Exams are over for a while!! 🙂
Unfortunately during my exams I had a spurt of inspiration to change my desktop. Here it is as it is now:
| **image removed, sorry!** | Even more reason the demo scene should goto Linux – cool X desktops! Check out www.linuxwarez.org for some awesome X screenshots! |
Now I’ve had a chance to digest what Snowman said on his announcement to accept Windows demos I find myself cringing at some of what he said.
First of all he calls them winmoes. I just wonder what exactly it was I watched on the C64 and Amiga when I loaded demos on those platforms. Were they actually 64moes and Amimoes? Stupid, and it just brings up another barrier between the different platforms. 🙁
Why is it scary to have Windows demos? Sheesh! I don’t care what platform I code for (just so long as it works in Linux;) and the openGL I’m doing is the first graphical coding I’ve done in years that I’ve enjoyed (last time was on the C64 around 1993!)
I enjoy not having to worry about drivers for different sound cards, drivers for VESA2.0, drivers for this and that… I never liked the PC architecture, but now I can code at a layer above it! Hey! My demos will even work on an Alpha machine! Now that’s a seriously cool idea. 🙂
The final issue of Demonews was a nostalgic view of an era past, now we’re in a multi-platform age where Windows 95, NT, DOS are equally viable platforms for demos. Linux is growing, with 6 million users (or so..) there’s a huge untapped audience out there for your demos. Watch out for it 🙂
There was a post in csipd about some guys who ripped code from an example coded by Statix in the PTC package and used it in their own demo. They only credited Statix in one line in their info file. I groaned when I read this. Below, you’ll find I talk about sharing demo source code, but this is what happens when code is shared in the demo scene. 🙁
‘Course, those rippers should have stated clearly how much they used of Statix’ code, and maybe released the source to their demo as well, but I fear demo coders just won’t ever have the same attitude the Linux scene has.
Perhaps if the example code with the PTC was released under the GPL it would have made those coders think twice about using the code..
Found the announcement I was talking about in 1998. It’s here: https://www.hornet.org/info/demonews/other/the_day.txt
“We have been carefully dancing around the issue for years. Now it is
time to confront it directly. The PC Windows Demo Scene. It is a scary
thought. Real PC demos produced to run under Windows only with no DOS
compatibility? Blasphemy. Or is it? The world IS moving to a Windows
environment and it seems only natural that our scene will follow.”