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PC Demoscene FAQ

written by Thomas Gruetzmacher (aka Tomaes)
latest update: 13:00 17.11.03

1. Meta Section

2. General Introduction

  • 2.1. What is a demo?
    Ultimately, a demo(nstration) in a demoscene sense, is a piece of free software
that shows realtime rendered graphics, while playing music. Often the music is
tightly connected/synced to the visuals. Modern pc demos run linear from start
to finish and are non-interactive. There is no whatsoever rule what a
demo must/can show. The creator is free to decide whether he wants to show
stylish and/or impressive effects, an epic story, funny/bizarre/satirical
audiovisual artwork or a distorted mindfuck. 
   
A scene demo is not a try-out version of a commercial application/game.
  • 2.2. What is the demoscene?
    Short answer: A subculture in the computer underground culture universe,
dealing with the creative and constructive side of technology, proving that a
computer can be used for much more than writing a letter in MS-Word and hence
emphasize on computer technology as just another medium that can transport
ideas and styles, show off skills, express opinions etc.  

Another theory says, that it's just a bunch of boozing computer nerds,
programming weird, useless multimedia stuff. Errm. ;)
  • 2.3. Where does the demoscene come from?
    Short answer: It basically started with cracking on home computers in the
early 1980s. Crackers started to remove the copy protection of games for fun
and competition with other crackers. Instead of just spreading the cracked
games, they soon thought about 'labeling' their releases. Modified versions of
title screens (saying "cracked by xyz") were soon followed by a more advanced
version of showing the cracking/programming skill of a cracker:The crack-intro.
Visual effects, music and long text scrollers filled with greetings and scene
babbling. Later, cheat modes ("trainers") followed. Of course those kind of
activities were (and still are) barely legal, so the crackers used pseudonyms
instead of their real names.

In the late 1980s the legal part of the cracking and warez scene slowly
drifted away from the illegal part. Intros became more advanced, (mega-)demos
(several advanced intros in a row) appeared. The demoscene was born... sort of.

Long answer: http://www.freax.hu
  • 2.4. What is the difference between a demo and an intro?
    An intro is usually limited to one executable 64kb (65536 bytes) file, while
there is no such restriction for demos. Of course demoparty organisers DO set
a filesize limit for them aswell, currently between 10 and 15mb. Final versions
and windows ports of older ms-dos intros might be bigger than 64kb.

The term 'intro' is historically determined by the early crack-intros
(see [2.3.] for a bit more about them...). Other common intro categories are
4kb (4096 bytes) and 256byte.
  • 2.5. What is a dentro?
    A dentro is a mixture of the characteristics of a 'demo' and an 'intro'.
In other words, a big intro, usually 256kb. Just like intros, everything
is packed in one executable file. Dentros are not very common these days
anymore. Also, in the past, dentros were often previews of upcoming demo.
  • 2.6. On what other hardware/software platforms does a demoscene exist?
    Demosceners have programmed demos and intros on a large variety of hardware
platforms and operating systems ranging from 8 bit machinery like c64, to game
consoles like gameboy and dreamcast, to the latest pentium 4 class pc.
Platforms with demoscene activities are/were:

 - arcon archimedes
 - amiga (various incl. ocs, ecs, aga, ppc...)
 - amstrad cpc
 - atari (various incl. xl/xe, st, falcon, lynx...)
 - c64 (and other commodore machines incl. c128, c16, plus 4...)
 - dreamcast
 - gameboy (various incl. gbc, gba)
 - gp32
 - pc (ms-dos/windows/linux/beos...)
 - playstation (1 and 2)
 - macintosh
 - mega drive (aka genesis)
 - nes, snes (aka famicon / super famicon)
 - vc20 (aka vic 20)
 - zx spectrum (various...)
 - xbox

...and a lot more incl. calculators (Texas Instruments models...) and all sorts
of portable systems. Not to mention arcane things like typewriters. Although
this list is incomplete, you should get the point. :)

The activity level on all those platforms varies a lot. In most cases, the
activity is pretty much proportional to the actual spread of the respective
hardware. The time and area of the original release and the access to
development software plays a certain role too.
You can imagine that there is not quite as much 'scene' on Msx than on Gameboy.

There are plenty of emulators for most technically obsolete and/or
not-so-common systems available. Of course watching demos on the original
hardware should be prefered. 
   
