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[64gigabyteram]

I found out about the demoscene in like 2018 or so, i think. I had recently gotten into tracker music, cracktros, and older 80s computers like the Amiga and Atari ST. One thing lead to another and then i eventually got enraptured in the demoscene. One of the more notable demos i saw was Overdrive 2 for the Sega Genesis, which is probably the best Demo of all time period. The technical aspect of it was already incredibly impressive for the hardware, topping a lot of the cool Amiga Demos i'd seen earlier, but they went one step further with this gritty cyberpunk retro aesthetic with the demo's visuals, even having what resembles a story in some parts. and they topped it all off with this amazing breakbeat sci fi soundtrack unlike anything else ever seen on a system like the Genesis. I love the scene for stuff like that and i'd like to wonder how YOU got into the demoscene if you ever have.
<---- Aforementioned overdrive 2 demo

 

[Kuranghi]

About the same time as I started to really download them and render them myself, I think it was about 5 year ago for me. I had watched them since I was a teen though, I just didn't really know what they were but I recognised some of the names from cracktros on Amiga releases.

I scoured pouet.net and downloaded all the highest rated ones around 2018/19 and put them in a folder with nice naming scheme to identify them, heres that folder so you can find/download them yourself if you want:

My favourites in no particular order of those above are:

ASD - Monolith
ASD - Spin
BRS - Magrathea
CNCD & FLT - Numb Res*
CNS - Chaos Theory
Still - Coronoid

With Spin and Coronoid being my favourite two if pressed. Unfortunately Spin appears to be broken on modern drivers since it will black out and have errors when I play it now, which is a big shame. Coronoid is epic as hell and still seems to run well. I love the music of Magrathea and speaking of that check this madness out that I just found because of your post!:




He rendered it offline at 1080p24 instead of the text renderer, that intro looks so amazing.

*I think Numb Res has an anaglyph 3D mode and you really should try that on a big screen, you just need the cheapie blue and red glasses.

 

[64gigabyteram]

I'd know more about this stuff if I actually had a good pc, lol
Nice mentioning pouet.net, that site is epic.

 

[Kuranghi]

I'd know more about this stuff if I actually had a good pc, lol
Nice mentioning pouet.net, that site is epic.

Even on a GTX 1080 you can run of the fancier ones at 4K and get locked 60fps, some not even 1080p60.

 

[Wildebeest]

I knew people who would have the floppy disks on the Amiga and show them to me, but I never felt like owning a library of them myself. All that copying and buying discs for something you couldn't play. They were impressive in a time before cdrom or 3d acceleration. The art of them was making something that could entertain someone just into the dance music scene, and at the same impress nerds who understood how you were making the hardware do things that few people could get it to do.

 

[64gigabyteram]

They were impressive in a time before cdrom or 3d acceleration.

not really-nowadays they're still impressive, but for different reasons. a lot of modern demos like to fit under 64kilobytes which is basically smaller than even a gameboy rom file. and the stuff they achieve with that insane small amount of space is crazy. the .product anyone?

that 64k also includes the kickass music you hear in that vid

 

[Wildebeest]

not really-nowadays they're still impressive, but for different reasons. a lot of modern demos like to fit under 64kilobytes which is basically smaller than even a gameboy rom file. and the stuff they achieve with that insane small amount of space is crazy. the .product anyone?

Yeah, there are still people who go for the maximal sort "demo" thing, where it is more about the art than the coding to the metal. I thought this documentary was pretty good.

 

[64gigabyteram]

Yeah, there are still people who go for the maximal sort "demo" thing, where it is more about the art than the coding to the metal. I thought this documentary was pretty good.

Demoscene productions are a form of art and should be treated as such. this stuff is too awesome to be this obscure

 

[Clear]

Good picks, but for me ASD's finest hour remains 2010's Happiness Is Around The Bend. It felt to me like the culmination of everything that made their prods special in the years leading up to it. The more emotional/pictorial stuff like Metamorphosis and Midnight Run, combined with their intricately sequenced stuff like Iconoclast and Animal Attraction.

All fantastic stuff, you really can't go wrong with ASD prods.

Numb Res is another fave of mine, but I have to admit its that amazing soundtrack that does all the heavy lifting for me, in its way it reminds me of STS-04 Instant Zen because the mix of audio impact to visual is so skewed. Not that there's anything wrong with using the same handful of fx for an entire demo.

The obvious champ of which shall always remain... wait for it Debris by farbraush. Which btw, if you aren't familiar with what makes it so technically remarkable, after watching check the file-size on Pouet.net/or Scene.org.

 

[Bitmap Frogs]

The obvious champ of which shall always remain... wait for it Debris by farbraush. Which btw, if you aren't familiar with what makes it so technically remarkable, after watching check the file-size on Pouet.net/or Scene.org.

The fuck is that file 180 kilobytes

How.

 

[64gigabyteram]

most games back in 2009 were 4-20 gigabytes, meanwhile debris is over here sporting visuals on par with those games.... at like even less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the filesize
oh yeah and kickass music too.
Demos are fucking amazing. how do they even do this stuff??? can code optimization really go that far???

 

[Kuranghi]

This guy doing god's work:

https://www.youtube.com/c/Overdozeofthedemoscene/videos

 

[64gigabyteram]

wonder if this would count seeing as how the 3dmark artists were heavily involved with the demoscene

 

[ReBurn]

I think it's boring

 

[kingpotato]

Not sure if this is relevant since it wants to be a product: https://food.game/