTHER hobby, besides computers, is making indie movies and music videos. I use a Matrox RT2500, which is a PCI-based video processing card that allows a lot of video editing functions to be done in real time. It isn't perfect, but I can make professional-looking content with this hardware faster on my dual 600mhz system than any G4 Mac out there.

Anyway, Trixter is one of the regulars on this forum. This user gives great advice and help for free, consistently. If Trixter has a Significant Other, they have to be jealous, because Trixter is one serious video geek.

So buy the frickin' DVD already. You can also get it at Amazon.com, search for MindCandy.

Re:Who profits?

[Reziac]

It's great that this old stuff has been saved from the bit bucket. As I mention in another post, I never got into watching demos, but I've got a good collexion of MOD music from many of the same people, and some of it is downright amazing.

BTW, do you know if the old Hornet archive got mirrored anywhere before ftp.cdrom.com went tits-up? hornet.org has been no-response for some time.

Anyway, I'll be buying the DVD -- $16 isn't a bad price, and since I see Maz has it on his site too, I can find it again if I forget :)

Hey, is the music extractable from these demos? nice to have it as MODs to play in the background when your system is busy doing something else, and not all of 'em were available separately. I know there used to be tools for this but I never got 'em to work (tho this was ages ago).

Re:Will they...

[Trixter]

Actually, Atom / Sorcerers was on the list for a while, as that is my favorite Sorcerers production. Maybe a future volume...

Has anyone discovered any easter eggs?

[Neon Totem]

I've heard rumor that there are a few extra demos on each side. Anyone found them/know where they're listed? Thanks...

review written as barely coherent rambling

[rpenguin]

First, I must congratulate Trixter, Phoenix, Pallbearer and all the Hornet/Fusemind crew on their creation. After receiving the DVD I first noticed the extremely professional packaging which was free cheese in every way. However, watching the "Old School" demos really was quite painful. The VGA to NTSC translation causes anything that scrolls full screen to jerk around, and, while I'm sure that the Hornet/Fusemind folks did the best they could with the conversion it was extremely distracting and detrimental to the whole thing. As I understand it, the framerate conversion or other limitations caused the audio to have to be recomposited and it stutters or runs strangely slow in certain places on the old demos.

The new school side more elegantly survives the move to DVD. Most shakiness is gone because a lot of these demos could be forced to (almost) happily run in 60hz and also because they focused far more on a 'graphic design' style that involved less full screen pans/zooms/rotations.

Overall the DVD serves its purpose as an archive that I can pull out and nostalgically remember the demos as they were. Just as photographs don't perfectly capture a vacation, this DVD doesn't perfectly capture the old school demo experience.

The demoscene is still alive, as made evident by the massive discussions that take place as to whether it was still alive or isn't. Sure, it's changed, but there's still something to be said for being part of a community that values creativity and ingenuity.

Yeah, but

[autopr0n]

You're forgetting the harm Real's software did to my desktop. Really, the software is terrible. Read the thread on Real's DRM a few stories down. Lots of us simply hate the software. You can also wrap mpeg-4 in quicktime and Windows media player. I agree that Divx is quite crapy, but anything is better then Real...

The scene truly means...

[lafutura]

It's interesting this post hits slashdot today.

Just yesterday I opened my mailbox to see a white padded envelope addressed from Germany with Maz's name on it. My Mindcandy DVD had just arrived!

I promptly went to my PC and stuck in the Old Skool demos side and the trip down memory lane just kept going one great hit after another...

It reminded me of what the scene meant to me as one growing up in the age of computers... I'm not young, but I'm not old. At least I don't feel so. At a ripe age of 26...

To me this DVD confirmed every bit of passion I have and for these machines, the computer, as back then, I learned more and more about what they could do.

I think one key reason that each and every one of you is "into computers" is this implicit hope and excitement that they can be used as a tool for great things. This could range anywhere from displaying something really "kewl" to actually solving some sort of problem.

Demos and all the applications that came out within the scene were all about pushing these little boxes to the max. There was something challenging and even mysterious about making this little box display these "beautiful" pictures and play these fantastic sounds.

