[HN Gopher] Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Revision Demoparty 2026: Razor1911 [video]
        
       Author : tetrisgm
       Score  : 347 points
       Date   : 2026-04-08 05:34 UTC (17 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | tetrisgm wrote:
       | Legendary demo group Razor 1911 submitted this beautiful demo as
       | the closer for the Revision 2026 demo competition.
       | 
       | It is an homage to 40 years of hacking from the group.
       | 
       | For context, they were pioneers in both the demoscene and in the
       | warez scene in the 80s-00s.
        
       | moodiverse wrote:
       | Nice!
        
       | MrBuddyCasino wrote:
       | Direct link with the correct timecode:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw4W9V57SKs&t=5716s
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | Ty. I pinged the mods and they updated it
        
       | 0xbs0d wrote:
       | This is awesome!
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | A lot of old school demo enthusiasts cried. These guys cracked
         | all the games we couldn't afford as kids/teens and did the
         | coolest demos and cracktros to show off how cool they were. I
         | saw them as high tech Robin Hoods. Hope you were around for
         | that!
        
       | amatecha wrote:
       | Oh man, I watched "non-live" earlier today but hearing the live
       | vers with the crowd audio is amazing. So damn good <3
        
       | krige wrote:
       | Excellent demo and good music to go with it. My favorite part was
       | probably the X-Copy sector map transitioning into a 3D cube with
       | a running sprite.
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | The tunnel going from ascii to RT gave me chills and made me
         | teary. It was 40 years of progress in seconds.
        
         | richrichardsson wrote:
         | Same! Beautiful nod to this amazing demo :
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMFBAOjuMWw
        
       | bowmessage wrote:
       | incredible work!
       | 
       | such a nice way to remember their fallen teammates at the end
       | there.
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | First time the shout outs weren't just respect or cheese. RIP,
         | til Valhalla.
         | 
         | PS: I never knew Westbam (of Love Parade fame?!) was involved.
        
           | janfoeh wrote:
           | Different Westbam. The DJ you're thinking of is still alive.
        
             | tetrisgm wrote:
             | Thank you
        
       | allenu wrote:
       | Beautiful. Masterfully done. I love all the BBS-era aesthetics
       | and callouts. I hadn't seen FILE_ID.DIZ art in forever.
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | When I was learning to make games and just hack around the pc,
         | I used to try to copy paste the characters from their nfos to
         | make my own "releases" of mini mods. Didn't know there were
         | ascii drawing programs! Wonder if you did the same. I'm sure we
         | all did but pre www era made it difficult!
        
           | Morromist wrote:
           | I dabble in ASCII art and use Playscii these days. Its still
           | pretty hard to make amazing looking art even with these great
           | tools, which just shows how legendary the demoscene is.
        
           | allenu wrote:
           | Copy-pasting is a clever way to do it!
           | 
           | I used to use TheDraw for doing ANSI art, but I also ended up
           | making my own ANSI drawing tool back then. It's stupid to
           | think of now, but one reason I made it was because I had a
           | monochrome monitor, so I couldn't "see" color. I wanted a
           | feature where I could put the cursor over a character and it
           | would tell me the color there when I was drawing so I could
           | still use color in the work.
           | 
           | I wasn't prolific, but did do a handful of ANSI art pieces
           | for local BBS SysOps who liked them well enough. Only later
           | on I realized when I got an actual color monitor that I had a
           | few color mistakes in them and they never told me. lol
        
             | tetrisgm wrote:
             | Damn, more OG than me. I must have looked up to you and
             | your peers back then! It's crazy how it was so common to
             | just go in a hex editor and mess with files to see what
             | would happen. Would love to see a submission of what you /
             | group / other notables did.
        
           | california-og wrote:
           | I keep a list of all current ASCII art (and related + other
           | creative tools) editors out there, if you're interested:
           | 
           | https://hlnet.notion.site/text-art-tools
           | 
           | I recommend Moebius for traditional ASCII and ANSI art.
        
