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Demo or Die (1995)
- seism 6y agoMany demos reek of bashful teenage spirit and childlike wonder. May the flame never die!
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoAnd a level / plane of software development very far removed from my day-to-day. I wouldn't know how to draw a square in any language I know of, let alone the craziness they end up building!
- test1_1234 6y agoSurely you can at least draw a square whose sides are horizontal and vertical?
- pjc50 6y agoThese days, "draw a square" takes pages of boilerplate while the fancy graphics fit in an incredibly dense line of maths.
- makach 6y agoWhoa! Blast from the past, I remember that original article from when WIRED was young and fresh. The demoscene laid a pretty solid foundation for me, I learned so much ranging from assembler programming, art, graphics and composition. I am proud to have been part of the demoscene and the sharing culture.
- unixhero 6y agoDemos are available at: https://scene.org https://scene.org https://www.pouet.net https://www.pouet.net https://www.demozoo.org https://www.demozoo.org
- dannyobrien 6y agoFor ancient Nineties tech culture trivia fans: this piece was written by Dave Green, who subsequently left Wired UK[1] (which is the source of this article) to edit the mildly noted British geek newsletter periodical NTK[2] [1]: https://www.spesh.com/danny/wireduk/ https://www.spesh.com/danny/wireduk/ [2]: http://www.ntk.net/ http://www.ntk.net/ d.
- pengaru 6y agoNever read this before, thanks for submitting. Demos are what got me interested in programming back in my teens and in the mid-late 90s I attended what few North American demo parties there were (NAID, Spring Break, and later Pilgrimage), even competing in and winning one (Spring Break '99). It's been great to see the scene is still active and while things have changed dramatically with insanely powerful GPUs and mature 3D graphics APIs, not as defined by the hardware limitations as it was back then, it's still a really interesting space. I highly recommend getting involved.
- meerita 6y agoThe first demo I've seen it was Stash 64 from The Black Lotus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqOaDLmJNgE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqOaDLmJNgE) and i got totally catched by this. I started going to all demoscene parties and i organized a big party in my country.
- elvis70 6y agoThe source code (+data) of Second Reality by Future Crew from 1993 is available under an open source license: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality It consists of 32K lines of assembler, 24K lines of C and 2K lines of Pascal. Here is a video of the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes
- elvis70 6y agoAnd here is a video of the making of the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIBRr31DIU
- joehartshorn 6y agoI read Whiplash by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe (MITP), in which Joi talked about "demo or die", and credited Nicholas Negroponte as the source of that phrase, but apparently not: NN - "Somebody else actually coined the term “demo or die” and I am not sure who. It might’ve been Muriel Cooper, because I arrived one day at her lab and saw it written on a wall clock where all the numbers had been taken out and were replaced with the letters, “demo or die.” I thought it was pretty good." (https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2019/05/nicholas-negroponte-heavy-guy/ https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2019/05/nicholas-neg...)
- kristopolous 6y agoI want this kind of tech enthusiasm back.
- bitwize 6y agoThe demoscene is still a thing. In fact there are modern demos for retro systems that'll blow your mind. If you want to participate, you need but find an old (or new) computer, get NASM (or an appropriate assembler for its CPU), and start hacking!
- indigochill 6y agoAnd even fantasy consoles! Pico-8 has the famous (at least in Pico-8 land) demo, Ad Astra. You can even run it straight in your browser here! https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=4050 https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=4050
- aricz 6y agoIf you're interested in the demoscene I would suggest taking a look at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ Created by Jim Leonard / Trixter and he's done an excellent job. Selected demos from PC and Amiga with top notch production. I highly recommend Volume 3.
- drivers99 6y agoI was thinking "I have that" but then you said "Volume 3" and so I learned there are two more volumes to get. (edit: I see the email is Dan Wright which makes me also remember ordering a CD of MOD/demo music from him at one point in the 90s, by sending a check in the mail. It includes a song by FireLight who is someone you see in Game Credits because of FMOD sound library. I used to chat with him about demos on a telnet BBS.)
- datameta 6y agoJoin us at https://www.dwitter.net/ https://www.dwitter.net/ JS codegolfing with <=140 chars.