14 ms·

Finland adds the demoscene as a UNESCO intangible world cultural heritage

1210 points by adunk 6y ago

skrebbel 6y ago
This is nice, I guess, but I'm still not sure how this has any benefit for anybody except that demoscene now shares a list on Wikipedia with some folk dances and knitting patterns. I think it's much more newsworthy that the Revision Demoparty happened last weekend despite the corona pandemic. It was fully online but still a 72-hour non stop event. Many of the releases are mind-blowing, check https://pouet.net https://pouet.net
- TekMol 6y ago
  Looked up the winner in the 64k competition and it seems to be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tirAdWbceak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tirAdWbceak To be honest, it looks like a techno video from the 90s to me.
  - WillKirkby 6y ago
    The 64k compo was particularly weak this year. I'd recommend checking out the 4k intro and 4k executable graphics compos for some stellar work.
    - Sharlin 6y ago
      I think Assembly eliminated 64k years ago, because 4k for all practical purposes had become the new 64k, and 64k entries had been scarce and not super impressive for a while.
      - GuB-42 6y ago
        Things come and go. At Revision 2015 to 2017, the PC 64k compo was absolutely insane, with production values exceeding pretty much every other category, including unconstrained PC demos. If 4k is the new 64k, 64k at that time became the new PC demo. 256 bytes is the big (hum...) thing now. With one ridiculous entry that managed to pack 8 different effects, with music and transitions https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85227 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85227
      - duskwuff 6y ago
        The 4k category was blown wide open in 2009 by rgba/tbc with Elevated [1] (live reactions: [2]). It demonstrated that 4k was more than sufficient for impressive effects and music -- suddenly, 64k was no longer an interesting constraint. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro5grR_efG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro5grR_efG0
      - floatboth 6y ago
        Last year's PC 64k was amazing https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=81021 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=81021 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=81015 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=81015 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=80996 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=80996
    - bane 6y ago
      There's a mind-blowing 256byte entry as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imquk_3oFf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imquk_3oFf4
      - sharken 6y ago
        The awesome commented code can be found in this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/fzzs4u/memories_256_byte_msdos_intro_commented_code/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/fzzs4u/memorie...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - skrebbel 6y ago
    I'd like to submit a small correction: the PC 64k winner. Eg there's this in the Amiga 64k compo: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85248 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85248 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s66OgcwqalA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s66OgcwqalA) It also looks like a techno video, but a good one :-)
- bane 6y ago
  More specifically, this is the compo results. https://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1550&when=2020 https://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1550&when=2020
  - yread 6y ago
    Cool stuff. But why aren't there more videos? Even if I wanted to download and run random executables Vivaldi (and probably Symantec, too) blocks the download.
    - skrebbel 6y ago
      The party is just over. Give it a week and many more prods will have youtube links. Capturing a demo properly for youtube is non-trivial (especially on other platforms than PC), and a couple of people have specialized in this. Expect a whole bunch of uploads soon enough.
    - bane 6y ago
      The twitch stream from the party is archived here for now https://www.twitch.tv/revisionparty https://www.twitch.tv/revisionparty
- rapsey 6y ago
  Lots of game developers and companies have their origins in the demo scene
- pnako 6y ago
  They were even able to run the Shader Showdown competition online! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GRD1gCX7fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GRD1gCX7fk For people who don't know what it is: it's a live coding competition where 2 competitors have 25 minutes to code a graphical effect (using shader language) in front of a live audience They use a tool called Bonzomatic which you can get for various platforms.
- lmm 6y ago
  It's official recognition that makes it easier to justify activities that preserve this heritage. Schoolteachers have an argument for spending time on it. Museums have an argument for including it. At the micro level it might become easier to use a community hall or similar space for a demoscene event. It's not going to be a day-and-night change. But it can make a lot of small things go better.
anonu 6y ago
This is awesome. A great way to bring attention to and protect humanity's cultural heritage - especially in these times of self isolation. I thought this list of other Living Heritage items - referenced in one of the article links [1] - was pretty cool: Playing and building the kantele Playing and building the jouhikantele (bowed lyre) Playing the musical saw National Culture Days of the Deaf Ryijy tradition Making of Tommi knives Puppetry Bedtime story tradition Demoscene Living Christmas Calendar of Käpylä Horsemanship of the Roma Kalevala bone setting [1] https://www.museovirasto.fi/en/articles/demoskene-sahansoitto-ja-romanien-hevostaidot-elavan-perinnon-kansalliseen-luetteloon-12-uutta-kohdetta https://www.museovirasto.fi/en/articles/demoskene-sahansoitt...
- new2628 6y ago
  While all those in the list are great, the list itself is a worthy match for Borges' Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge in which animals are divided into: those that belong to the Emperor, embalmed ones, those that are trained, suckling pigs, mermaids, fabulous ones, stray dogs, those included in the present classification, those that tremble as if they were mad, innumerable ones, those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, others, those that have just broken a flower vase, those that from a long way off look like flies.
  - notkaiho 6y ago
    I hadn't seen this since high school. Thank you for reminding me. :)
- Fnoord 6y ago
  Impressive list. Isn't it up to future civilizations which parts of our culture become heritage? What is the benefit of defining it as such? Protecting the culture? At what cost? I don't mean to downplay the importance, I'm just wondering if it is up to us, and if it is worth it. Heck, can we even reasonably decide if such is worth it? Does it matter? I don't know.
  - 6y ago
bane 6y ago
This is fantastic in so many ways. As a demoscener going back to the early 90s, I know myself and other people in the scene enjoy the extraordinary value the scene provides us. I think just as important is that among other intangible assets around the world, the demoscene is particularly vibrant -- with tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of people participating, enjoying, or at least knowing about the scene. It's a big source of innovation, an amazing social activity, and has quietly just done things for years that were thought to not be possible, or to be very very hard. It definitely has it's own culture, way of doing things, ideas, ethos, philosophy, and most importantly, is constantly evolving. It's amazingly aware of what's to come as well as effortlessly incorporating its own heritage. Believe it or not it's around half a century old and going strong!
- posterboy 6y ago
