Affectionate Diary

Because I don’t play games anymore because of Forza 2, it’s best that I avoid talking about that and instead show you what gaming has done for trippy shit on the PC. Thanks to modern graphics cards, groups of dedicated European geeks have been able to bring remarkable realtime imagery to life, probably for the sole purpose of watching whilst on drugs.

There exists a digital subculture called the Demoscene, a direct offshoot from the software cracking crews of the 1980s. Here, these geeks compete with furious anger to show who’s the best at making trippy shit happen on computers. The bottom line is that it has to be done in realtime, otherwise you’re just being a cunt.

* [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/VS8gkJgfYcU]

This is Aether by MFX, which was released in 2005. MFX are one of the best ‘crews’ around, combining heavy tech skills with a particularly sophisticated visual flair. MFX is also the name of Brazillian pornography label specialising in scat. The crew are presumed to have used this as inspiration. Luckily, they don’t make realtime PC-generated shit for sexual arousal, they instead make startlingly freakish images that captivate and delight in equal measure, often with a fucking sweet electro / electronica soundtrack. MFX are cool as fuck.

My favourite bit of this one is the weird synched-to-soundtrack exchange sequence that happens early on. A fuzzy cube gives a ribbon to a sphere, which then lights up and seems to make the cube explode. It’s fucking wicked. Also, the spastic dancing coral at the end fucks my mind up.

*
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/4KJR5GzZ-Xo]

This is 195/95 by Plastic, a relatively new crew from Poland. 195/95 went up against Aether at Breakpoint 2005 (a Demoscene party) and beat it to first place. It’s a delightfully pretentious tour-de-force in pretty, shiny and delicate, lit with HDR and accompanied by an equally pretentious soundtrack. However, the shiny is very pretty and it’s a mindfuck to think of this kind of visual fidelity being rendered in realtime. It seems to piss on Toy Story, which took like 16 years to render on 500 amazing computers. Wtf.

*
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/zJEiiM35-TM]

This is Pornonoise by Lunix and MFX. Now four years old, Pornonoise is an exemplary member of a rare species in the Demoscene’s pantheon: it’s using a custom-written software 3D engine. That means all the 3D and image processing you’re seeing is being calculated and rendered on the CPU only. Yes. It doesn’t give a fuck if you’re running some £25 PCI card or a £499 SLI monster.

The steady adoption of 3D accelerator cards caused an existential crisis within the Demoscene, as the coder’s prowess was shifted away from raw assembly and graphics algorithms and towards C++ and DirectX. With Pornonoise, MFX and Lunix not only declared that the hardcore can still code sick software engines, but also managed to mutate the classic Tron aesthetic into a dancing vision of glittering polygon faces and simulated analog distortion. It’s really quite beautiful.

My favourite bit in this is where the screen massively distorts and there’s this amazing ethereal shimmer. Heavenly. Most people like the synching particles that light up near the end.

*
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/YYZMP76nUJI]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/YC0pFp22ycE]

These are Animal Attraction and Iconoclast, both by Andromeda Software Developments, from 2006 and 2005 respectively. Iconoclast won Assembly 2005, which is the most prestigious event in the Demoscene calendar.

ASD produce some of the most accomplished demos ever seen. Their masterful grasp of the core Demoscene archetypes (particles, vector graphics, abstract organic shapes and spikey things) is matched with a peerless proficiency in post-render filtering and a seamless narrative flow that often lifts them far above many crews working in the field. However, their soundtracks are almost universally reviled, as they’re horribly ecelectic prog-mishmashes with rubbish fake rock drums.
Irrespective of the tunes, the visuals are lavish, often stunning and again, jarring when you realise they’re being rendered in realtime. ASD tend to demand fairly high hardware specs, but the classy visual splendour of their productions totally justifies it (apart from their 2D stuff, which is generally shit).

It’s quite hard to pick a favourite bit, as so many look really nice. The vectors are quite something, though.

*
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/v0Eg3dBnsHk]

This is cutting-edge 2007 Demoscene from the official greatest crew of all time, Farbrausch. Whilst not one of my favourites, the tech on display in Debris is pretty fucking sick, with particles going spastic at a complexity that’s awesome to behold. It’s basically about this cube that explodes in a city and makes it come alive, which is a bit too spazzy for my tastes as the buildings don’t look that great. They also fuck up the soundtrack with some overblown sound effects, but don’t be too fucked off as the music’s being generated in realtime too. The particles though, are fucking brilliant. Did I mention the whole thing is just 177kb? Yeah that’s right. JPG sized. I’m not overstating the particle effects, by the way. When you see them, you will shit bricks.

Farbrausch pretty much deserve and entire post to themselves. They pioneered in the 64kb arena, squeezing content comparable to multi-megabyte demos into the memory capacity of a Commodore 64 (an entirely intentional limit). They owned the early days of Directx9 with superb effects and fucked everybody’s mind with kKreiger, a 100%
procedurally-generated FPS that’s only 96kb in size.

My favourite bit in Debris is when the snake of cubes goes through the car park. When I saw it, I was shitting bricks.

*
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=KyAIf3YePY4]

This beauty is 1995 by MFX and Kewlers. Kewlers are the other fucking cool demoscene group. Farbrausch are just too geek to be cool and ASD don’t even get a look-in with their wack beats. MFX and Kewlers show exactly how fucking cool they are here by bringing the Demoscene of 1995 into the modern day, with a sick electro-pop song where the greets (shout-outs to other crews) are the literally the lyrics. What we see here is the delivery of Demoscene staples, as laid down in the early days of 3D acceleration, rendered with the kind of modern grunt, loving respect and wallowing nostalgia that can only be created by two crews as old as the year they’re referencing. I think that’s right. might be wrong. It’s wicked, anyway.

My favourite bit in this is all of it. I cried when I first saw it.

FUCK YEAH, DEMOSCENE!