Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!bu.edu!m2c!wpi.WPI.EDU!jlehmann From: jlehmann@wpi.WPI.EDU (Jonas A. Lehmann) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc Subject: Re: AMIGA DEMOS: Europe VS. USA Keywords: demos Message-ID: <1991Apr23.034813.28807@wpi.WPI.EDU> Date: 23 Apr 91 03:48:13 GMT References: <20691@brahms.udel.edu> Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute Lines: 159 In article <20691@brahms.udel.edu> jon@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Deutsch) writes: > >About amiga demos: > >There are a lot of them. They have been getting more and more complex. >They are becomming competitive! And *most* of the solid-vector/wild copper/ >blitter-mania demos are all coming from EUROPE! > > > Sociologically yours, > > Jon Deutsch > > X-------------------+--------------+-----------------------X > | | |\ |>jon@brahms.udel.edu<| "For my 2 cents, | > | \|on |/eutsch |>>-----------------<<| I'd pay a dollar" | > X------+--------------------+--------------------+---------X First of all lets emphasize MOST demos come from europe ... NOT ALL!!! Here is a small continuation of this continuous demo talk...... No flame intended here either ...... I like bad programming :-) I don't know if people are actually as ignorant on this Net as they sometimes appear to be or if everyone is just too scared to admit that they do know some things about piracy, thinking that it might be illegal to know about it. Well, I know about drugs (at least a little) but I don't use them and I know a little about the piracy scene but don't belong to it. This is not the piracy scene where Mr. X. in Taiwan sells copies of WordPerfect for $10 in the back of his shop (no racism intended) but the kiddie scene which is probably as bad sometimes. Why does it seem that demo coding is more popular and advanced in Europe. Well, I think it all leads back to the early days of kid's computing in the early 80s. I think this is a brief and general overview of some of the development that took place although I am sure others remember better. In Germany where I lived at that time, we were all switching from Atari game console type devices to the C64. Why?! Well definetely not because we were interested in BASIC programming and we thought the C64 was such a great machine .... most switched because they had friends who had one. When I was in 7th grade, I think 40-60% of my class owned a C64 with at least a tape recorder and 50-60% of those had a floppy drive. Kids don't have too much money and mom and dad sure didn't wan't to buy these little casettes every month for big $$$! Kids got together at school and in their neighborhood and started sharing what they had. This sharing got tougher however as software companies didn't like this criminal behavior. But in 7th grade, who was really informed?! I remember reading some computer magazines at that time (M&T) that surely in the early days mentioned NOTHING about this being illegal. Copy protection grew tougher and tougher and the removing of protection in order to share with your friends became tougher and tougher. Kids of course were proud to have been able to remove the protection and be able to "give" it to others. Kids formed groups (like small companies). Some would provide originals (who knows how), some would remove protection and some would spread software around. These groups gave themselves names exotic ones (RadWar?! GCS?!). Demos, well .... when a group in Bavaria released a program unprotected first, they wanted to make sure that everyone knew that they had a copy so fast only thanks to this group. People from each group sat down and wrote simple programs or edited games to display their names. Often, other groups they were friends with were greeted, lame groups were attacked, members listed and rumors spread in these small programs. Yet, each group wanted to have their small program look better and better. Soon there was some competition in who could write the coolest programs to spread news (demos/intros or "standalone" vs "with a program"). People who were talented would spend their entire time coding such cool programs. Soon the trivial stage of programming the C64 had been exceeded and only a few top programmers could bring out the extreme and close to impossible stuff on their machines. Demo writing had become nearly as important as cracking. Funny was to see demo routines used by software companies in their game intros! And even funnier was to see a demo by a pirate saying that he was going to release this new product for the C64 and a couple of weeks later it was released officially and commercially. Naturally, the scene had a un-protected copy faster than the commercial world. Well, hardware advanced and soon the amiga was released. Groups started switching to the amiga and the same trends as were seen on the C64 started appearing on the Amiga. I remember some early demos were even written in C and said clearly in the scrollers that C was much better for demo-writing than assembler .. they lost that one after some weeks :-) Some people accelled a lot faster than others in programming the hardware of the amiga. Some of you must remember Sodan & Magician 42 and their demos like "Tech Tech" "CopperShock" etc etc ... truly amazing demos for that time. Funny to see Sodan announce a game with big characters and cool graphics and then see "Sword of Sodan" exactly match his description and see many nifty routines from his demo in the game itself. Many others have gone the same way. Although there are many amiga users in America as well, I don't think the interaction between the users is as great here as there. The scene is just much different in europe and doesn't just evolve around BBSing like it does here in the USA. I mean I have heard about TONS of copy parties and legal programming parties in Europe just since Christmas but I have yet to hear of one big one here in the USA. Anyway .... PIRACY IS DEFINETLY WRONG AND ILLEGAL, MOST demo coders PROGRAM WITH NO OR POOR STYLE, AMERICANS do know how to program (not better or worse), EUROPEANS, AUSTRALIANS, etc also know how to program, SOME IBM people actually program DEMOS as well. I am sure some people from Europe have more exact memories of those old days. ADDENDUM: Pretty sad observations Some things are really sad to see. In the early days pirates used to rely on information from magazines such as C64 and Happy Computer (M&T) for reviews and stuff and to post adds. In the early days the permitted close to ANYTHING to be written there .. I still have OLD copies and can prove that (well they are in Switzerland and I am in USA). Today these magazines have become stricter and do not allow direct stuff relating to piracy ... yet they know that is what sells. I picked up a copy of "Amiga" by M&T I think this christmas in switzerland and saw a routine for rotating brushes using the blitter and it was written using SEKA!!! This is a MAGAZINE. SEKA is fine .. but they were using a modified version ... I think it was MasterSEKA which is NOT LEGAL ... that is easy to see since the legal old version (1.5?) does not support commands like INCBIN or >EXTERN etc ...... Furthermore, companies like Data Becker who at a time used to bust a lot of pirates for pirating their products, are not that innocent themselves. Don't they know (YES THEY DO) that many buy their books to use as manuals for pirated compilers, assemblers. I have their machine language book and it has a whole section on how to use SEKA with all commands and options. Furthermore their C book is the same way .... introductory course to Lattice and Manx! They know what sells!!! Also, Red Sector Inc. is a pirate group although they do a lot of legal stuff as well. They programmed a utility called RSI DemoMaker or something like that which is used to make Amiga Demos without coding. This product by a pirate group was RELEASED and DISTRIBUTED by Data Becker as far as I know..........get real.....anything for money it seems! No offense to RSI at all! Enough said ... we are all dirty some how. nobody is perfect. My high school used to copy MS-DOS! Jonas - jlehmann@wpi.wpi.edu