  > It's a big source of innovation that's enthusiasticly true, it is somewhat big and it is the source of some innovation, maybe. But it isn't a research center by any measure. People working in research might contribute, and that's nearly always awesome when it happens. But the roots of the demoscene are slightly more humble, between game producers, the cracking scene, teenage engineers and bed room musicians, the scene remained rather conservative. Oh I like to ramble, like the lamer that I am. I don't even know what the scene!? The scene is dead!!1 Also, "intangible" by definition means it never produced tangible results ;)
  - theandrewbailey 6y ago
    I was under the impression that 'intangible' means 'not physical'.
    - 867-5309 6y ago
      it does, the other definition is not an accepted definition
      - rendall 6y ago
kelvin0 6y ago
I wish I had grown up in Finland! The demoscene was a faraway oasis of pure geek fun I never reached as a younger and thristy programmer.
- bane 6y ago
  The good news is that it's a global activity. If you live anywhere in Europe, there's like to be a party you can attend. Australia and North America has a few, and some great competition has come out of Japan in the last few years. More importantly, anybody can host a competition and have a party. The local party scene is really the heart and soul of the scene. Get 20-30 people together, hang out in somebody's basement for a weekend, and at the end have a competition with whatever people have had lying around on their computers. 1 - https://www.demoparty.net/ https://www.demoparty.net/
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    The parties might be not happening for a while now, but it is true that Demos are a very democratic activity and caters to a great breadth of programmers. Yes, there are hyper-specialized groups that can cram a full 3D-shooter in 64k but you don't need to do that. You can play with something simpler.
    - bane 6y ago
      Right! There was actually a pretty great Java demo at Revision this year.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Not only Finland, as mentioned on sibling comment, it was all over Europe. I was into Portuguese demoscene, one of the guys in the group was trading floppies over post, we had another doing ProTracker sessions, and we had coding weekends with "bring your computer and do group coding".
eduindianews 6y ago
That is an amazing news to hear. https://www.eduindianews.com/cbse-schools-mumbai https://www.eduindianews.com/cbse-schools-mumbai https://www.eduindianews.com/cbse-schools-malad https://www.eduindianews.com/cbse-schools-malad
ddingus 6y ago
Oh this is such a good move! I love the demo scene, and it is cultural heritage for sure. Long live the scene, and we all really should participate at least once.
comfymatrix 6y ago
I love the demoscene. I’ve been trying to get into it for some time now but it’s actually hard in terms of that are very little if any resources aimed at beginners and demo examples and tutorials. The resources I’ve found are either incomplete or assume one is already familiar with the domain. I understand graphics to the extent I’ve written a raytacer and a “semi-caster”, but can’t find my foot in demos, especially translating my existing graphics knowledge to ASM. Anyone have any resources or information I may have missed?
- loveJesus 6y ago
  Praise the Lord, I found https://in4k.github.io/wiki/win32 https://in4k.github.io/wiki/win32 to have useful links. Particularly Compofiller studio is quite easy to get started with and rather well done. To make a final compressed executable takes a couple of steps, where you have to switch the mode and minify the shader code which is on the Compofiller UI before creating the executable. If you can do some coding on shadertoy.com it is rather easy to transfer to a production here. For the music, a suggestion would be to download the free version of renoise.com which is full featured and works fine for making demos. It is a good piece of software and worth the amount they ask for the full version if you can do it too i think. And then download the http://4klang.untergrund.net/ http://4klang.untergrund.net/ 4klang vst and use it with Renoise. You set up multiple instruments that link to the same instance of the VST instead of multiple instances of the VST and use different channels for each instrument (basically use the version that shows up top after you create one instance) and you can start by loading one of the preset patches included with 4klang. You record the songs in the 4klang vst and then put the generated files in the compofiller studio project directory and once it recompiles it has your new song. I played around with this for the release i helped make for revision 2020 ( https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85364 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85364 glsl source included ) Glory to Jesus, After this you can go lower level with the other 4k tutorials learning how to integrate with other assemblers or perhaps C++ compilers including Visual Studio community edition. It is possible to make even 4ks in C. If you want to get started in assembler i would recommend starting with the 256byte intros in a freedos installation. While I included source code in a 256byte that was presented at revision, i would start out with other tutorials. Start out by researching some basic instructions to be able to set memory in a loop to a pointer in es:di. The basic instructions to set memory and registers, increment, compare, jump. Look a little bit into interrupts to be able to detect a keypress, or set graphics mode with 256 colors. So for a freedos program you can do this with "mov ax, 13h; int 10h;" at the beginning of the program, set a label for the frame_loop_aleluya, then a label for the pixel_loop_aleluya (praising God in my code makes it more enjoyable) write to 0xA0000 for 320*200 bytes in the pixel_loop then detecting if a keypress has been made with "mov ah, 1;int 16h;jz frame_loop_aleluya" and then back to text mode "mov ax, 3h; int 10h" at the end of your program with ret. You can play around with that to make your first own little asm intro. Compile it with nasm to a .com. This is included in freedos.There is a little more boilerplate that goes into a .com as well, put "BITS 16; org 100h; section .text;" and a start: label . This works if you have no memory variables of your own, which is fine for a first step. Sorry, this is my first hacker news comment so i will see how this looks and make corrections if needed, and post a small full sample program as a reply. God guide us and bless you in Jesus name
wenc 6y ago
I was introduced to the demoscene via Future Crew's (Finnish) Second Reality. It made my computer do things I didn't know it could do. That also coincided with my introduction to the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS), a sound card with (patch-based) MIDI capabilities vastly superior to Sound Blaster 16's tinny FM synthesis output at the time, and which was extremely popular among demo programmers. Growing up, I had this notion that all the best (close-to-the-metal) programmers in the world were either Danes, Russians or Finns. Every Linux boot screen back in the day displayed the name "Hannu Savolainen". And SSH I've always associated with "Tatu Ylönen".
- schoen 6y ago
  I always thought of Ylönen as being pronounced something like /jʌ'loʊnɛn/, but then when I went to Finland I learned that it's something like /'ylønen/. (The stress is on the first syllable and the y is purely a vowel, not a consonant.)
  - doikor 6y ago
    Protip: In Finnish the stress is almost always on the first syllable. Only exceptions being some expressive words "juma'lattoman" "päin'vastoin" (' for where the stress is).
- ChrisArchitect 6y ago
  came here to totally mention Future Crew, so fitting for this recognition to come out of Finland. Legends.
bhouston 6y ago
Hilarious. I wouldn't have expected that ever to happen. So much talent in the Finish scene and they were so good at advertizing their accomplishments in a way that was energizing to fellow nerds. It was the biggest reason I ended up getting so deep into computer graphics -- I wanted to be as "cool" as they were. How else could you be "cool" by sitting at your computer BBS chatting all night doing math and algorithms? Such an awesome time. I know that mrdoob of three.js also got into coding via the demoscene. (My old 1990's era demo scene stuff: https://benhouston3d.com/#High_School-Era_and_Earlier_Projects https://benhouston3d.com/#High_School-Era_and_Earlier_Projec... https://hornet.scene.org/cgi-bin/scene-search.cgi?search=Azure https://hornet.scene.org/cgi-bin/scene-search.cgi?search=Azu... )
