CPCWiki forum

Less than 2 days until the Revision 2025, world's biggest pure demoscene party, will open its doors again in Saarbrücken:

https://2025.revision-party.net/ (https://2025.revision-party.net/)

I am looking forward a lot to meet my french CPC friends again :)


Beb / Vanity
Eliot / Benediction
Hicks / Vanity
Krusty / Benediction
MadRam / Overlanders
OffseT / Futurs'
Targhan / Arkos
toms / Pulpo Corrosivo
Zik / Futurs'

Did I forgot someone?
I will be there again before 11:00, this time together with Erik/Lastic (you know him from Benediction Coding Party) to reserve our CPC table row. Octoate should arrive around this time as well. I hope you will join us as usual at the waiting line again in front of the doors, before we enter.

See you soon!

Cracky (which you saw at the latest BND) will be here, and will transport me and Eliot to the Revision, probably a bit after the opening of the door :)

Hi, my train will arrive at 10h56, so I guess I'll be at party place 30min later (if I'm not lost ;))

This year I will make it too!
I will drive to Saarbrücken one day earlier so that I am in time on Friday, please reserve a place for me as well ;D

A too sad. If I would have known a few days earlier... 

Well, you can have 12 months of warning for the next one - Revision is on every easter weekend, and a bunch of CPC folks are at every one. I *almost* made it to this one :o

Can you share infos here so I can put them on web site ? Thanks in advance.

Quote from: Targhan on 22:49, 16 April 25Cracky (which you saw at the latest BND) will be here, and will transport me and Eliot to the Revision, probably a bit after the opening of the door :)

Cracky is a great Driver, have a good Trip! :)

Hope you are having a great time! Are there new CPC demos being released? 

I'm enjoying watching some of the general Revision party YouTube stuff like the live shader coding competition. 

old school demo compo is at 11PM today (probably later)

I hadn't realised there was live coverage...
https://2025.revision-party.net/live/

it's about to begin, eventually

3dManiaks2 is INCREDIBLE! :o

Supererb CPC+ demo. Stunning gfx and really cool music. Well done!!!! Best in class.

I liked a lot the 6128plus demo. :)

I thought the CPC+ demo was stunning. It made me realise though how little I understand of the basic hardware of the Plus machines and where the authors really have to work hard to make the effects.

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?

Quote from: villain on 18:11, 20 April 25If 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

What a cool and big CPC meeting! :D

Just watched the Oldskool Demo compo and 3DManiaks 2 looks so nice! Really shows how much potential the Plus range has!

Final results are out!

I'm really upset about 3DMANIAKS2 ending up in 5th place only -- IMO it deserved easily a spot on the podium.

Great job with the Amstrad 4KB entry, 2nd place is a solid result!

(https://2025.revision-party.net/photowall-sunday/03-sunday/20250420_211922_292.jpg)

You can find my report here with some more pictures

https://atariscne.org/news/index.php/lastic

It was really nice to see all your familiar faces again and I must thank

Targhan for the help with the PlayerMOD routine
Hicks for his help with handling BIN,SCR,WIN files and how to approach multiple images
Elliot for his continuing help to me , the Z80 Assembler noob

It was an honour and a pleasure to sit amongst you, today I will make the reservations for going to Benediction 2025. 

Great report :D
Looking forward to Benediction again!

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

Quote from: genesis8 on 09:16, 24 April 25Krusty 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

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.
(https://media.demozoo.org/screens/o/87/c4/1bc8.359610.png)
(https://media.demozoo.org/screens/o/75/ed/a444.359404.png)

And a beautiful Amiga demo "Fire Geisha" by Nah-Kolor. :)
(https://media.demozoo.org/screens/o/b9/23/a14b.359541.png)

Quote from: ZorrO on 11:55, 24 April 25If 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

Quote from: ZorrO on 11:55, 24 April 25There 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!

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.

Quote from: pelrun on 13:26, 24 April 25Do 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.

> 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.

