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."

Seizure Warnings?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

If you want encoded Amiga demos...

[antdude]

You can go to Ami Demos [planet-d.net] 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 [linux.de] (Unix Amiga Emulator) or WinUAE [winuae.net] 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 [cloanto.com] 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.

Fellow

[antdude]

Fellow [sourceforge.net] is another good Amiga emulator. :)

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)

Google has no cash?

[KPU]

What did Searchking [slashdot.org] do to them?

Forgot one..

[Ankka]

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

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 [mindcandy.de].
For ordering, check Fusecon's MindCandy ordering page. [fusecon.com]
If you'd like to see the trailers, a mirror of selected MindCandy content [cow.net] has been provided by Jason Scott.
(You may know Jason as the curator of textfiles.com [textfiles.com] and the BBS documentary project [bbsdocumentary.com], so check them out.)

Flying donuts!

[alexandre]

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

are there any future crew demos on this? :)

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 */

Google's Cache

[breon.halling]

Google's cache of the pricing page is here. [216.239.37.100]

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.

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: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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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...

list of demos

[glob]

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

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

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.

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.

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 [bbsdocumentary.com] and run a site about 1980's BBSes [textfiles.com] 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 [mobygames.com]. 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 [fark.com] will attest, I'm probably much better at killing kittens. [duke.edu]

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

[Robber Baron]

...and hosting their site on it!

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 [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 [maz-sound.com]
Fusecon [fusecon.com]

and they have a Forum [fusecon.com] 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.

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 [scenespot.org]

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 [slashdot.org] -- 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)

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.

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!

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... :)

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.

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. :)

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?

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 [exotica.fix.no]

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....

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...

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.

The most amazing 64k demo ever:

[WD]

Has to be Stash [pouet.net].
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!

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: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.

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..

[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..

[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..

[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: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: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..

[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 [ebay.com] 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

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 :)

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..

[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..

[Dolly_Llama]

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

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..

[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: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: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.

Re:Who profits?

[JohnFluxx]

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

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.

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:No offense...

[Trixter]

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

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.

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! [pouet.net] Unfortunately the first intros aren't listed there.
---

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...

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: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?

[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: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

[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: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?

[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.

Re:Ask Slashdot: Demo Scene - Game Industry

[KrunZ]

I also found this [gamers.com]: Future Crew formed bitboys, a graphic cards company.

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

Re:286/386 is for lamers

[ecote]

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

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$!?

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

[Trixter]

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