The importance of moral support

Written by EP

After the huge feedback on Hugi 29 at pouet, and by that I mean both the comments about the Save The Scene (STS) article and the comments about Hugi in general, we have acknowledge a few things:

1st: A huge number of sceners, however annoyed and upset by the mag for several issues, still read it and that is an important part of why we make it.

2nd: A lot of comments were helpful, even if ironic and mocker, to improve the mag quality.

After all this word war at pouet, I wrote Adok a long email explaining that we had to improve the mag quite a lot and how to do that. Among the changes, a very high selectivity was mandatory because the level of articles and artworks included wasn't scene like. By that I mean the scene is a place where only the best survive, that means we aren't producing this art for mass appreciation but for the top of the crop in the computer artwork community, that is you, demomakers. That's indeed the message I wanted to convey through STS: improve the quality of releases, of those which don't get to the top 10. What convinced me to write STS was a big anguish coming from the new demo style and demoscene spirit as seen in pouet and diskmags and the fact my computer wasn't powerful enough to watch demos properly: the result on screen was rubbish hence I was thinking the scene was dead or almost dead. In my times demos were supposed to use the hardware to the max and the shows were fantastic with just 8 MHz CPUs so seeing so many slowdowns on a 400 MHz one was a real shock! For the rest, I wasn't very attracted anymore by the scene because I didn't and still don't know very many new sceners, new groups and I've totally lost my love for computer coding, while I had strong feelings for it years ago. When you spend 40 / 50 hours in front of a screen you don't get much attraction for scene art, especially if you don't see where the challenge is, and without scrolltexts to get info about the underlying technology it was hard to be attracted again: technical attraction is made of meaning.

With some feedback and some support and a lot of work we get better and better Hugi issues as you've surely noticed. I didn't save the scene obviously but I've contributed to saving Hugi with all the other writers and contributers. But we need more because Hugi is your mag and we all need your articles, pictures, music, sources codes, tools, ideas, criticism, suggestions, and support. And we would like to get it both at pouet of course but also directly to our email boxes as it's more personal. Adok got overworked last issue and that's why we got a one-month delay: he had too much to do by himself. So we now need your support more than ever: our main editor follows two degrees courses at the same time, one in IT and another in medicine, it's not easy, he needs help and encouragements, the same goes for all other members. Making the mag is a hell of work, because we need some time to chase you, to convince you, to mail you again and again to get your answers months after months of waiting, please be more communicative: the mag gives you a way to be remembered by sceners, it's not as evanescent as a forum and you can get deeper in what you write there in. If you don't have time, just drop us a sentence as most people do, it's really important so we can focus on other tasks. Some writers / interviewees are very, very reactive, I thank them so much. We now conduct interviews and articles writing using Google Docs because it's best for everybody: you can work on your article / interview whenever you want, everywhere, and we can share the load, this saves both your and our time. We also try to interview you in your mother tongue. Please bear in mind the deadline however. I would like to thank all of you who have participated in the past issues: we need you again and again of course and we value your work, if you've talented sceners friends don't forget to ask them to participate too. The more we are, the easier it is because by nature a mag is a compilation of small parts, so parallel work is high.

Moral support is what makes demomaking valuable: sceners are very proud to get some feedback about their productions, so don't hesitate to write them an email. Scrolltexts were in demos since the beggining for this particular purpose: communicate between the team of makers and the other demomakers while giving fans some technical infos and keeping the show humane and entertaining. Bring them back, that really brings more emotions to the show: written language is a convention all people understand and attract too, just watch advertisements around you as a proof.

Now, I'm very happy to see the return of some of the best, I want to support:

1. Andromeda of course who is imho the best A500 group with enchanted music and gfx thanks to Lord Helmet, I mean Archmage, bedeviled copy paste!!! ;), perfectly synced effects and so majestically designed demos thanks to the 'Stalin' of the scene aka Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. If they are hard with you, that's because they love you and value quality demos which will make you happy, they are classy, valuable and principled and their demomaking requires some 'Stalinian' disciplined steps: 3D raytraced scrolltexts are well worth that and Zine is great but needs a better, more compatible interface IMHO while Nexus 7 needs the ability to use fast ram. Apart from that Andromeda is a future number 1 and that means demos will become even better than they are.

2. Alcatraz, the story tellers with an awesome disk numbers needed for a production, 6 for Odyssey but it's well worth that: they know how to write a scenario and make show, they are French et bienvenue de retour dans la scene.

3. Kefrens the melon eaters, great story tellers, dots record breakers with their very nice design, astonishing music and well scanned graphics!!!, well sometimes, RWO proved he was a great graphician too at another time... Their cinema-like production will bring back the good old demo ambience, keep the effort Mellica, Razmo. Perhaps Laxity will join back?

Proof is that the scene is made by sceners and good arrogance's back. We aren't there for fun and friendship either: we do this for sex! ;) Soon we will get oldskool styled demos back on our screens and Andromeda proved it: even newskoolers love it! Be arrogant, that motivates people: it's sexy! And never forget: if you can't do it better then why do it?

EP