Comment by vrganj
8 hours ago
This kind of made me sad.
The demoscene was all about human ingenuity getting the most out of the machine. It was about showing off how good your crew was at making things from nothing but their minds.
Now, it too, has been swallowed by the AI that is destroying this entire mode of being, the joy and creativity of writing code, of solving seemingly-impossible puzzles with ones mind.
My favorite creative and intellectual outlet is dying off and its killer is wearing its corpse as a costume.
For these four demos I don't know, but part of the challenge was certainly working within the constraints of the machines of the day. The Furture Crew demo I believe comes in at 2.5MB and ran on a 1993 PC, so probably 8MB of ram at the most. Running it in the browser is probably at least 20 times the memory.
It's really cool to be able to rewatch these demo, but the spirit in which they were created is somewhat lost.
Second Reality ran comfortably with only 640KB RAM using the Gravis Ultrasound.
But it did require a 386, which typically had 2 MB or more of RAM back then.
Second Reality runs in real mode, and doesn't use XMS or EMS so it runs in 640kb!
It was also ported to run on a Commodore 64 back in 1997, in 64KB
https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1216
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> probably 8MB of ram at the most. Running it in the browser is probably at least 20 times the memory.
lol, that would be 160MB then, a fraction of what a Firefox Tab consumes and in todays hardware specs its a roundoff error :-D
(while back then you were the ultimate king if you had 8 MB of RAM available at all! :-)
I feel the same, it sucks. All you can do is carve out a space for yourself doing the things you enjoy, and don't let the AI grifters tell you that AI is the only way and everyone else is "cooked", no one will be writing things by hand, etc etc. God that rhetoric is depressing.
I write demos and games as a hobby predominantly for MS-DOS and machines ranging from the 386 up to the Pentium (soon to add 8088/286 to that list) as well as old consoles like the Sega Master System and other random platforms (like ARM-based kids toys like the Leapster Explorer).
Right now I'm working on an EGA production. I could just get an AI to generate a lot of the code for me or give me all the answers, but instead, I have my Programmer's Guide to the EGA/VGA/SVGA by Ferraro and another reference open on my desk trying to understand the CRTC so I can create a custom video mode. I live for this stuff and want to fully understand what's going on in the hardware. I like the creative aspects of making demos and games but I also like the technical aspects, and understanding the platform and the deep details.
When I spend too much time reading HN or X and see too much of the AI stuff, it really bums me out, so I have to detox by unfollowing/ignoring and getting back to my projects.
Not sure if this will help, but nothing can take away the enjoyment of investing time in doing something "the hard way" for the sake of it unless you let it. Factories have been able to make good wooden tables efficiently since probably the 1950s, but there are still people who make their own with woodworking tools because they find it satisfying.
I think the biggest effect of AI here is that you can no longer make the inference from "that program looks impressive" to "the person who created it must be very skilful and/or invested a lot of effort in making it". So someone else seeing your work might not appreciate the level of effort and skill you put into it, or might even suspect you of lying if you say explicitly that you made it "by hand". I'm not going to say that we shouldn't care what others think; that's not realistic, most of us do want some recognition for things we've worked hard on. I think there will always be people interested in doing things the hard way, and among those people the "old" paths to recognition and respect still operate, it just gets harder because there has to be a lot of trust between them that no one's taken the easy way out (AI) and pretended otherwise.
You just don't understand, it's the prompt and knowing which foreign work to endless rehash that's the new creativity now. There's taste in knowing what artist to steal from!
/s if that wasn't obv.
The C64 scene is still surprisingly active, and they usually do the seemingly impossible on such a limited hardware, while remaining incredibly creative (in how many ways could you phase out the C64 BASIC screen and show your demo't title?...). After the PC golden era I've been interested in the C64 only for a very, very long time, and I have not regretted it.
Maybe it will just pass? Eventually maybe people will get bored of this consumerist mode of creation, of projects born with no vision or craft, made with the tastefulness of a kid smashing together their favorite toys. And when the majority finally agrees these stunts are a corrosive influence on the community, we can just approach it as a moderation problem, figure out some system of vouches and reports, or downsize and our communities until trust again becomes tractable, maybe even coming to appreciate some tactical slop as a stepping stone or a proof of concept to be eventually reverse-engineered into a maintainable human project.
> the joy and creativity of writing code, of solving seemingly-impossible puzzles with ones mind
Find tougher puzzles then
That is a nonserious nonresponse.
Who's going to show up to the next big demo party (like the ones they arrange in Europe), having e.g. hand coded 68k assembly or done some highly impressive 4k demo, having been intimate with every single instruction?
Revision attends approximately 1000 people.
Uh, many people. There are plenty of demo parties with retro categories in the compos, and plenty of people still interested in writing their own code for those platforms.
Glad to hear that! But then again, might be hard to know how their approach was. Traditionally people write a lot of code and prepare before the compos, it didn't all come during those few hours.
It's the eternal sloptember, but for humanity.
Or an eternal heaven, our every wish coming true. The next iteration of homo sapiens will not be thinking how to do things, but what things to do. Is this the new creative space for us?
I always tend to think of the phrase "comfort kills" when I hear this kind of thing. The journey is at least as important as the end result.
Have you ever soured on a video game because you downloaded a "god mode" cheat?
But the thinking is the valuable and meaningful part. I don't want it monopolized by a few megacorps, sterilized and devoid of human touch, only thinking of things that said corps find acceptable.
We'll get unlimited frozen pizzas, but we'll kill off chefs in the process.
It's not a trade I'm feeling good about.
BS. So far AI just destroys jobs and lifes, and does not create literally any more jobs at all.
What makes you say this? Just because someone used AI to port some classic productions to the browser (which is actually pretty cool), doesn't mean that AI has taken over.
AI slop productions tend to be frowned upon, or even banned, writing code and using cool tricks to to what seems impossible is still a big part of the demoscene, in particular in the sizecoding, oldschool and wild categories. Clever use of AI is a debated topic, the demoscene is about pushing the limits of current technology, and AI is part of current technology. There is also the question of using AI for tooling (modelers, compressors, test harnesses, etc...), as in, will you stop using a particular IDE because it is written with the help of AI, even if it is good?
But still, most productions are hand made.