Revision 2025 demoscene party

[genesis8]

Krusty can I suppose it's your photo ? Can I post it on my web site (with Lastic report link) ?

[krusty_benediction]

Krusty can I suppose it's your photo ? Can I post it on my web site (with Lastic report link) ?

It is revision photo. Free to use

[ZorrO]

If there are any of our forum members in this photo, it would be nice if someone could sign the photo with their nicknames.

There are rumors that Impact's low 5th place is due to suspicions that they used AI for graphics. But they had similar photorealistic ladies in their productions already 4 years ago, before generators of such graphics appeared. 3DManiaks2 is a really nice demo.

On other platforms I like the graphics of "Lost World" by Gaspar for Atari, and Amiga Girl by M_Hawk.



And a beautiful Amiga demo "Fire Geisha" by Nah-Kolor.

[Prodatron]

If there are any of our forum members in this photo, it would be nice if someone could sign the photo with their nicknames.

upper row: Zik, Simon, Toms, MadRam, Hicks, Krusty, Beb, Offset
middle row: PulkoMandy, Prodatron, Eliot, Golem, Targhan
lower row: Apollo, Lastic, Cracky, Octoate

[norecess464]

There are rumors that Impact's low 5th place is due to suspicions that they used AI for graphics.

3 decades ago, demoscene artists created the "NO COPY" label.

It was at a time where it became common for people to digitalize images of girls from magazines and then apply a pixel art pass on them.

While other talented people created everything from scratch in Deluxe Paint (resulting sometimes in weird forms for faces, body parts -- that was fun times ahah).

People adding the sentence "NO COPY" in their GFX meant that the graphic wasn't a rip or a conversion from another source.

Maybe it's time to revive that!

[pelrun]

Voting is a popularity contest. People hate admitting that they primarily vote for famous groups and friends instead of for technical or artistic merit, so they'll come up with whatever they think is a plausible excuse. AI is just the latest one.

Do it for the fun of it, not for the ranking you think you can get.

[norecess464]

Do it for the fun of it, not for the ranking you think you can get.

I have mixed feelings about that.

YES of course, making a production (a demo, a game, whatever) is a creative process that is "fun".
At the very core of it, it's a selfish thing, we create first because it's our own pleasure to do it.

But when you start spending weeks, months, and even years -- at some point you expect some recognition or at least, a good reception of your work.
Being ranked 5th while you know your production actually worth much more compared to the others can be really disappointing.

[pelrun]

> Being ranked 5th while you know your production actually worth much more compared to the others can be really disappointing. 

Oh absolutely. I'm not trying to say you *shouldn't* want recognition or be disappointed by a crap ranking, just that the game is totally rigged, and doing the work just for the recognition is inevitably going to get you burned. I'm just advocating for self-preservation.

This demo is great and it's going to be remembered by the people who care about the CPC, even as the other ones fade into obscurity.

[rexbeng]

Being ranked 5th while you know your production actually worth much more compared to the others can be really disappointing.

Man, this is so disappointing. Like, hold on. I get that you recognize how much work went into the code, but it feels like you're saying, 'Who gives an ass about graphics, bro? They're just there to fill the screen'. Wait, if you don't feel like they should be judged, why not consider to not include bitmap graphics in your demos at all, guys.

The reality is, you're entering a cross-platform competition. People are gonna evaluate your work as a whole; that's the deal. Nobody's obligated to factor in your platform's limitations or how hard you sweated to optimize those three bytes.

Voters at demoparties - especially those who actually make graphics- won't overlook sloppy conversions or AIs. Dithering alone doesn't make good graphics.

[norecess464]

@rexbeng 

I understand that you have your own criteria and I completely respect that.

From a demo-show perspective, my opinion is that I experienced a "wow effect" several times while watching this Plus demo.
The "better" demos in the same competition did not evoke the same feeling for me.

Not specifically judging the graphics, which btw I found to complement the production very well.

[Egg Master]

People who criticize the use of AI don't understand that it's a computing tool like any other. 
We've heard the same thing into the past about photoshop, emulators, and so on...

[villain]

If there are any of our forum members in this photo, it would be nice if someone could sign the photo with their nicknames.

upper row: Zik, Simon, Toms, MadRam, Hicks, Krusty, Beb, Offset
middle row: PulkoMandy, Prodatron, Eliot, Golem, Targhan
lower row: Apollo, Lastic, Cracky, Octoate

I'm counting 14 dudes at the photo and I count 17 names. Are there any new transparency effects used? ;-)

[rexbeng]

Well, judging by the result there's good chance that most people found the graphics to not complement the production very well. And this perhaps ruined the 'wow effect' for them.

Using AI to generate images may be fine, but. A) there's a lot of people who will immediately outvote them. B) when you use AI generated images you at least have to put some effort to fix the 'Artificial Stupidity' in it, like, say, number of fingers. Else you are risking to get a "yeah, used AI but wouldnt bother to even fix the obvious flaws" reaction. C) then you have to put some effort on the non AI graphics, or you are risking they pale in comparison. D) Finally, be open about it. I believe there was even a set of rules about prods featuring AI content this year..?

Regardless the above, I still find disturbing the 'downplaying' of the role of graphics. How about not minding demos featuring just precalculated animations as long as the code complements the graphics well?

