There were many really nice demos on Revision this year. Hacker News favorite (and mine, too!) LFT put out another microcontroller demo, Sum Ergo Demonstro:
Classic first comment on the Youtube video: Hey lft, I designed the RISC-V core you're using, and I had a ton of fun watching and re-watching this video and trying to guess some of the tricks you used. Awesome work and I'm looking forward to a write-up!
How they pulled that off on a stock A500 (okay, a stock A500 with 512kb RAM expansion, but still) is far beyond me. It's pretty awesome and really deserved the 1st place
I really enjoyed the demoscene back in the 90s. Was never a part of it but I was always fascinated by the effects and music and ascii art that these guys created.
A BBS in my city always had the latest e-zines like Reality Check Network and Affinity, and others I forget. Reading up on the scene and about groups like Razor1911 was something I spent a lot of time on when I was younger.
It is a great demo and really nostalgic. I was briefly a courier for Razor 1911 in the mid 90s. I recognize many of the handles throughout the demo and in the list at the end, and even BBS names if you slow down or pause some parts of the demo. So certainly brings back a lot of good memories. The music is great also.
> I really enjoyed the demoscene back in the 90s. Was never a part of it but I was always fascinated by the effects and music and ascii art that these guys created.
It was quite something... I take it there are quite a few hotshots on HN who used to be in the top groups. I was in a group and we were writing small intros for BBSes with a couple of friends and then we'd get infinite leech/upload ratio on those BBSes. Best memory was driving through Belgium / the Netherlands / Denmark / putting the car on the boat / Sweden (Uppsala) with our computers (Amiga, Atari ST and PCs) to participate at a demo compo. Forgot its name but in the PC category we tied first place with Future Crew (we would have been first had I not screwed the sound playback routine which crashed half-way the demo), before they had their big breakthrough on the PC demoscene. I think that was in 1991.
Cops/customs stopped us as the boat arrived in Sweden and thought we were dealing drugs: they tore the car apart and had no idea what we were talking about when we were explaining them in broken english that we were going to participate in a demo compo :-/
I still have a few effects as executables but I don't have the code anymore for these.
Thankfully I still have the entire source code of a game I made in assembly (for PC / 386+) in 1991 (never published but it's how my career started, long story) and lately I've been having a huge lot of fun trying to compile it again with Claude Code CLI / Sonnet. I'm using UASM, which is compatible with MASM which I used to use. I managed to have all the utilities I wrote back then (picture converters / sprites extractor / etc.) compiling and running (in DOSBox) but haven't managed to compile the main game yet. A few more hours with Claude Code CLI and I should get it running.
FWIW it's hilarious to go back to code from 1991 and see comments in my code talking about this and that bug and asking the LLM: "Find where that bug could be" and the LLM manages to find it. It's also insane the lack of version control: version control was copying entire directories. Copy/pasta code everywhere. And then 10 000 lines of code per source code file.
What an era. Diving in that old code of mine brings me back: the decades they've been flying.
P.S: funnily enough by lack of luck a macro I had used back then happen to become a reserved keyword/macro in assemblers later on. I had named back then a macro "incbin" and that was preventing my code from compiling in UASM: Claude Code / Sonnet 4.6 found that issue instantly.
P.P.S: 0x777 in hex gives 1911. RZR, legendary: probably the most legendary of them all. Probably still have a few 5"1/4 floppies (both C64 and Amiga for I had an Amiga with a little software mod to read 5"1/4 floppies as if they were 3"1/2 for the 5"1/4 were way cheaper) with Razor 1911 "cracktros" (even if they weren't called that yet) still working (back in 2020 quite a few of my floppies were still reading: maybe half to 2/3rd of them). I know it won't last, nothing will.
It's an old MS-DOS .EXE. Actually it compiles with the ".286" directive too. So I don't use protected mode.
It requires a VGA card and those were more common in 386 IIRC and, anyway, performance-wise to run at 60 Hz it needs a 386. I never tried to run it on a 286 with a VGA card: don't know if that was a thing.
It's funny looking at that old assembly code and see ax, bx, cx, dx registers and not the eax, etc. ones.
The utilities I've compiled to .EXE so far are self-contained in one file and I just use UASM to create directly the .EXE:
uasm -mz myutil.asm
UASM v2.57 does the job in my case (note that I compile from Linux: UASM exists for several platforms/OSes):
That was amazing, really great song & visuals too. Takes me back to the days when you couldn't close the keygen because the midi playing was such a banger.
MIDI songs? I checked, I couldn't find any from the link you posted. Most were different module formats, like XM, Protracker, S3M, Impulse Tracker. Those have nothing to do with midi other than they also produce music.
At one point in time, (I think maybe in connection with some mobile phone being able to play .midi files?) MIDI songs was (incorrectly) referring to a style/type of music rather than the transport/protocol we use for sending notes between instruments/devices, or the file format.
I'm still since then always assuming the above when someone says "MIDI music"; they really mean "really basic/simple music" or just straight up "chiptune" sometimes.
