Winning 1kb intro released at Assembly 2015

The demoscene started out of the software piracy scene. An intro was a short thing like this one, that people put into the boot sequence of games they cracked or otherwise made available to the scene. Over time these got more elaborate and people started making them separate from the games to show off their prowess in coding, called demos. Nowadays the names serve to differentiate the runtime length and size of the program. Intro = short thing, demo = long full effort thing.

skrebbel3• 11 years ago

Intro = short thing, demo = long full effort thing.

The problem is that that's not true anymore either. Many intros are equally "long full effort" as your average demo. Intro simply means "demo with a size limit", these days (and by "these days" i mean "the last 15 years")

xorcist• 11 years ago

Just wait until you get to the "megademo". :)

watson• 11 years ago

These already exists and are called wild demos:

From http://tomaes.32x.de/text/faq.php:

  A wild demo can be pretty much everything. Some possibilities:
  
   - It's any kind of film, usually available as divx/avi file
     (music videos, shorts, comedies, trash, prerendered animations...)
  
   - It's a demo that requires very rare/strange hardware to run
     (c64 with SCPUs, for example)
  
   - It's a demo that simply does not fit in any other competition (and the
     applying rules) of a given demoparty.
  
   - Sometimes, live performances count as 'wild' demos too. ;)
  
  However, in most cases, it IS a short movie (clip), either tradionally filmed
  or CG/animated.

alt_2• 11 years ago

Cute, but doesn't really compare to non-js stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQNIKOD6WnY

mrspeaker2• 11 years ago

Ha, I love that you are so condescending about what he made, and one of the first comments on the video you linked to was "Yawn. We did better in 256 byte microcode strings in 1986."

alt_2• 11 years ago

Yes, sorry. Just missing the golden days ;)

JeremyBanks• 11 years ago

I didn't read it as condescension, but observation: old demos were able to take advantage of a lot that's not available to JavaScript.

agumonkey• 11 years ago

Ouh that was cute. The dragon curve part felt like cube ^^ inception. I'd pay to see that in an IMAX theater.

xentronium• 11 years ago

Different limitations (source vs compiled file size).

phaemon• 11 years ago

Indeed, astonishing how that fit all into just 1kB (plus a copy of Microsoft Windows).

ninjin• 11 years ago

Which of course does not really compare to the C=64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAsiHY1VCs

Arbitrary limitations, art, it is all very subjective in the end.

JoeCoder_• 11 years ago

Youtube is being slow for me today. If only there were a way to compress the video smaller...

cranklin2• 11 years ago

i used to collect future crew's demos

adeptus• 11 years ago

^^^ Now you're just showing your age! No but seriously, "Second Reality" by Future Crew in 1993 was voted one of the top 10 hacks of all time by Slashdot.org. I remember watching this thing on a very low end 386, with something like 4MB of RAM and maybe 512K of video memory and I was mesmerized. They might as well be showing you this demo in 3D holography today, you'd be just as impressed as I was, it was borderline magic back then. It gets hella good after about 1:50. SECOND REALITY - BY FUTURE CREW, '93

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reality

mrspeaker2• 11 years ago

p01 does so much good stuff (http://www.p01.org/releases/) - the fact that he won Assembly 2015 with a JavaScript demo is testament to his skills!

bane• 11 years ago

Anybody interested in a well written history of the scene that really helps explain it as a cultural phenomenon should probably read the demoscene chapter in "The Future Was Here", a book about the Amiga. It's probably one of the best written synopsis of the scene I've ever read and really places it well as both a technical and artistic movement and helps provide context for this kind of work.

chengsun• 11 years ago

Also, a fantastic visual guide is the documentary film "Moleman 2" (2011). It's freely available to watch on YouTube; highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkZcTg1JWU

replete• 11 years ago

iTerm is also pretty great, because you can split terminal tabs into panes and there are some new neat features allowing you to click on filename strings etc in Finder!

snikch• 11 years ago

I think you meant to comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10069521

gfody• 11 years ago

other results: http://archive.assembly.org/2015

btzll• 11 years ago

I wonder if the bad performance is due to the <1kb requirement.

Ellipsis753• 11 years ago

Almost certainly. It would be tempting just to pre-render this to an HD video otherwise.

sp3323• 11 years ago

In case you missed the link on the page, there's a 1080p version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnZUUSdpt-k

adam12• 11 years ago

Here is the UNPACKED source.

function u() { requestAnimationFrame(u);

