4 ms·

I actually find tech like this kind of depressing. It's such a lovely art form... but such an anachronistic one. It's funny, you could say the same about all

by Pxtl 4y ago

I actually find tech like this kind of depressing. It's such a lovely art form... but such an anachronistic one. It's funny, you could say the same about all real-world art forms too, but somehow hand-crafting things don't bother me on the same level as this kind of tech. With things like the pi zero, the cost of a machine that can endlessly run full video is vastly eclipsed by the screen to present it on. So simple palette animations are now pointless. Filesize? My phone has over 100GB. Bandwidth? Streaming is everywhere. But I love this stuff. I love the aesthetic, the limitations, the tech that is simple-enough I can fit the whole concept into my head until I see the hellscape of optimizations that it took to squeeze out every last iota of performance on old machines that shouldn't be able to do this.

serf 4y ago
>With things like the pi zero, the cost of a machine that can endlessly run full video is vastly eclipsed by the screen to present it on. So simple palette animations are now pointless. it's not pointless -- constraint often produces beauty in unexpected ways. Piet Mondrian's art wouldn't have been improved by access to millions of colors and microscopic detail; the rigorous constraints are what produced his entire style. plus as a developer the idea of using the least amount of machine to accomplish something is incredibly appealing to me; it's like a more extreme version of code golf.
hbn 4y ago
As long as there's people who can appreciate the art for what it is, isn't it serving its purpose? It doesn't have to serve a utility. It's a beautiful, clever intersection between math and visual art, and that's all it has to be.
syntheweave 4y ago
Something about art is that it doesn't cast its aspirations into the future (as is typically the case when thinking about tech) because it's here to make a statement now. That grounds it in the moment, and in its own way justifies the effort. Popular ideas about art often get unhealthily fixated on the idea of production; there are always standard ways of doing things that give a consistent result, and when you layer them all up you get a pretty picture. And the average "pretty picture" one sees throughout social media is built on applying just those things. But that kind of default is an example of a normalization - if everyone has a guitar, you get a lot of guitar music, yet not every guitar player is really aiming for mastery of guitar specifically. It's stylistically more important to actually settle on a medium with a definite spec and then work through how to optimize it, like how a speedrunner gradually learns the intricacies of a game. Then you can make that definite statement.
LAC-Tech 4y ago
I think this stuff looks beautiful on its own merits. I always thought there was something aesthetic about older games - and I think the limited tools they had to work with was a big part of it. I'd play the hell out of a modern game that looked like this.
- d_tr 4y ago
  There are quite a few nice modern games that look like this and I have had lots of fun playing them on Steam. Wadjet Eye's adventure games, Blasphemous, The Messenger, CrossCode and more!
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    Cross code looks really nice from the trailer - part of it looks like Chrono Trigger (still one of the most beautiful games of all time IMHO)
- bzzzt 4y ago
  By all means go to Steam (or another digital storefront like the Nintendo e-shop) and check the 'indie' category. There's a revival of pixel-art games going on to the point some people are completely fed up with them. Even then, since 80% of everything is crap you can't expect every game to live up to your best memories, but if you want pixel-art you can get it ;)
samplatt 4y ago
Don't be depressed. The demoscene is still going strong - check out https://www.pouet.net https://www.pouet.net :-)
pugworthy 4y ago
I make furniture by hand sometimes. Plane the lumber, hand cut dovetails, 100+ year old molding planes for trim, hand forged square nails when I need fasteners, antique planes too for young and groove boards. Slow as hell to make, hugely pleasing to the soul. My metrics are that in the end, not efficiency.

by Pxtl 4y ago

serf 4y ago

>With things like the pi zero, the cost of a machine that can endlessly run full video is vastly eclipsed by the screen to present it on. So simple palette animations are now pointless. it's not pointless -- constraint often produces beauty in unexpected ways. Piet Mondrian's art wouldn't have been improved by access to millions of colors and microscopic detail; the rigorous constraints are what produced his entire style. plus as a developer the idea of using the least amount of machine to accomplish something is incredibly appealing to me; it's like a more extreme version of code golf.

hbn 4y ago

As long as there's people who can appreciate the art for what it is, isn't it serving its purpose? It doesn't have to serve a utility. It's a beautiful, clever intersection between math and visual art, and that's all it has to be.

syntheweave 4y ago

Something about art is that it doesn't cast its aspirations into the future (as is typically the case when thinking about tech) because it's here to make a statement now. That grounds it in the moment, and in its own way justifies the effort. Popular ideas about art often get unhealthily fixated on the idea of production; there are always standard ways of doing things that give a consistent result, and when you layer them all up you get a pretty picture. And the average "pretty picture" one sees throughout social media is built on applying just those things. But that kind of default is an example of a normalization - if everyone has a guitar, you get a lot of guitar music, yet not every guitar player is really aiming for mastery of guitar specifically. It's stylistically more important to actually settle on a medium with a definite spec and then work through how to optimize it, like how a speedrunner gradually learns the intricacies of a game. Then you can make that definite statement.

LAC-Tech 4y ago

I think this stuff looks beautiful on its own merits. I always thought there was something aesthetic about older games - and I think the limited tools they had to work with was a big part of it. I'd play the hell out of a modern game that looked like this.

d_tr 4y ago
There are quite a few nice modern games that look like this and I have had lots of fun playing them on Steam. Wadjet Eye's adventure games, Blasphemous, The Messenger, CrossCode and more!
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  Cross code looks really nice from the trailer - part of it looks like Chrono Trigger (still one of the most beautiful games of all time IMHO)
bzzzt 4y ago
By all means go to Steam (or another digital storefront like the Nintendo e-shop) and check the 'indie' category. There's a revival of pixel-art games going on to the point some people are completely fed up with them. Even then, since 80% of everything is crap you can't expect every game to live up to your best memories, but if you want pixel-art you can get it ;)

samplatt 4y ago

Don't be depressed. The demoscene is still going strong - check out https://www.pouet.net https://www.pouet.net :-)

pugworthy 4y ago

I make furniture by hand sometimes. Plane the lumber, hand cut dovetails, 100+ year old molding planes for trim, hand forged square nails when I need fasteners, antique planes too for young and groove boards. Slow as hell to make, hugely pleasing to the soul. My metrics are that in the end, not efficiency.