VB:CC000

Get Msg, All! Taken from http://www.vbroz.nm.ru/ Report about CC000 (c) Virtual Brothers, 2000. The text may be freely distributed provided maintaining integrity and authorship. During one of the computer parties with a group of excited computer geeks, who have already taken to their chests and are talking with inspiration in a strange, understandable Only in their language, a valiant guardian of order in a uniform cap approached. - So, citizens, what kind of gathering is this? Why are you making noise? What do you have here? - Comrade Sergeant said menacingly and frowned. Very suspicious guys appeared to him, talking in some non-Nash dialect, and through frightening foreign words like “sux!, rulez!, must die!, realtime, raytracing, mapping, ..." the tasty and so familiar to the cop's ear crawled through purely Russian curses. With some tension and dissatisfaction, computer scientists left the virtual space, descending to a hateful reality, but quickly realizing that the situation may become tense, the unnaturally sober and friendly masks. Having casually noted to myself that in the application "Reality.exe" is surprisingly inconvenient, illogical encoding and irrational a selected system of commands, one guy was still found, saying as he exhaled: - U We are demo-parties here!He said so proudly, even majestically. - What is this? - asked the sergeant, admitting his incompetence. Curiosity took over. Such a simple question suddenly caused a violent reaction in the minds of computer scientists, immediately reflected on their faces. It just so happens that any person who has been to these same demo parties and at least once absorbed the spirit of the strange action, can easily imagine what it’s about, but it’s so easy to give an answer to a simple question from our policeman, so that he would immediately understand, it turned out not the easiest task. And our computer scientists vying with each other began to explain something to the sergeant, who allowed himself to give in and now listened in confusion vague explanations. The simplest and seemingly logical answer is “a demo party is a big party.” programmers, computer musicians, artists and other representatives of the species "homo computerus" does not, however, give a clear picture of everything here what's happening In addition, such an answer immediately gives rise to a number of counter questions. like “What is a demo?”, “What is a demoscene?”, “Why is all this needed?”, “Who Is this what he's doing?" and “Which mental hospital did they all escape from?” Let's try to understand these issues together and understand who these people are. computer scientists, representatives of the cybernetic underground, what they do, why they gather and why their parties are held.First, let's remember those distant times when the most powerful modern The computer rattled, hummed and, emitting a piercing squeak and winking with a hundred lights, with a heartbreaking grinding sound it produced a printout of the results of many hours of work, when this unit, created by human genius, performed, in addition to the main its function also includes many others: it generated so much heat that it replaced a dozen heaters, bottles of beer and lemonade, and tons of paper with printouts helped the workers of some research institute fulfill and exceed the state task for waste paper collection. At that time, the now familiar word computer did not yet exist, but man, cleverly operated toggle switches, switches and knew how to handle a hammer drill, was proudly called a computer operator. "Soviet microcircuits are the largest microcircuits in the world!" - a slogan worthy those distant times. If then some seer had suddenly turned up and told him that everything the most powerful Soviet computers taken together will easily fit in about 20 years in an electronic wristwatch "Made in Japan", he would have been laughed at, but a serious political broker said: - Comrade! What kind of fantasies are these, what provocations are they! Lenin and the party teach us to look at things soberly! And you, you know, mysticism you are doing! Then they believed in the exploration of peaceful space, in life on otherplanets, believed that in the future they would engage in heavy physical labor robots (in newspapers and magazines robots were drawn with a light bulb instead of a nose), believed even into communism, but hardly anyone imagined which way they would go scientific and technological progress in fact. Children wanted to become or astronauts or police officers (the average child now wants to become oligarch, decl or Filya Kirkorov, however, no, hardly normal the child will want to become the husband of this cheerful old cow Allochka...), and adults wanted to quickly finish their shift and go home to their family, but weekend get drunk with friends or relatives and quietly scold your bosses yes Soviet power. But one day... Two simple American boys assembled the first one in a barn on their knees semiconductor laptop computer - it was still awkward, crooked ugly, but it was with him that this began... Thousands, tens of thousands of office employees were fired as unnecessary, hundreds of corporations are turning their heavy a shark's look at an emerging promising direction, vanity, misunderstanding with on the one hand, delight and expectation of something new on the other... And on the next decade - the boom of first expensive office computers (such monsters for $10,000 with 2-4 kilobytes of RAM), and then personal, home