- ionwake 6y ago
  I always had a man crush on mr doob as I spent years on three.js hoping he would notice my stuff but I never got around to publishing any of it I even spent 5 years on a three.js game Im still hoping to release
  - evere 6y ago
    Care to share any if your progress?
    - mrdoob2 6y ago
      Yeah! I want to see! :D
      - spiderfarmer 6y ago
        Awesome.
jng 6y ago
Bravo Finland. I remember attending Assembly'94 in Helsinki. So many good things came from the demoscene, including Tran's PMODE...
luismerino 6y ago
Just registered to say this: That's awesome!! <3 Now that I am here: do you know of any resources (books, tutorials, repos) that explain the techniques used in the demoscene?
- Minor49er 6y ago
  Denthor of Asphyxia's tutorials taught me quite a bit years ago http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/listed82.html?categoryid=130 http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/listed82.html?c... Dave Brackeen's VGA Programming in C tutorials also show off graphics modes and optimizations for things like primitive drawing, bitmaps, etc. I used this to create a game years ago http://www.brackeen.com/vga/index.html http://www.brackeen.com/vga/index.html There also used to be a site called ProgrammersHaven (later renamed ProgrammersHeaven that seems to have dumped all of its original content). This site had a collection of random programs and source files, many of which showed off demoscene techniques (parallax, plasma, 3D, bumpmapping, etc)
  - luismerino 6y ago
    Thx! That reminds me the nehe tutorials: https://nehe.gamedev.net/ https://nehe.gamedev.net/
    - CodeGlitch 6y ago
      Now there's a name I've not heard in a long long time...
    - Minor49er 6y ago
      I completely forgot about NeHe! Such a cool group
- bane 6y ago
  The demoscene operates very differently from other software communities in that it's inherently competitive. That means that different coders, or groups, try to keep what they're doing (and how) a bit secret so as to gain a competitive edge. Most of the coders I know who produce for the scene honestly start with books on graphics or sound and work their way up from there. It takes years to produce a collection of effects, techniques and code that you can pull from to make a great production. Early productions by people new to the scene are usually fairly simple with only a few effects or scenes, but if they keep at it will grow from there. That being said there are some scene "tutorials" that can help: https://github.com/psenough/teach_yourself_demoscene_in_14_days https://github.com/psenough/teach_yourself_demoscene_in_14_d... https://in4k.github.io/ https://in4k.github.io/ http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/Main_Page ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/code/3d/docs/ https://bitbucket.org/inclinescene/demosplash-2016/src/master/ https://bitbucket.org/inclinescene/demosplash-2016/src/maste... https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/205r78/sight_light_how_to_create_a_2d_visibilityshadow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/205r78/sight_light... http://www.hugi.scene.org/online/hugi35/hugi%2035%20-%20demoscene%20resources%20adok%20demo%20sourcecode%20list.htm http://www.hugi.scene.org/online/hugi35/hugi%2035%20-%20demo... https://4matprojects.blogspot.com/ https://4matprojects.blogspot.com/ https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=10882&page=1 https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=10882&page=1
isaacn 6y ago
The demoscene was one of the things that got me into programming in the mid 90's. I think it is awesome that it is being recognized in this way... youtube link to Future Crew Tribute for pure nostalgia:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yzzg19MvHA&list=PLE_ArT5AjrvOD1LjZW6xOWTeM9GHqEgmM&index=20&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yzzg19MvHA&list=PLE_ArT5Ajr...
fhools 6y ago
This is wonderful. Reading a WIRED magazine article on the demo scene when I was a early teen was what got me into programming in the first place.
- pavlov 6y ago
  Thanks for reminding me about this Wired article from 1995: https://www.wired.com/1995/07/democoders/ https://www.wired.com/1995/07/democoders/ Web version is missing all the screenshots and crazy '90s print design, unfortunately.
  - ebj73 6y ago
    Here's the full original print version too: https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1995-07_OCR/page/n145/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1995-07_OCR/page/n145/m... Wired Magazine during the years 1995, 1996 and 1997 had something a bit magical about it, the way I remember it. You could sort of feel, while reading it, that it was a harbinger of great, great things to come, both from technology in general, and the fusion of personal computing and the internet in particular. It generally was a pleasure to read the magazine in those days.
carapace 6y ago
Yeah, good. "A Mind is Born" is an intangible world cultural heritage IMO: https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/ https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/
dfc 6y ago
What is a "national UNESCO list"? I can't tell if it's a bad translation or just a misappropriation of UNESCO.
- schoen 6y ago
  I think that UNESCO members maintain their own lists of cultural heritage, and then they can also nominate some of those to be on the UNESCO international lists. The linked article from the linked article says > The Ministry of Education and Culture has inscribed 12 new elements on the National Inventory of Living Heritage. The National Inventory, which adheres to UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, currently comprises a total of 64 elements. The Finnish Heritage Agency is responsible for the implementation of the Convention in Finland. So I think the idea is that under this treaty, each country does have its own lists, which are maintained following rules and principles created by UNESCO, but where the content doesn't have to be approved by other member states. What I saw elsewhere in this thread is that Finland is currently nominating sauna culture to be added to the international list at the December UNESCO meeting. But I think that requires a consensus of other countries, where these twelve additions (including the demoscene) don't -- the Finnish government concluded on its own that they meet UNESCO's criteria for being significant enough in Finland to be publicly recognized and protected.
blakespot 6y ago
Lovely. Enjoying scenedemos is the main thing I do with all my Amigas, Atari ST, C64, A8, and even Apple Lisa. Great to see this!
starpilot 6y ago
From the country whose anthem is Darude - Sandstorm. This vid is fucking AWESOME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5f-A-vSyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5f-A-vSyw
abductee_hg 6y ago
yeah, i am happy about this as well!
abductee_hg 6y ago
hopefully this will help w/ things like this: https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=11891&page=1 https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=11891&page=1
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
this recognition gives me lots of warm feels. The number of aspects that the demoscene brought together: programming, art, music, an online world of connection, and community - was incredible and had a huge impact on me when I discovered and learned more about it as a young kid in the early 90s. All I can think of to commend this occasion is Future Crew 'Second Reality' :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes
atum47 6y ago
Yeah, I knew I wasn't wasting my time. I have made two (maybe more) projects that involves generative art: https://victorribeiro.com/radio/ https://victorribeiro.com/radio/ https://victorribeiro.com/showFractal/ https://victorribeiro.com/showFractal/ the first one I'm thiking about adding more stations. It used to have a few more, but chrome wont allow a page served over https to link content that is not served as https, so I had to remove a lot of radios. =(
