01 апреля 2001

Демосцена

           Can You Say Dezign? By LaesQ / Raww Arse

How many times have you been sat infront of your Speccy watching
the latest demo release (most likely  Russian) and thought 'seen 
it before', or 'CHANGE  THE  EFFECT!!!!!'.  For myself and a few
others whom I  have raised this topic with agree with me - demos 
nowadays  have no real dezign element.

It seems that the Russian  sector of the scene have  adopted the
Amiga/PC  style of demo. You  know the usual full screen  effect
followed by another  full screen effect  followed by... You  get
the picture. But with this they seem to have left out the dezign
element.

So  what  is  this dezign  element? If  you're making  a trackmo
(something which  can't really  exist on  Speccy with  it's many
different  flavours of  disk systems  - See  below for  a brief
description),  everything (and  I mean  just about  everything!)
should flow  easily and  seamlessly. And  to add  to the overall
effect, it should be timed to the music.

I have seen brave attempts to  do this in a few Speccy  demos of
recent times. But  they only seem  to be able  to lead from  one
effect into another and then  that's it, back to the  usual show
effect - blank - show effect - blank - sequence.

I  think the  lowest form  of  effect  transforming must  be the
common fade  in/out. Even  that isn't  seen in  alot of demos of
today. And what happened to all those fancy clears, etc. All  it
takes  is a  simple  AND/OR  rountine! CLS  just doesn't  cut it
nowadays! USE YOUR IMAGINATION!

Morphing is another good form of effect transforming. I've  seen
morphing  of  basic shapes  (vector  style) and  even  a dancing
person. But no one seems to have seen the real potential  behind
morphing, well, not on Speccy at least.

Another thing is the 'When is this effect gonna end?'  scenario.
You know  what I  mean, you're watching a demo and  up come some
swirling dots. They swirl and they swirl and they swirl and  you
go and make yourself a drink and they're STILL swirling when you
come back!  Ok, so  you may  have spent  five years coding those
damn dots,  but making  someone watch  them for  five years just
isn't fun!  Don't you  coders speak  with other  members of your
group?  I'm  sure  they'll  tell you  when  an  effect  has been
displayed for long enough.

And stop coping other peoples effects EXACTLY!! Ok, so you found
a new and great  way to do it  that takes 5 tacts  less than the
original one, but  it looks EXACTLY  the same! Also  the average
demo watcher couldn't care less  if your effect takes up  70,000
tacts or 70 tacts! It's what it looks like that matters.

Don't think that  'demo' means  endless  effects either.  Take a 
leaf  out of Agent-X's book  and look  at  Hypersonic  II.  That
started with a small (funny) story. This seems to be one of very
few that  I've seen so far that has a story in it.  Some may say
that 'Condomed' had a story to it. Ok, yes it had a story to it.
But the action was still  and boring. But  it  was a foot in the
right direction. And what about the all time classic  'Beruska'?
I still have yet to see another  demo of this variety and class.

Have  a  sense  of  humour! So  many  demos  nowadays  are soooo
serious! I'm surprised half of the Speccy scene hasn't committed
suicide in the past year or two.

Anyway, I hope I've made myself clear and that some other Speccy
groups will read this and learn.

LaesQ / Raww Arse.

Trackmo  -  Derived  from  the  two  words  'track'  and 'demo' 
- meaning to show a demo by loading tracks of data from a disk.