computers for family recreation.The land of the Soviets also did not remain aloof from the general race, and soon after The first domestic PCs also became imported. Factories assembled office and school computers (remember DVK, BK, Radio-RK...), but they still existed are little accessible to ordinary Russian people for home use, and inspired radio amateurs manually, using a soldering iron, a hammer and vigorous Russian obscenities they put together something that miraculously worked. According to diagrams from our magazines, according to diagrams of foreign countries redrawn on the knees with the help of a pencil stub personal data, according to other materials, God knows where they came from, but, I repeat, it WORKED! And small hybrid monsters began to be born from wires, microcircuits and snot, but these creations were sometimes a source of pride, almost the favorite child in the family, and off we go... The first electronic slot machines appeared, and teenagers in store in nooks and crannies with genuine joy they chased the letter “O” across the screen, behind which the evil letters "Zh" were chasing in a maze consisting of pros, cons and exclamation marks. Adults also played with toys with no less interest. uncles, but due to their social status they could not afford to do this openly, “in public,” and therefore quietly had fun in the workplace, looking around cautiously - doesn't anyone see, like an adult engineer, withoutfive minutes, the head of the department breaks the unfortunate keyboard, fighting with the text megamonster and saving the universe. I remember how, during the years of reckless childhood, I dreamed that when I grew up, I would become big and I’ll earn a lot of money, I’ll buy a machine like this for myself at home, and I’ll be with morning until evening fight with monsters, fight in mortal combat with the Shaolin monks, and when I get tired of this, I’ll go on a long journey to other planets, in between shooting at annoying space pirates along the way. scientific and technological progress, which unexpectedly chose the region as its main victim sciences dealing with problems of storage, processing, transmission and other types execution of information... The hardware market appeared, immediately followed by the software market. Computer games, developing no slower than computers themselves, they became a separate category. Moreover, in most cases, it is games that set the direction and certain criteria for developers of future personal computers. And very quickly video game production has become a full-fledged business area, because if people there is interest in something, then the cunning bourgeois will squeeze out of this interest money. A computer game becomes a product. Computers come naturally are divided into “office” ones (these are the ones that are more expensive, they were in offices, and They were played at "solitaire", "miner" and "Color lines" by all sorts of accountants and secretaries)and "game". The vast majority of home computers are gaming computers. usually they are connected to the TV, and the tape serves as information storage. Remember? Five minutes of agonizing waiting, and then, if you’re lucky, the game it will load normally, ten hours of hacking, blood, meat, speed... It ended with red ones emitting scorching rays in all directions, eyes, trembling knees and stinking armpits. Then you go outside you walk and glare at people so madly and furiously that they prefer to walk around avoid you, and some even hide in the people they meet, just in case gateways, entrances and grocery stores. And sometimes, looking from the balcony at little people and cars randomly scurrying back and forth, you suddenly you discover in yourself a strange desire to circle them in a rectangle and send fight crowd against crowd, thus creating a bloody meat grinder, so pleasing to the eye... However, we got distracted by lengthy thoughts, and an excursion into history turns out too long. Let's return to our sheep. Quietly delving into the essence of the matter, we came close to the moment when you can proceed directly to revealing the question “where did the first demomakers." Remember, on home computers (for specificity, you can safely mentionZX-Spectrum, a huge number of “Soviet” versions of which appeared in country, Commodore'64 and Atari, which were imported from abroad, were greatly cheaper among the bourgeoisie) while loading a game the message appeared “Cracked by...”, not very clear to a Russian person who doesn’t know much about (or rather, in most cases, not knowing at all) English. Like this This is how the hackers who hacked the game celebrated their communion with the birth of this version. If in capital countries hacking was a crime for which you can was “to end up in jail,” then we simply didn’t have it (and it’s still really there are no) no laws regarding this topic, no means to buy “branded” software. And all the games reached people after going through, often repeatedly, the “crack” process. What drove hackers to such dubious feats? Maybe the money is this despicable, but so caressing to the ear with its incomparable crunch, pieces of paper? Undoubtedly, they too. But anyone creative, proud, or seeking fame a person, among other things, wants to display his own works, wants tell the whole world: “Look and know, it’s me! I did it!” Yes and the first inscriptions “grunted-grunted by something” appeared in the first gaming bootloaders. Now you can only sigh, remembering those broken