Why you should not use MP3s in your demos

Written by toadward

If you use MP3s in your demos, then you could also play a video instead of running the demo. That's my opinion.

A demo is a very traditional thing. At the beginning of the nineties the demo groups showed the other people what you can do with the small resources like diskspace and memory, if you optimize your program code in speed and size.

Today we have a lot of MHz, GB and memory. But there are also 4Kb, 32Kb and 64Kb intro/demo competitions. Why? They who code such pieces of code are the real rulers of the scene. They show us up to 4 or 5 minutes of unbelieveable graphics effects in a 64Kb program.

If you use an MP3 instead of a module in your demo, it won't be a demo in the original sense. It is very easy to create 3D landscapes or bouncing balls in a video with a special program, but it is even better, if you create such effects with a self-coded program (demo) just 1 or 2 MB large instead of 50 or 100 MB. Then you produced a piece of art you can be proud of and if it is really great, you will gain much of fame for it.

So try to improve the quality of the demos today and optimize them in speed and size. This will also kill all the lamer groups in the scene who waste our diskspace and memory for something which can be done even better.

Best wishes

toadward / zp