- Eremotherium 6y ago
  Couldn't you just have proxied them over your own host Don't know what gear you're on but with e.g. Hetzner you get 20 TB for 3€/month
ultimoo 6y ago
For those that didn't know what this is (like me): > Demoskene is an international community focused on demos, programming, graphics and sound creatively real-time audiovisual performances.
kebman 6y ago
Anybody still miss the Atari vs Amiga war? I think it's probably still raging somewhere. Good times! Thank you for all the great demos! :D
- vardump 6y ago
  Not ever since Amiga won. ;-) Kidding aside, I do love to see new Atari ST(e) demos. Don't care much for Falcon or accelerated Amiga demos, just about great 68000 demos.
fangorn 6y ago
I wonder if this means one can now obtain a grant from Ministry of Culture to cultivate this officially recognised tradition/heritage activity. Imagine a career not stemming from what one learned creating demoes, but in actual creating demoes. Even if it was lousy money, just the concept is mind boggling. Plus, there would be no shortage of potential donors, from broadly speaking the same field, that would be happy to sponsor this culturally important organisation (aka demo group). Never would have crossed my mind typing my hands off on good old C64...
tibbydudeza 6y ago
I used to own an Amiga ... good times.
gwittel 6y ago
This makes me so happy. The demoscene is what made me want to learn to program in the first place. The first demo I saw was Heartquake by Iguana (Asm 1994) - http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=364 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=364 . I can still hear the credits music in my head. Jare and team, if you read this -- thank you! Never did get around to making my own demo, but I owe finding my career path early in life to the demoscene. So many fond memories (esp early 90s through 00s). I have and will spend countless hours coding to demoscene music (good and bad). To me, the unique thing somewhat lost in my avg day to day development life is that this is a fundamentally self driven challenge that can cross many CS disciplines combined with the art of practice. A demo pushes one in many directions at once: art, math, graphics, data structures, optimization, mechanical sympathy, sound, etc. (There's a reason there is a lot of game dev <-> scene crossover.). You can work in isolation, or as a group. However, a group is more common since most people can't do it all. Digression aside -- Could we use the demoscene as a gateway for future engineers? A STEM + demo style toolkit?
- Jare 6y ago
  You made my day, thank you for the kind words! I learned so much from so many people in the scene, and made great friends to this day, I'm happy and lucky I could give some back. :)
- bane 6y ago
  Oh man, the ending credits to that demo blew me away. This was only 3 years after Michael Jackson's Black & White, and a couple after Terminator 2 and here was basically kids doing the same special effect on commodity PCs in real-time. (not to mention commercial game quality 3d terrain) As for your question: coding used to be really viewed as a creative activity, akin to any other art form. Now it's just data plumbing and CRUD apps. For the people who really still view coding as an art, the demoscene can absolutely be a gateway. I think the most important thing being in the scene taught me was how to do teamwork on a complex technical project with vague and ambiguous requirements. I didn't encounter another environment like that until maybe grad school and professional development work. It prepared me in ways I still rely on, decades later. The competitive nature of the scene also prepares people well to work in non-academic/commercial places where the only proof of success is winning. Academia has nothing quite like this.
wendyshu 6y ago
"Demoscene" is like "informatics", an ostensibly English word but used primarily by non-native speakers.
egypturnash 6y ago
I feel like the inevitable outcome of this is that in a few years we will start seeing some seriously next-level Finnish demos dominating the competitions, all of which give thanks to one government art grant program or another in the middle of their ending shout-outs to other scene groups. Which sounds totally awesome IMHO.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Asymptotically, much like every San Francisco laundromat will be historical, every Earth location will be a world cultural heritage .
chrisweekly 6y ago
I'm curious to what degree Codepen^1 is considered to be part of the "demoscene". 1. https://codepen.io/popular/pens https://codepen.io/popular/pens
ddingus 6y ago
Someone has to do it: Aaaaaaameeeeega!
FraKtus 6y ago
The demoscene did motivate me in the '90s to start to create real-time video effects that I could synchronize to the music. It led me to create my own company and it's still there 25 years later. While I was never part of it because I had an Apple II and then a Macintosh that was never used by the scene, the demos were for me a technological demo of where we can go with a tool to be used by artists or musicians.
sharken 6y ago
I think many European countries could do the same, Denmark also had its fair share of the demo scene back in the day. I still remember names such as Kefrens and Dexion and it’s a bit amazing to find a detailed account of a demo event that took place in 1990, http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/party.php?id=92 http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/party.php?id=92 Link to Megademo 8 by Kefrens with a runtime of almost an hour: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Megademo%208+Amiga http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Megademo%208+Ami...
- mads 6y ago
  I was at that party in Falster in 1990. I remember we rented a video camera in a local hifi shop and documented the whole thing. The tape has unfortunately been lost as far as I know. Could be fun to watch it again. Do have some photos and possibly the original invitation lying around somewhere.
- jackbravo 6y ago
  Are campus party events similar to demoscene? In Mexico (Guadalajara) they were renamed to talent land, but still have the same vibe as campus party.
  - sharken 6y ago
    As i recall a demo scene event could be called a copyparty (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene), but that was before there was a focus on stopping pirated software. Those demo scene events i attended was a mix of creating demos, but also LAN gaming as we know it today. I do not remember campus party events that well, but i think the focus was more on gaming and hacking and not so much on presenting demos and having prizes for the best ones. Talent land sounds like you want to reach out to a less nerdy audience, but for me the nerdiness is the charm of these events :)
rgomez 6y ago
Love this thing, well done Finland. If a guy plugging a banana in a wall is a form of art... why not the demoscene? Of course it is.
timwaagh 6y ago
I don't think this is going to be a popular opinion, but what is the use of designating something as UNESCO world heritage? Doesn't the protection it would require keep budget away from other things, like COVID? I understand that its nice to get recognized though.
- ganzuul 6y ago
  Whatever helps keep people at home is a good investment right now. Problem with generalizations is that they generally don't hold up to concrete examples.
amelius 6y ago
Makes me wonder at what point will they put the entirety of YouTube under the protection of their cultural heritage umbrella?
xchip 6y ago
I used to be a demoscener, and watching other do amazing things is what inspired me to learn computer graphics and write my own demos. It was not only that, it was the amazing people that took the time to teach me and encouraged me to do better. Still nowadays that same spirit of being amazed by tech and willing to replicate what I find fascinating is still burning in me, I hope I will stay this way for many years. Thanks Demosceners!
easton_s 6y ago
Future Crew demos got me into programming. Scream Tracker set me on a life long love of making music. The demoscene significantly altered the trajectory of my life.