             | tetrisgm wrote:
             | That's sick. Ty for sharing!
        
       | dom96 wrote:
       | Absolutely amazing.
       | 
       | Nice to be reminded that Revision is still active, on my bucket
       | list to visit at least once in my life.
        
       | pogue wrote:
       | That was amazing, really great song & visuals too. Takes me back
       | to the days when you couldn't close the keygen because the midi
       | playing was such a banger.
       | 
       | https://keygenmusic.tk/
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | Do you know if someone is hosting these in web radio format so
         | I could stream in a car and such?
        
           | vrganj wrote:
           | You might enjoy this:
           | https://scenestream.net/demovibes/streams/
        
           | pogue wrote:
           | I don't. I'm sure you could find an archive of just midi
           | files out there though.
        
           | dither8 wrote:
           | qUAntUm RaDio
           | 
           | https://radio.erb.pw/public/subspace
        
         | vardump wrote:
         | MIDI songs? I checked, I couldn't find any from the link you
         | posted. Most were different module formats, like XM,
         | Protracker, S3M, Impulse Tracker. Those have nothing to do with
         | midi other than they also produce music.
        
           | pogue wrote:
           | They've probably been converted over the years, just like you
           | might convert an mp3 into flac or ogg or whatever.
        
           | embedding-shape wrote:
           | At one point in time, (I think maybe in connection with some
           | mobile phone being able to play .midi files?) MIDI songs was
           | (incorrectly) referring to a style/type of music rather than
           | the transport/protocol we use for sending notes between
           | instruments/devices, or the file format.
           | 
           | I'm still since then always assuming the above when someone
           | says "MIDI music"; they really mean "really basic/simple
           | music" or just straight up "chiptune" sometimes.
           | 
           | It has nothing to do with MIDI really, just a misnomer.
        
             | neonstatic wrote:
             | A more appropriate term is "chiptunes". I also heard people
             | refer to it as keygen music.
        
               | vardump wrote:
               | If it's a tracker module of some kind with very short
               | looping samples, then yeah, it's a chiptune.
        
               | teddyh wrote:
               | IMHO, a "chiptune" is music for an FM synthesis chip,
               | like on the NES, the SID chip in Commodore 64, or the
               | AdLib sound card for PC. A "mod" or "tracker music" is
               | music made for a range of platforms in a rather narrow
               | time-band, that could play digital samples, but could not
               | reasonably store entire songs recorded digitally, like
               | the Amiga, Atari ST, or early PC's like 386s or 486s.
        
               | vardump wrote:
               | Those are SID etc. tunes. Not chiptunes.
        
               | rzzzt wrote:
               | Neither the NES nor the SID employs FM synthesis. I'm not
               | even sure what the collective noun is for these.
               | Wikipedia tells me it's PSG (programmable sound
               | generator).
               | 
               | The same behavior could be (also was) teased out of a MOD
               | player if you choose samples with a handful of sample
               | points, like 12. You could also draw up a sawtooth in
               | paint and use that as a sample. These are down-to-earth
               | honest true Scotsman chiptunes.
        
             | Nition wrote:
             | I'd say 'MIDI music' became a catch-all for music that's
             | represented as data that is in turn triggering samples,
             | rather than being a pure audio file. Might be actual MIDI
             | or might be tracker music etc.
        
       | Incipient wrote:
       | Demos used to have sizes - I can't see one for this, is it just
       | an 'open' category? This thing is far too insane to be size
       | limited, surely?
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | Edit: better answer below
         | 
         | Idk what Revision actually enforces but that used to be the
         | rule at Assembly.
         | 
         | For the 1k, 4k, retro systems etc it's specified!
        
           | skrebbel wrote:
           | Revision had no maximum filesize in the demo compo.
        
