effekt (u/effekt) - Readit News

effekt commented on GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene gdimayhem.temari.fr/index... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

vintagedave · 2 months ago

For all those effects: is their source available?

I see EXE names and I think cracks were distributed that way. I don’t have enough insight into the cracking scene to know if there was any underground open source back then.

These days, having the source to these graphic effects would be invaluable!

effekt · 2 months ago

As for cracktros, probably not. I should spelunk through backups. However, the most technical and competitive people generally transitioned to the demoscene in the early 2000s and that scene is far more open.

You can find a lot of groups/individuals publish a lot of esp. their older stuff now.

Two off the top of my head:

- https://github.com/ConspiracyHu (and they made a W32 port of Future Crew's Second Reality, which is public domain: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality)

- Farbrausch published their original demo tool source ages ago: https://github.com/farbrausch/fr_public

effekt commented on GDI Effects from the PC cracking scene gdimayhem.temari.fr/index... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

Fnoord · 2 months ago

> Nostalgia!

Maktone [1] did some very nice chiptunes for Razor [2] [3]. This playlist [4] has a lot of good Razor ones, I bet someone was looking for [5] =]

Also, a lot of keygens didn't have to be used back when a simple hexedit of one value could validate the software. I remember that being the case for mIRC. And Sublime Text. I mean, it could be as simple as changing an if statement to if not. I use the same idea for Proxmox. It is quick and dirty, but not the way the code was intended. If you wanna go that route, a keygen is the way (a serial does the job). With crack, you never know what it does, same goes for keygen (wrt malware). I still love Serials 2000. A program which had all the keys and serials in existence. Which was a big feat back in the end of '90s when search engines were shit. It even had regular updates/patches.

As for the website. Screenshots don't show videos.

[1] https://archive.org/details/all_20240526

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mwO26qel2U

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI46EyzaKI8

[4] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5CC3A42488052F20

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K32PLx21Bi0

effekt · 2 months ago

He's still alive and well! While he's not super active and let his website(s) die, you can follow him on Facebook where he generally seems the most active these days: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063887643279&ref=...

And instead of YT/archive (though, shoutout to textfiles.com, which is now part of archive), https://www.pouet.net/ and https://scene.org/ is still where things are generally at

effekt commented on WebGL visual programming editor cables.gl is now open source cables.gl/standalone... · Posted by u/pandur

effekt · 2 years ago

I'm so happy every time I see the demoscene on HN's front page. Hi pandur!

effekt commented on What is the Demoscene? An interview onthearts.com/p/what-is-t... · Posted by u/keiferski

royjacobs · 2 years ago

I was part of the PC demoscene in that era (1997-2002) and it definitely was a super productive and exciting time. The transition to Windows wasn't necessarily a big deal, but the impact of 3d acceleration definitely was.

In that period 3d accelerators were basically capable of running Quake and not much else. Traditional demo effects that relied on reading the backbuffer (even to just do some basic postprocessing) were either unavailable or had to have bespoke implementations per card. There were no shaders to speak of, and so on.

For me that really killed demoscene innovation for a while, and a lot of demos basically consisted of a bunch of alpha-blended layers for a while.

Nowadays, though, I'd say the scene is probably doing pretty well even though it's arguably even more niche than it used to be. Oh well.

effekt · 2 years ago

Same here. I came in on the back end of having to write your own engine from scratch (not just 3D, but general graphics.) MOV AX, 13h; INT 10h will forever be burned into my memory.

The transition was definitely odd. What brought it around for me was when fr-08 was released and the broader scene realized what _could_ be done with procedural generation and whatnot.

effekt commented on What is the Demoscene? An interview onthearts.com/p/what-is-t... · Posted by u/keiferski

jnovek · 2 years ago

For what it's worth, UNESCO agrees that it's art:

https://www.unesco.de/en/culture-and-nature/intangible-cultu...

effekt · 2 years ago

Huge shoutout to Digitale Kultur e.V. for that -- that club was founded by the folks that organize the Evoke demoparty!

effekt commented on What is the Demoscene? An interview onthearts.com/p/what-is-t... · Posted by u/keiferski

slmjkdbtl · 2 years ago

There's a great documentary on Demoscene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-keHkcTZD4

effekt · 2 years ago

If you'd like to know where the demoscene came from, look no further than The BBS Documentary[1]

The whole thing started w/ cracktros in the 80s and through the artscene it eventually evolved into its own scene that was entirely disconnected from its roots in piracy.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dddbe9OuJLU&list=PL7nj3G6Jpv...

effekt commented on What is the Demoscene? An interview onthearts.com/p/what-is-t... · Posted by u/keiferski

_chu1 · 2 years ago

Even though I'm 15 I love tracker music and have so much respect for the work that was done in the days the demoscene was huge. I really hope it keeps going so I can be notable making my own tracker music.

effekt · 2 years ago

Steal everyone's samples! I recall my brother thinking they'd hate him for doing it, or he'd be a lamer.. it didn't matter, and eventually others used his samples and his techniques.

The scene these days is much more welcoming than it ever was in the past. Just get in there and do something, anything :)

effekt commented on What is the Demoscene? An interview onthearts.com/p/what-is-t... · Posted by u/keiferski

dfxm12 · 2 years ago

As someone who grew up with a woefully outdated computer, while my friends were playing duke nukem 3d or half life and saving MP3s on their luxuriously large HDDs, I was content with demos and mods.

Demos certainly fit most definitions of the hard to define "Art" (with a capital A), but at some level, I think art is anything you put even a little more of yourself into than you need to, and thinking back to some of my conversations with some people in the scene on IRC, you can tell demos more than meet that bar. In a way, demoparties were like a modern take on the French Salon.

Around the same time, I was learning how to play guitar, so I especially got into trackers. Just thinking in a different way about writing and playing music helped. Music is a combo of art and math, and trackers helped me understand this in a different way from my music theory teacher.

effekt · 2 years ago

Gave my baby brother FastTracker when he was 13 I believe, not only did he become one of the best chip musicians ever, it effectively shaped his entire life toward pursuing music in some form or another.

After this unexpected HN post today, I'll be queueing up some bleeps.

effekt commented on What is the Demoscene? An interview onthearts.com/p/what-is-t... · Posted by u/keiferski

KingOfCoders · 2 years ago

I still remember my first sine scroller, even it is nearly 40y ago. It was the first time I wrote software together with other people.

effekt · 2 years ago

I remember trying to replicate a sine scroller at age 9, not having the slightest clue what a sine wave is, I just let sprites go up and down linearly on a C64 and couldn't for the life of me figure out a way to make that a smooth wave until years later :D

effekt commented on What is the Demoscene? An interview onthearts.com/p/what-is-t... · Posted by u/keiferski

trainyperson · 2 years ago

I wasn’t around during the heyday of Demoscene but everything I see always blows me away.

I think these days, Dwitter has a similar vibe. 140-character JavaScript demos: https://www.dwitter.net/

effekt · 2 years ago

Which is, in fact, a demotool made by sceners and released at a party (check their about!) Just like Shadertoy and others :)