31 lines
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31 lines
2.0 KiB
Plaintext
demoscene
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/demohseen/ [also demo scene ] A culture of multimedia hackers located
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primarily in Scandinavia and northern Europe. Demoscene folklore recounts
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that when old-time warez d00dz cracked some piece of software they often
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added an advertisement in the beginning, usually containing colorful display
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hacks with greetings to other cracking groups. The demoscene was born among
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people who decided building these display hacks is more interesting than
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hacking or anyway safer. Around 1990 there began to be very serious police
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pressure on cracking groups, including raids with SWAT teams crashing into
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bedrooms to confiscate computers. Whether in response to this or for
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esthetic reasons, crackers of that period began to build self-contained
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display hacks of considerable elaboration and beauty (within the culture
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such a hack is called a demo ). As more of these demogroups emerged, they
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started to have compos at copying parties (see copyparty ), which later
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evolved to standalone events (see demoparty ). The demoscene has retained
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some traits from the warez d00dz , including their style of handles and
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group names and some of their jargon. Traditionally demos were written in
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assembly language, with lots of smart tricks, self-modifying code,
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undocumented op-codes and the like. Some time around 1995, people started
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coding demos in C, and a couple of years after that, they also started using
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Java. Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its original
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platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under DOS) die out and
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activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the Internet. While deeply
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underground in the past, demoscene is trying to get into the mainstream as
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accepted art form, and one symptom of this is the commercialization of
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bigger demoparties. Older demosceners frown at this, but the majority think
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it's a good direction. Many demosceners end up working in the computer game
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industry. Demoscene resource pages are available at
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http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/ and http://www.scene.org/.
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