1210 points by adunk 6y ago

This is nice, I guess, but I'm still not sure how this has any benefit for anybody except that demoscene now shares a list on Wikipedia with some folk dances and knitting patterns. I think it's much more newsworthy that the Revision Demoparty happened last weekend despite the corona pandemic. It was fully online but still a 72-hour non stop event. Many of the releases are mind-blowing, check https://pouet.net https://pouet.net

TekMol 6y ago
Looked up the winner in the 64k competition and it seems to be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tirAdWbceak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tirAdWbceak To be honest, it looks like a techno video from the 90s to me.
- WillKirkby 6y ago
  The 64k compo was particularly weak this year. I'd recommend checking out the 4k intro and 4k executable graphics compos for some stellar work.
  - Sharlin 6y ago
    I think Assembly eliminated 64k years ago, because 4k for all practical purposes had become the new 64k, and 64k entries had been scarce and not super impressive for a while.
    - GuB-42 6y ago
      Things come and go. At Revision 2015 to 2017, the PC 64k compo was absolutely insane, with production values exceeding pretty much every other category, including unconstrained PC demos. If 4k is the new 64k, 64k at that time became the new PC demo. 256 bytes is the big (hum...) thing now. With one ridiculous entry that managed to pack 8 different effects, with music and transitions https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85227 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85227
    - duskwuff 6y ago
      The 4k category was blown wide open in 2009 by rgba/tbc with Elevated [1] (live reactions: [2]). It demonstrated that 4k was more than sufficient for impressive effects and music -- suddenly, 64k was no longer an interesting constraint. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0vBmiTr6o [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro5grR_efG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro5grR_efG0
    - floatboth 6y ago
      Last year's PC 64k was amazing https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=81021 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=81021 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=81015 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=81015 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=80996 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=80996
  - bane 6y ago
    There's a mind-blowing 256byte entry as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imquk_3oFf4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imquk_3oFf4
    - sharken 6y ago
      The awesome commented code can be found in this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/fzzs4u/memories_256_byte_msdos_intro_commented_code/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/fzzs4u/memorie...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- skrebbel 6y ago
  I'd like to submit a small correction: the PC 64k winner. Eg there's this in the Amiga 64k compo: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85248 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85248 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s66OgcwqalA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s66OgcwqalA) It also looks like a techno video, but a good one :-)
bane 6y ago
More specifically, this is the compo results. https://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1550&when=2020 https://www.pouet.net/party.php?which=1550&when=2020
- yread 6y ago
  Cool stuff. But why aren't there more videos? Even if I wanted to download and run random executables Vivaldi (and probably Symantec, too) blocks the download.
  - skrebbel 6y ago
    The party is just over. Give it a week and many more prods will have youtube links. Capturing a demo properly for youtube is non-trivial (especially on other platforms than PC), and a couple of people have specialized in this. Expect a whole bunch of uploads soon enough.
  - bane 6y ago
    The twitch stream from the party is archived here for now https://www.twitch.tv/revisionparty https://www.twitch.tv/revisionparty
rapsey 6y ago
Lots of game developers and companies have their origins in the demo scene
pnako 6y ago
They were even able to run the Shader Showdown competition online! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GRD1gCX7fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GRD1gCX7fk For people who don't know what it is: it's a live coding competition where 2 competitors have 25 minutes to code a graphical effect (using shader language) in front of a live audience They use a tool called Bonzomatic which you can get for various platforms.
lmm 6y ago
It's official recognition that makes it easier to justify activities that preserve this heritage. Schoolteachers have an argument for spending time on it. Museums have an argument for including it. At the micro level it might become easier to use a community hall or similar space for a demoscene event. It's not going to be a day-and-night change. But it can make a lot of small things go better.

anonu 6y ago

This is awesome. A great way to bring attention to and protect humanity's cultural heritage - especially in these times of self isolation. I thought this list of other Living Heritage items - referenced in one of the article links [1] - was pretty cool: Playing and building the kantele Playing and building the jouhikantele (bowed lyre) Playing the musical saw National Culture Days of the Deaf Ryijy tradition Making of Tommi knives Puppetry Bedtime story tradition Demoscene Living Christmas Calendar of Käpylä Horsemanship of the Roma Kalevala bone setting [1] https://www.museovirasto.fi/en/articles/demoskene-sahansoitto-ja-romanien-hevostaidot-elavan-perinnon-kansalliseen-luetteloon-12-uutta-kohdetta https://www.museovirasto.fi/en/articles/demoskene-sahansoitt...

new2628 6y ago
While all those in the list are great, the list itself is a worthy match for Borges' Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge in which animals are divided into: those that belong to the Emperor, embalmed ones, those that are trained, suckling pigs, mermaids, fabulous ones, stray dogs, those included in the present classification, those that tremble as if they were mad, innumerable ones, those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, others, those that have just broken a flower vase, those that from a long way off look like flies.
- notkaiho 6y ago
  I hadn't seen this since high school. Thank you for reminding me. :)
Fnoord 6y ago
Impressive list. Isn't it up to future civilizations which parts of our culture become heritage? What is the benefit of defining it as such? Protecting the culture? At what cost? I don't mean to downplay the importance, I'm just wondering if it is up to us, and if it is worth it. Heck, can we even reasonably decide if such is worth it? Does it matter? I don't know.
- 6y ago

bane 6y ago

This is fantastic in so many ways. As a demoscener going back to the early 90s, I know myself and other people in the scene enjoy the extraordinary value the scene provides us. I think just as important is that among other intangible assets around the world, the demoscene is particularly vibrant -- with tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of people participating, enjoying, or at least knowing about the scene. It's a big source of innovation, an amazing social activity, and has quietly just done things for years that were thought to not be possible, or to be very very hard. It definitely has it's own culture, way of doing things, ideas, ethos, philosophy, and most importantly, is constantly evolving. It's amazingly aware of what's to come as well as effortlessly incorporating its own heritage. Believe it or not it's around half a century old and going strong!

posterboy 6y ago
> It's a big source of innovation that's enthusiasticly true, it is somewhat big and it is the source of some innovation, maybe. But it isn't a research center by any measure. People working in research might contribute, and that's nearly always awesome when it happens. But the roots of the demoscene are slightly more humble, between game producers, the cracking scene, teenage engineers and bed room musicians, the scene remained rather conservative. Oh I like to ramble, like the lamer that I am. I don't even know what the scene!? The scene is dead!!1 Also, "intangible" by definition means it never produced tangible results ;)
- theandrewbailey 6y ago
  I was under the impression that 'intangible' means 'not physical'.
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    it does, the other definition is not an accepted definition
    - rendall 6y ago

kelvin0 6y ago

I wish I had grown up in Finland! The demoscene was a faraway oasis of pure geek fun I never reached as a younger and thristy programmer.

