The CPC 'Scene'

[cpc4eva]

is there anywhere online that describes the CPC demo / home brew scene ?

or is there anyone who has been part of the scene from the beginnings in the 80s?

im trying to find out as much as i can for an article im researching and will be writing down the track

* looking at who started the scene?
* where did it start ?
* how did it start ?
* What was driving it ?
* When did it start ?
* why did it start ?
* How did it progress?
* Who were the individuals and groups that had the most influence or were the biggest names?
* What was objectives of this people and groups ?
* What it meant for the CPC ?
* How did it affect the CPC?
* What new techniques were uncovered?
* What Demos and other home brew tools, games, applications Changed the CPC?
* Why do people / groups do it ?
* Was it part of any 8bit war between the speccy / c64 / CPC ?
* What did people / groups get out of the experience ?
* How did itchange people's lives ?
* Which countries had the best / worst scene ?
* How has the scene survived since 1994 ?
* What is regarded as the very first CPC demo ?

and i guess i have a heap more questions as well, any help would be very much appreciated

thanks

[Overflow]

Huge work you're starting here!


Let's have some URLs you may check first:
http://homebrew.amstradtoday.com/index_uk.htm - THE place to read about homebrew on CPC
http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=database - publisher=_public_domain_ category=game == homebrew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q5sgNCN2Jw&t=32m10s - live seminar about CPC demoscene - pdf lost?
http://norecess.cpcscene.net/articles.html - some interviews of old guys
http://cpcrulez.fr/demoscene-articles.htm - articles from Optimus since 2000
http://cpcrulez.fr/demoscene-articles.htm - french articles about the early years
http://logonsystem.fr/html/engdemomakingcpc.htm - nice reading

[villain]

Interesting questions.  For sure the french scene was very important for the development of the scene itself. What leads me to another topic, that was discussed today in a german retrocomputing forum. Where did the massive success for the CPC in France come from? I started to read a little bit in the net but didn't find "the" answer. But what I found is this quite interesting interview with Mme Vannier:

http://www.commentcamarche.net/news/5854402-marion-vannier-ex-pdg-amstrad-france-on-a-lance-amstrad-france-a-deux-dans-un-simple-bureau-et-sans-ordinateur

[TotO]

The crocodiles TV advertissements, the price, the friends and Discology...

[Duke]

Interesting questions.  For sure the french scene was very important for the development of the scene itself. What leads me to another topic, that was discussed today in a german retrocomputing forum. Where did the massive success for the CPC in France come from? I started to read a little bit in the net but didn't find "the" answer. But what I found is this quite interesting interview with Mme Vannier:

http://www.commentcamarche.net/news/5854402-marion-vannier-ex-pdg-amstrad-france-on-a-lance-amstrad-france-a-deux-dans-un-simple-bureau-et-sans-ordinateur

Yes, I agree, it is interesting questions and some are very difficult.
I pretty much followed the scene from roughly 1987-1988 to 1992.
In the early days, I did not see many French demos, initially it was (for me) the germans that were most active, with MTI, MCS, BSC, THRILLER, KNS, ESC, KKB etc.
Later of course Logon made a huge impact on the scene, P007, fefesse, malibu and many others.

Perhaps early on things didn't get too well distributed from country to country and games was much more important to the main audience.
So the demoscene in the beginning was very local I think, ie. in Denmark we had NWC, Tyronesoft, DAX, UAC and some others that did demos in 1987- iirc.  when not many if any foreign demos were in circulation.
And how did it all start? - I think from "loaders" (cracktro's).

[Overflow]

About "CPC scene" which was a success in France: should we thank the french paper "Amstrad Cent Pour Cent"? I mean: they talked about demos, they talked about fanzines, they even had demomakers as writers! quite enough to motivate their young readers (1). Was it the same in Germany or UK?


(1) As an example: I did not care about demos until I read that issue of A100% from October 1989 - in which I saw 2 demo screenshots - and then ask my swappers-friends to get them on next disks by snail-mail - and then mimick them - etc... Had a look there from download.abandonware.org 

[Duke]

About "CPC scene" which was a success in France: should we thank the french paper "Amstrad Cent Pour Cent"? I mean: they talked about demos, they talked about fanzines, they even had demomakers as writers! quite enough to motivate their young readers (1). Was it the same in Germany or UK?

That probably helped it alot, for the case of the UK, I think they made the least demos on CPC (maybe because anyone that could program in the UK was making money on games instead?)

[SOS]

In the early days, I did not see many French demos, initially it was (for me) the germans that were most active, with MTI, MCS, BSC, THRILLER, KNS, ESC, KKB etc.
...
So the demoscene in the beginning was very local I think,
...
And how did it all start? - I think from "loaders" (cracktro's).

Crackers are improving their intros.
=>
so it were not a challenge to crack the 1000th Version of speedlock or cassys cassette-protection System.
It's was more intersting how to do something "special cool" which nobody see to be before (so I think the most of the hackers were kids in the 80's)
To play with the hardware was very interesting...

The local character depends on the time - no Internet and no sonething other global.
So trading with announcement in the local computer-magzines where the normal way at that time.

[Nich]

About "CPC scene" which was a success in France: should we thank the french paper "Amstrad Cent Pour Cent"? I mean: they talked about demos, they talked about fanzines, they even had demomakers as writers! quite enough to motivate their young readers (1). Was it the same in Germany or UK?

During its short life, CPC Attack! published a series of articles written by CRTC (aka Richard Fairhurst) about demomaking - and every screenshot in the article was taken from Face Hugger's Ultimate Megademo! That was in 1992, though.

Amstrad Action published an article in issue 89 about the demo scene and cracking games, but it didn't really go into any detail about how to code demos, other than that you need to learn assembler.

I'm trying to recall when I first 'got into' the demoscene (in my case, looking at demos and admiring them, rather than programming them), and I genuinely can't remember.