However, most demoscene related releases are pc/windows ones, these days.
  • 2.7. Are demos a form of art?
    That's one of the most controversial questions in the scene these days. :)
To put it bluntly: It's just like with books and films. Some are art, most
are not.
  • 2.8. What is the sense of demos and the motivation for being active in the demoscene?
    Normal people have normal hobbies, strange people have strange hobbies. ;)
While some enjoy to climb up to the top of the hightest mountains, others may
enjoy collecting stamps. And some find it interesting to live out their
creative potential: Painting, making music, writing etc. Demosceners blend
those activities with their interest for & usuage of computer technology. 

Secondly, people always like to communicate with like-minded people, who
share their interests and compete against or work together with them.
  • 2.9. What exactly is the advantage of making demos run in realtime?
    Challenge, competition, learning.
   
In addition, those demos are a LOT smaller than a video recording of the
content would be. A 64kb intro like fr-08 that runs for about 10 minutes, a
divx snapshot that could cope quality wise would waste more than 100 times the
space on your harddisk. Also, you can include hidden parts, provide additional
options or randomize certain aspects of the demo, which is not possible with
a cast-in-stone divx.
  • 2.10. Where can I download (the latest) scene demos?
    Follow the news on http://www.scene.org and http://www.pouet.net.
  • 2.11. Where can I download scene demos in divx/avi format?
    For most pc demos, there's simply no video recording. However, some known
takes of pc demos are:

 - raw confessions/Coccon (requires Gforce 3 to run in realtime)
   (http://cocoon.planet-d.net/raw/RawConfessions_Cocoon.avi)

 - relais/Kolor (requires Gforce 3 to run in realtime, no ati)
   (can be found on scene.org)


Another opportunity is to purchase the mindcany DVD (see [7.2.])

Btw, Videos of Amiga demos can be found here:

 - http://www.amidemos.org / http://www.scene.org/dir.php?dir=/mirrors/amidemos
  • 2.12. Where can I find demo xyz?
    In order to find a specific demo, you can try:

 - http://www.scene.org/search.php

 - http://www.ojuice.org/search.htm?t=a

 - http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php (or use the search box on the front page)

If you cannot remember the name of demo or the name of the group who has made
it, you can try asking sceners on the web or usenet (see [7.6.]) for help.
  • 2.13. Any suggestions what demoscene productions are worth downloading?
    You might...

 - read the reviews on http://ths.demoscene.org

 - follow the steady stream of information on http://www.pouet.net
   (or just click on "random" until you've found something interesting)

 - take a look at pouet.net's top-ten lists: http://www.pouet.net/top10.php

 - visit http://www.scene.org/tips.php

 - visit http://www.monostep.org

 - visit http://www.calodox.org/demoo
  • 2.14. Where can I get the music from intro/demo xyz?
    If you're lucky, you'll find it in the root or one of the sub directories
("/data" etc.) of the demo exe. In most cases it's either an mp3/ogg file,
or a module in xm/it format. If you cannot find it, you can:

 - go to http://www.dc5.org/demodulate, a collection of demo soundtracks,
   probably you'll find it here.
 
 - try the archive of nectarine demoscene radio: http://www.scenemusic.net 

 - ask the author of the tune (look into the readme file for mail adresses)

 - use a file ripper to try to find and extract the sound file  

 - sneak into every file with a hex editor and look for suppisious headers,
   once you've found a file that, according to the hex data and the file
   size could be a mp3/ogg/xm/it file, just rename it and try playing it.

 - record the audio stream while the demo's running

 - in case you want to grab the music of the farbrausch intros,
   go and get their music collection "brullwurfel", it features several
   intro tracks including a oportunity to render them to wav files.
  • 2.15. Are there scene demos which I can view online?
    You might try some alambik, shockwave or java demos. Some examples:

 - http://contest.alambik.com (Alambik)
 
 - http://medcg.free.fr/woodsenders (Alambik)
 
 - http://www.i-arts.com/darkzone/dz_awakv1.htm (Shockwave)
 
 - http://www.komplex.org/java.html (Java)
  • 2.16. Where can I find demos that bring my latest hardware to full effect?
    Since most demo coders are usually still busy with their education (pupils, 
students) they cannot afford the lastet suff from the hardware market. Since
the commercial death of the home computers era, the demoscene has always been
a certain bit behind the latest technology. F.e., the usuage of 3d accelerators
became common years after their establishment among gamers. In order to really
get some eye-candy from your brand-new graphics card, you may look at some
'tech demos'. Usually, the graphics chip developers have some nice
new-feature-show-off demos on their websites.