    for (g = p ? B.currentTime * 60 : (B = 'RIFFdataWAVEfmt ' + atob('EAAAAAEAAQAAeAAAAHgAAAEACAA') + 'data', b.style.background = 'radial-gradient(circle,#345,#000)', b.style.position = 'fixed', b.style.height = b.style.width = '100%', b.height = 720, h = b.style.left = b.style.top = A = f = C = 0, 6177); g > f; h *= f % 1 ? 1 : .995)
        for (s = Math.pow(Math.min(f / 5457, 1), 87) + Math.pow(1 - Math.min(f / 5457, 1), 8), f == [b.width = 1280, 1599, 2175, 2469, 2777, 3183, 3369, 3995, 4199, 4470, 4777, 5120][C] && (C++, h = 640), f += p ? (c.translate(640, 360 + h / 45 * Math.random()), c.rotate(A / 5457 - h / 5457), c.scale(1 + s * 8, 1 + s * 8), 1) : (B += T((1 + s * 8) * Math.random() + (1 - s) * (h / 45 * (f * (2 + C / 3 % 1) & 1) + (C > 3) * 8 * (f * (2 + (f / 8 & 3)) % 1)) | 1), 1 / 512), i = p.length; i;) y = p[i -= 7], x = p[i ^= 1], r = p[i + 4], l = p[i + 6], s = 2 * Math.random() + 1, t = s * 4, a = 122, 640 > r ? (640 > Math.abs(p[i ^= 1] += p[i + 2]) || (p[i + 2] *= -1), 640 > Math.abs(p[i ^= 1] += p[i + 2]) || (p[i + 2] *= -1), t = Math.random() > p[i + 7] || p[i + 7] == '22312131212313' [C] & h == 640, w = x - A, p[i + 2] || r * r / 3 > w * w && (t = s * (r - Math.abs(w)) / 45 + 2, a = 2 * Math.random() + 5, p.push(A, 0, s * Math.sin(a += 599), s * Math.sin(a - 11), s * t, C + s, 640, .995), s = 2 * Math.random() + 1, a = 2 * Math.random() + 5, p.push(A, 0, s * Math.sin(a += 599), s * Math.sin(a - 11), s * t, C + s, 640, .995), s = 2 * Math.random() + 1, a = 2 * Math.random() + 2, p.push(A, 0, s * Math.sin(a += 599), s * Math.sin(a - 11), s * t, C + s, 640, .995)), a = p[i + 2] * y / 45, l = p[i + 6] = t ? 640 : .9 * l, t = r) : A = p[i] ++, g > f || (s = r, c.beginPath(), c.lineTo(x + s * Math.sin(a += 599), y - s * Math.sin(a - 11)), s = t, c.lineTo(x + s * Math.sin(a += 599), y - s * Math.sin(a - 11)), c.lineTo(x + s * Math.sin(a += 599), y - s * Math.sin(a - 11)), c.shadowBlur = r, s = l, x = s * 2, a = p[i + 5], c.shadowColor = c.fillStyle = 'rgb(' + [x + s * Math.sin(a += 599) | 1, x + s * Math.sin(a += 599) | 1, x + s * Math.sin(a += 599) | 1] + ')', c.fill());
    p ? c.fillText('BLCK4777', 90, 99) : (B = new Audio('data:Audio/WAV;base64,' + btoa(B))).play(p = [f = C = 0, 0, 0, 0, 180, 2, 0, 1, -360, 0, 0, 0, 99, 1, 0, 2, 360, 0, 0, 0, 99, 1, 0, 3, -2880, 0, 0, 0, 1280, 0, 1280, 0])

};

paulirish• 11 years ago

A bit prettier: https://gist.github.com/paulirish/21326986569181e47f21

myth_drannon• 11 years ago

the 4kb winner is also amazing

http://archive.assembly.org/2015/4k-intro/hydrokinetics-by-p...

segmondy• 11 years ago

And today, I was reading that facebook's mobile messenger has 18000 classes, and is about a 100mb, this doesn't take into account other dependencies it has on the OS. These demos are 100% standalone, no external libraries. Progress is a funny thing.

mbilker• 11 years ago

The only other dependencies would be assets and OS included libraries. All of the code executed is part of the binary or it is remote JS.

lawl• 11 years ago

No, assets are included in the byte count of these demos!

Not sure what you mean by RemoteJS though. You aren't allowed to load more JS code from the web.

nomercy400• 11 years ago

Different use case. Facebook is a communications application, with user inputs and networking, focused on getting the information to you as fast as possible for the best user experience, and being always working 24/7.

This is a one-off deterministic demo, without inputs or networking.

Still, a 1k demo like this is impressive. And 18000 classes is too much for a messenger. But you can't compare them.

mrich• 11 years ago

This is a Javascript demo. So let's not discount the browser, Javascript engine, JIT, 3d acceleration libs, sound libs, and everything used from the OS that is involved here. Still it is a great effort.

Your argument fits better to a machine like the C64, where demos are really going directly to the hardware and the OS is basically inactive.

Dylan16807• 11 years ago

Well most of the things you named are inactive. It's using a very tiny bit of external 3d code, and external decompression, but almost everything else out of browser, javascript, libs, and OS is passthrough. The javascript engine exists but does not serve to make it smaller; the code is simple loops and subroutines that would probably be better as native code.

X-Istence• 11 years ago

This is one of my favourite demoscene's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auagm5UBTwY

AceJohnny2• 11 years ago

And a breakdown of how it was built:

http://iquilezles.org/www/material/function2009/function2009...

akx• 11 years ago

WebGL version, by iq himself: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdX3Rr

skrebbel3• 11 years ago

Nitpick: the demoscene is a community. You linked to one of your favourite demos.

(and insiders wouldn't call it a demo but an intro because it's small, and obviously the word "intro" signals something about file size)

justin_• 11 years ago

Here's a 256b web compo from 2002 (!) http://wildmag.de/compo/

A lot of the stuff looks almost trivial compared to what we do today. (And unfortunately a lot of these won't work anymore)

kornakiewicz• 11 years ago

For Polish-speaking guys: Ha!art published a magazine about scene with some of good articles:

http://www.ha.art.pl/czasopismo/numery-czasopisma/4054-ha-ar...

rational_indian• 11 years ago

So Javascript is now Assembly?

skrebbel3• 11 years ago

No, Assembly is an annual demoparty in Finland.

clippit• 11 years ago

How to unpack the compressed html file? I see a lot of binaries in there starts with "PNG".

rtpg• 11 years ago

how does one even begin to figure out the techniques used to write intros or demos like this?

csixty4• 11 years ago

If you're interested in doing C64 demos, here's a decent starting point: http://www.antimon.org/code/Linus/

z3033• 11 years ago

Read up on Computer graphics. this EdX course looks a decent starting point

https://www.edx.org/course/computer-graphics-uc-san-diegox-c...

Winning 1kb intro released at Assembly 2015

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