Innovative Demos?

Written by Hot wire

I read with interest the article in Hugi 12 about having new ideas for demos. Being a member, in fact designer, in a group, who for many years on Amiga, and now on PC, create some fairly odd demos, I'd like to say that the PC scene is very unresponsive to new ideas. They like to pride themselves on being at the fore-front of technology, which may be true, but they certainly are not at the fore-front of ideas. The highest rated and most downloaded demos are all very similar. Grainy 3D effects, flashing on and off wire frame objects, Aphex Twin-style or Trance sound tracks, and shaking screens. Well the first few times you see this it's an amazing thing, 303 - Acme/Psychic Link, Megablast - Orange, these were thrilling, now it is dull and predictable. 3D worlds, 3D worlds every where and none of them are good. Okay okay some are, but they seem to have no purpose often, and very little to entertain. But these are the demos that get the votes, the prize money, the respect.

However this is not something new, the Amiga scene was around for years before it started to become truly innovative. 3D worlds now, Bob demos back then. Grainy shaking camera now, sinus scroll back then, Trance now, Europop back then. But it took groups like Andromeda, Kefrens and Melon. to lift it up to a better level, either through the shear brilliance and smoothness of the demos (Andromeda and Kefrens) or the craziness and innovation behind the demos (Melon. and Movement). What the PC scene needs is style leaders. We have Pulse, Orange and Statix, but they are fast falling into making the same demo over and over again, they are very nice for sure, but they are very similar.

So anyway, Tesko is creating full proper demos, but when we have time and for fun we make some funny idea that may have come out of a phone call (usually started "wouldn't it be funny if..."). The first result of this on PC is Ashtray. Since the release of Ashtray we have had a coder quit over artistic differences! and managed the princely prize of one star on hornet. This is quite amusing to me and has renewed my resolve to make more odd demos/intros.

You Have Been Warned.

Ashtray.zip is available from http://www.hornet.org.

- Hot wire / Tesko