Folks if you liked this, please consider attending Demosplash (where this was unveiled this year). I attended this year but attendance was pretty low (even for American demoscene standards).
Sometimes it feels like Demoscene is slowly dying post COVID, lets not let that happen.
The folks running Demosplash have been fighting the good fight for years but if no one shows up then it gets harder to keep events like this going.
If you are near Pittsburgh, PA in November please consider attending. 30$ gets you two days of awesome demos, a chance to play and tinker with a huge collection of vintage hardware and even dinner on both nights(plus all the snacks and cake you can eat!). And if you got a student ID you get your ticket for less than half the price!
I really second this. Even if your participation is virtual. The party organizers are really accommodating of just about anything that's entered, which means the barrier to entry isn't super high, and there's multiple categories of things you can enter, even just an mp3 of some music you're sequencing, or an image you are painting in some interesting way, somewhere is fine.
It can be really fun to go, and in person can be a real blast. I'll also echo that since the party is run by CMU's computer club, the collection of vintage hardware you can mess with is absolutely unreal.
Whaaaaaat! I attended CMU and didn't know this was a thing. I tried my best to turn all of my dorm-mates in Schlag on to the demoscene for months! I don't know how much or if any of it stuck, but I can feel assured that "Elysium" and "Odyssey" and "Second Reality" were exposed to a new generation, if only for a few minutes.
Well, anyway, rock on fellow Tartan(s). Thanks for keeping the demoscene hacker spirit alive!
If you know people near CMU that would be interested in attending, please let them know for next Nov. Non-CMU people are welcome as well(I'm not CMU affiliated but they are super welcoming regardless).
I'm not CMU connected either and can confirm the party organizers, volunteers, and attendees have been great the few times I've made it in person. They really just want to do cool stuff and have fun with computing equipment.
I don't know in the US but don't worry the demoscene is very much alive in Europe! Lots of big and smaller events all year long. I am personally going to Revision (where about a thousand people gather every Easter) and Evoke almost every year..the rest of the time there's often other demoparty you can watch live online
Thats good to hear. Demosplash is one of the largest demoparties in the US and I think attendance numbers were less than 30 people this year? (I don't have an exact number but thats what it felt like).
That tells you what the state of demoscene gatherings are in the US.
yes, some people ask why I rushed this out the door rather than finishing it later and releasing at some other party. But I really wanted to support Demosplash, and as a US scener I try to release something nice there each year.
I really would have liked to be there in person this year but things came up. November is awkward timing for me, both with the college schedule but also because it often overlaps with the big Supercomputing Conference that happens around the same time.
And as why not release at a European demoparty: most of the crowd there don't really appreciate/understand the Apple II limitations, but also with Covid over they expect you to show up in person and bring along working hardware (sourcing a local Apple II, especially an NTSC one with a compatible power supply would be a challenge).
I thought about going but wasn't sure if it was actually happening or not. There were almost no updates on the website, Facebook, or Twitch in the time leading up to it and during the weekend. This is actually the first confirmation I'm hearing that it actually happened.
Sometimes it feels like Demoscene is slowly dying post COVID, lets not let that happen.
The folks running Demosplash have been fighting the good fight for years but if no one shows up then it gets harder to keep events like this going.
If you are near Pittsburgh, PA in November please consider attending. 30$ gets you two days of awesome demos, a chance to play and tinker with a huge collection of vintage hardware and even dinner on both nights(plus all the snacks and cake you can eat!). And if you got a student ID you get your ticket for less than half the price!
[1]:http://www.demosplash.org