However, to test your cpu power, you can download some raytracing demos
like the Federation against Nature ones: http://www.realstorm.de/Download.html.
  • 2.17. What's the difference between hardware accelerated and software rendering demos?
    Demos that only rely on software rendering do not make any use of special
capabilities of the installed graphics card. Everything shown is computed
by the cpu in contrast to 3d accelerated demos, where most/all of the actual
computations are done by the graphics card. That's why it (almost) doesn't
matter what kind of graphics card is installed when you run software rendered
demos. It won't run faster after you've installed a newer graphics card.
As a side effect, the compatibility and driver issues are minor. 

To compensate the high cpu load, software rendering demos usually run in a
lower resolution and/or colour depth than their 3d graphics hardware
accelerated counterparts. Most demos released before the year 2000 are
software rendering ones.

Raytracing demos or demos that show 2d effects only don't benefit much from
additional graphics hardware power due to their technical nature (pun alert;)).
  • 2.18. Are there commercial demos?
    Yes, although this really doesn't happen very often, from time to time, sceners
make money out of their hobby. Known 'incidents' are the Future Crew demo for
Creative Labs (and further works for SSI and The Waite Group Press) and the
Afri Cola Demo by members of Farbrausch.
  • 2.19. What is the legal status of demoscene productions?
    Generally spoken, demoscene productions are freeware. You can copy and
distribute them, as long as it keeps free of charge (and warranty).

On the other hand, demoscene productions often contain copyrighted material
in one way or the other. Most notably, it's the (rather rare) case of ripped
soundtracks and (more often) graphics. Several classic demos could not be
presented on the Mindcandy DVD [see 7.2.] or needed to be edited for this
very reason.
  • 2.20. What free tools for demo-making are available?
    Please note, that most groups/individuals have their own tools, exclusively
developed for in-house use. Only a small portion of the tools out there are
actually publicly available. Some demo assembling tools are:

- Demopaja by Moppi Productions
  (http://moppi.inside.org/demopaja)

- Smode by Virtual Emotion
  (http://smode.smousse.net)

3. Troubleshooting

4. Events

  • 4.1. What are demoscene parties?
    In short: Demoscene meetings/festivals where scerner meet. Usually there is a
a big screen, compos you can participate in and lots of weird people from all
over the world you can meet and talk to, exchange ideas and booze with. ;)
Oh, and there's a network too (but not for gameing).
  • 4.2. What are 'compos'?
    Competitions at demoparties. The most common competitions, that take place on
almost any demoscene party are:

 - demo
 - 64kb intro (see [2.4.])
 - 4kb intro
 - wild demo (see [5.1.])
 - graphics (at least seperated compos for rendered and pixeled ones)
 - music (seperated compos for 'tracked' and mp3/ogg music)
 - all kinds of fast/surprise compos
  • 4.3. What are the most important demoscene parties?
    Currently, the big ones are:

 - Breakpoint, Germany (100% scene, http://breakpoint.untergrund.net)

 - Assembly, Finnland (gamers and sceners, http://assembly.org)

 - The party, Den.. (...uhmm, wait a moment, you asked about demoscene? then,
   forget it ;))
  • 4.4. Where and when is the next demoscene party?
    The following sites provide all needed info:

 - http://www.ojuice.org/next/parties.htm

 - http://calendar.demoparty.de
  • 4.5. Why is it that compo results tend to get fucked up?
    Often, you might wonder why a certain compo result seems to be fucked up. 
Bad stuff ranked high, while a much better production is nowhere near the
place it deserved. This might be due to the following:

 - People might not have been sober during voting

 - People often DO have a strange taste

 - Some stuff looks much better/worse on the big screen/compo machine
   than on your home machinery (different colour/gamma intensity/more powerful
   hardware in the compo machine etc.).

 - People tend to vote for their own productions or for the 
   production of their group or their friends. (aka self-voting, group-voting,
   buddy-voting). You can imagine that a group with 20 members can 'distort'
   the results of a 200 people party quite a bit.

 - People cheat (exploiting the voting-system)

 - Never underestimate the fun-factor of a party. Technically and artistically
   bad productions might get a lot of votes if they're funny or just catch
   the mood of the audience.

 - The demo crashed the compo machine and most of the good stuff was
   yet about to follow. Does not happen very often though.

5. Terms

  • 5.1. What is a 'wild' demo?
    A wild demo can be pretty much everything. Some possibilities:

 - It's any kind of film, usually available as divx/avi file
   (music videos, shorts, comedies, trash, prerendered animations...)

