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Post by addicted2rpg on Jun 1, 2004 1:34:05 GMT
www.theproduct.de/fr08_final.zipThis had me holding my breath, and my jaw open. Consider the size of this file. Consider a single screen shot in NWN is larger. Graphics enthusiast, enjoy.
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Post by kline on Jun 1, 2004 4:18:18 GMT
Looking at the size of this file and all that it just did I have one thing to say holycrapWTFawsomeGreat I think that pretty much somes it up. One day we will be able to hook up on the internet and play NWNv20 on our Pentuim-10, solor powered, 500mb connection cell phones. While driving to our next meeting of coarse, with a hambuger and a coke and smokes in the other hand.... ;D
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Post by MitzaVolchenko on Jun 1, 2004 8:36:20 GMT
You both scare the hell out of me, but I love you.
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Post by TravisBrumm on Jun 1, 2004 9:35:26 GMT
dude kline... you don't already have a pentium-10 500mb connection cell phone with NWNv20? where have you been?
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Post by Silentus on Jun 1, 2004 10:09:37 GMT
Did you also happen to notice the dates on those files - this was done over 3 years ago... that begs the question, what exactly is being done right now...
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Lumix
Elder
Come to beautiful Castille!
Posts: 110
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Post by Lumix on Jun 1, 2004 10:44:20 GMT
Hey Silentus, check this out for new! www.theprodukkt.de/Its an Unreal 2004 style game in 96kb!  Oooh, and check out www.scene.org/ for more cool demo's *drools* -Lumix |
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Post by Phoenix on Jun 1, 2004 11:14:47 GMT
64 and 96k demos are cool, but when you think about what they are doing it's a little easier to understand.
The graphics in these files are not pre-rendered. The graphics are instead calculated on the fly. If you want to draw a box you give it the coordinates of the 4 points, and the program creates the image. If you want a texture on that box, it then calculates all the lines and dots for the texture. That's why the file is so small, it's only the instructions to create these images, not the images themselves.
Compare that to a 'modern' game like NWN and you wonder why the difference? Speed and space. These game demos are extreamly ineffective because the computer has to calculate all these objects instead of relying on prerendered textures. The 'down side' to using prerendered textures is they are large (relative) files. Given the average storage of PCs, you would be a fool not to trade the space for speed, which is what 'modern' games do.
Given all that, it's quite amazing what they fit into these demos, there are annual competitions for these games too. Different brackets for size, I think the smallest is 4K.
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Post by addicted2rpg on Jun 1, 2004 13:15:44 GMT
You are right Phoenix. The requirement for something to be a demo is it must be real-time. You can get disqualified from the contest if you pre-render anything (some exceptions were made with sound due to card variance at some compos). The demoscene has deep roots, going back to the amigas in the 80s and the rising PC scene of the mid-90s. I was lucky enough to be apart of it, or apart of a part of it. The demoscene in America died in 2000 with its last bastion, The Hornet Archive, closed down. You might find a smattering here or there, but really you have to go to europe for the volume of this kind of stuff. A major theme is "impression" -- to impress. These people try to push computers and hardware to the limits to fascinate and amaze. As a demo conoisseur, what they did in 64kb is impressive: Most real time demos run about 4 MB - 8 MB. The 4-8MB demos are still real time, generating the image material on the fly. However, it just takes 4-8MB of instructions to render them. This is evident in a lot of demos produced at the time, and some still even now. When they did it in 64k, it was quite an achievement even for other real-time renderers. The cool thing about most demos, is they are coded efficiently enough to render *fast*, even if it is real-time. When they entered it in the 64k division (The Party has like thousands usually, they get real big), people thought there was foul play (a contest coordinator probably put a "real" 4MB demo in the 64k directory on accident), or it was a joke. NWN is surprisingly half-real time, however. And even quake/unreal. The graphics are not generated (so its not pure real-time), but when you pan your camera around them or lighting effects, they are all rendered real time. The textures and objects however are pre-rendered. From a trade-off point of view, slow machines will want the speed/big space. Hard drives took off before CPUs did, but we are now moving into the next era where an HD full of DVDs and MP3s is better spent than one full of bulking games with your CPU only running at 20%. Bandwidth still seems to be quite a precious thing. Just think, I can e-mail it to you, and it is smaller than my resume. I think that takes us on the route Kline was talking about w/ the cellphone & car vision  . |
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Post by Phoenix on Jun 1, 2004 13:30:48 GMT
It would mean a shift in current thinking for games on portables, but it's certianly possible. I just see them recanning old games that are already small (old NES style games) to keep dev. cost low to none.
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Post by addicted2rpg on Jun 1, 2004 22:46:26 GMT
Here is a picture of a demo competition. "The product" (the link I posted) was for 2000. This one is a picture of The Gathering 2004.  When I said they are popular in Europe, they are popular |
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Post by kline on Jun 2, 2004 0:26:08 GMT
Well I dont have pics to show they dont allow camerias in wafer fabes. I worked in a wet etch bay. What if I told you they could make you that phone right now... What I told you they could make a memory chip right now crap 6 years ago. That could store more info than you could even think of. The process it simple really. The problem lies in the cost. In order for you to etch and build on a chip that much to store all that info would make the single wafer cost thousands of dollars. Anouther problem lies in that you will start withmaybe 2000 wafers and only end up with 3 at the end of the bunch. And you have spent many man hours and months of time to build. Not to mention the billions of dollars of machines used to make the wafers,down time, and materials used to make the wafers. You would lose so much money the chip would be crazy expensive....BUT they are getting better at it all the time.
PS The only thing that cant be done right now out of what I named is the 500MB connection I wish....
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