17 ms·

Wow, I never thought VC++ and MFC are this extensively used in demoscene groups.

skrebbel 14y ago
VC++ nearly exclusively. Some GCC'ers, but that's it, really. There's some more recent demos written in, say, Python, Java and C#, but they're pretty exceptional. Demoscene is also nearly entirely Windows-only. It's a good platform for games, and thus for demos. Plus, culturally, demos are about as closed-source as you can get, so there's this natural repellent force between the hardcore Linux zealots and the hardcore demoscene geeks.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  Exactly VC++ is much easier to work with than GCC on Windows (and I'm not talking only IDE but API support, debugging, binary size, etc) Also, video driver support is best on Windows. But of course, demos are made for Linux/OSX as well. You can try them on Wine as well under Linux, it's worth a shot.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    The demoscene for Linux never really took off. Most of the demos I've seen were ports of existing ones.
- skrebbel 14y ago
  > Demoscene is also nearly entirely Windows-only. Pardon, I meant the PC Demoscene. Don't want angry C64 demosceners here.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
pavlov 14y ago
The PC demoscene started out on DOS and Watcom C++, and switched almost exclusively to Windows and Visual C++ around 1999. It was a natural choice at the time, as Linux wasn't ready for primetime and MSVC really was the best compiler around. The choice of platform had to take the majority into account: most people didn't want to write demos that ordinary people couldn't watch. The opinion of programmers was not the most important factor anyway, simple because most people in the demoscene were not programmers -- there were musicians, graphics artists and all sorts of non-productive members besides.
- _delirium 14y ago
  Early demos were also frequently attached to warez, so they had to be on the same platform that the game/app being cracked was on.
  - aw3c2 14y ago
    That origin was really really early and not too relevant here.
    - _delirium 14y ago
      There wasn't ever really a clean break afaik, and the association (some groups more than others) continued through at least the 1990s. Fairlight were active in both scenes for over a decade, for example, though from what I can tell the group did slowly internally divide in terms of who was focusing on warez v. demos. More to the point, though, I think the association with reverse-engineering culture had a significant impact on the technical culture and choice of tools/platforms. Unix culture had more of a C ethos, and less of a patch-asm-into-a-running-program type ethos.
      - jonbro 14y ago
        in fact, razor 1911 is still releasing both demos and warez. I don't know that they have any in the running for the scene awards, but they are getting ranked.
  - novalis 14y ago
    This is also very true of the Amiga scene back in the day.
- Impossible 14y ago
  Linux is still not ready for prime time as far as graphics is concerned. Window is still the strongest platform for graphically intense applications that push the GPU due to the quality of Windows drivers being better than Linux and Mac OS.
- 14y ago
pjmlp 14y ago
Demoscene and open source were distinct worlds. Demoscene started on the 8bit world and as the PC world started focusing on MS-DOS, so did the coders. As one of the goals of the demoscene was to see which groups were able to push the machine to the limits while minimizing the amount of code, the used algorithms were worth gold and thus kept secret. So open source was a foreign word in the demoscene universe and everyone was happily coding the latest demo, instead of getting alternative OS to run on their PCs.
gaius 14y ago
For a demo you need every ounce of performance. http://willus.com/ccomp_benchmark2.shtml http://willus.com/ccomp_benchmark2.shtml for a modern take on this.
angersock 14y ago
I imagine that having a solid set of system libraries, useful abstractions, and a fixed ABI helps a great deal.

VC++ nearly exclusively. Some GCC'ers, but that's it, really. There's some more recent demos written in, say, Python, Java and C#, but they're pretty exceptional. Demoscene is also nearly entirely Windows-only. It's a good platform for games, and thus for demos. Plus, culturally, demos are about as closed-source as you can get, so there's this natural repellent force between the hardcore Linux zealots and the hardcore demoscene geeks.

raverbashing 14y ago
Exactly VC++ is much easier to work with than GCC on Windows (and I'm not talking only IDE but API support, debugging, binary size, etc) Also, video driver support is best on Windows. But of course, demos are made for Linux/OSX as well. You can try them on Wine as well under Linux, it's worth a shot.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  The demoscene for Linux never really took off. Most of the demos I've seen were ports of existing ones.
skrebbel 14y ago
> Demoscene is also nearly entirely Windows-only. Pardon, I meant the PC Demoscene. Don't want angry C64 demosceners here.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

pavlov 14y ago

The PC demoscene started out on DOS and Watcom C++, and switched almost exclusively to Windows and Visual C++ around 1999. It was a natural choice at the time, as Linux wasn't ready for primetime and MSVC really was the best compiler around. The choice of platform had to take the majority into account: most people didn't want to write demos that ordinary people couldn't watch. The opinion of programmers was not the most important factor anyway, simple because most people in the demoscene were not programmers -- there were musicians, graphics artists and all sorts of non-productive members besides.

_delirium 14y ago
Early demos were also frequently attached to warez, so they had to be on the same platform that the game/app being cracked was on.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  That origin was really really early and not too relevant here.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    There wasn't ever really a clean break afaik, and the association (some groups more than others) continued through at least the 1990s. Fairlight were active in both scenes for over a decade, for example, though from what I can tell the group did slowly internally divide in terms of who was focusing on warez v. demos. More to the point, though, I think the association with reverse-engineering culture had a significant impact on the technical culture and choice of tools/platforms. Unix culture had more of a C ethos, and less of a patch-asm-into-a-running-program type ethos.
    - jonbro 14y ago
      in fact, razor 1911 is still releasing both demos and warez. I don't know that they have any in the running for the scene awards, but they are getting ranked.
- novalis 14y ago
  This is also very true of the Amiga scene back in the day.
Impossible 14y ago
Linux is still not ready for prime time as far as graphics is concerned. Window is still the strongest platform for graphically intense applications that push the GPU due to the quality of Windows drivers being better than Linux and Mac OS.
14y ago

pjmlp 14y ago

Demoscene and open source were distinct worlds. Demoscene started on the 8bit world and as the PC world started focusing on MS-DOS, so did the coders. As one of the goals of the demoscene was to see which groups were able to push the machine to the limits while minimizing the amount of code, the used algorithms were worth gold and thus kept secret. So open source was a foreign word in the demoscene universe and everyone was happily coding the latest demo, instead of getting alternative OS to run on their PCs.

gaius 14y ago

For a demo you need every ounce of performance. http://willus.com/ccomp_benchmark2.shtml http://willus.com/ccomp_benchmark2.shtml for a modern take on this.

angersock 14y ago

I imagine that having a solid set of system libraries, useful abstractions, and a fixed ABI helps a great deal.