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Interview with Japanese Demoscener 0b5vr (6octaves.com)
241 points by nokonoko 75 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments


Warms my heart when they mention his 'discography' and it's a link to pouet.net, one of the various scene.org sites been around forever and still going. Having any kind of documentation/archives of a subculture's history, especially from around that time when digital things just disappear, is great to see.


This article was such a cool trip down memory lane, and as an old-timer that hasn’t looked at this stuff since the early 90s (mode13h anyone?) I am so happy to see how strong the scene is today.


His live set demo is pretty neat

https://youtu.be/3lOptjAeA2w

Repo: https://github.com/0b5vr/0mix


Just to clarify for readers who didn't read the interview, not a live set, it’s a 64kb demo that looks and feels like a recording of a livecoding competition. So “live set demo” is technically correct because it’s a “live set” themed demo. But it’s not actually a live set :-)


I don't know why the sibling comment is dead (edit: was). I mean, it is a valid concern, if one doesn't know.

So, for slickytail and anyone who has the same question:

The code is actually compressed into a binary blob. You can see it if you just look at the source of https://0b5vr.com/0mix/0mix.html

A small script loads the blob and uncompresses it before running it through eval:

  fetch("#").then(t=>t.blob()).then(t=>new Response(t.slice(156).stream().pipeThrough(new DecompressionStream("deflate"))).text()).then(eval)
This is a common approach in browser demos and what is counted as "less than 64Kb" is that final html. A similar technique compresses it into a PNG.


In what sense is this 64KB? Clearly there's more than 64KB of code in the repo. And since it's typescript it's not like there's a binary that could be 64KB.


The html file with all assets and js bundled in is under 64kb.


Mode 13H was pretty nice. But mode 13X, hacked to have square pixels, was the coolest!


Mode X allowed pretty cool stuff, like fake true color with interlaced lines (R,G,B), double buffering etc!

Fond memories.

Here is a YouTube rendition of a demo I implemented in 96, showing those techniques https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t8o-uuq73UU&pp=ygUQTmlra2kgaml...


I really enjoyed the interview, and I definitely resonate with the art being free from so called “value” as an asset, truly a pure from of artistic creation and expression. I am curious to know more about the scene and it sounds like they would be welcoming to n00bs, you guys recommend any upcoming live events to keep track of?


https://www.demoparty.net/

The biggest pure demoscene event is Revision in Saarbrücken, Germany. The 2026 edition has yet to be announced, but it is always during the Easter week-end. They have a dedicated newbie corner if you are interested https://2025.revision-party.net/about/newcomers/


If Easter doesn't work for you, you can come to Evoke instead, that's (late?) summer in Cologne and not quite as big. Definitely welcoming though.


Nice to see Setsukos blog here on hackernews! She has done a lot of great interviews with sceners over the years you should check out.

I met her once at Tokyo Demofest, and I still feel bad about making her try the Swedish licorice I had brought... :)


I always found Demoscene to be a curious phenomena. A combination of fascination and not understanding the point.

Seems to be mostly a European thing, too.


They're talented hobbyists who are not interested in monetizing their passion. Such people exist in US too, although perhaps are more rare.


There were a lot of global crews during c64 days and a few crews on the Amiga. In New Zealand on the Amiga a lot of the warez and compilations had importros on them. So was a small coding scene here but not as big as Europe or during C64 days.


I think the point is to create fracking cool art - and show off your skills


From what I've seen, mostly East-European and former USSR.


Assembly, arguably the most known demo party, was famously Finnish. Future Crew (who made Second Reality) were (are?) Finnish as well. Lots of demo scene in Germany, also.


About evenly spread both sides of the Iron curtain, I’d say. Lots of demoscene in eg Germany, Scandinavia too. Netherlands, UK and France also have sizeable (though smaller) scenes.


And to lesser extent Iberian Penisula, where sceners like shader toy creators come from.




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