         | skrebbel wrote:
         | In demoscene nomenclature, an "intro" is a demo with a
         | sizelimit. This was entered in the demo compo, ergo "no size
         | limit".
         | 
         | With file size, most democoders go all the way, both ways. By
         | that I mean that if they choose a sizelimit category, they
         | squeeze out every last byte, and if they don't, most don't care
         | about filesize _at all_. There 's demos these days that are
         | many times bigger than an acceptable video recording would be
         | because nobody bothered to eg compress the assets, it includes
         | an entire game engine, etc. Like 800MB for a 3 minute
         | audiovisual show. Kinda ridiculous but it's just.. well, call
         | it either laziness or focused pragmatism :-) Gotta get that
         | prod out before the deadline!
         | 
         | The Razor1911 zip[1] is 30MB, which actually is very much on
         | the small side for a current-day demo.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=105954 has a download
         | link
        
           | whizzter wrote:
           | 30 megs is like 2005 era size :D , obvious that it's realtime
           | stuff (and music is probably a significant fraction?).
        
             | embedding-shape wrote:
             | > The Razor1911 zip[1] is 30MB, which actually is very much
             | on the small side for a current-day demo.
             | 
             | > and music is probably a significant fraction?
             | 
             | For the Razor1911.exe in the ZIP which ends up being 31MB
             | on disk, which is almost entirely made out of a compressed
             | 145MB executable, whose size is mostly 48 PNG files (11MB),
             | 69MB of zeros (nice?), 329 compiled DirectX shader blobs
             | (DXBC) totaling 6MB, One large MP3 of about 17MB and
             | finally like 34MB of what seems to be other types of
             | runtime data like asset tables, font and UI data,
        
               | crtasm wrote:
               | from the nfo >Sorry for the not very optimized file size
               | for this party version, we'll make sure to push a PROPER
               | once Revision 2026 is finished
        
               | skrebbel wrote:
               | Love the 69MB of zeros.
        
               | embedding-shape wrote:
               | I bet that neatly compresses during packaging too :)
        
         | richrichardsson wrote:
         | This came up in the Discord party chat, basically there isn't a
         | size limit in the rules[1], but going beyond 2GB would be
         | concerning that it's not a real-time demo but instead just
         | playback of animation.
         | 
         | [1] https://2026.revision-party.net/competitions/pc/
        
       | vintermann wrote:
       | There were many really nice demos on Revision this year. Hacker
       | News favorite (and mine, too!) LFT put out another
       | microcontroller demo, Sum Ergo Demonstro:
       | 
       | https://youtube.com/watch?v=v8zKDotYh9A&is=xAbW7VZVGLn0986B
       | 
       | But I think my favorite so far from the ones I've seen has to be
       | Second Nature, an OCS Amiga demo by Desire & The Twitch Elite,
       | and music by Hoffman.
        
         | HellMood wrote:
         | i second that. "Second Nature" is also my party favorite!
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFVxntafsXM&t=1764s
        
           | dark-star wrote:
           | How they pulled that off on a stock A500 (okay, a stock A500
           | with 512kb RAM expansion, but still) is far beyond me. It's
           | pretty awesome and really deserved the 1st place
        
             | emchammer wrote:
             | It's a really uplifting break compared to all the other
             | news coming out now.
        
         | contingencies wrote:
         | Classic first comment on the Youtube video: _Hey lft, I
         | designed the RISC-V core you 're using, and I had a ton of fun
         | watching and re-watching this video and trying to guess some of
         | the tricks you used. Awesome work and I'm looking forward to a
         | write-up!_
        
