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Farb-Rausch Releases PC Demo Creation Software
RaD Man [ACiD] writes "Farb-Rausch, one of the best-known groups at the forefront of the PC demoscene, has just released Werkkzeug, a fully featured, freely downloadable PC demo creation tool used to make the visually stunning and award-winning demo The Popular Demo. Not only have they freely published the creation tools, but they've also released the original datafiles for The Popular Demo as well." We also recently featured a 96kb FPS demo from the same authors.
Computer demos have always led the way to the latest in graphics. Be it with commodore 64 (those were the days), Amigas, or the PC it will always be amazing to see what the next year's demos have to offer. I say that this will only spur on more creativity..good for them.
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Back in the old days, when groups like the Future Crew still ruled, the demo-scene was way more interesting. Making stunning effects is much more of a challenge when the hardware you're working on is limited. These guys used to create a 3D-engine from scratch in 64kb, as there was no DirectX. For me, the massive computing/graphics power we have today has taken away all the fun.
Why they would do this?
... alex ;-)) act, but in the past big demo groups have released even their source code for next generations of sceners to learn from (ofcourse ripping is a fact :-().
...)
...) Thus allowing to show something spectacular in such a small sized package.
:-)), it still will be difficult for most groups to reach their level ;-)
Maybe for simple reasons, maybe just as simple as the 'new' scene spirit of sharing as opposed to the original hacker culture. More of a 'hippy commune' (hi Statix, ehm
In fact, there are a few other demo-authoring tools out there already. (Demopaja, smouse,
What makes this one so unique is that it allows you to make REALLY small demos, as opposed to the multi deca-mega-byte demos. It allows you to create small demos called intros. (all fitting in 64k).
The big trick is to GENERATE your data from parameters as opposed to loading the data from a file. (jpg, tga, gif, xm, mod, mp3, 3ds, iwo,
As for the commercial value of this: The other mentioned demo creation tools are also commercialised (at least some) as VJ tools for a videowall or related devices. This is not the case for this tool. Maybe shortsighted of me, but I do not see the commercial value of this product besides the obvious one: get the competition to pay for reaching your level of competence, but even still, then this is only scene related.
And as everyone knows: it is not the tools that make you good (but it helps), so I fear that if it is the intention of Farbraush to level the competitionfield (because it is all too easy for them to win competitions
Gongo / Green ^ openUDS
ROTFL.
I used to think that too... technology keeps rushing by, and you slowly lose your contact. Some people then give up and start whining how much the past was better, and other people don't. And catch up.
Just for the record, the sound system used in the Farbrausch 64k demos is done in 95% hand-optimized assembler, is only 4.5K in size in its newest incarnation and needs less than 10% CPU on a recent PC for synthesizing a complete song in realtime.
And honestly, that FELT right when I did it.
kb^fr
The scene itself isn't really interested in making stuff with the .werkkzeug, most comments we got so far were more like "Thanks for releasing, I'll have a look at it, let's see what I can learn from it for doing my own stuff".
;)
There have always been the '1337 selfmade and the l4me demomaker demos, so I don't think we endanger the scene at all. But perhaps some "outsiders" fiddle around with the tool and get interested, that'd be a cool goal
kb^fr
When there was no 3d hardware available and operating systems were open (for examples: Dos, Atari TOS, Amiga WB), demos had a reason to exist: they stressed the available hardware, doing things no one knew they could be done. Demos usually wrote to the bare metal, bypassing any operating system libraries (if they were any).
For example, no one knew that Amiga could do 60-FPS sprite scaling, until demos did it (and the chance of having a good conversion of Outrun was totally missed).
But what is the reason for a demo today ? a demo is limited by the O/S architecture (no direct hardware access) and by what the local graphics/multimedia API offers. Demos are no longer a demonstration of the programming abilities of their creators; at their best, demos show off the abilities of the video card they run under (of the lack of abilities).
Demos are an indication that we have reached an age that technology in no longer important, and creativity is more important.
I mean I just picked up Unreal Tournament 2004 a couple weeks ago. Total, it weighs in at SIX CDs. Looking on my drive, the textures alone are nearly 3GB uncompressed. And against that stands 64k demos, which really have pretty cool 3d when you get down to it.
Now I'm not oging to go on about bloat or any of that shit,I know full and well why UT is huge when the FR stuff isn't. However the FR demos are still cool in their own right. It isn't easy making shit that small. Their mathematical texture generation adn tiny sound engine are programming works of art.
That they have 3d hardware to make it possible doesn't diminish their acomplishments. Programming isn't just about making a bare CPU do cool things, it's about pushing a whole system, complete with advanced subprocessors to the maximum.
Now they are doing only once kind of maxing, diskspace. One might note that there are other areas that suffer, memory usage in particular, but it is still an impressive feat. They are showing what can be done by focusing on the on disk optimisation.
Also the artistic aspect is not to be discounted. It isn't easy to design pleasing visuals and synch them to music. FR is on par with FC when it comes to demos that appeal to the senses. Far too many demos from the FC era were just slideshows of algorithm implementation. The FR demons, by and large, are quite artistic. An accomplishment even given no space constraints, more so given their small size.