It's a kind of a coding competition, indeed. The goals and the circumstances differ from a hackathon. The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens, but rather for showing off the work that was prepared beforehand. Usually these works are multimedia, so visuals and sound go together, but the main focus is the visuals, the rest of it is supportive. Works are nominated in different categories, which are usually set up to be very restrictive, for example, the work should be a single 32-bit Windows executable, no additional files, and the EXE should not exceed a certain byte size. The point of all this is to create the most impressive work within the restraints.
Wrt/ terminology, one submission of such a work is a "demo", and "demoscene" is the name for the culture itself (people, events, submissions, associated works like websites).
For an easy example, the all-time most popular work is this one: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30244 (according to the site's own ranking). You can download the software to run yourself, or you can watch a youtube recording of it, which is much more accessible. The entirety of this work (visuals, music) is compiled into a single 177k executable.
This is referring to demo parties specifically. Let's not forget the social aspects of them though. Yes, a selected few went to parties to "compete" in their chosen art, some might have even taken them quite seriously. But they were the minority.
The bulk of the attendees just went for fun and company, and did not create anything. Demoparties _were indeed_ parties back in the 90s, with people playing games, drinking and socializing in general. You could argue these were like rave parties, only a bit quieter and much friendlier / inclusive (ok, maybe I am biased, but it certainly felt that way).
It was lacking in one aspect though - not many girls attended, and so as time passed these parties were becoming less attractive. But that did not stop anyone going home and downloading and admiring the products of demosceners, who did all this basically in their free time, for not much (if at all) compensation.
> The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens
How to tell you've never been to a demo party without saying you've never been to a demo party.
I jest, but scrambling to implement the last effect before the deadline, or fix some stupid last minute bug was certainly typical at the events I was at. And you see this in a lot of the prods which released post-party "proper" versions.
There were also parties which had "live" competitions, where a theme would be announced at the party and you had then just a few hours to make a demo. Obviously wouldn't do it from scratch but typically coding would be involved, if for nothing else to tie the effects together.
But yeah, the main demos and intros would primarily be made well in advance.
Guilty, I never have been! But, if you contrast it with a hackathon, the objective of the event is the showing off part, not the preparation part. Prep is at least months of work. Whereas the point of a hackathon is to create somethere during the event.
People creating interesting visuals in a very, very small computer program; often with some artificial constraints. Often it was put together with cracking scene, I guess the skills involved used to be similar (lot of low level hacking?).
My personal involvement with this scene is nil - I always just saw some interesting thing playing with crack.exe that I got from some dubious source, thought "huh it's neat", and went on with my life.
I have no idea what are the constraints do they have in 2025, or what platform do they even target. How are you gonna do demos on iOS that's all locked from top to bottom and you can't even run anything without involving Apple in the process?
I wanted to say earlier when first reading this that I got like 15 minutes in without any explanation of what this scene was, and it felt like that might be a reason for a scene to die, if someone like me who got his first Commodore 64 in 1986 and has been alive for nearly half a century with interest in what this sounded like had never heard of it, outreach and publicity to new folks must not be great.
But Wikipedia says this is primarily a European thing, so I guess that's why.
That's a very narrow definition, really. In general demos have neither much to do with shaders (except insofar that you have to write shaders to do 3D on GPUs), nor are they size-limited in general; only certain subtypes are.
The procedural music aspect doesn't get enough love. There's an amazing amount of DSP like stuff going on in the background. Most people focus on the visuals though
It's a kind of a coding competition, indeed. The goals and the circumstances differ from a hackathon. The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens, but rather for showing off the work that was prepared beforehand. Usually these works are multimedia, so visuals and sound go together, but the main focus is the visuals, the rest of it is supportive. Works are nominated in different categories, which are usually set up to be very restrictive, for example, the work should be a single 32-bit Windows executable, no additional files, and the EXE should not exceed a certain byte size. The point of all this is to create the most impressive work within the restraints.
Wrt/ terminology, one submission of such a work is a "demo", and "demoscene" is the name for the culture itself (people, events, submissions, associated works like websites).
For an easy example, the all-time most popular work is this one: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30244 (according to the site's own ranking). You can download the software to run yourself, or you can watch a youtube recording of it, which is much more accessible. The entirety of this work (visuals, music) is compiled into a single 177k executable.
> It's a kind of a coding competition, indeed.
This is referring to demo parties specifically. Let's not forget the social aspects of them though. Yes, a selected few went to parties to "compete" in their chosen art, some might have even taken them quite seriously. But they were the minority.
The bulk of the attendees just went for fun and company, and did not create anything. Demoparties _were indeed_ parties back in the 90s, with people playing games, drinking and socializing in general. You could argue these were like rave parties, only a bit quieter and much friendlier / inclusive (ok, maybe I am biased, but it certainly felt that way).
It was lacking in one aspect though - not many girls attended, and so as time passed these parties were becoming less attractive. But that did not stop anyone going home and downloading and admiring the products of demosceners, who did all this basically in their free time, for not much (if at all) compensation.
> The demoscene events are not for coding, although I'm sure it happens
How to tell you've never been to a demo party without saying you've never been to a demo party.
I jest, but scrambling to implement the last effect before the deadline, or fix some stupid last minute bug was certainly typical at the events I was at. And you see this in a lot of the prods which released post-party "proper" versions.
There were also parties which had "live" competitions, where a theme would be announced at the party and you had then just a few hours to make a demo. Obviously wouldn't do it from scratch but typically coding would be involved, if for nothing else to tie the effects together.
But yeah, the main demos and intros would primarily be made well in advance.
Guilty, I never have been! But, if you contrast it with a hackathon, the objective of the event is the showing off part, not the preparation part. Prep is at least months of work. Whereas the point of a hackathon is to create somethere during the event.
Yeah I was just reminded of the panicked coding I witnessed at the events I went to.
Thank you. Whoever you are. I guess I could have googled it, but I love that you took the time and energy to respond.
You are very welcome! Sometimes, a hand-crafted answer just hits different. Have a nice day!
Wikipedia can probably explain it best: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
People creating interesting visuals in a very, very small computer program; often with some artificial constraints. Often it was put together with cracking scene, I guess the skills involved used to be similar (lot of low level hacking?).
My personal involvement with this scene is nil - I always just saw some interesting thing playing with crack.exe that I got from some dubious source, thought "huh it's neat", and went on with my life.
I have no idea what are the constraints do they have in 2025, or what platform do they even target. How are you gonna do demos on iOS that's all locked from top to bottom and you can't even run anything without involving Apple in the process?
If it doesn't exist already, there really should be an iOS Safari WASM scene. :)
I wanted to say earlier when first reading this that I got like 15 minutes in without any explanation of what this scene was, and it felt like that might be a reason for a scene to die, if someone like me who got his first Commodore 64 in 1986 and has been alive for nearly half a century with interest in what this sounded like had never heard of it, outreach and publicity to new folks must not be great.
But Wikipedia says this is primarily a European thing, so I guess that's why.
A demo is basically "let me show off something cool and amazing that shouldn't be possible re: graphics and sound."
One great analogy I heard somewhere -- if videogames are prose, demos are poetry.
The very broad definition is people who write artistic shaders frequently limited to a binary size, sometime 4kb, sometime 16.
That's a very narrow definition, really. In general demos have neither much to do with shaders (except insofar that you have to write shaders to do 3D on GPUs), nor are they size-limited in general; only certain subtypes are.
The procedural music aspect doesn't get enough love. There's an amazing amount of DSP like stuff going on in the background. Most people focus on the visuals though
Definitely!