±12 Celebrity: Chaos/Sanity ±13------------------------------------- ±12by Dolphin ±12"Tell us about your favourite demos". ±13 Chaos/Sanity ±11Old demos: The screens from Mr. Mega Mind in the Dexion Mega demo 1 &2 because he was the first to do zooming :-), Hunt 4 7th oct and Complex Vectorpreview because it's still the best vectors I've ever seen in an Amiga demo (this is why most vectors suck, I've seen something better 2 years ago therefore I must vomit...) New demos: 2D-Demo 3 (?) by Hannibal, because of some cool effects, mucke and gfx, Announce (see below), Desert Dream because it contains most of my effects in a nice design (If Laxity start inventing his own effects instead of copying everything, he might become an excellent coder. We should better prepare for something really good from him in future. Well, when I did a "best of Sanity" and called it WoC, everybody said that it is lame to use the same effects twice, but if someone copies effects from other persons without even improving them, isn't this even more lame?) ±12"In your opinion, who is the best coder in the scene, today?" ±11On Amiga: No question. Hannibal. For example: Many coders copied my Rotator-idea (Amiga-Rules effect, by the way, it runs much better on an Atari ST because of other Bitmap organisation, so in this case, Atari rules. If you don't believe, just get a copy of the "A Grumbler in the season" demo from electricity and see my screen...). But nobody except Hannibal found out, how the effect works. For the assembly invitation, they precalculated the whole rotation and made a lame realtime zoom, in Desert Dream Laxity rotates so few dots that there is absolutely no problem (he does it in a rather stupid way, but it works since there are so few pixels to rotate). Hannibal even improved my basic algorithm. I rotated a 64x64 Pixel picture (this is the size of the picture in memory, not the size of the screen display). Using Plasma for display simplifies things, so if I would have used Plasma, I would have made 128x256 Pixels (I didn't use plasma because of several reasons, you will find out when you see my next demo...). With Hannibals improvement, 256x512 pixels are possible. And he also used a great Copper-Technique (just compare the tiny and ugly display in Desert Dream with the big high-resolution display in Announce). Perhaps this question is so easy to answer because there are only few "real" coders left on Amiga, on ST/Falcon are many coders that are better (like Rapido/Synergy, and perhaps even Fury/Legacy, who might release something on A1200). ±12"Why do you/don't you like design?" ±11If you have a good designed demo with good effects, this is of course better then having a bad designed demo with bad effects. But the "standart" today is having good designed demos without effects. (just look at melon, except "how to skin a cat"). The problem is, what people expect from a demo. In the past (well, 3 years ago), the coders did what they liked best: Coding difficult effects. They were quite proud of this and when they got enough effects, they put them all on one disk, made a loader that loads them and released thier new "Mega Demo". These were the good old times, when coders where real coders, demos where real demos (that actually "demonstrate" something) and swappers were unimportant. In the ST-Scene, swappers are still unimportant and therefore ST-Coders still code megademos (with real menus, so you can select the effect you want to see a part directly, because you want to show someone how difficult the code is). On Amiga, you must code the demo for Swappers, if you want to have success in the charts and competitions. Since most swappers are generally stupid, they don't know how difficult something is. Even more, they are not interested in how difficult something is. They expect us doing something that looks like MTV. They expect what THEY call "design". I tell to these people: If you want to see something like MTV, then just switch on the bloody telly and WATCH MTV. If you want to see Animations (Speed, State of the Art, Mobile), then use a camcorder. But WE CODERS can do much more then just stupid animations, we can do REAL DEMOS! "Design" was invented in the 1920's (just think about "Bauhaus") to presentate something in a better way. But in demos today, the design presents just the design, isn't there missing something? Isn't it a bit useless to present a 40 pixel high ball or a sinescroller? Even if it is good designed, it is still nothing, isn't it? There's one more point. I am a coder, and for me it is fun to code difficult routines. Sometimes (about once a year) it happens that I finish something great and then I just watch it for hours (all though few of these effects have been released). (Sometimes it even happens that I see something great that has been coded by someone else and then I curse him to death because he thought it would be "good design" to show it only a few seconds (Hannibals dot sphere, Video-Feedback in the Shining 40K intro), I'd like to see these effects for hours, too) Coding the effect takes usually 2 weeks to 4 weeks (if it is really great). But then I have to spend twice as much time in designing the effect, and when I finished, sometimes the effect is less bombastic, but better looking. Furthermore, doing the design work is just BORING. So there is a good chance that my next big demo will come with very little design (who likes to do boring work?) but great effects. It will be less succesfull, but it will be much more fun doing and it will be released just in time. Perhaps my problem is that I don't like Tekkno. State of the Art and all other teckno demos are just a big pile of shit to me, because very bad music, no graphics, no code, ugly design (just flashing and stupid things). ±12(Now a short answer): ±11I code for fun. In the past I coded for fame. But now, I just want to code effects, and doing design is simply boring. Music Sync is important and easy to do, and I like it. I also like good transitions (like Yesterday), but it's too much work. If you can't do it better why do it?? ±12 Demo or die! ±13Chaos/Sanity... ç