       | masternight wrote:
       | Ah wow.
       | 
       | I really enjoyed the demoscene back in the 90s. Was never a part
       | of it but I was always fascinated by the effects and music and
       | ascii art that these guys created.
       | 
       | A BBS in my city always had the latest e-zines like Reality Check
       | Network and Affinity, and others I forget. Reading up on the
       | scene and about groups like Razor1911 was something I spent a lot
       | of time on when I was younger.
       | 
       | Amazing demo and homage to the era.
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | > I really enjoyed the demoscene back in the 90s. Was never a
         | part of it but I was always fascinated by the effects and music
         | and ascii art that these guys created.
         | 
         | It was quite something... I take it there are quite a few
         | hotshots on HN who used to be in the top groups. I was in a
         | group and we were writing small intros for BBSes with a couple
         | of friends and then we'd get infinite leech/upload ratio on
         | those BBSes. Best memory was driving through Belgium / the
         | Netherlands / Denmark / putting the car on the boat / Sweden
         | (Uppsala) with our computers (Amiga, Atari ST and PCs) to
         | participate at a demo compo. Forgot its name but in the PC
         | category we tied first place with Future Crew (we would have
         | been first had I not screwed the sound playback routine which
         | crashed half-way the demo), before they had their big
         | breakthrough on the PC demoscene. I think that was in 1991.
         | 
         | Cops/customs stopped us as the boat arrived in Sweden and
         | thought we were dealing drugs: they tore the car apart and had
         | no idea what we were talking about when we were explaining them
         | in broken english that we were going to participate in a demo
         | compo :-/
         | 
         | I still have a few effects as executables but I don't have the
         | code anymore for these.
         | 
         | Thankfully I still have the entire source code of a game I made
         | in assembly (for PC / 386+) in 1991 (never published but it's
         | how my career started, long story) and lately I've been having
         | a huge lot of fun trying to compile it again with Claude Code
         | CLI / Sonnet. I'm using UASM, which is compatible with MASM
         | which I used to use. I managed to have all the utilities I
         | wrote back then (picture converters / sprites extractor / etc.)
         | compiling and running (in DOSBox) but haven't managed to
         | compile the main game yet. A few more hours with Claude Code
         | CLI and I should get it running.
         | 
         | FWIW it's hilarious to go back to code from 1991 and see
         | comments in my code talking about this and that bug and asking
         | the LLM: _" Find where that bug could be"_ and the LLM manages
         | to find it. It's also insane the lack of version control:
         | version control was copying entire directories. Copy/pasta code
         | everywhere. And then 10 000 lines of code per source code file.
         | 
         | What an era. Diving in that old code of mine brings me back:
         | the decades they've been flying.
         | 
         | P.S: funnily enough by lack of luck a macro I had used back
         | then happen to become a reserved keyword/macro in assemblers
         | later on. I had named back then a macro "incbin" and that was
         | preventing my code from compiling in UASM: Claude Code / Sonnet
         | 4.6 found that issue instantly.
         | 
         | P.P.S: 0x777 in hex gives 1911. RZR, legendary: probably the
         | most legendary of them all. Probably still have a few 5"1/4
         | floppies (both C64 and Amiga for I had an Amiga with a little
         | software mod to read 5"1/4 floppies as if they were 3"1/2 for
         | the 5"1/4 were way cheaper) with Razor 1911 "cracktros" (even
         | if they weren't called that yet) still working (back in 2020
         | quite a few of my floppies were still reading: maybe half to
         | 2/3rd of them). I know it won't last, nothing will.
        
           | DrJokepu wrote:
           | What are using as a linker? Also, do you use protected mode
           | and if yes, what do you use for that, PMODE or CWSDPMI or
           | something else?
        
             | TacticalCoder wrote:
             | It's an old MS-DOS .EXE. Actually it compiles with the
             | ".286" directive too. So I don't use protected mode.
             | 
             | It requires a VGA card and those were more common in 386
             | IIRC and, anyway, performance-wise to run at 60 Hz it needs
             | a 386. I never tried to run it on a 286 with a VGA card:
             | don't know if that was a thing.
             | 
             | It's funny looking at that old assembly code and see ax,
             | bx, cx, dx registers and not the eax, etc. ones.
             | 
             | The utilities I've compiled to .EXE so far are self-
             | contained in one file and I just use UASM to create
             | directly the .EXE:                   uasm -mz myutil.asm
             | 
             | UASM v2.57 does the job in my case (note that I compile
             | from Linux: UASM exists for several platforms/OSes):
             | 
             | https://www.terraspace.co.uk/uasm.html
             | 
             | I haven't tried yet to compile the entire game yet: that
             | one is more involved as it implies many files.
        
