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Introduction to the DEMO SCENE
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Written by Civax (Ohad Barzilay)
Join the Demoscene Forum
A Demo is a program that displays a sound, music, and light show,
usually in 3D. They are 100% not interactive and are only
ment to be watched (opposing "Game Demos" which got nothing
to do with the demoscene).
Essentially, demos "show off". They do so in usually one, two, or
all three of three following methods:
- They show off the computer's hardware abilities (3D world &
objects, Multi-channel Music, etc.)
- They show off the creative abilities of the demo group (Artists,
Musicians, Coders)
- They show off the programmer's abilities (Fast and Complex 3D
scenes, Complex motion, etc.)
Demos are an art form. They blend mathematics, programming skill, and
creativity into something incredible to watch and listen to. Demos are
very close to music videos beside the fact that (in most cases) the
CODE is the most important thing and not the music.
Another form of demos is the INTRO. Actually, the demos
originated from intros (used to be called cracktros in the old C64
and Amiga days). Originally intros presented a logo of a group,
announcing the new game it cracked, or published BBSs. Today, however,
as the Demo Scene is no longer underground and more mainstream, intros
are a common way for a group to show they can do impressive effects
under very pressing size limitations, mostly in 64 Kb.
The demo scene is a community. These are people from all over the world united by their love and passion
for the computerized art. Majority of the Demo sceners are creative, and they code (program), track (compose
music) or do Art (3D models, 2d/3d pictures, logos etc.). However, you don't have to actually create in order
to be a demo scener, though that's how people gain their 'fame' inside the scene so even if you don't do
anything when you got inside at first, you'll get the urge to do so.
Most people will agree that the demo scene had started back in the early 80's, probably first born on the C64
computers. It started as cracking groups appeared, removed the protection from games and wanted to sign on their
achievement. That's how early intros began. Later, whole demos were made by groups who did no cracking at all and
produced demos in order to take the computer beyond what it was suppose to reach. C64, Atari ST and Amiga were
strong while the PC, with a lousy beeper and 4 shades of green was believed to be too inferior to handle graphics.
For more information:
Computer Demos - The Story So Far
The PC, as we all know, is the main platform today. Equipped with strong processors and monster video cards,
it's no wonder the scene is enjoying the best products ever on it. The demoscene nowadays lives mostly inside
the internet, with the exception of the many demo parties around the world.
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Demo Scene vs Game Industry |
As we all know, the PC had grown a lot since the C64 days and is now the main platform the demo scene is active
on (though some people still code for the C64). In the early days of the VGA PC's, the time of the i386 and i486
processors, demo sceners that came originally from the amiga had done some awesome things on the pc, leaving the
computer games industry way way behind. Demo sceners were enjoying a feeling of superiority towards the Game
Development industry for still doing simple-hardly-exciting games while they already had 3D Engines, shading
effects and running it all smoothly in real-time. This situation had totally changed nowadays. The Game industry
is making a lot of money so it can spend a lot on research and Development, over a big periods of time. While
demo sceners are usually students in high school or university and cannot afford to invest so much in their
productions. However, while the game development companies spend a lot of time on things like interface, AI,
Game design, playability and interactivity - The demo scener have the benefit of concentrating on effects and
environment. As demos are not interactive, they tend to get more and more towards the music video style. So
it's a matter of what you like and what you do in life. You won't earn money on the scene, if that's what you're
looking for (unless you'll win one of the international parties where money prizes are pretty high). However, you
will have a hell of a time and get experience that would cost you a lot of money to learn any other way.
Not to mention the friends around the world and the ego-boosting feedback when releasing a cool product!
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The reason people in the demo scene use nicks is historic. Back in the early days, when the scene was totally
underground and cracking games / Trading warez were part of the daily activity, using handles and gathering in
groups was essential. Today the scene is much less underground, if not mainstream, and people still use nicks
cause they like it - It's FUN!
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Creating a demo or an intro is a teamwork. You need a musician to do the music, an artist to draw, make fonts,
model 3D objects and of course - you need a coder to pack everything together and do the actual production -
the effects. A DEMO GROUP have at least 1 of each of those three. However, there are also groups of artists,
which release only graphics, 3D models and animations, as well as groups of musicians (this thing had become
popular) that release music together.
