Q: Subculture?
A: Early program protection cracks were accompanied by a team "logo" executable, promoting the team's quality of work.
In time, the "trademark" making procedure separated from the actual crack and became an art by itself.
Q: Non-interactive?
A: The presentation is linear and does not change by user/viewer input actions.
Q: Real-time?
A: The presentation is not by any means pre-rendered. Everything is done by programming instructions, from 3d effects to even text and music!
So, procedural programming and algorithms are essentially used for every aspect: 3d rendering, "material", effects, text, music etc.
Q: How does it run?
A: Every demo is made for a specific platform. Even now there are contests for older computers like Atari ST and Amiga, or consoles like Gameboy!
To run a dos-based demo we would need either a real DOS OS equipped PC, or a dos emulator like Dosbox.
A simple Dos prompt might be insufficient considering limited full-screen or sound-reproduction capabilities.
Some modern demos run also natively on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX etc.
Q: In what programming language is a demo written?
A: Assembly in the early days, but in time C and C++ were also used.
Now, even BASIC, Flash and macros are used as "platforms" in special contests.
Q: Only programming is required?
A: That's the real challenge, yes. Even sound-music is made using sound synthesis algorithms (like a synthesizer).
But there are cases that the executable can be accompanied by a data file.
Q: Why is the Demoscene music style so "ambient" and "techno"?
A: One reason is the era that the subculture rose. Another is that such styles of music is heavily "pattern" based.
Melodic, harmonic rhythmic & sound ambience ideas - forms are repeated over and over so it's ideal for sound synthesis procedural programming.
Once a procedure for a pattern is made, although stored once in the executable, it can be called as meny times as needed in run time!
This page will orient to 64k intros, meaning demos limited to a size of 64 kilobytes!
64k is not that small a size. It refers only to the file size. When running, the program can consum much larger memory space.
And anyway we modern users are spoiled by the amounts of cpu power, storage and RAM that we are enjoying nowdays.
But the truth is that 32k of RAM took us to the moon, 4k made fantastic games, 64k took Graphics User Interfaces up and 28k could run applications.
The 64k barrier is traditional for the x86 IBM compatible PC systems. 64k is segmentation and COM executable size limit.
64k is also well suited for incorporating decent audio quality as well as graphics in demos.
Seeing videos of demos can not compare to actually running them. It's not only the quality that we get wnen we run them, it's the whole idea that what we see and hear is produced by our CPU!
Resolution and frame issues upon watching Demoscene videos happen only because of video quality for streaming purposes.The demos themselves produce excellent quality!
But at least you will get an idea of the Demoscene.
| Some links to great
64k intros, by video representation |
| Drift |
1995 | Youtube
link |
| Exceed - Heaven Seven | 2000 | Youtube link |
| Farbrausch - fr-08: .the .product | 2000 | Youtube link |
| Conspiracy - Beyond | 2004 | Youtube link |
| Fairlight - Dead Ringer | Youtube link |
Page will update soon with more links.
For a more detailed info on the Demoscene, visit this Wikipedia link!