               | Narishma wrote:
               | VGA was pretty common on 286, I even had an SVGA card on
               | my own back in the day. And it also had protected mode
               | but was still 16-bit.
        
           | e12e wrote:
           | > It's also insane the lack of version control: version
           | control was copying entire directories.
           | 
           | I can understand that - under dos - but as I recall quite a
           | lot of gnu/nix tooling was workable on the Amiga - RCS harks
           | back to 1984...
        
           | masternight wrote:
           | > I was in a group and we were writing small intros for BBSes
           | with a couple of friends
           | 
           | Ah that would have been such an awesome time. Thanks for
           | sharing!
        
       | tomaytotomato wrote:
       | Wow, a real throwback to my earlier years exploring the Warez
       | scene as cash poor teenager, which meant you had to get creative
       | to find what you wanted.
       | 
       | Looking back in my 30s, I think part of my brain has atrophied
       | because I can now purchase and download games and content with a
       | few clicks on Steam and PS40, which will be ready to play after
       | dinner.
       | 
       | Before you had to think and search forums (both public and
       | private) for DDL links, CD keys, cracks, passwords to unzip
       | files.
       | 
       | Then once you had downloaded these multiple RAR/Zip files you
       | then had to check and verify them for corruption or viruses.
       | After that it was reading the sacred README.nfo file included in
       | the crack zip. Which if you didn't specify to open in Notepad or
       | Notepad++, it would open the Windows System information window.
       | 
       | The last stage before firing up a game was the patching/cracking
       | phase; that could involved things like editing hosts files,
       | unplugging or disconnecting from the internet, or modifying your
       | firewall to prevent network requests for anti-piracy software.
       | Then you ran your crack or copied a patched .exe file over into
       | the game directory. Aye presto, you're ready to fire up
       | (hopefully it didn't have a virus or rootkit)
       | 
       | ...but wait there is no loading videos or splash screen (panic).
       | Well that's because the pirates were saving storage space and
       | removed unnecessary game videos and music assets.
       | 
       | <Play game> Bioshock
       | 
       | Ah, that was a nice nostalgia trip.
       | 
       | Also for any other nostalgia trippers, do you remember the first
       | thing you always installed was a cracked version of WinRar
       | (before 7zip became cool), running on a fresh install of
       | Windows_7_SP3_BLACK_EDITION_XXX.iso
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | Such a throwback. If you were doing floppies there was the
         | whole sing and dance you'd do with pkzip or arj to split your
         | files across many disks!
        
       | NKosmatos wrote:
       | I upvote every post related to the demoscene due to my age, so I
       | couldn't let this one, especially when it's coming from RZR.
       | Imagine if we could get a new release from FC as well in 2026 (40
       | years since their founding)!!!
       | 
       | More about Razor 1911 and Future Crew for the young readers of
       | HN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_1911
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Crew
       | 
       | P.S. Too many groups to mention, but these two hold a special
       | place in my mind ;-)
       | 
       | P.S.2. Extra mention to the most famous Greek demo group - ASD
       | (Andromeda Software Development) -
       | https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=1317
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | ASD - Spin lives rent free in my head. I remember a colleague
         | explaining how the morphing between meshes was really just
         | random noise but the proximity and speed made it look like a
         | real transformation. So cool.
         | 
         | Should out to TheBlackLotus, Fairlight, Orange, CNCD also for
         | those of you who want to look up epic demos.
        
           | bananaboy wrote:
           | CNCD and Orange are two of my most favorite groups! Inside,
           | Secret Life of Mr Black, Megablast are some of my favorites
           | of all time.
        
           | ErneX wrote:
           | I also liked Triton. They made great demos and also
           | FastTracker 2!
        
             | xyproto wrote:
             | FT2 was written in Borland Pascal 7 and TASM, btw.
        
               | ErneX wrote:
               | Shout out also to Cubic Team, I spent countless hours
               | using Cubic Player, they also made some cool
               | demos/intros.
        