It has nothing to do with MIDI really, just a misnomer.
I'd say 'MIDI music' became a catch-all for music that's represented as data that is in turn triggering samples, rather than being a pure audio file. Might be actual MIDI or might be tracker music etc.
The parts where it exits fullscreen and starts messing around with separate windows is really well done. In a way it's playing with the limits of what defines a demo (ie. the user's desktop is part of the performance), which is something I love to see. Same with the notepad animation part. I wonder if they implemented their own notepad-alike from scratch or it they used something like this: https://kylehalladay.com/blog/2020/05/20/Rendering-With-Note...
Really cool retro-mix, and some slick transitions.
Most of that was before my time though, so 1995 by Kewlers[1] hit harder for me, since that was when I really got into the demo scene and with it my drive to learn programming.
Glad the demo scene is alive and kicking, though I get why a lot is oriented around old hardware, modern hardware makes things too easy almost.
That Dynamic Duo disk at the beginning reminded me of my friend who got his house raided in 1987 for exchanging (not selling) cracked computer games for the C64 at the age of 18 in super rural Germany. He still managed to get into the army as an officer.
I upvote every post related to the demoscene due to my age, so I couldn't let this one, especially when it's coming from RZR.
Imagine if we could get a new release from FC as well in 2026 (40 years since their founding)!!!
as a broke kid from the third world, the amount of coping Razor1911 enabled for me with gaming got me through high school during the 2000s (edit due to not finishing a sentence originally) cannot be understated.
Wow, a real throwback to my earlier years exploring the Warez scene as cash poor teenager, which meant you had to get creative to find what you wanted.
Looking back in my 30s, I think part of my brain has atrophied because I can now purchase and download games and content with a few clicks on Steam and £40, which will be ready to play after dinner.
Before you had to think and search forums (both public and private) for DDL links, CD keys, cracks, passwords to unzip files.
Then once you had downloaded these multiple RAR/Zip files you then had to check and verify them for corruption or viruses. After that it was reading the sacred README.nfo file included in the crack zip. Which if you didn't specify to open in Notepad or Notepad++, it would open the Windows System information window.
The last stage before firing up a game was the patching/cracking phase; that could involved things like editing hosts files, unplugging or disconnecting from the internet, or modifying your firewall to prevent network requests for anti-piracy software. Then you ran your crack or copied a patched .exe file over into the game directory. Aye presto, you're ready to fire up (hopefully it didn't have a virus or rootkit)
...but wait there is no loading videos or splash screen (panic). Well that's because the pirates were saving storage space and removed unnecessary game videos and music assets.
Bioshock
Ah, that was a nice nostalgia trip.
Also for any other nostalgia trippers, do you remember the first thing you always installed was a cracked version of WinRar (before 7zip became cool), running on a fresh install of Windows_7_SP3_BLACK_EDITION_XXX.iso
OMG. Thanks so much for posting this - completely awesome! Such a nostalgic roller coaster ride, from Qmodem to Xcopy and everything in between... brought back so many memories... - thanks again!
134 comments
https://youtube.com/watch?v=v8zKDotYh9A&is=xAbW7VZVGLn0986B
But I think my favorite so far from the ones I've seen has to be Second Nature, an OCS Amiga demo by Desire & The Twitch Elite, and music by Hoffman.
I really enjoyed the demoscene back in the 90s. Was never a part of it but I was always fascinated by the effects and music and ascii art that these guys created.
A BBS in my city always had the latest e-zines like Reality Check Network and Affinity, and others I forget. Reading up on the scene and about groups like Razor1911 was something I spent a lot of time on when I was younger.
Amazing demo and homage to the era.
> I really enjoyed the demoscene back in the 90s. Was never a part of it but I was always fascinated by the effects and music and ascii art that these guys created.
It was quite something... I take it there are quite a few hotshots on HN who used to be in the top groups. I was in a group and we were writing small intros for BBSes with a couple of friends and then we'd get infinite leech/upload ratio on those BBSes. Best memory was driving through Belgium / the Netherlands / Denmark / putting the car on the boat / Sweden (Uppsala) with our computers (Amiga, Atari ST and PCs) to participate at a demo compo. Forgot its name but in the PC category we tied first place with Future Crew (we would have been first had I not screwed the sound playback routine which crashed half-way the demo), before they had their big breakthrough on the PC demoscene. I think that was in 1991.
Cops/customs stopped us as the boat arrived in Sweden and thought we were dealing drugs: they tore the car apart and had no idea what we were talking about when we were explaining them in broken english that we were going to participate in a demo compo :-/
I still have a few effects as executables but I don't have the code anymore for these.
Thankfully I still have the entire source code of a game I made in assembly (for PC / 386+) in 1991 (never published but it's how my career started, long story) and lately I've been having a huge lot of fun trying to compile it again with Claude Code CLI / Sonnet. I'm using UASM, which is compatible with MASM which I used to use. I managed to have all the utilities I wrote back then (picture converters / sprites extractor / etc.) compiling and running (in DOSBox) but haven't managed to compile the main game yet. A few more hours with Claude Code CLI and I should get it running.
