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(c) 1999 Adok/Hugi
This article will give you some initial, basic
information about the demoscene.
The demoscene arose partly from the cracker class
1980s on home computers like the Commodore 64. Crackers
were people who were involved in the illegal extraction of protection from
copying from games and programs, and also distributing hacked
programs. Crackers exist all over the world. From the time when
they united into groups in order to more effectively
hacking. In addition, they took pseudonyms for themselves (nicks, nicks,
handles) to be known in the crack scene while hiding
real names.At some stages it became necessary to give
a short introduction to my hacked games and programs. This
they wanted to show people that they can do more than just hack
programs, but also know many secrets and possibilities
computer hardware and programming. These small intros
were usually small programs that displayed on the screen
moving text with information about the crack group, greetings,
logo or any other picture drawn by one of
group members, and background music.
Soon the intro became one of the main aspects in
competition between various crack groups. Now the best
of them are not only capable of hacking many modern games
as quickly as possible, but also to create
sometimes very original intro. Over time, formed
groups that specialized in creating intros for crack groups.
At some point, there were so many groups creating intros,
that they broke away from the cracker scene and formed a new one
legal scene based on programming and graphics:
demoscene.
The word "demoscene" comes from the words "demo", i.e.
an abbreviation for "demonstration". In theory, demo isand there is
intro. Their purpose is to demonstrate the capabilities of their
programmers, designers and musicians. But these demos weren't
limited in size like their crack-intros cousins, because
they did not spread with them.
Demos have evolved over time. Soon endless
collapsing text was gradually replaced by more advanced ones
effects like shadebobs, plasmas, rotozoomers and fire.
Later, 3D effects became very popular. They
usually used in modern demos. Starting with simple objects
like rotating cubes, now they have grown into realistic ones
three-dimensional spaces like in the games Doom or Quake.
The use of various shading and anti-aliasing effects made
3D worlds are very similar to real ones. Now to make a demo
popular, it is almost necessary to have your own 3D engine.
This is why every demo programmer needs good knowledge
mathematics.
In the beginning, programmers themselves wrote music and created
graphics for their demos, but these roles were soon taken over by others
members of the group, each doing their own thing. Now they all
who creates the demo are divided into the following categories:
Coders: programmers demo. Theyresponsible for graphic
and sound effects, for the correct operation of the code and for synchronization
individual effects and pictures with music. On PC coders
usually use assembler or Watcom C++ in DOS or Visual
C++ for Windows.
Graphicians: artists also called GFXers, GFXians and
etc. They create the graphics and logo presented in the demo.
Real artists don't use scanned images, but
draw pictures pixel by pixel in programs such as
Deluxe Paint II. Later, many switched to more advanced
Photoshop program. In addition to this, some artists
They also write scenes in 3D editors: 3d Studio, Bryce, etc.
Musicians: musicians, also composers. They write music for
demo. There are many styles of music, although usually
musicians specialize in one style. For
Fast tracker programs are used to write compositions,
Impulse tracker or Scream tracker.
Designers: designers create the main idea, demo concept
and then discuss its reproduction with other group members.
Often the designer may be a Coder or a Graphician.
Group Organizers: Also called Group Leaders. Main
how these people are responsible for the issuesrelative to the group,
for example, choosing who can join the group or who
should ee leave, projects and plans of the group and who is what
doing work. Their competence also includes PR issues
(Public Relations), contacts with other demo groups, etc.
In addition, there are people who are not directly involved
work on demo, for example, distributors (sysops for
BBS support for access to demo, FTP server administrators,
webmasters, mailers, etc.), electronic editors
magazines (diskmags) dedicated to the demo scene.
An important part of today's demo scene is Parties.
Large or small, international or local, organized
the same demosceners or their professionally organized
group, they are held throughout the year. Everyone can meet here
sceners, exchange a few tricks and just have a good time
spend time together. Usually, when going to such a party, you take c
is a computer. The most important part of such meetings is
Compos. All demos are presented to the audience on the big screen,
graphics, music tunes and other works of participating groups and
artists. Viewers can then vote for the best
seen and heard demo, and shortly before the end there will be
results announced. The winning group orthe artist will
invited to the stage where emy will be presented with prizes - CDs, T-shirts
or money. The size of the prize depends on the party and its organizers. On
big parties (The Party, Assembly) can sometimes be won
several thousand dollars!
By the way, this is the only financial incentive for
writing demo. Except for this, all demosceners write
free. However, some artists who have already made a name for themselves
have a high chance of getting jobs in gaming companies.
For example, some employees of the EIDOS company (who released Tom
Raider are members of the demo group Black Lotus.
Today, the average age of a demoscener is about 20
years Many of them are computer and science students
education, and younger ones study in higher schools. In the majority
In their own way, demosceners are intelligent and smart people.
In addition to creating demos, demosceners also work
production of other products - music discs (compilations
musical works associated with a graphical interface),
art discs (also, only one graphics), wild demos (products
like demo, which did not fit into the rules of Parties, others
demo/animation for non-standard systems like PSX) or intro.
Now the intro rules have changed a little compared tofirst:
intro is a standard demo, but limited in size - 64
kilobyte, i.e. the maximum size of such is 65535 bytes and 4
kilobyte, i.e. 4096 bytes.
In addition, there is Diskmags. As was said, this
electronic magazine. It includes a unique c interface
graphics and music and several hundred kilobytes of articles. All topics
magazines are mostly related to demoscene, but there are
Several diskmags where other topics are highlighted.