         | tomaytotomato wrote:
         | Yes - Razor 1911 was a core memory unlocked.
         | 
         | Along with Skidrow and Paradox crews
        
         | pjc50 wrote:
         | Future Crew's "Second Reality" was my introduction to demos,
         | back in the 486 PC days.
        
         | whizzter wrote:
         | Razor 1911 and FC are different in that FC was one of those
         | team/friend-groups that depended more on a constellation of
         | people working together and producing until life took them away
         | to other things.
         | 
         | Razor, Fairlight and some others became more of continious
         | groups with evolving memberships (I was briefly a member of the
         | demoteam back in 1999 and did one production in association
         | with the people that moved over to Fairlight).
        
           | tetrisgm wrote:
           | Damn, that's awesome. Any memory to share?
        
             | whizzter wrote:
             | Wasn't a member for too long, I think there was some anti-
             | piracy raids around that time that I vaguely remember where
             | some of the fallout for whatever reason was the other guys
             | going over to Fairlight but I were already involved enough
             | with other groups (and our highschool equivalent or perhaps
             | work by that time?).
             | 
             | Funniest thing perhaps is that Smash was a musician back
             | then for 2 things where I did the code (one musicdisc and
             | one joke intro), Smash then went on to become a damn
             | accomplished coder of quite a few famous Fairlight demos,
             | Sony tools and made the commercial Notch visual
             | toolset/editor/player that has roots in the Fairlight
             | demoeditor codebase (Notch startup logo often pops up in
             | democompos for those that haven't followed the scene).
        
               | tetrisgm wrote:
               | Oh yeah Smash is god tier. Saw his name on so many
               | amazing FLT demos
        
       | andrepd wrote:
       | My first time hearing the name RAZOR1911 was on the cracktro for
       | GTA IV, which had this banger of a music
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy4-9PsZHqI
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | The game was notoriously hard to crack too. Rockstar had a lot
         | of former demosceners, so they put all sorts of protection that
         | would mess with the game.
         | 
         | I recall my friend describing Nico being randomly drunk, or
         | vehicles suddenly accelerating. Razor eventually nailed it iirc
        
       | keyle wrote:
       | I like that you linked the live show instead of the video of the
       | demo alone, as the crowd noise adds to the experience.
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | This demo is a salute to everyone in the scene. And it's
         | emotional. Had to be this version!
        
       | igleria wrote:
       | as a broke kid from the third world, the amount of coping
       | Razor1911 enabled for me with gaming got me through high school
       | during the 2000s (edit due to not finishing a sentence
       | originally) cannot be understated.
        
       | ptype wrote:
       | not sure I've experienced goosebumps like this before
        
       | tetrisgm wrote:
       | The song can be gotten for free / pay what you want at:
       | https://dubmood.bandcamp.com/track/fighting-words-feat-goto8...
        
         | dark-star wrote:
         | or you can unpack the executable (it's packed with UPX) and
         | extract the MP3 from that ;-) You can also get high-res PNGs of
         | some of the scenes that way (e.g. the floppy disk pan, or the
         | fake Windows desktops)
        
         | ninjin wrote:
         | In addition, here is the Bright White Lightning discography:
         | 
         | https://dataairlines.bandcamp.com/album/bad-teeth-data024
         | 
         | https://dataairlines.bandcamp.com/album/dirty-nails-data038
         | 
         | Having not seen anything from them since 2014, so I am very
         | happy for another track.
        
       | appstorelottery wrote:
       | OMG. Thanks _so_ much for posting this - completely awesome! Such
       | a nostalgic roller coaster ride, from Qmodem to Xcopy and
       | everything in between... brought back so many memories... -
       | thanks again!
        
       | jansan wrote:
       | That Dynamic Duo disk at the beginning reminded me of my friend
       | who got his house raided in 1987 for exchanging (not selling)
       | cracked computer games for the C64 at the age of 18 in super
       | rural Germany. He still managed to get into the army as an
       | officer.
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | Somebody needed to hack the Soviets! CCC were beasts
        
       | dist-epoch wrote:
       | Did they state if/how much AI agents they used in creating this
       | demo?
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | None. That would defeat the entire purpose
        
         | unkeen wrote:
         | Of course they used none.
        
