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Meanwhile, I am still trying to figure out how to really get started with making my first demos. I can write a basic shader with ShaderToy, I can write a raymar

Meanwhile, I am still trying to figure out how to really get started with making my first demos. I can write a basic shader with ShaderToy, I can write a raymarching algorithm and do a few cute tricks with it...and now what? How do I turn this into a "proper" demo? Even just guidelines on the entire compilation step would be appreciated, or knowledge on how some fairly standard examples of demos were compiled, and which tools were used.

AndriyKunitsyn 3y ago
I used https://github.com/naavis/4k-Intro-Template/ https://github.com/naavis/4k-Intro-Template/ to get started. The main ingredient of the secret sauce is a special compressing linker, called crinkler.
- TwentyPosts 3y ago
  Ah, that Linux user feeling. Feels like a lot of people in the scene use Windows, which still surprises me considering how tech-y it all is.
  - skrebbel 3y ago
    Windows used to be the only platform where even half baked graphics code could be assumed to run properly most places, due to its position as the primary OS for gaming. All the graphics cards had drivers, direct3d came bundled in etc. It was just easier. Dont forget that most democoders want to make stuff. Something like Visual Studio, which you can (pirate and) install, and then you type code and press a button with a play icon and see the code run, that’s super nice and it’s had that UX for 20 years or so. Compared to Linux at the time, which drew the kinds of people who enjoyed building up their perfect Gentoo from scratch and setting up their Vim just right, and making automake detect dependencies on all the distros. To your average demoscener, all that stuff gets in the way of getting graphics on the screen. These days the difference is pretty much gone though, so it’s just momentum. You can install Ubuntu and a random IDE and code some opengl in an SDL window and things will Just Work just like they would on Windows. And I assume even Linux these days has a way to deal with dependencies that’s as easy for devs as Windows’s “just add the DLLs you need to the zip file”.
    - stOneskull 3y ago
      lots of things were before windows. c64 and amiga were legendary.
      - whizzter 3y ago
        Agreed, those were the roots. But this thread is a bit about tooling/distribution on win vs linux and the C64 and Amiga is more like Windows than Linux in that sense. If prods would've been open-sourced or compile for yourself you'd lose control of packaging and stuff like track-ordering for disk-loading would've been impossible to control properly.
        stOneskull 3y ago
        yeah i get you. to me it seemed they left amiga for windows. hardly much linux really. but i think it depends on what you were looking at.
    - whizzter 3y ago
      Not to mention that it's only recently that Blender has become bearable, even if 3dsMAX,etc is ancient those kinds of tools were often used in the past and Linux was a kind of no-starter. Also since intros were size-limited you kinda needed control of your pipeline to achieve the smallest size of the _binary_. For a 4k intro different compilers could produce different sized binaries, the .exe compressor crinkler mentioned above does some "function-order-randomization" to improve compression by a few bytes by having the correct ordering of data/functions so just running a slightly different version and/or not long enough could fail to produce something below 4k.
      - anthk 3y ago
        Actual demosceners would use PovRay, not 3DSMAX or they choose Borland IDE's over a turd like Visual C++.
    - reaperducer 3y ago
      It was just easier I got out of the demo scene after the Commodore 64, but isn't the whole point that it's supposed to be hard, not easy? That's what makes it amazing.
  - smokel 3y ago
    The demoscene was also not so much into "open source". Code was often kept secret, to add to the mysticism of the amazing algorithms (which often turned out to be very clever tricks, and not academic breakthroughs), or to simply hide the fact that the code was a terrible mess. With regards to Linux -- Avoozl and I wrote a 4k intro for it in 1999 [1]. It was quite a lot of effort, with custom ELF headers to shave off a few bytes. There were but few people willing to run the thing as root though. (This was a requirement for svgalib, and us demosceners couldn't understand why unix sysadmins took offence with that :) [1] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1318 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1318
    - whizzter 3y ago
      haha, wow svgalib is really ages ago :D
    - mav88 3y ago
      Hah - I remember this prod. Super Grover ftw! I had done some svgalib work so I had no problem running it as root. In those days I had a Cirrus Logic or a Matrox dual head.
      - smokel 3y ago
        Even though I think the intro is quite impressive, the screenshot is fake -- there is no Grover to be seen in the entire intro. Somehow we got away with that, because it is quite hard to get the thing working nowadays :) If anyone manages to turn it into a YouTube video, I will, ehm, applaud them for it!
  - blackle 3y ago
    Self-plug, but demoscene on linux is very possible. I got into the scene around 2015 and submitted my first entry to an IRL demoparty in 2018. All of my prods are linux and open source. Most are 4k exegfx, which means they are still images, but "scalemark" is an animated 4k intro with music. https://suricrasia.online/demoscene/ https://suricrasia.online/demoscene/
immibis 3y ago
You don't have to do a size-limited demo. You can focus on writing some kind of cool animation and/or music that is only or mostly code (as opposed to a video file or huge animation tables) and that's your first demo. Some demos I liked watching are tens of megabytes, e.g. https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=57446 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=57446 . I'm not sure why that still counts as a demo, but I suppose as long as the the sequence of things is mostly driven by code, then it does. Perhaps it's like 500kB of custom stuff glued onto a 42MB off-the-shelf game engine like Unity, which I think should be totally okay to count as a demo. Obviously this won't be competing in any size category.

