[HN Gopher] Teach Yourself Demoscene in 14 Days
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       Teach Yourself Demoscene in 14 Days
        
       Author : HugoDaniel
       Score  : 306 points
       Date   : 2021-05-23 13:20 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | pseudosudoer wrote:
       | Ever since I had discovered shadertoy I've been searching for a
       | consolidated source like this. I have a decent graphics
       | background after taking a handful undergrad courses, but most of
       | the producers on shadertoy just seem like magicians
       | comparatively. Very excited to check this out!
        
         | beaugunderson wrote:
         | I have really, really enjoyed Arsiliath's compute shader
         | workshops (and the Discord community built around them):
         | https://paprika.studio/workshops/compute/
         | 
         | Learned a lot of really hard math and parallel GPU concepts
         | that I would not have been able to without the ability to ask
         | experts questions.
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | Get some shader programming books like
         | 
         | https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/gpugems/contributors
         | 
         | The Cg book although outdated provides good information about
         | shaders,
         | 
         | https://developer.download.nvidia.com/CgTutorial/cg_tutorial...
        
       | adam12 wrote:
       | Here's a great tool that you can use to create your demoscene:
       | 
       | https://github.com/mrdoob/frame.js
        
         | layoutIfNeeded wrote:
         | Ummm... you mean "demo", right? "Demoscene" means the community
         | making the demos.
        
       | herodoturtle wrote:
       | I remember working through the Denthor tuts back in the 90s and
       | how much that helped me get into the demoscene.
       | 
       | This modern-day equivalent is awesome (and although I haven't
       | been through it in detail, it looks super thorough!).
       | 
       | Thanks for sharing it. It's great to see the demoscene still
       | going strong.
        
       | xyproto wrote:
       | Also check out Bonzomatic, a live shader coding tool. It's
       | available as a package in Arch Linux.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Some previous discussion and notes from a few years ago:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21470398
        
       | j4yav wrote:
       | Very cool. I am definitely going to give this a try, it is
       | something I have always wanted to learn.
        
       | grouphugs wrote:
       | no
        
       | SeeManDo wrote:
       | Awesome! I "went" to Revision 2021! https://2021.revision-
       | party.net/
       | 
       | Been watching the scene since 1992 this will be an interesting
       | read.
        
       | NorSoulx wrote:
       | I dabbled in the C64/Amiga demoscene back in the 80s and we
       | released one the first Amiga demo creators back in May 1987:
       | 
       | http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/release.php?id=73124
       | 
       | It allowed others to get started creating demos by supplying:
       | 
       | * image
       | 
       | * sampled sound
       | 
       | * scrolling text
       | 
       | Not very advanced by todays standards, but unbeknownst to me at
       | the time, turned out to actually be used by some groups to
       | release their first Amiga demos:
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/amiga/comments/nd74xf/celebrating_3...
        
       | avaldes wrote:
       | > The demoscene is an underground computer art culture
       | 
       | I've seen A LOT of posts of demoscene here on HN through the
       | years so what does "underground" means in this context? Genuinely
       | curious.
        
         | xvedejas wrote:
         | Not mainstream; it's a niche hobby. Most people have never
         | heard of it, and you won't encounter anyone on the street
         | chatting about the latest demoscene developments. You won't
         | find TV shows about it nor regional clubs dedicated to it.
         | While it is an art, no artist makes their living doing it. It's
         | also not the most accessible since there's some technical skill
         | required.
        
           | userbinator wrote:
           | That said, in northern Europe and post-Soviet countries it's
           | a lot more prevalent than elsewhere.
        
         | Sharlin wrote:
         | Presumably it just means "not mainstream". Which is certainly
         | true. Because demoscene is exemplar of the "hacker mindset",
         | it's no wonder it tends to feature on HN. But HN is not exactly
         | mainstream either.
        
       | atum47 wrote:
       | Back in 2018 (I guess) I was trying to create a place where
       | programmers could create audio visualizations (like winamp and
       | windows media player) that would react to an audio (radio, mp3
       | playlist, youtube video...). I end up creating 5 or 6
       | "demoscenes" so other people would contribute. My original goal
       | was to detach the radio project from me website. Give it it's own
       | domain and hosting and make a platform out of it, maybe an online
       | code editor, so people could create live (while listening to
       | music). Well, the project is not dead yet and I'd like to
       | continue it some day.
       | 
       | https://github.com/victorqribeiro/radio
        
         | wcarss wrote:
         | awesome! I started working on some visualizations in that vein
         | for fun just in the last few weeks, and had very similar ideas
         | about making a 'scriptable' version and letting others build
         | what they want with it.
         | 
         | I've been running a node-ytdl-core server alongside it to
         | stream audio from youtube videos, which is my primary issue
         | right now: making something interesting for others seems like
         | it needs to be able to play the audio _they_ want, but most
         | people don 't have folders full of mp3's anymore, and both
         | youtube/soundcloud/others and the modern cross-site web
         | security model make it _incredibly hard_ to do something as
         | simple as decode the audio signal the browser is playing.
         | 
         | Regardless, your project looks super cool! Using online radio
         | seems like a neat way to workaround the problem I've been
         | having.
        