games, which reached us. Literally every game suffered from this in one way or another.interference from hackers - branded screensavers disappeared, the game could “freeze” in at the very beginning, worse, it could glitch somewhere at the end, in five minutes from a long-awaited victory, because often to place the bootloader code or immortalization, pieces of the game that were “unnecessary” in the opinion of hackers were thrown out, containing, for example, music, “extra” sprites, etc. But not picky Soviet people bought, played, swore during moments of “freezing” or "resetting" the computer, and bought it again, and played again. It was later that the concept of “hacker aestheticism” appeared in the minds of hackers principles were formed that finally became a good filter for bad hacks. Moreover, many Russian hackers often released versions of games that after the barbaric Polish or Bulgarian crackers were brought into divine form and no longer refused to work, took up 20 kilobytes less space (20 kilobyte! a huge number for those computers!) after cleaning, getting rid of debris left by predecessors and compression by packers. What happened next? Colorless, imperceptible, not calling a line in any way, mentioning the author of the crack turned out to be not enough, and hacker skills were used, like programmer as a creator and creator. The lines sparkled, ran, acquired color, the letters began to write out strange trajectories, flying ones were added to themstars, clever patterns and other special effects intended only for in order to draw attention to themselves, or more precisely to the name of their author. Main feature The point here is that this whole thing, for fundamental reasons, should not have been take up a lot of space on a cassette or floppy disk, ideally be an order of magnitude smaller the size of the game to which the hacker’s creation was “attached” (let me remind you that For computer scientists, size is measured in bytes, a meter is a unit of volume, and in kilogram 1024 grams). Therefore, peculiar perversions were used, I joined geometry, mathematics, physics, although often the coder did not know what he was using in to its Lissajous figure procedure, rotation matrix, Hofmann algorithm or, say, Lambert's lighting model. In stage terms, this hacker screensaver began to be called "intro". One way or another, I would like to note that initially the art of demo-making and hacking - directions closely intersecting. And despite the fact that now they exist at some distance from each other, and tendencies towards further The weakening of the connection is obvious, a complete break will not happen. This won't happen if only because both are a huge part of the underground cyber culture, and these areas are based on the intelligence of a computer scientist, skills low-level programming, and usually the need to do your own thing through the ass (of course, in the good sense of the word).Later, music began to appear in the intros to enhance the effect, which at first just pearls from some foreign game. But as soon as computers acquired a voice, musicians (“musakers”) began to appear on stage, writing your works using your home personal computer. I must say, the sound of the first computers were nothing like what we are used to hearing now. Three or four channels, characteristic gurgles, squeaking like what we hear from electronic alarm clocks and cell phones, but even this was enough to What authors get from creating their musical creations is incomparable pleasure. And to those who listened to them, distinguish “best!” and "rulez!" from "sax" and "Mazday". There are still some people who sit at their third table on quiet autumn evenings. stump, and, having loaded the emulator, listens to the good old “chip” music, and suddenly a stingy tear wells up in the eyes, and a long sigh is heard, and the sound is made louder... At a certain stage of cyber evolution, individuals began to unite in groups, the standard set was as follows: coder + musician + artist. Naturally not all unions were fully staffed; sometimes there were no muzaker or graphic artist, sometimes one person did both (and I’m still and the typewriter... - (c) cat Matroskin), there were teams of two coders, one a musician, but without an artist, etc.Soon one more character will be formed in the group to complete the set - organizer His competence includes the ideological direction of team creativity, he must follow and navigate well the events taking place in the virtual world, it is he who deals with issues of distribution, exchange and promotion product created by the group. Now a good organizer is the key to common success. And if previously the coder was the basis (most often he was involved in organizational problems, but for him, of course, this was only a secondary task), then now the basis of successful creativity is the balanced work of all members of the group, which is primarily ensured by the ideological leader - "organizer". Demo, as a separate direction, arose precisely at the time when the lesson hacking and coding are no longer the work of one person. Programming effects became interesting in itself. Then the first “demos” began to appear, then “megademo” (the concept has now died out; it used to mean "a demo consisting of a large number of parts and effects"). The very name “demo” could initially be interpreted as “a program demonstrating the capabilities of a computer platform." Currently the concept this has somewhat lost its meaning, now we can talk about the demo as "a product that demonstrates the awesomeness of the team that created it."Somewhere in this place you need to screw in a few words that reveal the concept "scene". It is difficult to give an unambiguous definition, but roughly we can say this: demoscene - virtual space in which products exist computer underground (intro, demo, creations of tracker musicians, works of computer artists, etc.), as well as their creators and creative unions. Sooner or later, a creative person has a need to communicate. Of course, now we have the Internet in our hands, erasing boundaries, age, and social status, and racial identity (there were loud words on this topic enough has been said). The network began to interact with the scene in many ways, but firstly, just 6-7 years ago the Internet was the privilege of a few, and secondly, meetings “in real life”, conversations full of emotions and facial expressions, a bottle vodka, drunk in a close circle of like-minded people - all this can be replaced by the Internet It's unlikely he can. So computer scientists began to meet. Small ones at first parties of 5-10 people, located either in some cheap pub, either in nature or in someone’s apartment. However, the conversations, and the drinking, and the endings were most often the same. Then meetings followed in clubs, in empty auditoriums of institutes, at amateur radio flea markets (maybe these were prototypes of future Russian parties?), and again there was beer, and again there was vodka, andthe main thing was communication, live dialogues, acquaintances, new meetings, associations according to interests, and then the accumulated energy materialized, turning into real work. And small works of computer art appeared. But as always happens in any creative community united by a common interest, people have a desire to prove their own worth, to shut up belt of “competitors”, earn the title “best of the best”. "We are the best!" - some said. "Never mind, we're still cooler!" - others stated. The situation was heating up, which was not without virtual fights, but often stimulated people to create new creations. Meanwhile, with With the development of computer capabilities, more and more video effects were added high-quality computer music, increasingly realistic graphics, respectively, except for programmers and hackers in virtual showdowns with Musicians and artists began to take part with no less enthusiasm. Natural in this way the efforts of these people combined to obtain the maximum the effect of collaboration. Around this stage of computer development creativity and the idea arose to hold centralized parties. In order to people had the opportunity to communicate, exchange experiences and officially find out who cooler, smarter and more significant.After all, if the testing ground for virtual competitions was mainly the market for broken software (the scene itself, as a separate independent direction, existed then in our country only in its infancy), then with the advent of official creative battle events would acquire official status and receive significantly larger scope. In Europe, the first democratic parties appeared in 91-92, here in Russia, because lack of conditions (no money, no "sponsors", it was difficult to have a couple of computers get hold of) "festivals of computer creativity" began to take place several later - the first major event - Enlight demo party - took place in 1995 year in St. Petersburg. A start has been made. Interest grew, people watching the scene, and, what is important, actively taking part in the events, It was getting bigger. Some works were written specifically “for the occasion”, and It’s quite natural that demos, musical and graphic, won attention compositions, the release of which was timed to coincide with the demo-party. From year to year, more and more organized computer parties were held, they multiplied and grew like mushrooms after rain. The stage today is a huge virtual space that has absorbed many directions of cyber culture. Now at any party there are compos in sections demo, intro, design and graphics, computer music (sometimes electronic masterpieces,created at home without the use of "cool studio equipment" are superior, albeit not in quality, but compositionally and ideologically, many musical crafts, which are broadcast on radio and television). Here we need to dwell a little more specifically on the concept of “demo”. Perhaps to understand, you just need to look, but to fully understand (feel those the efforts of the demomakers, thanks to which the demo was born, to penetrate spirit of the computer underground), you must visit the demo party at least once. For for a simple viewer who is not trying to delve into the “cool code”, the demo looks like a video clip in which colorful effects follow each other to the music. However It should immediately be noted that, unlike the video clip, the visuals in the demo are not represents pieces of chopped video, this is not a cartoon, where each frame pre-drawn or calculated in some 3D editor. At the time when the demo is running on your computer, the processor is working hard like a convict on gold mine. Most of what you see is the result of mathematics settlements carried out in real time, “without leaving the cash register”. After all, she herself the demo takes up about 4 megabytes on your hard drive (if we’re talking We are talking about “full-fledged” demos, there are also “intros”, the size of which can generally be consider zero - 4-64 