bane 6y ago
The good news is that it's a global activity. If you live anywhere in Europe, there's like to be a party you can attend. Australia and North America has a few, and some great competition has come out of Japan in the last few years. More importantly, anybody can host a competition and have a party. The local party scene is really the heart and soul of the scene. Get 20-30 people together, hang out in somebody's basement for a weekend, and at the end have a competition with whatever people have had lying around on their computers. 1 - https://www.demoparty.net/ https://www.demoparty.net/
- raverbashing 6y ago
  The parties might be not happening for a while now, but it is true that Demos are a very democratic activity and caters to a great breadth of programmers. Yes, there are hyper-specialized groups that can cram a full 3D-shooter in 64k but you don't need to do that. You can play with something simpler.
  - bane 6y ago
    Right! There was actually a pretty great Java demo at Revision this year.
pjmlp 6y ago
Not only Finland, as mentioned on sibling comment, it was all over Europe. I was into Portuguese demoscene, one of the guys in the group was trading floppies over post, we had another doing ProTracker sessions, and we had coding weekends with "bring your computer and do group coding".

eduindianews 6y ago

That is an amazing news to hear. https://www.eduindianews.com/cbse-schools-mumbai https://www.eduindianews.com/cbse-schools-mumbai https://www.eduindianews.com/cbse-schools-malad https://www.eduindianews.com/cbse-schools-malad

ddingus 6y ago

Oh this is such a good move! I love the demo scene, and it is cultural heritage for sure. Long live the scene, and we all really should participate at least once.

comfymatrix 6y ago

I love the demoscene. I’ve been trying to get into it for some time now but it’s actually hard in terms of that are very little if any resources aimed at beginners and demo examples and tutorials. The resources I’ve found are either incomplete or assume one is already familiar with the domain. I understand graphics to the extent I’ve written a raytacer and a “semi-caster”, but can’t find my foot in demos, especially translating my existing graphics knowledge to ASM. Anyone have any resources or information I may have missed?

loveJesus 6y ago
Praise the Lord, I found https://in4k.github.io/wiki/win32 https://in4k.github.io/wiki/win32 to have useful links. Particularly Compofiller studio is quite easy to get started with and rather well done. To make a final compressed executable takes a couple of steps, where you have to switch the mode and minify the shader code which is on the Compofiller UI before creating the executable. If you can do some coding on shadertoy.com it is rather easy to transfer to a production here. For the music, a suggestion would be to download the free version of renoise.com which is full featured and works fine for making demos. It is a good piece of software and worth the amount they ask for the full version if you can do it too i think. And then download the http://4klang.untergrund.net/ http://4klang.untergrund.net/ 4klang vst and use it with Renoise. You set up multiple instruments that link to the same instance of the VST instead of multiple instances of the VST and use different channels for each instrument (basically use the version that shows up top after you create one instance) and you can start by loading one of the preset patches included with 4klang. You record the songs in the 4klang vst and then put the generated files in the compofiller studio project directory and once it recompiles it has your new song. I played around with this for the release i helped make for revision 2020 ( https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85364 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85364 glsl source included ) Glory to Jesus, After this you can go lower level with the other 4k tutorials learning how to integrate with other assemblers or perhaps C++ compilers including Visual Studio community edition. It is possible to make even 4ks in C. If you want to get started in assembler i would recommend starting with the 256byte intros in a freedos installation. While I included source code in a 256byte that was presented at revision, i would start out with other tutorials. Start out by researching some basic instructions to be able to set memory in a loop to a pointer in es:di. The basic instructions to set memory and registers, increment, compare, jump. Look a little bit into interrupts to be able to detect a keypress, or set graphics mode with 256 colors. So for a freedos program you can do this with "mov ax, 13h; int 10h;" at the beginning of the program, set a label for the frame_loop_aleluya, then a label for the pixel_loop_aleluya (praising God in my code makes it more enjoyable) write to 0xA0000 for 320*200 bytes in the pixel_loop then detecting if a keypress has been made with "mov ah, 1;int 16h;jz frame_loop_aleluya" and then back to text mode "mov ax, 3h; int 10h" at the end of your program with ret. You can play around with that to make your first own little asm intro. Compile it with nasm to a .com. This is included in freedos.There is a little more boilerplate that goes into a .com as well, put "BITS 16; org 100h; section .text;" and a start: label . This works if you have no memory variables of your own, which is fine for a first step. Sorry, this is my first hacker news comment so i will see how this looks and make corrections if needed, and post a small full sample program as a reply. God guide us and bless you in Jesus name

wenc 6y ago

I was introduced to the demoscene via Future Crew's (Finnish) Second Reality. It made my computer do things I didn't know it could do. That also coincided with my introduction to the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS), a sound card with (patch-based) MIDI capabilities vastly superior to Sound Blaster 16's tinny FM synthesis output at the time, and which was extremely popular among demo programmers. Growing up, I had this notion that all the best (close-to-the-metal) programmers in the world were either Danes, Russians or Finns. Every Linux boot screen back in the day displayed the name "Hannu Savolainen". And SSH I've always associated with "Tatu Ylönen".

schoen 6y ago
I always thought of Ylönen as being pronounced something like /jʌ'loʊnɛn/, but then when I went to Finland I learned that it's something like /'ylønen/. (The stress is on the first syllable and the y is purely a vowel, not a consonant.)
- doikor 6y ago
  Protip: In Finnish the stress is almost always on the first syllable. Only exceptions being some expressive words "juma'lattoman" "päin'vastoin" (' for where the stress is).
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
came here to totally mention Future Crew, so fitting for this recognition to come out of Finland. Legends.

bhouston 6y ago

Hilarious. I wouldn't have expected that ever to happen. So much talent in the Finish scene and they were so good at advertizing their accomplishments in a way that was energizing to fellow nerds. It was the biggest reason I ended up getting so deep into computer graphics -- I wanted to be as "cool" as they were. How else could you be "cool" by sitting at your computer BBS chatting all night doing math and algorithms? Such an awesome time. I know that mrdoob of three.js also got into coding via the demoscene. (My old 1990's era demo scene stuff: https://benhouston3d.com/#High_School-Era_and_Earlier_Projects https://benhouston3d.com/#High_School-Era_and_Earlier_Projec... https://hornet.scene.org/cgi-bin/scene-search.cgi?search=Azure https://hornet.scene.org/cgi-bin/scene-search.cgi?search=Azu... )

ionwake 6y ago
I always had a man crush on mr doob as I spent years on three.js hoping he would notice my stuff but I never got around to publishing any of it I even spent 5 years on a three.js game Im still hoping to release
- evere 6y ago
  Care to share any if your progress?
  - mrdoob2 6y ago
    Yeah! I want to see! :D
    - spiderfarmer 6y ago
      Awesome.

jng 6y ago

Bravo Finland. I remember attending Assembly'94 in Helsinki. So many good things came from the demoscene, including Tran's PMODE...

luismerino 6y ago

Just registered to say this: That's awesome!! <3 Now that I am here: do you know of any resources (books, tutorials, repos) that explain the techniques used in the demoscene?