         | vrganj wrote:
         | How many inkjet printers did Da Vinci use for the Mona Lisa?
        
         | leptons wrote:
         | Tell us you don't understand the demoscene without telling us
         | you don't understand the demoscene.
        
       | ttoinou wrote:
       | Wow, and this is their "mid career retrospective". Wait for the
       | end of caree retrospective...
        
       | JetSetIlly wrote:
       | Superb demos this year at Revision. Triplet by Otomata Labs for
       | the Atari 2600 is exceptional
       | 
       | Original release video (probably running on Stella)
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEJ0A8Wvdxs
       | 
       | And a video of it running on Gopher2600.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixFH22MxqEg
        
       | ttoinou wrote:
       | Anyone understand why multiple demos have voices singing now..
       | how do they do it ?
        
         | rustyhancock wrote:
         | I wish there was more info about how they're made but I suppose
         | part of the demo scene has always been secretive and reverse
         | engineer it if you want to know.
         | 
         | The first one said made with Godot and blender so is it using
         | premade assets? (Which I thought was not allowed)
         | 
         | Edit: #22 Heart of Glass says 144kB of WebGL + audio. I assume
         | this means the audio is separate.
        
           | ErneX wrote:
           | This 64kb intro has speech synthesis to generate the voice of
           | the song.
           | 
           | https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=9424
           | 
           | More info: https://www.flipcode.com/archives/08-04-2003.shtml
        
           | Jare wrote:
           | > I suppose part of the demo scene has always been secretive
           | and reverse engineer it if you want to know.
           | 
           | Not really, there's tons of info and source code out there,
           | but fairly scattered and disorganized. It just may not be
           | easy to know how to search for it when coming from outside.
           | But if you can strike a conversation with a demoscener, I
           | never saw anyone wanting to hold back secrets, on the
           | contrary, everyone has always been excited to talk about the
           | magic to another enthusiast like themselves (ourselves).
        
           | z303 wrote:
           | As Jare said. Lots of info around
           | 
           | https://github.com/psenough/teach_yourself_demoscene_in_14_d.
           | ..
           | 
           | https://gargaj.github.io/demos-for-dummies/#intro/1
           | 
           | https://demobasics.pixienop.net/
           | 
           | https://github.com/psykon/awesome-demoscene
           | 
           | http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/Main_Page
           | 
           | https://www.lofibucket.com/articles/64k_intro.html
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | Literally just singing! It's an mp3 :)
        
         | whizzter wrote:
         | Most full demo (no tech or sizelimit) soundtracks since the
         | early 00s are just mp3 streams or alike, size-coded that have
         | soft-synths or retro categories were singing is an issue due to
         | datasize or hardware power often don't (sometimes they do as a
         | technical demonstration).
         | 
         | But I did notice some 64k's and small synths-executables had
         | singing this year, I've added small voice-samples (compressed)
         | but that's just seconds whilst these entries had longer
         | sequences so I'm a tad curious as well.
        
         | amiga386 wrote:
         | It has been a thing for some time. Even back in the 16-bit
         | days:
         | 
         | - Movement _Mina Omistan_ (1994): https://youtu.be/Ryq8fz_XAhI
         | 
         | - TBL _Tint_ (1996) second part: https://youtu.be/KcSV4qAG-
         | xk?t=459
        
           | amiga386 wrote:
           | https://demozoo.org/productions/tagged/vocals-in-music/
        
           | Narishma wrote:
           | Even on 8-bit systems:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SdGkkp1aq8
        
       | uzyn wrote:
       | This is so sick!
       | 
       | Revision faded out the credits part, which is still really cool
       | on its own. The full version (10m 16s) can be viewed at
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AnbYNudAyM
        
         | embedding-shape wrote:
         | Sadly, that full version isn't in 4K, unlike the submission.
         | 
         | But this is Hacker News, we can do much better! Here is the
         | actual binary: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=105954
         | 
         | Sadly I couldn't get it to work on Linux with Wine/Proton, like
         | a lot of demos they seem to really be using less common paths,
         | so of course it crashes.
        
