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DemoScene Starter Kit 3 01
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³ DEMOSCENE HISTORY ³
³ PART 1 OF THE DEMOSCENE STARTER KIT V.3.0 by Zippy of Utopia. ³
³ DO NOT DISTRIBUTE SEPERATELY FROM THE STARTER KIT. ³
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Quite a few changes here and there since version 2.
Updated a lot of info about the groups.
*GASP!* I removed Realtech from the group-list! Yup..
A lot of people told me that they didn't think Realtech deserved
to be there, so I removed them. It works both ways. If you want them back
send me mails saying so. No hard feelings towards Realtech.
I've also added TBL and Pulse, because I thought they deserved it.
I'd like to start this section off with a classic quote from Mr. Grant Smith.
You'll find this quote at Trixter's PC Demos Explained Site and
in one of Grant Smith's democoding-tutorials.
[
Jonny looks around, confused, his train of thought disrupted. He
collects himself, and stares at the teacher with a steady eye. "I want
to code demos," he says, his words becoming stronger and more confidant
as he speaks. "I want to write something that will change people's
perception of reality. I want them to walk away from the computer dazed,
unsure of their footing and eyesight. I want to write something that
will reach out of the screen and grab them, making heartbeats and
breathing slow to almost a halt. I want to write something that, when it
is finished, they are reluctant to leave, knowing that nothing they
experience that day will be quite as real, as insightful, as good. I
want to write demos."
Silence. The class and the teacher stare at Jonny, stunned. It
is the teachers turn to be confused. Jonny blushes, feeling that
something more is required. "Either that or I want to be a fireman."
- Grant Smith,
14:32,
11/21/93
]
With this I begin my re-telling of the history of the DemoScene.
The demoscene started in the early 80's when some hackers, and crackers
started enjoying making cracktro's more than they did cracking programs.
They started making them for fun, and after a while they had stopped
cracking programs, and gone over to making cracktro's full-time.
These soon turned into demos as they demonstrated the power of the computer,
and programmer. Old crack-groups started turning into demo-groups, and
thus, slowly the demo-scene emerged, as more and more hackers/crackers
joined the fun. These are our underground roots, which is the reason
that even today the demoscene is slightly underground,
allthough perfectly legal. A lot of people are proud of the scene's
background, and some are ashamed of it. I don't really mind either way,
but I definetely think it should be remembered, when we start talking
about commercial demos, sponsored demos, and stuff like that.
The first demos were made for the AppleII, and the C64, then moving
on to the Atari ST, and Amiga-machines. Now the IBM-compatible PC has become
the largest demo-format (despite it's few registers compared to the Amiga),
and there have even been a few demos for RISC-based computers.
Most of the PC-demosceners have migrated from Amiga, or started out in
the scene as PC-demosceners. If you think 3D in demos is something new,
you can also think again. The first heavy use of line-vectors was in 1990,
and shaded polygons followed a year or two later.
This is why a lot of people are tired of vectors in demos.
The demoscene started out as an allmost entirely Finnish scene,
then growing to become a Scandinavian scene. It later also included an
American scene, but they were kind of seperated from the Scandinavians.
Today with the Internet becoming so large the scene is world-wide,
and is represented, as far as I know in all continents, and a suprisingly
large amount of countries. I have heard of a South-african scene,
a Brazillian scene, and an Australian-scene in addition to the scene in
Europe and Northern-America. It is still Europe, and North America that are
the biggest parts of the scene. I'm including Scandinavia as a part of Europe.
BBS's used to be the main meeting-place for sceners,
apart from the demo-parties. With high phone-bills,
this kept the Scandinavian Scene away from the American.
This also resulted in more links to the computer-underground,
as, well, nobody likes a high phone-bill..
With the arrival of the Internet, the DemoScene truly blossomed bringing
unity to the worldwide DemoScene. Suddenly Europe layed eyes on American
demos, and America... well we all know there's nothing like seeing a
demo from Finland for the first time. There's something really strange
about Finland. For some strange reason, most demos, and demo-groups from
Finland, are amazingly good. This also helped the fact that the DemoScene
is a very anti-rasistical environment. The scene is also mostly drug-free.
Both facts are quite logical, when some of your best friends live in
other continents it's not very natural to be rasistical, and when your
hobby is using your brain to the maximum extent possible then you
don't really feel like rotting it with drugs..
You no longer had to be connected to an active scene in your country
to be a scener, neither was it nessecary to have been at
one of the big scandinavian demo-parties, all you needed was access to the
Internet. Don't get me wrong, nothing beats having a (relatively) local
DemoScene-environment. It's great to be in a demo-group, and know that
if you want to show something to the other people in your group,
it's just a short train-ride away, or that you're at least in the same
country, however, thanks to the Internet it is possible to have international
groups spread all over the world. The Internet is really, really great.
