Aminet 44/Aminet 44 (2001)(GTI - Schatztruhe)[!][Aug 2001].iso/Aminet/demo/mag/GDS-DISC11b.lha/text/BACK TO WORLDRECORDS

Text File | 1998-10-02 | 7KB | 224 lines

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     BACK TO THE WORLDRECORDS«»
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«c3»BY DARKHAWK/IRIS«»

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You remember those? 8 vectorcubes on
one screen spinning around, 4800
shaded stars on screen, 3 playfields
at the same time, and so on, all
running fullframe on an unexpanded
A500. The scene in general has
forgotten about the concept of
worldrecords, and it is time to
introduce them anew, if we want to
break away from all those «c2»3D
vectorworlds «c5»running 5 frames or so.
Well, whether we actually want to
break away from that is another topic,
but in this article, I will write a
bit about the worldrecords of the old
scene.«»
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Once, the coders measured their skills
in that way, seeing who could cram the
most into one screen, while running it
fullframe. There was competition about
everything, from the amount of dots on
one screen to number of sinusscrollers
(21 was the record) to number of faces
on a glenzvector. In order to know
whether an effect was truly a world
record and better than its
predecessor, everything had to run
fullframe by a sort of anonymous and
general agreement in the scene, a
coder was not good if he couldn't make
all of his effects run fullframe. But
when that simple rule was established,
people could easily compete about a
multitude of things, and it quickly
became a real sport doing the best and
most worldrecords. Coders finetuned
and optimized their code, virtually to
press just one more dot out of their
code, and for the rest of the scene,
it was always interesting watching the
worldrecords, seeing what progress was
made. It was an exciting and
interesting competition, that made the
scene feel vibrant and alive, and laid
the foundation of the arrogance of the
coders. A coder could rightfully brag
about his worldrecords and say that he
was the best, etc.«»
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Some have critizised this «c2»worldrecord
«c5»movement for not being innovative, but
merely repetitive, since it all was
about squeezing more out of the
computer, not about doing new
routines. This is not fair at all
however, becuase many coders really
spiced up their world records after
having made them, it was a mark of
total talent if you could cram some
other effect into the old one, and
that really made the onlookers
appreciate it. It also took a lot of
innovation and ingenuity to optimize
the effects and make them faster and
faster. Out of that came a lot of nice
productions, also used in the
commercial world, plus a lot of really
nifty algorithms and ways of faking to
make it run faster. Also, there was
some other movement beside the world
record one, and that was the 'worlds
first' movement. While it was great
seeing an intro with 16 sinusscrollers
and then, one month later, a demo with
21, there was also an ongoing
competition about creating new, never
seen before effects back then, and
that was called worlds first in some
productions. Those also had to run
fullframe ofcourse, and when they were
established (like after the first
glenzvector, which Celebrandil coded
in Phenomena's Animotion), it became a
sport copying them, and making them
better, thus all effects evolved into
the world record thingie after a
while, but that was not everything
that happened, innovation and new
effects were still being done, just
look at all those numerable 2D and 3D
planar effects being made back then.
Most very original.«»
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Then a (in some ways) sad thing
happened, the world went 3D. Everybody
had to code 3D, and not just
vectorboxes like in the past, but 3D
worlds, with texturemapping and all
sorts of shading, gouraud/env mapping,
etc. The Amiga was not geared towards
that, it was a compact, smart machine
with customchips ideally suited to the
2d planar effects, but with the 3D
stuff, it all depended on its
processor and chipset, and those were
certainly not up to the task, neither
on A500 or A1200. With the advent of
the A1200, fullframe effects were
gradually dropped in order to code all
sorts of new effects, mostly 3D and
mostly not that different from
eachother. One could never do too much
of that fullframe, and instead of
dropping doing those effects, which
would have been impossible, since
people wanted to see them, the entire
idea of having all effects running
fullframe was discarded along the way.
And now effects running fullframe are
virtually unknown, maybe a scroller
manages to do it, but otherwise it's
pretty hard, since most people only
code in chunky now. The idea of only
coding fullframe effects seems to be
dead.«»
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However, with the dead of that idea,
the idea about worldrecords become
somewhat untenable too, since there is
no way of actually measuring how good
an effect is if it hasn't any frame
restrictions. Measuring the quality of
effects by measuring the framerate is
a somewhat easy way of knowing how
good an effect is, that was one of the
reasons for the fullframe 'rule' back
then. Nowadays it would be hard to
know how good an effect is, when you
know it isn't fullframe, and you can't
see in what framerate it actually
runs. Thus, the effects are not that
accesible for the masses, if they look
nice, the masses like them, but they
have no easy way of discerning whether
the effects are really good/fast or
not, except by experience, only other
coders can know how good an effect is.
That's too bad, as worldrecords and
fast, smooth effects were two of those
things that hooked me and others to
the scene, watching what you could do
with your computer, watching people
strive harder to try and better other
people, etc. This is now generally not
feasible, everybody sort of produces
their stuff in a closed vacuum, if the
audience likes the production, it is
called a good production, but there is
no direct way of comparing the code
for instance.«»
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Well, this brings me to that which was
really my intent with this article,
which is a shout to the scene in
general to «c2»bring back the
worldrecords! «c5»It would bring some
needed competition into the scene
again, it would encourage people to
strive harder and it would make the
audience more appreciative I think.
And how do we then measure whether an
effect actually IS a worldrecord?
Easy piecy my friend, just insert a
framecounter in all of those effects
you want to proclaim as a worldrecord
(and don't you dare faking the
framecounter, hahah), then others can
try and make the effect better, and
know what framerate they have to
surpass. I think it would be healthy
with this kind of competition, and I
don't really think that it would
hinder any sort of creativity and
innovation really, you can always make
new routines and call them worlds
first too. Besides, what creativity
and innovation in regards to coded
effects do we have now?«»
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Well ok, maybe the scene is not
skilled enough for this, maybe it
wouldn't be fun watching an effect
with a framecounter saying 2.4 fps,
heh. But that's the problem with all
that 3D and chunky coding we have now,
maybe, just maybe, if the idea with
worldrecords and framerates became
successfull, more coders would learn
that they could code a lot of what
they traditionally do in chunky
because it is easier, in planar, and
then make their code faster too.
Coding shouldn't be about doing what
is convenient and easy, but should be
about effectivity.«»
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«c3»                     DARKHAWK/IRIS«»
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