What I really love about the scene
What I really love about the scene?
Many things since I discovered it in 1992. I particulary love its music and the artistic gfx side. I also used to love the code but nowadays this doesn't attract me so much: I have nothing against DirectX nor OpenGL and they are mandatory with so much different hardware, but as they act as an interface between the coder and the hardware, they also cause a loss in coding depth, as there is less intimacy between the hardware and the coder... I mean as you don't directly talk to the computer with its own language by using video hardware registers for example, we cannot get the most of the hardware and we lose what has made demos so interesting in the past: there were IE overscans / hardware scrolling / digitized speech on Atari ST, and also several interesting tricks which aren't possible nowadays, such as trackloaders.
Don't misunderstand me: making a DirectX / OGL demo isn't purely pleasure, it isn't easy, it's hard and you must be respected for that, but there is something which is lost by not using hardware programming: It is called control, total control, total computer and hardware knowledge, total osmosis between the coder's mind and the CPU / GPU / Custom Chips. Moreover, total hardware experimentation is impossible to achieve nowadays: impossible to use the most of the CPU currently used on a typical (different from one's used by this democoder) PC : if you code on a Athlon XP 2200+, you can't optimize for a P4 2.4 and 2.8 and 3.2 GHz as all these CPU have different timings. This is what I call the "timing harmony break". Nowadays you can't try to put a special and forbidden value in a register to see what the result will be, you are forced to follow the guidelines. You cannot try using registers. So nowadays the coders' job is stunning in an artistic (beautiful curves, shapes, algorythmics) or mathematical (highly complicated formulas, very complex objects to render realtime) way. Of course coders use shaders and so use asm too but what I mean with loss of control is that in former times we weren't used to see overscan and people said it was never done before, how it's possible ? - and suddenly it turned out that it was possible. Limits where obvious to be seen and when they were exceeded this was clearly seeable. Nowadays we see demos without understanding what is extraordinary about them: Of course demos are original but as we don't know the hardware limits as we aren't educated of them, watching the demos doesn't demonstrate anything. Therefore I suggest coders to explain a bit what they do in demos as technological demo is interesting when explanations come along with the show. So please more buzz, so we can be more and more amazed. Tell us what you demonstrate, showing it isn't enough. Only the meaning has an importance in human life, give us information to get the meaning of your art, please give us the vocabulary of your language, please use drawing, schemes as a drawing is worth 1000 words and is instantaneously understood.
After this long explanation, which shows my ignorance of nowadays coding technics, I must say I love the scene whatever sceners have said in pouet posts. I love it as it's good to get a place where we can said everything with perfect freedom (somewhat limited with css tricks and firefox extension... We go slowly to a TCPA IT system with IT police everywhere, hopefully I will no more use computers at this time or will move to linux or Mac).
What I love in demos and in the scene?
Well, it's about freedom: freedom of action, freedom of speech, freedom of creation, freedom of attitude, freedom of improvement and innovation. It's fresh, it's new, it's living, it's young, it's always changing - well, it's computer and IT spirit in essence. It can't be defined, it's mystic, that's love.