As usual, diskmags publishes news from the scene,
interviews with famous sceners, results and reports from Parties,
tricks for coders, graphicians and musicians, various
disputes and comments about the latest developments (as c
technical and from a general point of view), demo and charts reviews.
There are many different FTP servers on the Internet and
demoscene web pages. One of the most popular
servers - (www.hornet.org) Hornet, containing a huge archive
demoscene works since 1992. Unfortunately, Hornet Archive
is now closed. A promising archive has appeared (www.trebel.org)
Trebel, site (www.scene.org) scene.org, which hosts
FTP and web servers group pages. Regarding sites
news, I can recommend (www.scene-central.com) Networkand (ojuice.citeweb.net) Orange Juice. The latter also has
excellent catalog of demosceners with autobiography and photographs.
The most important of the demoscene newsgroups are
are comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos, available on most
Usenet, alt.trebel.* and news.scene.org servers.
Sceners, as a rule, sign documents with their nickname
(nick), slash "/" and the name of your group. For example, "Adok/Hugi"
means I am Adok, a member of Hugi. If you are a member of more than one
groups, you can list all their names in the same way,
for example, "Unreal/Pulse/CNCD". In the middle of this decade we switched to
a more fashionable "^" icon instead of the usual "/": "Adok^Hugi".
Some people also use periods or underscores:
"e605.sdi", "fear_tbl". The main reason for this is that slash
cannot be used in nicknames on Internet Relay Chat (IRC),
became popular on the PC scene in 1995.
Stage Slang
Now you see how many demosceners there are around the world.
Now you may be wondering "how do they connect?" Answer
is simple: almost all of them speak English and
demosceners use this language to communicate with co-sceners from
other countries.In "stage English" there are, however, some
specific features. Not only sceners use
abbreviations and abbreviations common throughout
Internet, for example "U" instead of "you", "CU" instead of "see you",
"w8" - "wait", "10x" or "thx" instead of "thanks", "btw" - "by the
way", "IMHO" - "in my humble opinion", "ppl" - "people", "aka"
or "a.k.a" - "also known as". There are many words and ways
spellings that may seem strange to others.
As for spelling, some people replace the letter
"s" at the end of a word pluralizing the letter "z" when
they want to seem "cool". Therefore, the word "demos" is gradually
becomes "demoz". The letter "f" became "ph" and the words c
endings "ks" or "ts" are now replaced with "x": "phreaks" and
"phreax". Sceners also write in lowercase letters, because
that it's faster and looks cooler.
Below are some important words that appear in
diskmags. I will try to explain their meanings below.
Compo: abbreviation for Competition (competition, competition)
Credits: shows who created this part of the work
demoscenes.
Ripping: This means that someoneuses the original
code, graphics, music, samples, etc. from someone else's
works in their own right, without the consent of the authors and
indication of information about sources. Ripping is considered serious
breaking the rules of the demoscene. However, with those who sue
for ripping, other demosceners simply won't talk.
Dude, Dewd: synonym for "person", person.
Bug: software error, defect.
Lamer: This is quite an offensive word. On the one hand,
sceners call lamer people with bad behavior, for example,
due to the fact that the person is engaged in ripping'om. On the other hand
This is what people with very little experience are called. But this is not good.
The demoscene needs talented and educated individuals.
Elite: the opposite of lamer. Some people think
that they are talented, have created good works and themselves
elected Elite. This word is used in an ironic sense to
descriptions of people who think of themselves as "stage gods", but before
still have not been able to show a single drop of their skill and talent.
"Elite" guys and good stage works "rule", a
"lamers" and all the bad "suck".
Eleet, 31337: Another way to spell Elite.
Advert: Mailswappers (those whoengaged in exchange
stage works via mail) usually give a small
advertising information along with the ASCII logo, your addresses and
other information in diskmags. This is a way to make new connections,
contacts.
Contact: contact with another demoscener you are with
exchanges works and letters. Basically the term
"contact" is only used by mailswappers.
Scene Stuff: any demoscene products.
Greetings: greetings from friends and other sceners in the section
"Greetings" to your demos, diskmags and your other works.
If one group greets another, it is called "group
greetings".
Respects: Same as greetings. Intended for scener'am,
whose creativity you admire, but have no connection with.
Warez: Illegal, pirated copies of protected programs
legal laws.
Mag, Zine: Abbreviations "diskmag". Amiga sceners are called
their diskmags as "ScenZines".
BBS: Bulletin Board System. You can get to the station
BBS using a modem or ISDN. On demo BBS you can
download or burnworks scenes, chat
(chat) with other users or leave a message in
conferences. BBS have been common in the demoscene in the past,
now they have been replaced by FTP servers.
Oldskool: people making their demos in style,
previously distributed. The so-called "old school".
ASCII/ANSI: ASCII is the standard MS-DOS character set. Yes
called "ASCII artists" make logos and pictures using
ASCII characters only. ANSI is a text format type,
used on many BBS. ANSI allows characters to be output
ASCII in various color combinations and special attributes, e.g.
flickering letters. There is also a separate stage, independent
from the demoscene, whose members create graphics in ANSI.
file_id.diz: small file that comes with most
programs containing a small description are mainly used
on BBS. Also used in demoscene productions, where in files
file_id.diz contains a logo made of ASCII characters.
Teht was "ripped" ;) from Hugi diskmag
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