A demo party is a place for sceners to meet, have fun, watch and take part in competitions presented on a
big screen. Here is what Petri Kuittinen (aka Eye) say about Demo Parties in his Computer Demos - The Story So Far:
"Demo scene members organize big meetings, called demo parties.
They usually last few days and contain so much different kind of events that the
attenders rarely get a good night's sleep. People go to demo parties to meet other
demo scene members, swap software, play multi-player network games and watch and
attend to various kinds of competitions. The best competition entries are usually
rewarded with prices: money and computer products from sponsors.
On big demo parties the number of entries for a competition can be very large. A
small jury consisting of scene members first reviews the entries and a limited
amount (e.g. 10-15) entries are shown to the big audience. Often entries get
disqualified because they have broken some competition rule or they contain material
which offended the organizers or they don't work in the organizers' computers."
Related links:
Orange Juice - Parties list
Slengpung - Pictures from parties around the world
Various sites offer demos. Most of them are scene sites but since demos became popular,
thanks to the 3D cards mania, there are some other sites offering them as well. Here is
a list of places where you can get demos:
- Reccomanded Windows Demos - Start here to get some of the best windows demos around. Updated regulary.
- Scene.org - The biggest demo scene archive on the internet. Demos, intros, products from parties, music, graphics - everything. If it's from the demo scene - it's there. However, there is no catalog or description of files yet, as the site is mainly an FTP (server holding files).
- CFXweb Files Archive - We offer demos, intros, java demos and much more. We always offer a description, sometimes screenshots and most of the time several download links.
- Orange Juice - OJ is a big center and the billboard of the scene. They offer a search engine looking for productions on more then 51 FTPs. Very useful if you know what you're looking for.
- Pouet.net - A fairly new site. Holds demos submitted by sceners and holds track of downloads along with providing details on each entry.
A diskmag is an electronic magazine or newsletter that is distributed on a
semi-regular basis. It usually has demoscene news, reviews, party reports,
and general rambling. :-) Diskmags are similar to musicdisks (coming up next)
in that they are executable programs that come with their own reader, which
itself usually has a nice selection of music and interface graphics.
You can find many diskmags at ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/demos/mags
and on
http://www.cfxweb.net/files/DemoScene/Diskmags.
Example: Hugi Issue #20
A musicdisk is a collection of songs put out by a single music or demo group
(or, in rare cases, multiple groups--see the multi-group musicdisks
Chromatiks and Epidemic, for example) or musician whose distribution medium
is a single diskette. A musicdisk has a custom player built just for the
musicdisk--it plays only the songs on the disk, and usually has a nice
graphical interface or specific information from the composers on their
songs. Musicdisks are put out whenever the group feels it has enough music
to put in them, so they're released irregularly and infrequently.
You can find many musicdisks at ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/demos/music/disks
and on
http://www.cfxweb.net/files/DemoScene/MusicDisks.
You can find a lot of the demo sceners chatting on IRC. Popular networks are IRCnet and EFnet. The most popular
way to chat on IRC is using one of these clients: mIRC (Windows),
ircII (Linux),
Ircle (Mac),
Baxter (BeOS).
Most sceners are usually on the IRC network (several irc servers that share channels) known as IRCnet.
Other networks you can try are EFnet and DALnet. Most of the IRC clients you can download already got a list
of servers from each network so you don't have to look any further.
Finally, you can also use our online java IRC client. We have a fair list of IRCnet servers available and we already
organized a nice list of channels you can choose from, including our own #cfxweb.
Popular channels are:
- #coders (homepage) - Programmers and general scene chit-chat
- #trax (homepage) - Trackers (musicians)
- #pixel (homepage) - Artists
other channels are:
- #ukscene (homepage) - The UK scene meeting place
- #codersfr (homepage) - Coders and general chit chat of French Scene
The demo scene have one official newsgroup - comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos.
If you need a news server for catching up this group try news.scene.org
If you don't have a newsreader installed and you want to view the newsgroup right now, click here.
Lots and Lots of scene websites around. If you want to look for something specific
(or add your own site)
visit our links Index. Here is a short list
of main scene sites, where you can find other links around the scene: [This list does not
include CFXweb, since we're naturally the leading scene site, bla bla bla... :) ]
Orange Juice - lists of sceners, groups, online news, demo parties.
Demoscene.ru - Russian and English. Updated once a week.
GFXzone - If Scene art is what you're looking for.
No-Error - Scene music is your cup of tea? Go here!
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DEMOS: WINDOWS