In fact, demos were how I became interested in coding altogether. I wanted to do it too. I not only wanted to make demos, but I was so excited that this drab, tan box (a Tandy 1000 TX to start, and a Zeos 386/20 + Gravis Ultrasound 1MB later on...) could do these amazing things. It confirmed... computers were fun - and didn't just do "business stuff", life could be better.

Demos essentially took the challenges and limitations of old PCs of the growing PC revolution and developed applications that have directly and indirectly affected where we are today. Namely, in computer gaming, but also in graphics hardware.

One thing that any of us with any "age" in us can do is look back over the years and talk about those limited, constrained little boxes that we all desired, and pushed, to do amazing things.

I guess for me, that's what computers are all about. It's a machine that ultimately does amazing things for me every day, and because it's constantly changing and there's always new stuff coming out, it keeps me excited, and I keep going...

It's great to look back at where we've come from to excite us and challenge us with what lies ahead.

I completely recommend this DVD to anyone who was using PCs back in the late 80's, early 90's and can remember one of those moments where you just said, "Wicked." (or more likely, "Cool.") because you couldn't believe it was actually on that screen in front of you.

Re:Who profits?

[Jon Abbott]

BTW, do you know if the old Hornet archive got mirrored anywhere before ftp.cdrom.com went tits-up? hornet.org has been no-response for some time.

Although hornet.org appears to be back up, let me know via email if you want me to snail mail you a CD-R copy of the Hornet demo archive... It is a three CD set:

Disc one: Demos, 1987-1996
Disc two: Demos, 1996-1997
Disc three: Music, 1991-1996

I burned this back in 1999, and painstakingly downloaded all of it via modem. Lots of sweat and tears went into these CDs. :^) Anyway, I had a strange feeling the archive would later disappear, and a year after that it did.

Re:Who profits?

[Reziac]

You're a saint. Email on its way!! (Assuming the link on your website is good. If not, the one on my site does work.)

Re:Who profits?

[Jon Abbott]

Yeah, the email address is good (I use that address to shield myself from the onslaught of junk email)... I'll send it your way as soon as I can get all of the CD-Rs duplicated. Anybody else interested in a CD-R copy of the Hornet demo and music archive? Get 'em while they're free and hot! :^)

Sceners

[HeadSoft]

I was in the demo scene actively from the early 80's and I'm one of the few remaining American sceners who is even semi-active anymore.

I noticed a lot of questions and comments about the scene in general keep cropping up, and code-related questions in particular. Those of you who are programmers programmers with technical questions etc. might want to visit the sceners themselves and get the answers you want. If that's the case, then the place to find us is ircnet #coders (that's IRC, yes, download MIRC and try some servers such as irc.funet.fi or irc.stealth.net)

The scene remains alive after this long because new people find an interest and become sceners themselves :) See what we're all about.

Re:Who profits?

[Reziac]

The funny email address reminds me of some of my passwords, which occasionally reflect unflattering opinions of the site involved.. :)

So, what *did* you plan to do with your weekend? :)

(Thanks again!)

Putting my Gravis UltraSound back to work...

[Knacklappen]

Sorry to disappoint you but to me it seems like an absolute impossible task to write an emulator for demos.
We are not talking about more or less nicely compiled programs, this is weird assembler stuff using all possible coding tricks. Like uploading MOD-file samples into the memory of the soundcard (had to be a Gravis UltraSound) and letting the GUS playing the song on it's own, thus freeing the CPU from that task. Or using a fraction of the GUS-memory as RAM-disk for faster loading (1MB memory preferred). Or tweaking the VGA card for GFX tricks like in "2nd Reality" or...
If you were active with assembler on the C64, then think of IRQ, raster time and all that and double the effort. I am still impressed and can't wait to get my hands on the DVD.
Actually, I think I will fetch my 386-40 from the basement, mount the GUS back in and run some demos. Right now. Oh yeah...

Cheap UK Price

[NomNet]

Only £10 including postage, for UK folks !

http://poves.com/mindcandy/order.html