Minor49er 6y ago
Denthor of Asphyxia's tutorials taught me quite a bit years ago http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/listed82.html?categoryid=130 http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/listed82.html?c... Dave Brackeen's VGA Programming in C tutorials also show off graphics modes and optimizations for things like primitive drawing, bitmaps, etc. I used this to create a game years ago http://www.brackeen.com/vga/index.html http://www.brackeen.com/vga/index.html There also used to be a site called ProgrammersHaven (later renamed ProgrammersHeaven that seems to have dumped all of its original content). This site had a collection of random programs and source files, many of which showed off demoscene techniques (parallax, plasma, 3D, bumpmapping, etc)
- luismerino 6y ago
  Thx! That reminds me the nehe tutorials: https://nehe.gamedev.net/ https://nehe.gamedev.net/
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    Now there's a name I've not heard in a long long time...
  - Minor49er 6y ago
    I completely forgot about NeHe! Such a cool group
bane 6y ago
The demoscene operates very differently from other software communities in that it's inherently competitive. That means that different coders, or groups, try to keep what they're doing (and how) a bit secret so as to gain a competitive edge. Most of the coders I know who produce for the scene honestly start with books on graphics or sound and work their way up from there. It takes years to produce a collection of effects, techniques and code that you can pull from to make a great production. Early productions by people new to the scene are usually fairly simple with only a few effects or scenes, but if they keep at it will grow from there. That being said there are some scene "tutorials" that can help: https://github.com/psenough/teach_yourself_demoscene_in_14_days https://github.com/psenough/teach_yourself_demoscene_in_14_d... https://in4k.github.io/ https://in4k.github.io/ http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/Main_Page ftp://ftp.scene.org/mirrors/hornet/code/3d/docs/ https://bitbucket.org/inclinescene/demosplash-2016/src/master/ https://bitbucket.org/inclinescene/demosplash-2016/src/maste... https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/205r78/sight_light_how_to_create_a_2d_visibilityshadow/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/205r78/sight_light... http://www.hugi.scene.org/online/hugi35/hugi%2035%20-%20demoscene%20resources%20adok%20demo%20sourcecode%20list.htm http://www.hugi.scene.org/online/hugi35/hugi%2035%20-%20demo... https://4matprojects.blogspot.com/ https://4matprojects.blogspot.com/ https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=10882&page=1 https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=10882&page=1

isaacn 6y ago

The demoscene was one of the things that got me into programming in the mid 90's. I think it is awesome that it is being recognized in this way... youtube link to Future Crew Tribute for pure nostalgia:) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yzzg19MvHA&list=PLE_ArT5AjrvOD1LjZW6xOWTeM9GHqEgmM&index=20&t=0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yzzg19MvHA&list=PLE_ArT5Ajr...

fhools 6y ago

This is wonderful. Reading a WIRED magazine article on the demo scene when I was a early teen was what got me into programming in the first place.

pavlov 6y ago
Thanks for reminding me about this Wired article from 1995: https://www.wired.com/1995/07/democoders/ https://www.wired.com/1995/07/democoders/ Web version is missing all the screenshots and crazy '90s print design, unfortunately.
- ebj73 6y ago
  Here's the full original print version too: https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1995-07_OCR/page/n145/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1995-07_OCR/page/n145/m... Wired Magazine during the years 1995, 1996 and 1997 had something a bit magical about it, the way I remember it. You could sort of feel, while reading it, that it was a harbinger of great, great things to come, both from technology in general, and the fusion of personal computing and the internet in particular. It generally was a pleasure to read the magazine in those days.

carapace 6y ago

Yeah, good. "A Mind is Born" is an intangible world cultural heritage IMO: https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/ https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/

dfc 6y ago

What is a "national UNESCO list"? I can't tell if it's a bad translation or just a misappropriation of UNESCO.

schoen 6y ago
I think that UNESCO members maintain their own lists of cultural heritage, and then they can also nominate some of those to be on the UNESCO international lists. The linked article from the linked article says > The Ministry of Education and Culture has inscribed 12 new elements on the National Inventory of Living Heritage. The National Inventory, which adheres to UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, currently comprises a total of 64 elements. The Finnish Heritage Agency is responsible for the implementation of the Convention in Finland. So I think the idea is that under this treaty, each country does have its own lists, which are maintained following rules and principles created by UNESCO, but where the content doesn't have to be approved by other member states. What I saw elsewhere in this thread is that Finland is currently nominating sauna culture to be added to the international list at the December UNESCO meeting. But I think that requires a consensus of other countries, where these twelve additions (including the demoscene) don't -- the Finnish government concluded on its own that they meet UNESCO's criteria for being significant enough in Finland to be publicly recognized and protected.

blakespot 6y ago

Lovely. Enjoying scenedemos is the main thing I do with all my Amigas, Atari ST, C64, A8, and even Apple Lisa. Great to see this!

starpilot 6y ago

From the country whose anthem is Darude - Sandstorm. This vid is fucking AWESOME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5f-A-vSyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5f-A-vSyw

abductee_hg 6y ago

yeah, i am happy about this as well!

abductee_hg 6y ago

hopefully this will help w/ things like this: https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=11891&page=1 https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=11891&page=1

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

this recognition gives me lots of warm feels. The number of aspects that the demoscene brought together: programming, art, music, an online world of connection, and community - was incredible and had a huge impact on me when I discovered and learned more about it as a young kid in the early 90s. All I can think of to commend this occasion is Future Crew 'Second Reality' :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes

atum47 6y ago

Yeah, I knew I wasn't wasting my time. I have made two (maybe more) projects that involves generative art: https://victorribeiro.com/radio/ https://victorribeiro.com/radio/ https://victorribeiro.com/showFractal/ https://victorribeiro.com/showFractal/ the first one I'm thiking about adding more stations. It used to have a few more, but chrome wont allow a page served over https to link content that is not served as https, so I had to remove a lot of radios. =(

