6 ms·

Most people who were a part of the scene in 2000 remember The Product (1). I remember it winning The Party and being struck by how impressive their work was. If

Most people who were a part of the scene in 2000 remember The Product (1). I remember it winning The Party and being struck by how impressive their work was. If you're on windows, I guess you can download the demo itself (2). At 64kb, it should be a pretty quick download ;-) Their impressiveness has only gone up since 2000, as you can see by watching Debris (3), which at 177kb beats the living crap out of most things you see today. The amount of work that goes into the tools these guys make is incredible. Quite happy to see ryg, kb and team release all this stuff. There should be a ton of things worthy of checking out in all this source code. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkEsP9H2HGM [2] ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/demos/groups/farb-rausch/fr08_final.zip [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_efKXc4zd6w

leon_ 15y ago
fr08 was their best work to me. I remember that summer - bought a new graphics card only to watch fr08 :)
web_chops 15y ago
It's amazing how they can fit that much detailed demo in 64kb along with sound. Feels magical :)
- aw3c2 15y ago
  Prepare to be amazed by 4k, Elevated by RGBA and TBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWMGuh15nE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWMGuh15nE
  - psykotic 15y ago
    Or the 4k remake of Chaos Theory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAIaclLrKE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAIaclLrKE. Elevated is a classic and a complete aesthetic package, but it's still a one-effect intro. Chaos Theory 4k is more varied but unfortunately it has a shitty synth.
frou_dh 15y ago
Fantastic tiny demos are truly the closest thing I've seen to magic. You know it's really a bag of tricks but it's simply so good.
- exch 15y ago
  I've always had a great deal of admiration for these kind of works. They elevate programming to an art form.
pkrefta 15y ago
Every time I see the this demo YT I want to teach myself C++ (despite I hate compiled languages) - this is great inspiration for me. Nowa days this graphics is not really that impressive but back in 2000 that was jaw-breaking OMG
- buster 15y ago
  I guess, you'll have to learn so much more then just C++, most likely assembler too, and a lot (lot lot lot) of tricks. Everytime i see those multi-minute long demos, with music and animations and see those in 64k (or even 4k intros!!) i'm baffled.
  - enqk 15y ago
    asm is not required anymore (besides reading it for debugging or optimization purposes) you'd rather have to learn practical 3d/2d math and try many things out.
  - skrebbel 15y ago
    In fact, you don't have to learn C++ either. You can use any native compiled language without problems (say, Pascal). You can also use any other language as long as its runtime is small enough. Most important though, much more so than whether you know C++, is knowing graphics programming. In fact, I've been calling myself a democoder for 10 years now, and I still suck at graphics programming, which is why my demos suck. Focus on the graphics, not the language. A fondness for math is much more important than a fondness for compilers. I'd recommend making a demo in your favourite programming language. Don't care about size, care about looks. Once you've learned to make it good, you can consider learning, say, C(++) to make it small enough for the 64k or 4k categories. Sidenote: most 4ks these days are entirely coded in a shader. This means you can mostly copy&paste the entire C part from somewhere, and start hacking GLSL or HLSL. Sure, you'd need to learn the shader language, but it's smaller and simpler than c++.
    - pjmlp 15y ago
      Actually in the PC Demoscene, many demos were done in Turbo Pascal with lots of inline assembly as well.
wbhart 15y ago
I imagined that demo skills would eventually die and the more recent stuff would just end up being bloated or lame. But it really has improved. Infeasibly improved. Debris is amazing. But it isn't the only more recent amazing demo. Someone once asked me whether there was a limit to how realistic demos can be made. I would normally prate on about Shannon information or something, but it was a very smart mathematician who asked me. I did eventually think of a reason though. A demo is never going to contain a model of a piece of paper on which its own source code (plus additional information) is written in the demo. So there have to be some limits. But the limits don't seems to have been reached yet, especially with better and better modelling in the hardware.
- Scene_Cast 15y ago
  Your piece of paper example caught me a bit off guard. It sounds pretty similar to a quine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) ). I think that the same thing is possible with a demo - write the code to render a piece of paper from an array of letters, and put that part of the source code into the array.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - wbhart 15y ago
    Yeah I'm wrong. What I had in mind I guess, is take an existing very impressive 64kb demo, then do this. That might be much harder, but not necessarily impossible in theory.
    - wbhart 15y ago
      A far better argument for me to have made is that it would be impossible to have a 64kb demo which models a surface on which is printed the source code of all 64kb demos written since the start of the scene decades ago. Of course, if equations that describe all of reality are discovered and fit in 64kb, and the graphics card contains a universe simulator, then maybe it's possible.

