Demo Scene.

[RichRSi]

Is there anyone on here who is a fan of the computer demo scene?

They are basicly a demo groups way of showing off their skills, like a combined portfolio of work but produced more for fun than anything else.

Last years Assembly 07 winner. the PC demo Lifeforce by Andromeda Software Development (ASD)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aJoHLYM3C8A

The typography effects are superb.

I remember spending ages sat infront of the Protracker making .mod tunes. For anyone who used to do that too, if you dont know already here's a great site..

Amiga (.mod and chip) music preservation http://amp.dascene.net/home.php

Pretty much most digi music of the early demo era has inspired the commercial music scene over the years, even fairly recent bands like Crystal Castles using .sid chip music samples.

Chip music is the type of stuff used heavilly in Atari demos and on the C64.

'Overlanders' Vectorballs 3.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Be5HvIG5lYo

I remember watching it at the time it came out and thinking how amazingly smooth the 3d was, naturally it seems so basic now, but at the time it was a real eye opener.

100's of demos were produced (still are) showing off coders skills. Many musicians and artists went on to work in the games industry and the demo scene was a helpful way to get their foot in the door.

Massive Amiga demo resource:
http://www.classicamiga.com/content/section/7/46/
Atari ST demo resource A-Z:
http://pacidemo.planet-d.net/flash.html

Even the Commodore 64 (that's 64k not bit to the newbs) still gets a few sceners producing demo's, pretty impressive considering how basic they are.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wcTMOkwkFt0

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4Oi0KRjZJh4

 

[sn00p]

future crew on the PC and brothers in arm on the archimedes rocked.

I wrote a demo for the archimedes.

Which reminds me, I did this at work a few months back to see how much speed I could get out of a microcontroller directly driving an lcd, i.e I am the framebuffer and I'm having to refresh the lcd to keep the display visible!

[youtube]DK6ezHNWtVM[/youtube]

 

[seb]

that C64 stuff is amazing.

 

[RichRSi]

That's f**king awsome snoop, all you need is a bit of music and you've got yourself a mini greetings screen!
It's an artform! hence why I put the post up on here as I figured there might be some people on CS who've dabbled.

I remember our Arch at school and we had a few basic demo's floating around, at the time I had my Ste and later a CDTV A500. I loved coming into the resourses room where the arch sat and wait till no one was looking and boot a demo with my mates.
How i miss those days where I waited excitedly for my next, red sector, Keyfrens or Fairlight demo to come through the post and experience some new effects!

Things like this really impress me, it's one thing having a game company with a massive budget and a big team of people working to create something visually entertaining but it's even more amazing for me me to see the results of a small team or a individual work this way.

I wish to god I would have backed up my .mod files so I could remix them, I dont know where the disks are now. I may have recorded some on to tape that are knocking about at my folks place....
Still I would love to get involved in the scene, maybe the Mac scene as not many crews are working on the mac.

 

[RichRSi]

that C64 stuff is amazing.

Absolutly Seb! I can watch GTAIV and be impressed by that, but the amount of work to produce effects of this quality on a C64!

The effects used in some demo's are beyond any game on that system. It makes me think just what could be forced from something powerful like a PS3 or 360 with enough experience.

I remember when demo style vetor balls started appearing in games but it was very basic, i know they were in used to create characters in Ballz on the 3DO console, it was a fighting game back in 1995!

 

[sn00p]

That's f**king awsome snoop, all you need is a bit of music and you've got yourself a mini greetings screen!
It's an artform! hence why I put the post up on here as I figured there might be some people on CS who've dabbled.

Music you say....

...actually a few few days later I implented a 1 bit dac (same processor different board though). Although I don't have enough processing power to keep the screen running and have quality music coming out the DAC at the same time. (1 bit DAC is a processing power hog! 8 or 16 bit and it would be (strangely) easier and less power hungry).

I only really did that as a "proof of concept" as all the other LCD modules we supply have a built in controller which handles the LCD refresh for you - that was the only one we supply which doesn't, which is a shame because it's probably the nicest one!

I used to do all sorts of crap with the VGA registers back in the DOS days, you could make text mode do all sorts of funky stuff!

 

[Clart]

i used to love all that stuff back in the 386 days. Doesn't seem quite so appealing anymore for some reason.

 

[Lee]

I used to follow it back when I had an Amiga.

One of the lads I used to work with did a lot of demo work before going commercial. He worked on some pretty famous ones including Jesus on Es. He also did stuff on the crack intros.

I remember RJ Michael who co designed the Amiga standing at my desk when I had a demo running, he was amazed. He was really cool guy, he loved to see people doing new things with his hardware, and demos regulary broke new ground.

I remember Megamaid being the first scrolling HAM image. Plus it was p**n of course.

Quality stuff. [youtube]y7PX3JAF_5Q[/youtube]

 

[RichRSi]

Nice one Lee! I would have loved to get involved in the demo scene back when rave demo's like Jesus on E's was around!

As a teenager I could have reeled off most demo groups names and even the handles of the crews! It used to be cool when you'd see the shouts and the occasional 'send a fcuk' out to the people they had a beef with.
I remember the Lost Boys demo 'ooh blimey wot a scortcher' megademo on the Atari ST where they chain-sawed a carebear in half... there was a bit of 'friendly' rivalry between the two groups (though I think a carebears coder did help with a screen on that demo anyway)

Do you remember the actual hardware Fairlight were producing back in the day, you could copy Nintendo carts to floppy disk and play them using the drive.
I think some of their guys involved in hacking and distribution were given prison sentences.

One of my favourite crews these days is Black Lotus TBL, I think all these guys do amazing work!

This Amiga demo won overall at Assembly 2006, thats going against PC's!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUv0jSYRBZo

The music is by Olof Gustafsson (aka Blaizer) he also created the music for Pinball Fantasies! The Swedish have always been one the best countries for turning out musicians with a knack for demo music, although Alistair Brimble from Team 17 used to create some great 4 track stuff.

 

[Lee]

I used to love all the Crystal Cracked and Melon Design intros.

Yeah I remember those, we had one at work as it was quicker to copy stuff that way than use the Eprom programmer. lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairlight_(group)

Razor 1911 were another very famous group back then.

I loved the music in Pinball Fantasies and loads of Alistair Brimbles stuff in the Team 17 games was just as good. Very similar synth styles. I think one of my favourite pieces he did was the intro music for Project X. A stunning but stupidly hard shootem up.

It's the second track on the music player, on the project X page if you click on Team 17. http://www.lemonamiga.com/?mainurl=http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=1793

We're working with Team 17 at the moment. I seem to have to keep sending them new dev kits on a weekly basis!

I used to work a little with Mark Cooksey, he wasn't at Elite when I was there though: http://www.remix64.com/interview_mark_cooksey.html Of course he was never up there with Martin Gallway or Rob Hubbard.

 

[Lee]

I really should be getting to bed, but now I'm listening to various Amiga game soundtracks on Lemon Amiga. Pinball Fantasies into was superb.