           | crtasm wrote:
           | the nfo notes >This demo will not run on intel iris gpus and
           | only in 1080p
        
           | pocksuppet wrote:
           | Just install pirated Windows in a VM (really the only valid
           | way to run Windows these days). Razor would approve.
        
       | magicalhippo wrote:
       | Really cool retro-mix, and some slick transitions.
       | 
       | Most of that was before my time though, so 1995 by Kewlers[1] hit
       | harder for me, since that was when I really got into the demo
       | scene and with it my drive to learn programming.
       | 
       | Glad the demo scene is alive and kicking, though I get why a lot
       | is oriented around old hardware, modern hardware makes things too
       | easy almost.
       | 
       | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mtctbodNXY (20 years old
       | this year, now I feel _really_ old)
        
         | tetrisgm wrote:
         | Great demo. My favorite of theirs is MF Real. Nothing crazy but
         | so stylish https://youtu.be/rvhGp9NGwos
        
       | rast1234 wrote:
       | Executable here: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=105954
        
       | WhitneyLand wrote:
       | Great music.
       | 
       | Bright White Lightning, but didn't see a track name.
       | 
       | Overall, wow.
        
       | esafak wrote:
       | I think a modern equivalent might be WebGPU. Anybody doing cool
       | stuff that? I'd like to see the code.
        
         | unixhero wrote:
         | Web shaders? Ues check out shadertoy
        
       | Cthulhu_ wrote:
       | Awesome, I remember some of these from back when, mostly from the
       | 90's and early 2000's I believe.
        
       | conceptme wrote:
       | absolute banger :D
        
         | unixhero wrote:
         | I know. I must have replayed it 20 times already
        
       | pierrec wrote:
       | The parts where it exits fullscreen and starts messing around
       | with separate windows is really well done. In a way it's playing
       | with the limits of what defines a demo (ie. the user's desktop is
       | part of the performance), which is something I love to see. Same
       | with the notepad animation part. I wonder if they implemented
       | their own notepad-alike from scratch or it they used something
       | like this: https://kylehalladay.com/blog/2020/05/20/Rendering-
       | With-Note...
        
       | hugodan wrote:
       | Isn't AI affecting the demoscene as it is affecting other
       | programming hobbies? Why?
        
         | laurentlb wrote:
         | There have been lots of discussions around AI in the demoscene.
         | Revision limits how you can use AI (https://2026.revision-
         | party.net/competitions/general-rules/), even if it's not always
         | enforceable.
         | 
         | There's a lot of push back against AI-generated graphics and
         | music. For code, it's more difficult to know. AI is used by
         | some people to automate the boring tasks, so that they can
         | focus more on the artistic side.
        
         | Jare wrote:
         | At revision there was a cool seminar about the author of a
         | music synth who used AI to modernize it. He begun his talk with
         | words for the audience along the lines of "Please don't do a
         | Life of Brian, I am not here saying Jehova".
         | 
         | It makes sense that a creative medium with a long tradition of
         | pushing boundaries of what people can create, frowns on use of
         | generative tech _unless you have created it yourself_. Back in
         | the day the pushback was against using AMOS, or a PC, or
         | programming in C, or using a GPU, or using MP3, or using
         | Photoshop, or using another group 's demo engine, or using a
         | commercial game engine, or... AI is just the latest. And like
         | its predecessors, it will gain legitimacy if people create
         | genuinely interesting experiences with it.
        
         | unixhero wrote:
         | Game engines and their useage hit harder
         | 
         | Demos are now often using Unreal engine Unity Godot
        
       | stego-tech wrote:
       | Damn, this made my entire week. Absolute legends.
       | 
       | Release is here: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=105954
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2026-04-08 23:02 UTC)