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Programming As Art — 13 Amazing Code Demos
cranberryzero writes "The demo scene has been around for twenty years now, and it has grown by leaps and bounds. From the early days of programmers pushing the limits of Ataris and Amigas to modern landscapes with full lighting, mapping, and motion capture, demo groups have done it all and done it under 100k. To celebrate this art form, I heart Chaos takes a look at thirteen of the best demo programs on the web. Flash video links are included, but it's more fun to download them and give your processor something fun to chew on."
I think any serious demo list needs to include Second Reality.
:-)
While obviously there are more impressive demos from a graphics point of view (since SR is 15 years old), I'm still to see one with a better soundtrack and a better integration of video and audio.
Skaven's music is still one of my favourites - I wish it was properly resampled, as obviously S3M and MOD are a bit outdated
More really good demoes are compiled at my maa.org article, 64K or less. http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgames_08_16_04.html The main demoscene sites are better though: http://www.scene.org/ and http://www.pouet.net/ . One of my own recent favorites is a 4K demo, synchroplastikum http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=20967
Second Reality, Unreal, the various music demos from the scene, these were pretty incredible. But one of the demos that rocked my socks the hardest was because of what it did for so little space. It was called 'MARS.EXE'. It was about 4KB and, when ran, would generate a VGA 3D world with shading and what looked like a fractal sky. You'd use your mouse and navigate in any direction (always facing the same direction, sure, but you could strafe) and you would slide up and down the smooth terrain.
There were demos with better graphics, but the most astonishing thing was what this could do with so little disk space. This ran under DOS, not Windows, so there wasn't a bunch of free APIs it could take advantage of, it was all crammed into a tiny-tiny package with built-in mouse support and everything.
Anyone can make a 'demo' that blasts megs of raw graphics through a video card. Hell, half the 'demos' today are probably made in the modern equivalent of 3DS or something with a chunk of 'player' code attached.
But that 4K 3D landscape program... that was tight.
Because this seems more like Art for geeks.
Also, kind of funny. We're asked to download 'em so our processors have something to chew on and we make their server choke...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
I don't think it is "programming as art" as much as it is "making art through programming", because the art-object - the thing that we are looking at and appreciating - is the execution of the program, not the source-code itself. We can be impressed at the skill and ingenuity of writing the program within the space confines that each demo category produces, just like we can be impressed at the self-imposed restrictions of Dogme 95 film-makers. Those restrictions are orthogonal to the effectiveness of the demo itself, though.
The programming is the how of the art work. But just like we can think of painting as art without thinking of "brushstrokes as art", we can think of software as art without calling it programming "as" art. I do think it is possible for source-code itself to be a work of aesthetic appreciation (granted, with a somewhat limited audience, but then all audiences are limited) but that's not what this is.
most of my memory leaks are several orders of magnitude larger than these entire demos, and they do far more than memory leaks have ever done for me!
AVG throws a wobbly on synchroplastikum stating that there is a Trojan in it.
wot no sig
...hosting a website and posting a link on slashdot.
Shocking! People with different religions to you! What is the world coming to?
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Anything from the demo group Farbrausch is guaranteed to be a good look. My personal recommendations include: --> FR-08: By far, this is the best demo of them all. 13+ minutes of sheer graphical goodness. In 64kB... --> FR-019: Awesome graphics, awesome music, just an incredible few minutes of sheer artistry. --> FR-025: Awesome music, cool graphics, adjustable resolution and graphical options. --> FR-041: Run this at the highest res you can and full options and you will make your graphics card cry. My ATI X1900XTX cant make it all the way through without artifacting due to heat. Only 177kB to boot... For non-Farbrausch demos, check out: --> "Heaven Seven" by Exceed: Again, just a beautiful few minutes of graphics. Hit the spacebar for a FPS counter. Only 64kB as well. --> "Fall Equals Winter" by Replay: Not a exceedingly stunning graphic demo, but the music is awesome in this one. Tip, you may have to run it with the windowed mode switch (-w)
If you consider optimizing the crap out of something which is ultimately pointless, to be somehow comparable to what real programmers do, I suppose.
I used to write these things back when all I wrote in was assembly language. It's cool, it's fun, it's a puzzle and a challenge. Comparing it to "modern programmers" though is sort of like comparing a Sudoku expert to a professional in applied mathematics. The Sudoku expert will probably outclass the generalist at Sudoku but I wouldn't describe it as putting the mathematician to shame, nor would I trust the Sudoku expert to work out some difficult integrals for me.
I am a bit disappointed in this article. The subject made me think of some really beautiful pieces of code that I've seen in my life. Breseham's algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bresenham's_line_algorithm which is an integer arithmetic method of drawing a line on a computer monitor. I would love to have seen 12 more such examples of "artful code" but instead I get a link to a slashdotted article which appears to contain interesting 3D scenes and maybe animations done with older hardware. Boring.
The demoscene first appeared during the 8-bit era on computers such as the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, and came to prominence during the rise of the 16/32-bit home computers (the Atari ST and the Amiga). In the early years, demos had a strong connection with software cracking. When a cracked program was started, the cracker or his team would take credit with a graphical introduction called a crack intro (shortened cracktro). Later, the making of intros and standalone demos evolved into a new subculture independent of the software piracy scene.