 - It's a demo that requires very rare/strange hardware to run
   (c64 with scpu etc.)

 - It's a demo that simply does not fit in any competition (and the
   applying rules) of a given demoparty.   
   (30mb demo, although 15mb is the limit)

 - Sometimes, live performances count as 'wild' demos too. ;)

However, in most cases, it IS a short film.
  • 5.2. What are trackers?
    Either people who use tracking software, or the software itself. Simply put, a
tracker is a music software which combines sequencing and sampling. Patterns
are used to arrange notes and effects, while the source of the actual
sounds/instruments are stored as samples. The so-called modules, files with
extensions like it/xm/mod/s3m, which contain the notes, effects, patterns and
also (unlike midi files) the sample data/instrument definitions can be used as
soundtrack for demos/games/diskmags or 64kb intros (if they're small enough).
   
The main advantages of modules are hardware independency, small filesize (you
can stuff 10 minutes of music in a 50kb file, if you're using sin-waves and
other simple samples as your instrument sources) and their natural open
source-ness (you can open a file with one of the many mod editors, press play
and see how it's all arranged).
   
Much more about them here: http://www.united-trackers.org/resources/handbook
  • 5.3. What are diskmags?
    Diskmags could be described as electronic magazines or fanzines, made by
sceners for sceners. They usually contain tutorials, interviews, news, party
reports and much more. Unlike newsletters, or articles on the web, the content
is integrated in an unique interface with (hopefully pleasing) graphics and
background music. Diskmags  are a solid platform for scene related
communication and information. 

While diskmags have lost quite a bit of their importance on pc
(information and communication is web-based nowadays), they are still a vital
part of the c64/amiga/atari scene. 

related Links:
http://pain.scene.org
http://www.hugi.de
  • 5.4. What is a 'music disk'?
    It's a collection of songs (ep, album or compilation) that comes with an unique
interface/player. So called 'chip disks' contain chip tunes (see [5.5.]) only.
  • 5.5. What are 'chip tunes'?
    Tunes of the pre-sample era of electronic music, music which sounds are
generated by computers, respectively their sound chips, or songs that imitate
or resemble that characteristic sound.

Some chiptune resources are:
 - http://www.chiptune.de
 - http://www.chiptune.com
  • 5.6. What do all those abbreviations (gfx...) mean?
    Ok, here's a short list of abbreviations that you might run across:

 - gfx (graphics...)

 - msx (music... unless they really refer to the msx hardware)

 - zik (muzik.. er, music or musician)

 - oj (orange juice, demoscene news website ...see [7.7.]) 

 - asm (Assembly... either the demoscene party in finland, or 
        the assembly language)

 - xm/mod/s3m/it (common trackers and/or their file formats... see [5.2.])

 - compo (Competition... see [4.2.])

 - csipd (Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos)

 - GUS (Gravis Ultrasound, most sceners favourite sound card in the ms-dos era,
        can be emulated via gusemu: http://listen.to/gusemu)
  • 5.7. What is ascii/ansi art?
    Ascii art is text art, graphics that consist of ascii characters. Most require
a non-proportional font (f.e. "fixedsys") for correct viewing. The logo in
front of this FAQ is supposed to be ascii art too. :)

Ansi includes additional formating/displaying information, the most obvious
difference is that ansi supports colours and the possibility to create
animations.

In the days of bulletin board systems, when bandwidth and processing power was
limited, ascii/ansi art was an efficient and easy way to display graphical
content. In the late 90s, ascii art made a comeback as email signature and
sms.

Ascii art is often used to enrich info/readme files that come along with
demoscene productions.

Further information and examples:

- http://www.ascii-art.de
- http://www.thuglife.org
- http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art
- http://www.outworldarts.com/ansi.php
- http://www.acid.org
- http://www.ice.org
- http://asciipr0n.com (for adults only ;))
  • 5.8. What is cracktro?
    See [2.3.].
  • 5.9. What is a slideshow?
    A slideshow is a graphics collection/presentation with an unique interface,
often with background music. It's the graphical counterpart of a music disk
(see [5.4.]).
  • 5.10. What is a inv(i)tro?
    Invtro (or invitro) is the abbreviation of 'ivitation intro'. The main purpose
is to inform sceners about an upcoming demoscene party, when and where it will
take place, what compos can be expected, entrance fee etc. Unlike normal
intros, an invitation intro is usually not limited to a certain filesize.
  • 5.11. What is a fast-intro?
    On demoparties, one of the most fun competitions are "fast" ones. In case of
fast-intro competitions, the goal is to make a demo (see [2.1.]) within a given
time limit. To increase the level of difficulty, the content has to meet a
given theme or needs to have certain elements in it that are often related to
events (or incidents ;)) at the party.