leon_ 15y ago

fr08 was their best work to me. I remember that summer - bought a new graphics card only to watch fr08 :)

web_chops 15y ago

It's amazing how they can fit that much detailed demo in 64kb along with sound. Feels magical :)

aw3c2 15y ago
Prepare to be amazed by 4k, Elevated by RGBA and TBC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWMGuh15nE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YWMGuh15nE
- psykotic 15y ago
  Or the 4k remake of Chaos Theory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAIaclLrKE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFAIaclLrKE. Elevated is a classic and a complete aesthetic package, but it's still a one-effect intro. Chaos Theory 4k is more varied but unfortunately it has a shitty synth.

frou_dh 15y ago

Fantastic tiny demos are truly the closest thing I've seen to magic. You know it's really a bag of tricks but it's simply so good.

exch 15y ago
I've always had a great deal of admiration for these kind of works. They elevate programming to an art form.

pkrefta 15y ago

Every time I see the this demo YT I want to teach myself C++ (despite I hate compiled languages) - this is great inspiration for me. Nowa days this graphics is not really that impressive but back in 2000 that was jaw-breaking OMG

buster 15y ago
I guess, you'll have to learn so much more then just C++, most likely assembler too, and a lot (lot lot lot) of tricks. Everytime i see those multi-minute long demos, with music and animations and see those in 64k (or even 4k intros!!) i'm baffled.
- enqk 15y ago
  asm is not required anymore (besides reading it for debugging or optimization purposes) you'd rather have to learn practical 3d/2d math and try many things out.
- skrebbel 15y ago
  In fact, you don't have to learn C++ either. You can use any native compiled language without problems (say, Pascal). You can also use any other language as long as its runtime is small enough. Most important though, much more so than whether you know C++, is knowing graphics programming. In fact, I've been calling myself a democoder for 10 years now, and I still suck at graphics programming, which is why my demos suck. Focus on the graphics, not the language. A fondness for math is much more important than a fondness for compilers. I'd recommend making a demo in your favourite programming language. Don't care about size, care about looks. Once you've learned to make it good, you can consider learning, say, C(++) to make it small enough for the 64k or 4k categories. Sidenote: most 4ks these days are entirely coded in a shader. This means you can mostly copy&paste the entire C part from somewhere, and start hacking GLSL or HLSL. Sure, you'd need to learn the shader language, but it's smaller and simpler than c++.
  - pjmlp 15y ago
    Actually in the PC Demoscene, many demos were done in Turbo Pascal with lots of inline assembly as well.

wbhart 15y ago

I imagined that demo skills would eventually die and the more recent stuff would just end up being bloated or lame. But it really has improved. Infeasibly improved. Debris is amazing. But it isn't the only more recent amazing demo. Someone once asked me whether there was a limit to how realistic demos can be made. I would normally prate on about Shannon information or something, but it was a very smart mathematician who asked me. I did eventually think of a reason though. A demo is never going to contain a model of a piece of paper on which its own source code (plus additional information) is written in the demo. So there have to be some limits. But the limits don't seems to have been reached yet, especially with better and better modelling in the hardware.

Scene_Cast 15y ago
Your piece of paper example caught me a bit off guard. It sounds pretty similar to a quine ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) ). I think that the same thing is possible with a demo - write the code to render a piece of paper from an array of letters, and put that part of the source code into the array.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- wbhart 15y ago
  Yeah I'm wrong. What I had in mind I guess, is take an existing very impressive 64kb demo, then do this. That might be much harder, but not necessarily impossible in theory.
  - wbhart 15y ago
    A far better argument for me to have made is that it would be impossible to have a 64kb demo which models a surface on which is printed the source code of all 64kb demos written since the start of the scene decades ago. Of course, if equations that describe all of reality are discovered and fit in 64kb, and the graphics card contains a universe simulator, then maybe it's possible.