           | atum47 wrote:
           | Yeah, I've encountered some cool people running web radio
           | stations who thought they site were bored. So I've added
           | slugs so they can link the project directly to their station.
           | 
           | Later chrome started blocking non https content (which most
           | of the stations were streaming like) so I had to remove a lot
           | of cool stations, sadly
        
       | adamnemecek wrote:
       | Am I the only one who thinks that deadlines are
       | counterproductive?
        
         | fortyseven wrote:
         | As a deeply lazy man, the I was most productive during the
         | handful of Ludum Dare 48-hour game jams I entered. It felt
         | great, if stressful. I couldn't afford to stay too far off from
         | my plan if I'd intended to meet the deadline.
        
         | sp332 wrote:
         | Deadlines help me scope a project. Especially with something
         | open-ended like "learn demoscene".
        
         | Retr0spectrum wrote:
         | Some people find them motivating, and a useful guideline for
         | tracking their progress.
         | 
         | Personally I find them paralyzing - so I'll just progress at my
         | own speed - nobody is forcing us to use the timings proposed in
         | the repo.
        
         | dahart wrote:
         | How so? Not sure if you said that partly tongue in cheek, but
         | deadlines for me usually seem to help me make realistic choices
         | in order to get something done on a time budget. No doubt they
         | can sometimes compromise lofty goals, and/or can be frustrating
         | or less fun than having open-ended time, but there's enough to
         | be said about deadlines I don't think I'd personally ever
         | summarize them with a single word counterproductive.
         | 
         | In this context, the deadline section is referring to being
         | ready for a demo party, possibly as a compo entry, which
         | happens on a specific date, so what would even be an
         | alternative to having a deadline? The writing wasn't urging the
         | reader to choose whether to use deadlines, it was saying pay
         | attention to the fact that your demo showdown is coming up on a
         | day picked by someone else, so plan accordingly. Right?
        
         | _joel wrote:
         | If you're doing something creative then deadlines can be useful
         | to stop yourself from constantly tweaking. Actually finishing
         | stuff helps with morale and also allows you to review and hone
         | processes, rather than getting lost in the weeds. I dabble in
         | music production and the amount of 16 bar loops I had before
         | actually deciding to restict myself (with the help of a friend
         | adjudicating) was mind-boggling. Once I'd started to finish
         | stuff it became easier overall to not get stuck in a rabbit
         | hole.
        
         | Jare wrote:
         | A deadline is just a goal that helps you structure your
         | efforts.
        
         | NikolaNovak wrote:
         | It depends on the person of course,but I think also in
         | circumstance.
         | 
         | If I want to tinker or aimlessly play with
         | something,sure,artificial deadlines may not suit me.
         | 
         | But if I want to even remotely accomplish an actual goal,or
         | build something,or even learn something concrete,I positively
         | need a firm and ideally external and enforced deadline -
         | otherwise I'll meander,change scope and direction,redo from
         | scratch,try a different tool / framework / system / method
         | /whatever...and generally never ever finish
        
         | danbolt wrote:
         | Sometimes; I find it can depend on the project in mind. I think
         | if a decent number of people try to scope for a certain
         | timeline, you can get interesting discussions on what's
         | achievable within the timeframe.
         | 
         | Maybe a bit like schoolwork, what you get out of it is what
         | you're able to put into it.
        
         | bombcar wrote:
         | Even if you're not working toward a submission date it's good
         | to have deadlines, even if just to see where you are at given
         | points in time.
         | 
         | For actual deadlines often features get cut to meet them - and
         | said features may return in future versions.
        
         | rcxdude wrote:
         | It depends. For projects which are never really 'done' (i.e.
         | there's always more polish you can put on), they can help focus
         | things to get them out the door. However for other projects
         | they can be extremely counterproductive, especially if the
         | priority is on having something done by the deadline over
         | having something which is good enough as soon as possible (in
         | which case sufficiently poorly defined deadlines can basically
         | prolong a project indefinitely).
        
         | CyberDildonics wrote:
         | Time is money and everything has a budget.
        
         | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-23 23:00 UTC)