FWIW it's hilarious to go back to code from 1991 and see comments in my code talking about this and that bug and asking the LLM: "Find where that bug could be" and the LLM manages to find it. It's also insane the lack of version control: version control was copying entire directories. Copy/pasta code everywhere. And then 10 000 lines of code per source code file.
What an era. Diving in that old code of mine brings me back: the decades they've been flying.
P.S: funnily enough by lack of luck a macro I had used back then happen to become a reserved keyword/macro in assemblers later on. I had named back then a macro "incbin" and that was preventing my code from compiling in UASM: Claude Code / Sonnet 4.6 found that issue instantly.
P.P.S: 0x777 in hex gives 1911. RZR, legendary: probably the most legendary of them all. Probably still have a few 5"1/4 floppies (both C64 and Amiga for I had an Amiga with a little software mod to read 5"1/4 floppies as if they were 3"1/2 for the 5"1/4 were way cheaper) with Razor 1911 "cracktros" (even if they weren't called that yet) still working (back in 2020 quite a few of my floppies were still reading: maybe half to 2/3rd of them). I know it won't last, nothing will.
> It's also insane the lack of version control: version control was copying entire directories.
I can understand that - under dos - but as I recall quite a lot of gnu/nix tooling was workable on the Amiga - RCS harks back to 1984...
> I was in a group and we were writing small intros for BBSes with a couple of friends
Ah that would have been such an awesome time. Thanks for sharing!
It requires a VGA card and those were more common in 386 IIRC and, anyway, performance-wise to run at 60 Hz it needs a 386. I never tried to run it on a 286 with a VGA card: don't know if that was a thing.
It's funny looking at that old assembly code and see ax, bx, cx, dx registers and not the eax, etc. ones.
The utilities I've compiled to .EXE so far are self-contained in one file and I just use UASM to create directly the .EXE:
UASM v2.57 does the job in my case (note that I compile from Linux: UASM exists for several platforms/OSes):https://www.terraspace.co.uk/uasm.html
I haven't tried yet to compile the entire game yet: that one is more involved as it implies many files.
> VGA was pretty common on 286, I even had an SVGA card on my own back in the day. And it also had protected mode but was still 16-bit.
Oh that's intriguing. Well I still have one, so now I'll have to find a VGA card and see if my code even works on a 286!
https://keygenmusic.tk/
I'm still since then always assuming the above when someone says "MIDI music"; they really mean "really basic/simple music" or just straight up "chiptune" sometimes.
It has nothing to do with MIDI really, just a misnomer.
Original release video (probably running on Stella)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEJ0A8Wvdxs
And a video of it running on Gopher2600.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixFH22MxqEg
It is an homage to 40 years of hacking from the group.
For context, they were pioneers in both the demoscene and in the warez scene in the 80s-00s.
Most of that was before my time though, so 1995 by Kewlers[1] hit harder for me, since that was when I really got into the demo scene and with it my drive to learn programming.
Glad the demo scene is alive and kicking, though I get why a lot is oriented around old hardware, modern hardware makes things too easy almost.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mtctbodNXY (20 years old this year, now I feel really old)
Revision faded out the credits part, which is still really cool on its own. The full version (10m 16s) can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AnbYNudAyM
More about Razor 1911 and Future Crew for the young readers of HN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_1911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Crew
P.S. Too many groups to mention, but these two hold a special place in my mind ;-)
P.S.2. Extra mention to the most famous Greek demo group - ASD (Andromeda Software Development) - https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=1317
such a nice way to remember their fallen teammates at the end there.
Nice to be reminded that Revision is still active, on my bucket list to visit at least once in my life.
Release is here: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=105954
Looking back in my 30s, I think part of my brain has atrophied because I can now purchase and download games and content with a few clicks on Steam and £40, which will be ready to play after dinner.
Before you had to think and search forums (both public and private) for DDL links, CD keys, cracks, passwords to unzip files.
Then once you had downloaded these multiple RAR/Zip files you then had to check and verify them for corruption or viruses. After that it was reading the sacred README.nfo file included in the crack zip. Which if you didn't specify to open in Notepad or Notepad++, it would open the Windows System information window.
The last stage before firing up a game was the patching/cracking phase; that could involved things like editing hosts files, unplugging or disconnecting from the internet, or modifying your firewall to prevent network requests for anti-piracy software. Then you ran your crack or copied a patched .exe file over into the game directory. Aye presto, you're ready to fire up (hopefully it didn't have a virus or rootkit)
...but wait there is no loading videos or splash screen (panic). Well that's because the pirates were saving storage space and removed unnecessary game videos and music assets.
Ah, that was a nice nostalgia trip.
Also for any other nostalgia trippers, do you remember the first thing you always installed was a cracked version of WinRar (before 7zip became cool), running on a fresh install of Windows_7_SP3_BLACK_EDITION_XXX.iso
Bright White Lightning, but didn’t see a track name.
Overall, wow.
Amazing artistry and skills.