kilobytes - is this really significant considering that yousee?). In general, the main limiter for demomakers is volume (the one which is measured in kilo-megabytes), and, of course, the capabilities of the platform, on which creates this miracle. It must be said that until recently demomakers didn’t think much about ideological content of their works, the code was primarily at the forefront, second - style, the beauty of the resulting effect, later - a successful combination with music. Now everyone is talking about the plot in the demo - about the filler that together with the rest, gives the viewer additional impressions, expands the range emotions. It is in the package “good code + beautiful visual effects + killer music + high-quality graphics + exciting plot" the demo becomes truly cool, that’s when the phrase is pronounced: this is art, art with a capital letter! I would like the authors of the works not to forget about this. Now let’s take a closer look at the comparison of Russian demo-parties with foreign ones. Are there any differences? Certainly. They are connected primarily with the number of money, invested in the event. They are having a demo party - a large-scale event, good funded, well organized and... insipid and, perhaps, even a bit boring. We have something that arises spontaneously and almost never pays off. based on the sheer enthusiasm of those people for whom, for various reasons,this is interesting and important. For comparison: at the last Russian party there were 4-5 computers for 400 people, at a party held in Finland (“Assembly 2000"), there were 100 times more computers (but, of course, there were also more people). But in terms of the number of emotions, the mood, the “intensity”, the liveliness Our demo parties leave behind any imported ones. Our people come first turn to communicate, get acquainted, share experiences (and, of course, measure themselves by members ;). They are (at least this is the impression) people they come to sit with smart people at their computers in a big get-together play Quake, casually squeeze out “it’s cool” after watching it another job and stare at the monitor again - as if home is not enough. So our parties are not yet distinguished by an enviable organization, but it’s still worth be lenient towards organizational miscalculations - if not for these selfless people, such large parties would not have taken place at all. We sincerely We hope that the level of such events will grow, which, taking into account all mistakes, the organizers will not make them twice. After all, in every minus, how it is known that there is half a plus... I remember the statement of one person, ex on CC000: “We live in the ass, but we shit golden poop.” Rough, of course but it reflects the state of affairs well. Therefore, hope for better times, forThere are still some good guys unfastening green pieces of paper. In the end like this concentrations of “mad geniuses”, fans of their craft, cool specialists (even if hairy, unshaven, with red eyes and a bottle of beer in their hands) you will not find at any conference dedicated to computer technologies or problems information security. Towards the end, let's say a few words about the computers on which compos are carried out. (competitions) in Russia and neighboring countries: - PC - well, he’s also PC in Africa. - Amiga - the best demo creation platform of its time (and many others) relationships). For a long time she dictated fashion and determined the direction of development demomaking. - ZX-Spectrum - at one time became a “well, purely Russian” computer. Exactly Russian coders surprised the whole world by performing such tricks that an experienced a PC programmer, having looked at the source code, would have grabbed his head and shaved his head monks. In other countries, the ZX-Spectrum has long since left the stage, but here we have this The venerable old man is alive and well. - Commodore 64 - did not gain distribution in our country (although in Europe America was very popular), so Russian demos are released on this platform extremely rare. So, we have almost completed the process of loading this very chaotic text, but since you have already reached these words, we have completed the task.I would like to think that the interest in the scene as a manifestation of computer culture is it has been kindled in you. After all, your opinion and your attention are additional energy injection, namely due to this energy the stage exists, and on light appears, exciting the brain and delivering great aesthetic pleasure of a work of art. In conclusion, we note once again that demomaking is a young trend that has emerged and living thanks to the enthusiasm of computer scientists. But despite my youth, It is developing very intensively and gaining momentum every year. Very I want the scene in our country to expand, so that new people come, new ideas arose and were implemented. And for this to happen not without your participation. So keep an eye on the events, and if there is an opportunity, come visit us! It will be interesting! This is what we promise you. (c) Virtual Brothers, 2000. The text may be freely distributed provided maintaining integrity and authorship. *Crossposted in ZX.TALKING *Crossposted in RISE.FORWARD *Crossposted in KAMCHATKA.FORWARDS *Crossposted in HARLANS.FORWARD *Crossposted in 4311.LOCAL [I.ZX] --------------------------------> Warm greetings, Slava! Virtual Real Unit <-------- Faint Pearl mailme: copper_feet@mail.ru icq#me: 81191986