Saxonia Issue 02 Part 023

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

Saxonia

 · 22 Aug 2019

  

Who are you to let productions down 
By Rumrunner/VOID 
[l 

I read an article from Zerox some time ago, I think it was called "Why 
destroy a possible future". He told about a person interested in Amiga, 
who had made a couple of intros and put them on his webpage. He was then 
critisized because the intros were made with a demomaker and this was 
nothing to release, people said. That's wrong in most cases. 

Let's take a look at todays scene. Most people are not making anything 
before, let's say a couple of weeks or months before a party, and then 
they work like mad on their production. They release something that's 
"99% finished" and write something like "look out for the 
bugfixed/improved version soon". If they bother, they release the bugfix 
in a couple of weeks after the party. Then, they do nothing before the 
next one. 

Sad, but true in most cases, this is how people work with demos and other 
productions now. Who/what can we blame for this? I think that parts of 
the reason is to be found in the prizes at big parties. Why work for 
a long time on something and then release it an ordinary day, when we can 
make lots of money on it, money which we perhaps will use to upgrade our 
computers, is perhaps a legitimate reason for may to work as described. 
Moreover, much (that should perhaps be all) of the competition found 
earlier is gone now. People can wait for a party with their demo, and 
there will be nobody else that have released the same revolutionary effect 
before them. Simply because either : 

1 - The effect is not revolutionary 

      or 

2 - If it is, there's very little chance that others bother to make 
    something like it, so there's not much to worry about 

This could not be done in past days. I remember one of the most imressive 
stunts (at the time) on the Commodore 64. I guess that you all know it. 
It's ofcourse 1001 crew managing to put graphics on the sideborder of the 
screen. This part of the screen was not intended for such purposes, so 
this should really not be possible. Now, people might be unaware of this, 
but according to some old Rebels members, another coder, calling himself 
Zen-Master had made the same kind of routine and finished it one day 
before, the problem was that he hadn't released it. You can read about 
this in the C64demo from the mentioned group (Rebels). Bu tbe sure to 
watch the demo on an Amiga 500 as you will not get sound on Amiga1200. 

So, who remembers Zen-Master now, and who remembers 1001 Crew? Do we need 
to take a survey on this? Most certainly not. This shows that under some 
circumstances, waiting for a party was not satisfactory. 

Let's also take a little look at how people arranges parties. Until now, 
it may seem that I have, in certain cases, a little resentment towards 
those who only releases stuff at events such as a party. However, this 
is not the case, it's more the party arrangers that should have a little 
kick in the butt sometimes. Most focus is on gamecompetitions and such 
rediculous events. And, if I'm not mistaken, I even read that the 
Gathering coming up in about a week's time is sponsored by our enemy 
number one, Microsoft, that is. There seems to be little focus on demos 
and actually making anything, but let's stick to the subject here and 
say that even though parties have grown bigger, there are not so many 
of them now as before. I would prefer a party with 10 sceners over a 
party with 300 gamers everyday, but am I the only one thinking this way? 
There would be much easier to release stuff more often if there was more 
parties held around. 

 
Right, so far I have written about when and how people release stuff, 
which is important enough regarding what I wanted to discuss in this 
article, namely critisizing people who actually tries to do something 
for the scene. 

You might think that an intro made with a demomaker is not a 
sceneproduction, but before you say this and speak negatively about it, 
answer this question for yourself : 

  [2 How much have you released for the benefit of the scene lately[0 

If you say one or two productions or even more, I am happy. Go ahead and 
critisize if you really want to stop newcomers on the scene, who might 
move away from the demomaker and onto the assembler in some time. But if 
you haven't done anything for years, you are not in the position to 
pull down other people's work. If you don't do anything, somebody else 
must do it, right? Or should the scene die because you don't think that 
it's worth the effort to make something?