Not only because of stuff you can do with international groups, and stuff,
but also how, if you upload you programs to an FTP-server, you theoretically
have a potential audience of something like 30 million people, worldwide.
However, we are now past the days of the Internet-boom, and following
growth of the DemoScene, we have now entered into a bad period in history.
The scene is fading.. This is a fact. Less and less new young people
find out about, and decide to become a part of, the DemoScene,
and the current elite is getting snapped up by the game-development companies.
A lot of people blame this on Windows '95, and other people blame it
on the scene for not adapting to Windows '95. What most people agree upon
is that the arrival of Windows '95 has something to do with it.
What makes a lot of people start out wanting to find out more about their
machines, and perhaps start to code is fiddling around with drivers,
learning DOS-commands, making boot-disks, and getting games to work.
Windows '95 makes this all so simple. Click the icon, and the game
starts, no questions asked, no puzzled users, no new little sceners.
Some people claim that Windows '95 simply doesn't have the raw power that is
needed to run good demos. *My opinion* is that anything you can do in
Win '95 you can do faster in DOS. However the margins are getting smaller,
especially if you're using DirectX5. The thing is that DOS,
the way we know it, *is* dying, no question about it.
If this new generation of Windows-users get their eyes on demos it might
be all it takes to get them into the scene...
Read more about this subject in the section called "What Operating System?".
One of the main reasons I made the DemoScene Starter Kit was to do my bit
for the future of the scene, and recruit more sceners.
The newbies can't be labelled lamers if we want the scene to survive.
A recent cause of controversy is the coming of the first really capable
3D-cards. 3Dfx Voodoo, Voodoo 2, and PowerVR-chipsets provide speeds
previously un-imaginable. This means that 3D-games (and SCREENSAVERS!)
are suddenly displaying more impressive graphics than demos.
This is not a good trend. But the question is: Should we embrase the 3D-cards,
or are they simply lame pieces of hardware that do the stuff a coder should
do himeself. I have no answers. I know that 3Dfx-stuff is easing it's way
slowly and painfully into demos (Check out Nature by Vertigo)..
That's fine by me. I *love* 3Dfx. The stuff you produce with it is just so
amazing. I would like to see people from the 3Dfx screensaver-scene emigrate
to the demoscene so we can get some really classy quality 3Dfx demos.
Beeing afraid of Windows is no excuse. 3D-cards *do* work under DOS y'know..
Hmm. Take some time to hink about it..
I'd also like to mention that in 'normal society' every decade is visibly
different from the previous, but it seems the demoscene has some sort
of compressed history, because in the demoscene every single year
is visibly different from the previous. Think about it.
Look at demos from 1994,1995,1996,1997,1998, and you'll find that every year
there are different things which the different demos have in common.
In 1994 it was really common to use 320x400 images. Sound & gfx was normally
better than code. Effects were simpler, and gfx was better. More Amiga-like.
In 1995 demos got more classy, and stylish. Code got better.
In 1996 we saw the a lot of crappy object-shows + some good slideshows.
In 1997 people started to use a *lot* of 3D.
In 1998 it's popular to do colored lights transparent objects, fancy stuff.
I hope 1998 will also be the year that 3Dfx becomes as vital to demos as GUS
has been. It looks like it will be the year that Windows enters the scene.
Now I'll give a brief(?) introduction to some demo-groups that
it would be useful to know about. I'd like to say that,
these don't necessarily have to be the best groups, or the core of the
scene, these are groups that I think a newbie to the scene would feel
it useful to know about. A sad fact I just noticed is that a lot of these
groups have become pretty non-active lately, or have disappeared completely..
It still think you need to know about them to fully understand the demoscene.
These are the few groups you should know about:
Future Crew: These guys made some amazing demos, and really revolutionized
the demo-scene, in the early 90's, and did a lot to mold it
into what it is today. Recently they released their
(final?) demo, Final Reality.
Of course this wasn't officially a demo, neither was it
officially by Future Crew. It is a 'benchmarking utility'
developed by their games-company Remedy Entertainment.
It runs under Windows'95, and needs a hell of a machine
to run at a decent frame-rate. It runs quite slow on my
P133 with 3Dfx.. If you have a state-of-the-art machine,
with a 3D-card, I'd recommend it, otherwise steer clear..
What these guys *have* proven however is that the demoscene
can indeed be a road to success. They are currently
developing 'Max Payne', the replacement of the
'Duke Nukem'-series, for 3D Realms.
They've gone totally commercial though, as I've predicted....
Some of the greets from Final Reality: Siemens Nixdorf, Intel,
IBM, MICROSOFT!!! That's right: MICROSOFT!! Jeez...
Their past glory can be witnessed in:
Unreal, Panic, Second Reality, Yo!, and lots of other demos.
