Introduction to the Demoscene

[Discoalucard]

hg101.kontek.net/demoscene/demoscene.htm

I've heard the term "demoscene" in the past and was only vaguely aware of what it actually meant. This article serves as an introduction to discuss the scene, its origins, and its implications on game development, as well as various scene members that went on to go legit, form their own companies and make their own games.

That kkrieger thing impresses the hell out of me. 96k? Good christ. Most NES games were significantly larger than that.

[Gendo Ikari]

A correction about dates: Doom 3 was released in August 2004. I remember .kkrieger coming out that summer so it actually came a little before D3.

I remember when I and a friend, in the mid '90s, spent a lot of time watching demoscene animations that were included in the cover disks of a magazine. Some were bland, others impressive. There were also cracktros capable of playing high-quality mod music on the PC Speaker. Used as I was to bleeps and bland music, I was blown away by that.

[Deleted]

Cool article! I was already familiar with most of the stuff mentioned in the article, but there was plenty of new things too.

[kal]

Mark Ferrari's website depresses me a bit. Sad to see him basically abandon the unbelievably gorgeous pixel artworks he use to make.

[Weasel]

Nov 11, 2011 4:06:46 GMT -5 Gendo Ikari said:

A correction about dates: Doom 3 was released in August 2004. I remember .kkrieger coming out that summer so it actually came a little before D3.

Ooops. I thought Doom 3 had beaten .kkrieger to the punch, but if it came out before Doom 3 hit shelves, then that's actually an even bigger stride than I thought. I don't know why I keep thinking it was 2003.

I remember when I and a friend, in the mid '90s, spent a lot of time watching demoscene animations that were included in the cover disks of a magazine. Some were bland, others impressive. There were also cracktros capable of playing high-quality mod music on the PC Speaker. Used as I was to bleeps and bland music, I was blown away by that.

Heh, yep! My first real exposure to the demoscene was a copy of Bjorn Lynne's 12THWAR.MOD playing through the internal speaker of an old IBM Aptiva. =P

Mark Ferrari's website depresses me a bit. Sad to see him basically abandon the unbelievably gorgeous pixel artworks he use to make.

For reference, the artwork I borrowed was from this neat HTML5 color cycling demo - which is actually pretty cool on its own, if you have a browser that can display it.

[KeeperBvK]

I just wanted to thank you for this great article. I had never been interested in the demoscene at all, but your article was fascinating to read, while maintaining a perfect balance between being short enough to not eventually start boring me, and being long enough to cover enough interesting information for me to feel like I was missing out on something before. Excellent work.