BlitzMax DemoScene

I've seen some incredible things at http://www.scene.org/

Now that the demoscene is based around shaders and OpenGl, I'd like to know if BlitzMax could compete. I know BlitzMax can get assistance from the FASM assembler. Anybody using BlitzMax for making demos? Is it even fast enough when programming OpenGl. And I'm wondering how deep the integration of BlitzMax and OpenGl is. Can you go from polygon to shader using BlitzMax OpenGl programming? Is the integration complete and secure?

Here's the link I've been looking for. When you watch this, try and remember that it's only 177KB. This is one of the most inspirational realtime projects I've ever seen.

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30244

yay, TBL was in the greetz :P

Btw, while technically impressive, I found it quite dull. Even Hollywood movies can flop, no matter how many millions are spent on ILM.

Gotta disagree with you there. It was technically and thematically amazing. Reminded me of what I consider one of the best movies ever made, Dark City. I don't think I've ever seen a rendered clip that amazed me like this one. I think the fact that it is realtime, only 177KB, and the entire thing is nothing but cubes, physics and shaders. This to me is a great display of tech to people who know about graphics.

I don't really remeber if BlitzMax is compiled to machine code or not but since it has links to assembler and OpenGL, I think it's a great candidate for demo creation. I finally found a reason to really dig in deep in BlitzMax (the Irrlicht mod could be another one)

Just not my style, I found earlier FB stuff more interesting.

To specify whether BMax or any language is suitable for demos, we first need to specify what a demo is. In the early years it was actually coding, there were no 3d cards around. I've the impression that for years already it's just having a player for scenes made in 3ds-max by some artist(s). I find 'em less interesting from an oldskool pov, and interesting from a generic video pov. I mean, I won't bother leeching those demos to watch on my PC anymore, I rather check out youtube, runs like a charm on it. I figure there's hardly any difference anymore.

So, whether BMax can do the same is mainly based on what you're going to do in a demo: just playback from pre-made scene from some renderer, or manually tweaked effects, like from before the 3d cards?

The camera was great. Will they ever release werkzeug3?

I didn't think about playback from a 3d environment. I know there are realtime engines for 3dsMax but I doubt they could be packaged in 177KB. I might be wrong. It's the size of the demos that fascinate me. To look like that and last so long just seems impossible.

Scripts, precalced textures, realtime calc/DSP. Scripts can be fairly compact.

Well that would suck if it were true. Kinda ruin the whole mystical aspect of coding demos. But I really don't see how you can make the bridge which was made up of cubes without 90% coding. Anyway the team listing sort of validates this particular demo.

If you can describe an object or a movement or whatever anim in words and math, then you can script it. Need a path for an object? What about some 64 bytes for some bezier'ish path? Need a texture for a brickwall? With a good texture generator, some 30 bytes should prolly be enough script to create such a 128x128 texture. Need a complex object, made out of cubes? Slice the object and rebuild it in the found cubes.

What FR is doing (and TBL was one of the pioneers on precalced textures 'n things :P) is creating texture generators, sound generators, tons of generators. The more advanced the generators, the more realistic or impressive the result.

Looked pretty but was rather uninteresting to watch and listen to after a while.

Looked interesting, but it doesn't work here.

Didn't work here either, but you can catch it here instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0Eg3dBnsHk

You really should watch the avi instead as the quality is much better.