Quote from: norecess464 on 14:13, 24 April 25Being 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.

@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.

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...

Quote from: Prodatron on 12:14, 24 April 25

Quote from: ZorrO on 11:55, 24 April 25If 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? ;-)

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?

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.

Quote from: villain on 19:08, 24 April 25

Quote from: Prodatron on 12:14, 24 April 25upper 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

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

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

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.

Quote from: rexbeng on 21:32, 24 April 25What 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.

Quote from: Egg Master on 18:05, 24 April 25People 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.

Quote from: roudoudou on 21:06, 20 April 25

Quote from: villain on 18:11, 20 April 25If 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.

Quote from: norecess464 on 20:48, 24 April 25I 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)http://ldeplanque.free.fr/3DManiaks2/Github.png(http://ldeplanque.free.fr/3DManiaks2/Github.png) (http://ldeplanque.free.fr/3DManiaks2/Github.png)

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

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.

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.

Quote from: Anthony Flack on 02:45, 25 April 25

Quote from: roudoudou on 21:06, 20 April 25

Quote from: villain on 18:11, 20 April 25If 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.

Refer to the discussion on this thread, does that answer your question?  https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/games/soh-tactics-gx-is-not-working-6128-m4-board/msg237278/#msg237278

Some artists add a few photos from the creation stages, or even an entire timelapse, to prove their talent.

Examples from the last Revision:
https://demozoo.org/graphics/371232/
https://demozoo.org/graphics/371237/

Quote from: ZorrO on 09:26, 25 April 25Some artists add a few photos from the creation stages, or even an entire timelapse, to prove their talent.

For the graphic compos this is the usual way. I wonder, if this is not even a rule (showing first sketches as well) when you want to participate, or maybe it's just a matter of habit.
Of course this doesn't make sense for demos.

Quote from: robcfg on 23:35, 24 April 25there's the issue of the data these models have been trained with. Specially all the images used without artists' permission

This is an argument we often hear, but it remains unfounded. Besides, all artists have been inspired by existing works to create their own style, and there is nothing illegal about that. As soon as we can see or hear something, it is copied into our memories.

Regarding the fact that what an AI does is not perfect... How to say, it's human nature.

And aren't there a few sites where you can keep graphics for free? Including the most popular one, FB. In practice, no one reads it, but everyone who creates a profile clicks that yes, I have read the terms and conditions. And there it was that by pasting something there, you declare that it was yours and that you allow them to do with it whatever they want. If you pasted someone else's work, the author can have a claim on you, not on them. If you pasted yours, you also agreed for them to do with it whatever they want, so have a claim on yourself, not on them.

And if 20 years later some graphic designers will lose their jobs because AI will do it for them, what do you expect?

People protest that GPT chat can create images in a few seconds like artists at Ghibli in hours. And they complain that it will take away artists' jobs, and that these computers consume natural resources. - And I will say this. Similar fears that artists will cease to be needed appeared when photography was invented. Meanwhile, artists are doing well and even a new field of art photography has been created. And as for resource consumption, I don't know if a group of artists working on a film for several years won't use more of them than one artist creating a film in a few weeks on a computer without using paints. The difference will be that now, instead of waiting years for 1 film, the same number of artists will be able to create dozens of films at the same time. Nooo, this is a tragedy! We won't survive this, the world will collapse. ;)

As for copyright regulations, I think it would be better for artists to learn how to use these new tools to create more work faster than to waste time on court battles. Before cameras and film projectors were invented, such cartoonists would occasionally get commissions for a picture for a newspaper or someone's wall, and now thanks to films they have work almost constantly, so they owe it to the development of technology, although they had to learn how to create animation frames and not just individual images.

And it will be the same with AI graphics generators. In a few years, AI will write demos and games for retro computers, you just have to tell them your vision and they will make it happen.

If we think about it, Intellectual Property makes zero sense in the age of Super Intelligence.

We are probably living in the last few years before these laws are scraped away.