[norecess464]

I won't enter into the discussion of guessing why people did or didn't enjoy the production.

But I totally get your point, @rexbeng. Like you, I will always prefer carefully crafted pixel art bitmaps. Sometimes, artists take shortcuts and the result is less "catchy", but that doesn't mean it's bad either.

btw, is there a public statement that some or all the graphics in 3DManiaks2 are AI-generated? ( @demoniak ?). From what I understood it's only "rumors" for now.

[Prodatron]

upper row: Zik, Simon, Toms, MadRam, Hicks, Krusty, Beb, Offset
middle row: PulkoMandy, Prodatron, Eliot, Golem, Targhan
lower row: Apollo, Lastic, Cracky, Octoate

I'm counting 14 dudes at the photo and I count 17 names. Are there any new transparency effects used? ;-)

https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/news-events/revision-2025-demoscene-party/msg250349/#msg250349

[villain]

I see, I see... ;-) Only looked at the photo in your post... 

[Prodatron]

Yeah, indeed, the photo posted by Krusty was the most completed, and also the last one, so I was refering to it

[rexbeng]

What do you mean 'rumor'? The 'trademark' of current AI image generators is their consistent struggle with specific details. Misaligned fingers, distorted hands, and botched instrument shapes among other things. Besides some of these flaws, there's also a few sloppy edits done over the AI output (edit: in 3DManiaks2). You know, it's not much different than what has been happening with converted images. It's easy to spot if the author is indeed the creator of the image, or just wired and dithered over it.

[norecess464]

What do you mean 'rumor'? The 'trademark' of current AI image generators is their consistent struggle with specific details. Misaligned fingers, distorted hands, and botched instrument shapes among other things. Besides some of these flaws, there's also a few sloppy edits done over the AI output (edit: in 3DManiaks2). You know, it's not much different than what has been happening with converted images. It's easy to spot if the author is indeed the creator of the image, or just wired and dithered over it.

I was referring to Zorro's post above ("There are rumors that Impact's low 5th place is due to suspicions that they used AI for graphics").

TBH I did not catch those details, I'm not exposed enough to AI (yet) to realize and detect those artefacts.

[robcfg]

People who criticize the use of AI don't understand that it's a computing tool like any other.
We've heard the same thing into the past about photoshop, emulators, and so on...

Yes and no.

Yes, because the search results from any search engine have become so poisoned that it's almost impossible to find any meaningful result. Using any LLM like Copilot, ChatGPT, etc, gives a much better and you can explain in a more detailed fashioned what you're looking for.
I use it to ask about programming languages as it's again much faster than the search engine.

No, because you have to double-check the results, specially when asking for code snippets, when it comes to images, it can definitely generate good stuff, but it all looks the same so everything is flooded with images with a particular AI stench to them.

And there's the issue of the data these models have been trained with. Specially all the images used without artists' permission that have caused large economic damage to them.

Constructive critiques are good, rants are a different thing.

[Anthony Flack]

If I get it right I could use my M4 to launch this .CPR on my Plus, right?

Never tried it so the next question could be, would this work with any .CPR or are there restrictions?

as far as i remember, for +256k cartridges, you need to uncheck upper set of ROM, something like that, to let the M4 emulate all the cartridge

Does anybody know how to go about this, preferably by editing a config and not going through the web interface? (My CPC is outside of wifi range). I never figured out how to get 512k carts working.

[demoniak]

I won't enter into the discussion of guessing why people did or didn't enjoy the production.

But I totally get your point, @rexbeng. Like you, I will always prefer carefully crafted pixel art bitmaps. Sometimes, artists take shortcuts and the result is less "catchy", but that doesn't mean it's bad either.

btw, is there a public statement that some or all the graphics in 3DManiaks2 are AI-generated? ( @demoniak ?). From what I understood it's only "rumors" for now.

Kris did all the graphics, and only he can answer this question. But I know he spent hours and hours improving the demo's graphics, as evidenced by the 296 git's commits of the demo and the various evolutions of the graphics between each version 

http://ldeplanque.free.fr/3DManiaks2/Github.png

[krusty_benediction]

491 commits for 4dekades without any gfx and less effects. I'm not sure a global number of commits is a good evaluation metric

[andycadley]

I think at lot depends on what you find interesting in demos. The 3Dmaniaks2 demo is certainly pretty and has some clever coding for the 3D bits, for sure but I can't say I find it particularly enthralling. By contrast the recent NINE demo on C64 is fascinating - it looks butt ugly, but pulls off (what appears to be) a single trick that should be impossible. Now, as the various breakdown videos show, it's actually a multitude of very clever effects all combined to give the appearance of doing one single thing - and the simplistic appearance actually sells the whole idea far better.

Like all art, it comes down to what the end viewer gets out of it and just because someone thinks their art deserves more credit, it doesn't mean everyone else will agree. And just because someone laboured for hours over pixel work, it doesn't necessarily deserve more applause than simple graphics over very clever code. Trying to blame that on AI generated graphics really misses the point.

[Pollo]

The 3DM2 demo would have deserved to be in the top3 with the NES and NeoGeo demos I think.

The C64 demos above 3dm2 didn't add much novelty.