64kb useless ???

[benny!]

Hi all...

I just want to start a little discussion about nowadays position of 64kb intros
in the scene. Some years ago - it really fascinates me what people can press
into just 64kb. But nowadays - it is even more fascinating seeing what people
can do in only 4kb. The quality of the effects and even the sound quality (ref.
to Gargajs softsynth e.g) are comparable to the quality of normal 64kb intros.

The only big difference I see is - that a 64kb contains more effects and is longer.
That leads me to another point -> compression and its relating decompression
time.

I have to say that there are some 64kb intros which truly rocks concerning their
quality. These intros definately have some amazing compression algos' and very
good algos for creating synth, textures and other stuff. But what is sometimes
really annoying is long decrunch-time (guess you all know the famous farbrausch
progress bar). And it is really a pity, but long decrunch times often keep me away
from watching a 64kb a second time because I dont want to wait each time.

The compression rate is comparably low for 4kb intros because there are not so
many bytes for compression algo's and stuff. And the decrunch time of nowadays
4kb intros are acceptable IMHO.


So what do you think about it ? Do you feel the same when you start a 64kb intro
the second time - and you have to wait about one minute until it is decompressed?

Should the scene drop 64kb development and focus on 4kb intros only

Or should there be a informal rule that a 64kb decompression may not take any longer
than a certain time ( ~ 10seconds ) on a standard computer.


Feel free to share your opinions about that with me

[p01]

As people said before, the techniques evolved to a point that the quality has shifted completely.

Today's 4kb are yesterday's 64kb.
Today's 64kb are the yesterday's demos.
Today's demo are yesterday's wild/animation.

I'd even go as far as to say that today's 1kb and 256b are yesterday's ( ok the day before ) 4kb.


I don't see a 1 minute generation/loading time as a big hurdle for a 3-7 minutes intro. Beyond 1 minute feels excessive but it can happen, especially with 4kb intros generating ambient occlusion maps, complex meshes, crazy softSynth, ... don't worry if a prod takes too long to generate its data people will bitch about it.

Why on earth should people stop doing 64kb ? This category is still challenging. Actually it offers more room for content and creativity than 4kb, i.e. speech synthesis and character animation remain scarce in 4kb but is not uncommon in 64kb.

All intro categories ( 64kb, 4kb, 1kb, 256b and less ) offer interresting and enough challenges for many people to produce quality productions of all kind and size. There's room and challenges for everyone.

[ninogenio]

i dont think you could take away 64k or restrict it to a certin decrunch time as this is just limiting peoples creativity.

having said that i can see where your coming from benny 1min+ is a long time to wait for a demo im one of those people who dont care about small demos i have all my resources external and have very small loading times.

[Ghost^BHT]

In my warped opinion size don't matter. Its the end result for me. I realize that more and more small code is thought to be the measuring stick along with content, design etc.  i'd rather watch big and good rather than small and bad. But I'm not scener so I look at things different. I look at design, sync, ambiance and story thread if there is one, not the size. The race to get the most stuff in the smallest package is a coders quest, which should be appreciated, surely. If I were a coder i would look at things differently. 

as compilers get better and coders get more clever things will change and changes will eventually lead to more compotition and creativity.........

As far as decrunch/build times i don't mind unless its crap after a long wait and if there is some sort of status bar telling me that something is going on. I hate it when just a black screen shows and u don't know wheather its hung, crashed or what. Thats an instant delete for me.

[Shockwave]

Heck of a statement to make, that a 64kb is useless category, but interesting. I think we can safely say that it has changed over time. Given enough precalculation time, any amount of data can be generated, especially as todays computers have so much available memory..

I don't think 64kb is a waste of time, it's more a case of proving who has the best demo tool. It's a really competitive category. The only constraint is size, therefore having a demo that takes minutes to precalculate is acceptable.. This is not clever for me and detracts from the actual viewing of it. Your expectations are always much higher after staring at a progress bar for ages.

Actually it is favourable to download the video of a demo in some cases, at least it will run properly, if you want to watch it again then the precalc time is zero and as you are downloading the video you can do something else in the background which would kind of make the category redundant I think But yet again it isnt.

Why do I always look forward to the 64kb compo entries?

There is a certain style to them, it's different to all the other categories of demos. They all have thier place, it's just that they are evolving.

[mike_g]

I pretty much agree with Ghost^BHT on this. The end result is the most important to me.

While its quite amazing what clever people can fit into so few bytes, personally I'd prefer to watch a 128K demo than the same demo done in 64K that takes ages to decompress. The whole video thing seems a little ironic to me. You can watch a 64K demo that takes ages to decompress or a 200MB video that takes ages to download.

[taj]

As people said before, the techniques evolved to a point that the quality has shifted completely.

Today's 4kb are yesterday's 64kb.
Today's 64kb are the yesterday's demos.
Today's demo are yesterday's wild/animation.

