How To Make Your Demo Look Good (Or At Least Not Suck)
- Demo Design For Beginners -
Introduction:
"Don't do as I do, do as I say"
Hello there. I've got this awful flu and I've been keeping myself entertained by watching through my entire demo collection and reading old Hugis. I decided to write this article because I keep seeing stupid mistakes that could be easily avoided. Most of them are due to ignorance or just simply inexperience and I thought it might be useful to the newcomers (and experienced sceners as well) to learn how to avoid them.
Please note that this is not an attack on newbies. We've all been there once, and being inexperienced does not equal to being stupid or lame or anything of such nature. I'm really a nice and friendly guy, so please don't take any of these critiques the harsh way. Feedback, flames, critique, questionsand the like will be much appreciated, you can (and should) e-mail me at mnurmika@cc.hut.fi.
About me? My real name is Martti Nurmikari, I'm currently 22 years old and I study at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. I've been following the scene since 1995, though I haven't contributed much myself (yet). Currently I'm a coder in Traction and Static, though the latter seems to be quite dead. If you're interested, here is my "scenegraphy":
Asm 1999 - Viping by NoID (Demo. Do not bother, it will probably not work on
modern computers :))
Asm 2000 - The Blue Man (4k intro. My highest-ranking production ever, second
place in the compo)
Asm 2002 - NET by Traction (I only did two effects for it)
Asm 2003 - Another Soul Lost (4k intro. My last DOS production, sixth place)
Asm 2003 - A Study in Lines and Textures (Eighth in the demo compo. Mostly coded
by me)
Asm 2004 - I Am (11th place)
I am fully aware that all of the productions I've named break the guidelines I'm about to talk about. It's a learning process, after all. The next one will be better ;) Also, from looking at my productions, you can clearly see that I favour a certain sort of design. I do appreciate other sorts of demos as well (and I'm planning on making some), so please don't assume that I hate everything that looks technological.
So, let's get down to business. First we should talk about the most important thing of all: