boyd@nu.cs.fsu.edu (Mickey Boyd) (06/15/91)
In article <2865725@MVB.SAIC.COM>, steveg@cseic.saic.com (Stephen Harold Goldstein) writes: > >Now can anyone tell me just who these guys are that wrote things like >the WHATTHEHECK and Life's a bitch demos? The demos are pretty neat >but I'm concerned about references to 'ripping' sounds from commercial >games and 'copy parties' in their 'scroll texts'. Are these demos nothing >more than cut and paste jobs of stolen code and artwork? Well, most of these guys are/were pirates, more specifically crackers. A cracker is one who removes copy protection from a piece of software, so it can be more easily distributed via BBS's. After the program is "cracked", these folks sometimes put a little graphic demo at the beginning, stating which "cracking group" did the work, and perhaps a scrolling message (usually containing hellos to other cracking groups). All the "scroller" type demos originated from this. As they got more and more complex (remember that they had to be able to coexist with another program, so they are generally small), and as competition increased they got more and more impressive (in terms of graphics/sound). Some common techniques were to "rip" sounds from games or other demos, and sometimes graphics backgrounds or sprites. At some point, a cracking group organized and produced a full disk of these demoes (I believe the first was the Union demo, still one of the best). Many others followed, including the ones you have mentioned. They usually consist of offerings from many "groups", collected together under some sort of common menu program. The theft of music/graphics from copyrighted stuff is going down, although using stuff found in other demos is still common (it is usually of better quality). Now, interestingly enough, many "cracking" groups have become "demo" groups. They have given up cracking and pirating in favor of writing demos. One reason for this might be increased legal awareness developing in europe of software pirating. For whatever reason, some of these folks are now being employed to write games and sound/graphic tools (for example, the TCB Soundtracker, named best music program in europe, was written by The Care Bears, a former cracking group). Also, some "demo" groups have formed that have no history of pirating. At most european computer shows, there is a "latest and greatest" demo competition, with software companies looking on. There are also some other interesting categories, like "best demo written in 24 hours". I have been seeing less "scroller only" type entries, and more snazzy stuff, like real time 3D (although just about all the demoes have some sort of scrolling message). Please note that most of these folks are REALLY young (like 14, for chrissake!). Kind of humbling, huh? Anyway, almost all coding is done exclusively in assembly (I have seen reference to the TURBOASS assembler, which has been discussed recently here on c.s.a.st). Thus, I would say that these demos are much more than just "cut-and-paste" jobs, but they do have a definite ancestory to software cracking. With the advent of "demo only" type groups, offers to share source code and have "demo parties" are becoming more common. One groups usually hosts a party, inviting members from other groups. Zillions of Cokes and Doritos later, a new demo disk emerges. At some point in the future, I am going to try to attend one (and pretend I broke my two typing fingers in a bench vise :-). I am very curious as to just how they do all that stuff, and I hope to come back with some disks of source. As someone pointed out on the net, most of these demos work at a very low level. Thus, you should not expect to see standard GEM windows, or expect them to work on all computers made by Atari. What you should expect is some mind- blowing graphics and sound which push your particular machine to the limit (I can't wait until some TT specific ones come out, that should be impressive). By the way, almost all of the "full disk" type demos contain at least one hidden demo (the one for the Union demo is incredible, and was the root for the TCB Soundtracker). Usually one of the scrolltexts will tell you how to invoke it. -- ---------------------------------+------------------------------------- Mickey R. Boyd | "Kirk to Enterprise. All clear FSU Computer Science | down here. Beam down Technical Support Group | yeoman Rand and a six-pack . ." email: boyd@fsucs.cs.fsu.edu | ---------------------------------+-------------------------------------