Demo for Dummies.

As you may have noticed some information about the demoscene-competitions at TG06 has been published, and an invitation-demo has been released. But, most of you probably neither know exactly what a demo is, nor how one is created. We therefore decided to write this article so to give you a simple picture of things.

What exactly is a demo?

A demo is not a rendered movie such as those made in for example 3D Studio MAX or Maya, nor it is something put together using a movie editing program like Adobe Premiere or Pinnacle Studio. A demo is a program created with many thousand lines of code and instructions. The creation of a demo is, in most cases, the result of many years of learning and experience.

What you see in a demo is rendered in «real-time», this means that each frame you see is created in the few milliseconds before you see it. If you have experience in creating a rendered movie or editing movie clips you probably know how long it takes to export the whole thing to MPEG or AVI. In a demo this happens while you see it. Actually, many of the same techniques that are used to create computer games are used in demos. So...if you want to create the next random hit-game, why not start in the demo-scene? ;-).

Some of elements you see in a demo is usually not real-time though, the code just put things together and make things move and animate. The music, for instance, is created beforehand, and often with trackers such as fasttracker2 or a program like Propellarhead Reason. There are also graphics like 3D objects, and textures to make things look nicer and more colourful. These elements are often created by someone other than the coder.

Now, where to start?

First you need to find out what you want to do. Do you want to code, create music or do graphics? If you choose to learn how to code you probably will need more dedication and hard work than the other options. If you want to create music, get a hold of a tracker or some other program like the one previously mentioned and start playing around with it. If you want to create 2D graphics, try to get your hands on Adobe Photoshop (or Gimp for you Linux people). For 3D graphics you can use 3D Studio Max or Maya. Once you’ve made your mind up, you probably want to find other people to be creative with :-).

If you want Duckers' "Demomaker's Kickstart Kit", including examples, tutorials, plugins and more you can download it here.

If you have questions, or want advice on how to get started, it might be a good idea to join #scene.no at EFNet. You can also use The Gathering Forums

If you just want to watch demos you can follow these links:

Don't forget that there are other competitions to participate in, such as graphics, music and even one where you can code a useless utility (the most original idea wins). To read more about the demo-scene competitions at The Gathering head over to the demoscene section now.