AndriyKunitsyn 3y ago

I used https://github.com/naavis/4k-Intro-Template/ https://github.com/naavis/4k-Intro-Template/ to get started. The main ingredient of the secret sauce is a special compressing linker, called crinkler.

TwentyPosts 3y ago
Ah, that Linux user feeling. Feels like a lot of people in the scene use Windows, which still surprises me considering how tech-y it all is.
- skrebbel 3y ago
  Windows used to be the only platform where even half baked graphics code could be assumed to run properly most places, due to its position as the primary OS for gaming. All the graphics cards had drivers, direct3d came bundled in etc. It was just easier. Dont forget that most democoders want to make stuff. Something like Visual Studio, which you can (pirate and) install, and then you type code and press a button with a play icon and see the code run, that’s super nice and it’s had that UX for 20 years or so. Compared to Linux at the time, which drew the kinds of people who enjoyed building up their perfect Gentoo from scratch and setting up their Vim just right, and making automake detect dependencies on all the distros. To your average demoscener, all that stuff gets in the way of getting graphics on the screen. These days the difference is pretty much gone though, so it’s just momentum. You can install Ubuntu and a random IDE and code some opengl in an SDL window and things will Just Work just like they would on Windows. And I assume even Linux these days has a way to deal with dependencies that’s as easy for devs as Windows’s “just add the DLLs you need to the zip file”.
  - stOneskull 3y ago
    lots of things were before windows. c64 and amiga were legendary.
    - whizzter 3y ago
      Agreed, those were the roots. But this thread is a bit about tooling/distribution on win vs linux and the C64 and Amiga is more like Windows than Linux in that sense. If prods would've been open-sourced or compile for yourself you'd lose control of packaging and stuff like track-ordering for disk-loading would've been impossible to control properly.
      - stOneskull 3y ago
        yeah i get you. to me it seemed they left amiga for windows. hardly much linux really. but i think it depends on what you were looking at.
  - whizzter 3y ago
    Not to mention that it's only recently that Blender has become bearable, even if 3dsMAX,etc is ancient those kinds of tools were often used in the past and Linux was a kind of no-starter. Also since intros were size-limited you kinda needed control of your pipeline to achieve the smallest size of the _binary_. For a 4k intro different compilers could produce different sized binaries, the .exe compressor crinkler mentioned above does some "function-order-randomization" to improve compression by a few bytes by having the correct ordering of data/functions so just running a slightly different version and/or not long enough could fail to produce something below 4k.
    - anthk 3y ago
      Actual demosceners would use PovRay, not 3DSMAX or they choose Borland IDE's over a turd like Visual C++.
  - reaperducer 3y ago
    It was just easier I got out of the demo scene after the Commodore 64, but isn't the whole point that it's supposed to be hard, not easy? That's what makes it amazing.
- smokel 3y ago
  The demoscene was also not so much into "open source". Code was often kept secret, to add to the mysticism of the amazing algorithms (which often turned out to be very clever tricks, and not academic breakthroughs), or to simply hide the fact that the code was a terrible mess. With regards to Linux -- Avoozl and I wrote a 4k intro for it in 1999 [1]. It was quite a lot of effort, with custom ELF headers to shave off a few bytes. There were but few people willing to run the thing as root though. (This was a requirement for svgalib, and us demosceners couldn't understand why unix sysadmins took offence with that :) [1] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1318 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1318
  - whizzter 3y ago
    haha, wow svgalib is really ages ago :D
  - mav88 3y ago
    Hah - I remember this prod. Super Grover ftw! I had done some svgalib work so I had no problem running it as root. In those days I had a Cirrus Logic or a Matrox dual head.
    - smokel 3y ago
      Even though I think the intro is quite impressive, the screenshot is fake -- there is no Grover to be seen in the entire intro. Somehow we got away with that, because it is quite hard to get the thing working nowadays :) If anyone manages to turn it into a YouTube video, I will, ehm, applaud them for it!
- blackle 3y ago
  Self-plug, but demoscene on linux is very possible. I got into the scene around 2015 and submitted my first entry to an IRL demoparty in 2018. All of my prods are linux and open source. Most are 4k exegfx, which means they are still images, but "scalemark" is an animated 4k intro with music. https://suricrasia.online/demoscene/ https://suricrasia.online/demoscene/

immibis 3y ago

You don't have to do a size-limited demo. You can focus on writing some kind of cool animation and/or music that is only or mostly code (as opposed to a video file or huge animation tables) and that's your first demo. Some demos I liked watching are tens of megabytes, e.g. https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=57446 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=57446 . I'm not sure why that still counts as a demo, but I suppose as long as the the sequence of things is mostly driven by code, then it does. Perhaps it's like 500kB of custom stuff glued onto a 42MB off-the-shelf game engine like Unity, which I think should be totally okay to count as a demo. Obviously this won't be competing in any size category.