Prior to the popularity of IBM PC compatibles, most home computers of a given line had relatively little variance in their basic hardware, which made their capabilities practically identical. Therefore, the variations among demos created for one computer line were attributed to programming alone, rather than one computer having better hardware. This created a competitive environment in which demoscene groups would try to outperform each other in creating amazing effects, and often to demonstrate why they felt one machine was better than another (for example Commodore 64 or Amiga versus Atari 800 or ST).
Demo writers went to great lengths to get every last ounce of performance out of their target machine. Where games and application writers were concerned with the stability and functionality of their software, the demo writer was typically interested in how many CPU cycles a routine would consume and, more generally, how best to squeeze great activity onto the screen. Writers went so far as to exploit known hardware errors to produce effects that the manufacturer of the computer had not intended. The perception that the demo scene was going to extremes and charting new territory added to its draw.
Even with modern technology, where much of the effects seen in demos could be replicated in programs like 3D Studio Max, the point of demos are not just the beautiful visuals and music but the abilities of the programmers involved to write code so tight, so efficient, that something might be several megabytes if rendered in a 3D program comes out to less than 100k. So heres IHCs favorites from the demo scene of the last few years. These demos are in no particular order, and while weve provided Flash video links to each demo, the greatest joy is downloading them (PC only) and giving your graphic cards something fun to chew on.
Good Design
Lifeforce by Andromeda Software Design
Link to online Flash video
Link to download
Raw Confessions by cocoon
Link to online Flash video
Link to download
sandbox punks by cocoon
Link to online Flash video
Link to download
chaos theory by conspiracy
Link to online Flash video
Link to download
The popular demo by Far
I haven't rtfa, but I won't look at "thirteen timeless demos.." if it doesn't have Second Reality by the Future Crew. That demo, singlehandedly, motivated me to be a programmer, and duplicate what I saw. If the author of the list hasn't discovered it, or decided not to include it, then imho, its would be a waste of time to look at it his uninformed list.
Juice was another good one.
The two polyhedral meshes, with transparency (blue on red, I believe?), blew my arse right off the map.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Optimizing like that isn't all that comparable, no. But it's a really great way to learn how to code stuff that's still zippy even on derelict hardware. In a world where operating systems like Vista are becoming norm, I'd think that kind of skill is one people should be learning, no?
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
In my day I had to hand-code demos in ARM assembler. On a 8MHz CPU. Without a floating-point unit, uphill, with no graphics card, both ways in the snow. We were so poor we had to unroll our own loops, write self-modifying code to build our own sprite-plot routines, and only use small SoundTracker modules. You tell that to kids these days, they won't believe you.
PS. This is actually true, apart from the snow and the uphill both ways bit. Also, TFA is 403.
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
Way too many demos were of the variety of simply being a slide show of effects. They'd do one thing (and often tell you what that was) then go on to the next thing. There'd be a soundtrack playing but it was just background noise. 2nd reality was the first one I ever saw that was a real good integration of everything, where it was just an overall cool show. The technical merits of the effects were secondary to the fact that it was just damn cool to watch.
Along those lines today, one of the best I think is "The Popular Demo." There's nothing particularly special about what is done, the same group has done more impressive technical demos (they are the guys that do the 64k 3D demos) however it is just really well done overall. It's a great song, great visuals, and great sync between the two.
To me, that kind of skill is even more impressive than a nifty coding effect.
It is a metaphor for the futility of human existence.
Mah-vellous.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
The source code probably never existed. A lot of this stuff was probably done in assembly. I guess the original assembly code would have some comments, but actually understanding it would still probably be extremely difficult. And even if you did, a lot of it wouldn't be applicable to programming in anything other than assembly.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Actually, you can get a CD version of some of Purple Motion's work. He's got an album out called the "Purple Motion Music Disk." I have it and I like it. http://www.purplemotion.net/
It's not pointless.
Yes, optimizing the crap out of some assembly loop aren't popular anymore in mainstream programming for the past several years, mainly because there are much more automated tools that can do quite a good job at optimising or analysing code and warning programmer about mistakes (something that would previously had required deep knowledge of the architecture).
Such weird skills are still valuable nowadays with embed electronics (where fast processor and big memory is un-available luxury) or tight loop in graphically intensive games (where no matter how much the hardware is fast, mad optimizing is still a very welcome increase of performance).
Or the whole GPGPU field which is still new and still requires a hell lot of optimisations by hand (CUDA, for example is much more lower level than even C and requires much more hacking and optimizing to squeeze out the most performance of code).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Every time demos ever get discussed, you always get a bunch of Second Reality fanboys coming out of the woodwork. Yes, I know that demo was a glimmering of hope in your sad PC-owner lives, the first hint that maybe one day the reapidly advancing raw power of the PC platform would overtake the elegance of the Amiga's hardware. And yes, eventually that did happen. But Second Reality, in and of itself, was rubbish, far far below the standards of the demo scene at the time - and mark my words, the Amiga demo scene WAS the demo scene at that time. The PC scene was just a mediocre group of wannabes.
You want a classic blend of quality design and absolute top-shelf "impossible" code? Try "Arte" by Sanity.
Here is one in real life (Real Reality). Even its soundtracks are kind of cool (wished they were higher quality).
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).