I'll go further than p01 - whose opinion I respect v. much.
Demos are dead. Its a waste of time and energy. They are beaten by games, animations, movies, scientific visualisations, you name it. The only thing remaining "advantage" in demos is style. So if you intend to do demos, get attitude real quick. If you think demos arent dead, you dont watch animations beyond the demo scene which are often more inventive and have higher production values. Art is of course ones own opinion so I cant comment.

FR restored my faith in anything >64k at BP07. Still they used only 177k. 

64k Is the toughest category of all. Its a demo (as p01 says) in 64k. Thats not a lot. RGBA make me smile. They take Plastic demos and crunch them to 64k with technical expertise that is outstanding. Thats where the real wow is now. I love IQ and would happily have his babies. For 64k you need tons of code, a kick ass synth (so you need to know what you are doing), speech, animation, models, texgen (the easy part) and a ton more stuff. It demonstrates you not only can crunch but you can write tons of coherent code. 64k is the first level that allows "soul" in my opinon.

4k is an awesome category and a real technical challenge but til today lacks the art of 64k. Its a matter of time though. But the truth is 4k is, today, still a 1 effect category (+ glow or something equally downloadable). Nontheless PS3.0 + geometry shaders of dx10 will lead us to a whole new world of software rendered 4k intros that will blow away anything - *anything* - we see today. I predict ambient occlusion, HDR, complex curved models and some style in 4ks within 12 months. Likely we will see real raytraced intros of some value with next gen cards too. (nvidia 9XXX).

Nontheless 64k still allows room for a truly killer intro but to be honest 64k is killing demos. Demoscene is dead. Long live introscene.


Chris

[benny!]

4k is an awesome category and a real technical challenge but til today lacks the art of 64k.
Its a matter of time though. But the truth is 4k is, today, still a 1 effect category (+ glow
or something equally downloadable). Nontheless PS3.0 + geometry shaders of dx10 will lead
us to a whole new world of software rendered 4k intros that will blow away anything - *anything*
- we see today. I predict ambient occlusion, HDR, complex curved models and some style
in 4ks within 12 months. Likely we will see real raytraced intros of some value with next gen
cards too. (nvidia 9XXX).

That would be faboulus. Hopefully your prediction come to truth


@topic:

Nice to hear your opinions about it. Especially like "Demos are dead" and that they are
beaten concernig graphic quality by games and stuff is on the one hand shocking and on the
other hand true. So crunching everything into a certain kbyte limit makes actually sense to
have some additional competition.

The art factor of the demoscene is still there IMHO. But cant be hardly judged - thats
true. Will see how things evolve ...

[ferris]

It's probably true that demos are being entirely replaced by 64k intros. However, I believe the same is not happening to 64k's by 4k's. I mean, 4k's are of course getting more and more complex - they always will. But that doesn't at all mean 64k's aren't either.

Demos will always be around, as long as there're people who don't care to procedurally generate everything.

Who know what the future of the demoscene will bring? We've got some very creative and smart people in the scene these days that are completely able to exploit a maching in such ways to produce nearly anything.

[taj]

Demos will always be around, as long as there're people who don't care to procedurally generate everything.

True Thygrion, I agree 100% - its a cool category for the artists and musicians especially who can express more freely in demos.
But I want to point out how many demos v intros are in the pouet all time top ten:
3 demos (one of which is 177k so I call it an intro)
6 64ks
1 256b

or to put it another way, 8 intros, 2 demos.

Demos will always be with us, but the real spirit of the demoscene, ironically, now lies with intros and I think the votes on pouet tell us this clearly. Size matters ;-).

Chris

[benny!]

@taj:

Interesting to see the pouet stats. Never really looked at the top10 in that
way. Wondering when the first 4kb productions will be in it 


@thygrion:

good points. and I also agree 100% that existance of demos are cool for sceners
who just want to express something without caring about a certain size limit. That
would bring me back to this topic : Storylined Demos.

[benny!]

Hehe ... just browsing the results for Function 2008 and thought about this old topic.
Well, over a year has passed since I started this topic - and it really seems that the
interests in creating 64kb productions is decreasing.

As I stated before - I can totally understand that ppl either wants to have a size-
challange and therefore take the 4kb-challenge or concentrating on effects without
caring about filesizes and producing full demos.

Well, I think the category 64k still deserves its place in the scene - just think
about all upcoming various new platforms (e.g. Mac, Flash, Linux). Since those
platforms may not have tools like crinkler and so on - the 64k-limitation might be a
good challenge for them.

However, IMHO the 64k-category in general lost their attractiveness on windows.
jaja ... I know - how can I say this without having done a 64k myself...

Just my 2cts.

[Shockwave]

4kb is the new 64kb nowadays, I feel it more and more.

Sad also that my old group S!P didn't release anything at function, I was thinking that they had something in progress, oh well.

Try running the comp entries though on an ati card.. unless you have nvidia you can forget it, scene is all nvidia these days and fair play to nvidia for sponsoring scene parties, they even gave a demo dox away to sundown organisers, a party with only a couple of dozen people... Why don't ATI take that initiative?

Another question... How about dropping 64kb categories to say... 32kb? Hopefully we'd end up with something new!