Just like invtros (see [5.10.]), fast-intros are rarely limited to a certain
filesize, "fast-demo" would be a more appropriate term. :)

6. Do it yourself(tm)

7. Resources

8. Misc

  • 8.1. How many sceners are there?
    It depends on what you count as 'demoscener'. Everybody who has watched at
least one demo? Everbody who has been on a demoparty? Everybody who's
participated in a demo?

Pouet.net holds no less than 4500 accounts (we can savely assume that at least
~1/5 of them are fake/one-post-only/forgot-my-password-dammit ones). The
orange juice scener database holds more than 10000 accounts. Those dimensions
seem rather realistic to me. Most sceners are active on pc, followed by
amiga and c64. Most sceners are NOT coders.
  • 8.2. Where do most sceners come from?
    The majority of demosceners come from europe.  There's only little (North
America, Israel, Japan, Australia...) or no activity in other parts of the
world.
  • 8.3. What's the average age of a scener?
    Most are already 20 or older.
  • 8.4. What is this 'scene is dead' thing all about?
    Although, this 'opinion' is nothing new (documented by tons of 'scene is dead'
articles in diskmags see [5.3.]), recently, it became a running gag on
the orange juice oneliner. Reasons to type these magical words might be:

 - "I'm an old fart, being active and mega-1337 2 decades ago. All you kids
    suck, your scene is not what I used to know as scene. Plus, I'm an old
    fart."
 - "Hehe, look, just 3 words and they're all going mad!"
 - "Hey, it's fun, isn't it?! ;)"
 - "3D accelerators killed it. YOU HEAR ME??!"
 - "[insert your favourite oldschool hardware] forever! Everything else sucks"
 - "Future Crew is dead? Really? Oh, that sucks" 

More seriously, many 'oldschoolers' might be concerned about...
 - things getting just too easy with webtools, opengl/directx, it's not a
   hardcore-geek-only thing anymore
 - the scene is not THAT underground anymore (due to public websites, media
   coverage... and FAQs)
 - many old scene parties turned into commercial lan-parties
  • 8.5. What is 'scene poetry'?
    There are different ways to design a demo or an intro. One of the (by now
cliche) ways is to include wise/personal/political/whatever words on top of the
scenes and effects. While some of them succeded in transporting an emotion or a
certain feeling this way, many failed. That's why many demosceners have mixed
feelings towards them, to say the least. ;) Hence, it is not surprising that
the 'Scene poetry' concept has been skitted several times. Some 'scene peotry'
attempts can be seen in:

 - almost any replay intro
 - heaven 7 / exceed (can be disabled in the final version)
 - unet syd�men ajatuksia / haujobb (even multi-language :))
 - backslide 7 / hellcore and omnicolor
  • 8.6. What's the 'dutch colour scheme' and what are 'coder colours'?
    The excessive use of orange/yellow/red in a demo or intro is called 'dutch
colour scheme'. The phrase was used by Macaw on the usenet newsgroup
comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos to make fun of the dutch coders and their colour
preferences. Since then, more people started using that phrase and it slowly
but surely became a common scene term. ;)

And whenever a certain colour scheme is inconsistent, looks random or plain
ugly (f.e. pure rgb colours), it was the coders' fault... probably. Next time
he should consult a graphic artist or designer. ;)
  • 8.7. How can I find hidden parts in scene productions?
    A list of hidden parts in diskmags was published in hugi #24:
http://www.virtually.at/hugi/main.php?page=hugi24

The "Quasi-Official List of Demo Hidden Parts, Keys, and Tricks" can be found
here: http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula/hidden.shtml. Updates can be found in
newer issues of the diskmag (see [5.3.]) PAiN.
  • 8.8. On demoparties I heard people yelling "foliba" or "ficken", what does that mean?
    Firstly, foliba is an abbreviation for (F)ake-(O)ber(li)ppen(ba)rt, which is
German and means "fake-moustache". Visit http://www.foliba.org to even less
understand that arcane running gag. ;) And secondly, "ficken", another German
word, just means "(to) fuck".