This introduction to the world of demo makers was written by Rasmus
Christian Kaae, a very passionate demo maker.
First I think you should know that there are many different kinds of demos
and all of them has their individual beauty. In the
hard-core corner we have the size-optimized demos which normally are called
intros. These comes in many different sizes, the
smallest are 128 bytes and the biggest are 64kb. Secondly there are demos that
take up anything from 64kb up to 10mb. A major point to be taken about all of
these demos and intros is that everything is being rendered real-time - just
like your favourite game! All the mentioned demos and intros here are for
either Windows or DOS (unless anything else is mentioned).
The
art of making demos dates all the way back to the early 1980s where it was used
by pirate-groups to promote their new cracks and to show off their skills. As
the use of Amiga, C64 and PCs began to get common in the average household the
demos also got more popular. Most people who owned an Amiga was used to and
loved the creativity and the eager demo teams (who doesn't remember State of
All the way up through the 90s demos were one of the most inspiring places for
game-companies to get in contact with new programmers, graphicians and
musicians. Even though the games of today set the standard in hi tech
programming the demos and intros to come are worth the download!
In
this category I will put anything up to 4kb. These productions are normally
produced by one or more coders that are dedicated to generate all data needed.
In the extreme cases everything has to be hand crafted from self-invented formulas
and in other cases the data can be derived from generic procedures.
The smallest intros normally runs under DOS, since this leaves the programmer
with more space open for effects. In DOS you can initialise the
graphics-adapter in very few bytes whereas windows requires
alot more initialising. These small intros have one goal - to impress other
coders! The code is normally written in hard-core low-level assembly which
takes alot of time to program.
All
though the title of this part may be abit wrong, since the "big"
intros are up to 64kb in size (which means you can have more than 20 of these
beauties on a single 1.44MB disk!!). These intros requires hard-work from all
involved parties, the coder has to size optimize the code, the graphician has
to limit his resources and the musician has to work in very little space.
Most data in intros are generated, leaving space for other things like music
re-player, effects and so on. The generated data takes up very little space
whereas the compressed data takes up many percent of the final intro. If you
wonder how little space you have if you are a graphician or musician just try
to make a picture in your favourite paint-program and save it and see how small
you picture has to be just to fit in 4kb or so (leaving space for other things
music re-player, effects, and so on).
The heaviest work involved in these 64kb intros are performed by the coders and
it is often also the coders who designs and makes everything fit together.
These
are the main event at every demo party. The consist of
many days/weeks/months of hard work. Demanding high quality
work performed by the coder, graphician and the musician.
All though the size limit of these demos are remarkably higher than the intros
they are not easy to make. To produce a good demo everything has to fit
together 100% No "oops"-graphics or the likes can be made. Which also leads a very high quality in the final demos.
There are many different ways of creating a demo. Some
demo-groups likes that the coder produces massive amounts of effects and the
rest of the group collects them a make a good looking demo. Others
prefer that there is a general outline or design of the demo which is later
implemented to a final demo. And the list of different working methods is unlimited, everyone has their own way of working and doing
creative work.
In a closing I
would like to say that if you have any questions about demo programming (or the
demo-scene in general), feel free to e-mail me at macaw@hotmail.com or try
posting on comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos (newsgroup). The demo-scene is all about
friendship (and having fun)!