Eremotherium 6y ago
Couldn't you just have proxied them over your own host Don't know what gear you're on but with e.g. Hetzner you get 20 TB for 3€/month

ultimoo 6y ago

For those that didn't know what this is (like me): > Demoskene is an international community focused on demos, programming, graphics and sound creatively real-time audiovisual performances.

kebman 6y ago

Anybody still miss the Atari vs Amiga war? I think it's probably still raging somewhere. Good times! Thank you for all the great demos! :D

vardump 6y ago
Not ever since Amiga won. ;-) Kidding aside, I do love to see new Atari ST(e) demos. Don't care much for Falcon or accelerated Amiga demos, just about great 68000 demos.

fangorn 6y ago

I wonder if this means one can now obtain a grant from Ministry of Culture to cultivate this officially recognised tradition/heritage activity. Imagine a career not stemming from what one learned creating demoes, but in actual creating demoes. Even if it was lousy money, just the concept is mind boggling. Plus, there would be no shortage of potential donors, from broadly speaking the same field, that would be happy to sponsor this culturally important organisation (aka demo group). Never would have crossed my mind typing my hands off on good old C64...

tibbydudeza 6y ago

I used to own an Amiga ... good times.

gwittel 6y ago

This makes me so happy. The demoscene is what made me want to learn to program in the first place. The first demo I saw was Heartquake by Iguana (Asm 1994) - http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=364 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=364 . I can still hear the credits music in my head. Jare and team, if you read this -- thank you! Never did get around to making my own demo, but I owe finding my career path early in life to the demoscene. So many fond memories (esp early 90s through 00s). I have and will spend countless hours coding to demoscene music (good and bad). To me, the unique thing somewhat lost in my avg day to day development life is that this is a fundamentally self driven challenge that can cross many CS disciplines combined with the art of practice. A demo pushes one in many directions at once: art, math, graphics, data structures, optimization, mechanical sympathy, sound, etc. (There's a reason there is a lot of game dev <-> scene crossover.). You can work in isolation, or as a group. However, a group is more common since most people can't do it all. Digression aside -- Could we use the demoscene as a gateway for future engineers? A STEM + demo style toolkit?

Jare 6y ago
You made my day, thank you for the kind words! I learned so much from so many people in the scene, and made great friends to this day, I'm happy and lucky I could give some back. :)
bane 6y ago
Oh man, the ending credits to that demo blew me away. This was only 3 years after Michael Jackson's Black & White, and a couple after Terminator 2 and here was basically kids doing the same special effect on commodity PCs in real-time. (not to mention commercial game quality 3d terrain) As for your question: coding used to be really viewed as a creative activity, akin to any other art form. Now it's just data plumbing and CRUD apps. For the people who really still view coding as an art, the demoscene can absolutely be a gateway. I think the most important thing being in the scene taught me was how to do teamwork on a complex technical project with vague and ambiguous requirements. I didn't encounter another environment like that until maybe grad school and professional development work. It prepared me in ways I still rely on, decades later. The competitive nature of the scene also prepares people well to work in non-academic/commercial places where the only proof of success is winning. Academia has nothing quite like this.

wendyshu 6y ago

"Demoscene" is like "informatics", an ostensibly English word but used primarily by non-native speakers.

egypturnash 6y ago

I feel like the inevitable outcome of this is that in a few years we will start seeing some seriously next-level Finnish demos dominating the competitions, all of which give thanks to one government art grant program or another in the middle of their ending shout-outs to other scene groups. Which sounds totally awesome IMHO.

BurningFrog 6y ago

Asymptotically, much like every San Francisco laundromat will be historical, every Earth location will be a world cultural heritage .

chrisweekly 6y ago

I'm curious to what degree Codepen^1 is considered to be part of the "demoscene". 1. https://codepen.io/popular/pens https://codepen.io/popular/pens

ddingus 6y ago

Someone has to do it: Aaaaaaameeeeega!

FraKtus 6y ago

The demoscene did motivate me in the '90s to start to create real-time video effects that I could synchronize to the music. It led me to create my own company and it's still there 25 years later. While I was never part of it because I had an Apple II and then a Macintosh that was never used by the scene, the demos were for me a technological demo of where we can go with a tool to be used by artists or musicians.

sharken 6y ago

I think many European countries could do the same, Denmark also had its fair share of the demo scene back in the day. I still remember names such as Kefrens and Dexion and it’s a bit amazing to find a detailed account of a demo event that took place in 1990, http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/party.php?id=92 http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/party.php?id=92 Link to Megademo 8 by Kefrens with a runtime of almost an hour: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Megademo%208+Amiga http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Megademo%208+Ami...

mads 6y ago
I was at that party in Falster in 1990. I remember we rented a video camera in a local hifi shop and documented the whole thing. The tape has unfortunately been lost as far as I know. Could be fun to watch it again. Do have some photos and possibly the original invitation lying around somewhere.
jackbravo 6y ago
Are campus party events similar to demoscene? In Mexico (Guadalajara) they were renamed to talent land, but still have the same vibe as campus party.
- sharken 6y ago
  As i recall a demo scene event could be called a copyparty (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene), but that was before there was a focus on stopping pirated software. Those demo scene events i attended was a mix of creating demos, but also LAN gaming as we know it today. I do not remember campus party events that well, but i think the focus was more on gaming and hacking and not so much on presenting demos and having prizes for the best ones. Talent land sounds like you want to reach out to a less nerdy audience, but for me the nerdiness is the charm of these events :)

rgomez 6y ago

Love this thing, well done Finland. If a guy plugging a banana in a wall is a form of art... why not the demoscene? Of course it is.

timwaagh 6y ago

I don't think this is going to be a popular opinion, but what is the use of designating something as UNESCO world heritage? Doesn't the protection it would require keep budget away from other things, like COVID? I understand that its nice to get recognized though.

ganzuul 6y ago
Whatever helps keep people at home is a good investment right now. Problem with generalizations is that they generally don't hold up to concrete examples.

amelius 6y ago

Makes me wonder at what point will they put the entirety of YouTube under the protection of their cultural heritage umbrella?

xchip 6y ago

I used to be a demoscener, and watching other do amazing things is what inspired me to learn computer graphics and write my own demos. It was not only that, it was the amazing people that took the time to teach me and encouraged me to do better. Still nowadays that same spirit of being amazed by tech and willing to replicate what I find fascinating is still burning in me, I hope I will stay this way for many years. Thanks Demosceners!

easton_s 6y ago

Future Crew demos got me into programming. Scream Tracker set me on a life long love of making music. The demoscene significantly altered the trajectory of my life.