Have to be seen to be believed. If you want to see what their
doing now, buy Max Payne, or that car-game they did,
or get hold of Final Reality..
Used to be thought of by many as the ultimate demo-group.
I never have shared that view, and lately my feelngs to that
direction have been enhanced. Pioneers of making newbies
feel like lamers..
From Finland.
EMF: The Electromotive Force, to give them their full name is one of the
best groups ever, in my opinion.
They were in the same league as the Future Crew,
and today they go beyond what I believe the Future Crew could today,
in the terms of demo-design.
They are still going strong(?), and have had a lot of success at
demo-parties. You should get hold of Verses, Eclipse, Caero, and Porno.
Four very good productions from EMF. (Caero was by EMF & Plant.)
A lot of the EMF-people are also members of Plant.
They've been a bit to silent lately for my liking,
and I don't think I'm the only person who noticed the disappearance
of emf@mea.utu.fi.... I really hope they're not quitting.
Perhaps they've dropped EMF, and merged with Plant? Anyone know?
From Finland.
Triton: They've also been around as long as the others, and they made
the tracker that a lot of demo-scene musicians use today:
FastTracker II. Triton are remembered today by many as:
"The ones who finally beat Future Crew", as the release of
Crystal Dreams II pushed FC of the no.1 spot in the charts.
They released two good demos: Crystal Dreams, and Crystal Dreams II.
Today they are involved in the gaming business, and have run into a
little legal trouble with GT interactive, according to the rumours.
From Sweden.
Komplex: They've been around for a while, and are among the best groups today.
Dope is pretty impressive, but if you want the full experience
you will need a GUS for sound. A lot of people would call Dope
one of the best demos ever released, but I kind of think it lacks
something. Can't quite put my finger on it..
They are obviously eager to grasp new technology,
as they were the first demosceners to make good demos for both
3Dfx and Java. Their Java-demo will truly blow your mind.
It has proven to me that it is possible to make demos in Java.
They're a brilliant group, and they make brilliant demos.
Yet another example of finnish talent.
For some strange reason they are now Komplex, not Complex...
From Finland.
Valhalla: Great group with huge success. They go a long way back,
and are still today among the best groups.
As opposed to a lot of great groups they are not arrogant,
and they don't mind speaking to newbies it seems. Nice guys. :)
Check out Visions Of Light, Solstice, and their OS/2 promo-demo.
You'll be in for a treat.
Have these guys also left the demoscene??
From England.
Hornet: Really good group. Not very many productions, but they are the
foundation of the demoscene on the Internet. Without them I do not
think the scene would be as international as it is today.
The Hornet Archive is really as close you'll get to the DemoScene's
www-headquarters. Explicit is a cool demo by Hornet.
From USA.
Orange: I have to admit that I don't know to much about this group.
I have a few demos & intros by them, though.
They're a totally different group from all the others.
Originality is definetely their main trait. They are very skillfull.
Their productions are both weird, and cool. One of the most popular
groups around lately. Masses of stuff too look for;
I especially like 'Compost', a '70s-style demo!
Another popular demo by them, is 'The Secret Life of Mr. Black'..
Weird..
From Finland (?).
Psychic Link: Pretty new group, compared to the others I've mentioned here,
but they look like they have a chance of being the next
revolutionaries. At least Statix, a real wizard.
Act1, Juice & Headache should be seen.
I also think Paper is one of the best designed 64K-intros ever.
From England.
COMA: A good and different demogroup. They've done some really
impressive stuff, but to understand why I decided to put them here
you have to see their intro Stikman. NOW! After you've seen that
you'll need to know they can code other stuff as well.
Then you can take a look at the demo called Control.
You could watch another popular demo: Insects,
or their TG98 demo. It may just be a joke for TG98,
but in their TG98-demo they call themselves KOMA,
like Complex called themselves Komplex.
From Finland.
TBL: The Black Lotus were not mentioned in previous versions,
but I decided to include them now in admiration of how
they are the undisputed rulers of stuffing most data into 64K.
Way to go! I would be impressed if their 64 KB intros were 2 MB demos!
Take a look at Jizz or Stash to see what I mean.
From Holland & Sweden.
Pulse: I love them for their blend of oldskool-style combined with their
up-to-date coding. Today's code/gfx/music, yesterday's superior style.
Brilliant group, currently no.1 on the Hornet Charts.
Take a look at Square, Tribes, Reve, Broken Pipe, Sink,
and lots of other stuff.
From Poland & France.
Utopia: The group I'm in! Watch out for us! :) We've (still) got a demo,
or an intro and a MusicDisk on the way.
From Norway.
I'm sure there are a few other groups who feel they should be included here,
but I've probably included to many already. So, tough.
Nobody mailed me telling me to include them, so I reckon that means I've
been pretty fair. Mail me with some good reasons, and I might
include you in the next version, if there is a next version, which I doubt.
[EOF]
