- TMDC3 NOW!

TMDC mirrors: Home (fi) Crest (de) ws.bizuk.net (uk)


   Textmode democompo 3 is now!
Deadline 11.11.98.
Compo site: http://sauna.net/tmdc3/


Resources

Picket Fence 1.4 - a simple boundschecker to help hunting down C pointer bugs.
TXTFLI2 - Textmode FLI/FLC player with C source.
textmode demo reviews - Some reviews of existing textmode demos.

History

Once upon a time I (Sol/Trauma) stumbled on a textmode demo (sort of) called "Textmode strikes .bak" by a group "Shape!". I had never heard of them before. Later on I saw a demo of sorts by some people wanting to join Shape!, and even after that I heard that they were going to do something in graphics modes. That was the last I heard about them.

   Demos in textmode weren't a brand new idea, mind; I had seen some demos by Sorcerers in textmode - I believe these were the very first demos on PC. (As it happens, those Sorcerers' demos were my introduction to the demoscene).

   Later on (by a year or two) I was hanging on IRC a lot one summer and I met some cool people like TheJoker/Crusaders (TJ), and for some reason the conversation turned to textmode demos. I had been planning a "real" demo in textmode with !Cube/Trauma at the time. (the demo was supposed to be called "REAL" - in realmode, with real 3d bump vectors, real truecolor transparent textures etc). TJ mentioned he had done a demo in textmode, and I ftp'd it. If you watch it now, it's nothing spectacular; but the movement had started.

TMDC

   Anyhow, we agreed that we like demos in textmode, and we wanted more of them. One way was to code new textmode demos, perhaps make one good enough that it will really hit some people and thus cause more textmode demos to appear. Succeeding in such thing was, however, quite improbable.. So, how to make other people code textmode demos? We started planning text mode demo compo over the internet, and here we are.

   As it happens, I ended up doing most of the TMDC work since TJ was literally drowned on work, but he still pointed some things out I would surely have missed by myself. Also, he's responsible of the text mode compos at The Gathering.

TMDC2

So, I organized TMDC2 while being in the army, and it worked out better than I had expected (I was free for most weekends, but I had little other free time). I felt a bit bad 'ditching' TJ, but I really had no way of communicating to Norway frequently enough to do the organizing that way. TJ, however, helped out with the TMDC2 prizes (most of the prizes in TMDC2 - 90% or so - came from TG organizing).

   As I was working on the TMDC2 aftermath, Gandalf, one of the hardcore textmode demo fans (and the first one to leap to sponsor TMDC with A.C.E demos collection CD:s) asked whether there will be TMDC3. I thought for it a bit, and answered, "what the heck, once more..".

TMDC3

The slogan of TMDC3 is 'F**k the millennium'. By this I wish to point out how miraclously some insane ideas work. We're currently living in times where processors are powerful enough for truecolor high-resolution demos; 3d-accelerators are coming in fast and they're going to stay; DOS is practically dead, and people have started doing demos in windows; and yet, things can be done in textmode that impress people.

   By organizing these TMDCs I'm not saying that the scene should go back to the roots or anything. I hate that. I'm coding mostly in windows myself these days and good riddance to DOS. The fact that dos-loving sceneers who cannot let go of GUS don't understand is that it's all about impressing people. I also think that it's about doing new things, and learning. Demos, that is.

   To impress people you have to do something not thought possible, or thought to be hard. Doing beautiful things in textmode is just this. Anyone can do stuff in textmode, but to make it look GOOD...




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