demoparty
= D =
dentro
demoscene /dem'oh-seen/
[also `demo scene'] A culture of
multimedia hackers located primarily in Scandinavia and northern
Europe. Demoscene folklore recounts that when old-time warez d00dz cracked some piece of software they often added an
advertisement in the beginning, usually containing colorful
display hacks with greetings to other cracking groups. The
demoscene was born among people who decided building these display
hacks is more interesting than hacking - or anyway safer. Around
1990 there began to be very serious police pressure on cracking
groups, including raids with SWAT teams crashing into bedrooms to
confiscate computers. Whether in response to this or for esthetic
reasons, crackers of that period began to build self-contained
display hacks of considerable elaboration and beauty (within the
culture such a hack is called a demo). As more of these
demogroups emerged, they started to have compos at
copying parties (see copyparty), which later evolved to
standalone events (see demoparty). The demoscene has retained
some traits from the warez d00dz, including their style of
handles and group names and some of their jargon.
Traditionally demos were written in assembly language, with lots of
smart tricks, self-modifying code, undocumented op-codes and the
like. Some time around 1995, people started coding demos in C, and
a couple of years after that, they also started using Java.
Ten years on (in 1998-1999), the demoscene is changing as its
original platforms (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST, IBM PC under
DOS) die out and activity shifts towards Windows, Linux, and the
Internet. While deeply underground in the past, demoscene is
trying to get into the mainstream as accepted art form, and one
symptom of this is the commercialization of bigger
demoparties. Older demosceners frown at this, but the majority think
it's a good direction. Many demosceners end up working in the
computer game industry. Demoscene resource pages are available at
http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained/ and
http://www.scene.org/.
--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.