ricardocabellov5.5

Lodma contacted me some months ago looking for a light weight, multi-language web system done with simple and easy to understand (so, avoid classes) actionscript  for developing a website for Adega Coop. And after the usual fights between the coder and the designer we ended up with a system we were happy with.

So my part was done, and since then Lodma has been working on the design/content on the site, and dealing with the client... until today. This is the end result:

http://www.adegaborba.pt/

Ah.. a shame I didn't know SWFAddress back then! :(

Good work Paulo!

We ended up last (as usual this year). But the really bad news are that the moral winner got 4th.

It's interesing (and probably coincidence) that the winner group is from .de too :)

So, as a my friend Ben would say... It's been real, it's been fun, but I hasn't been real fun ;)

Results

http://www.splicemusic.com/songs/crankshaft/ trying-out-loud/remix/

Way to go Crankshaft! !!o/!!

While at assembly, I was able to share a couple of words with Matt "Gasman" Westcott. I must admit I didn't understood much of what he said, mainly because I still don't get his accent, but he was saying something that he was pretty busy doing something with RoR, and he didn't have time for doing a prod.

That thing he was doing is called DemoZoo, and I think is the best thing since, uhm... pouet. It's like pouet but with some clever coding for sorting all the stuff in a better way, and it's easier for giving to someone that doesn't know about all this (let's face it, for a newcomer (or for my mum) finding the download link on pouet isn't that easy).

Just an example... this is how my profile is looking at the moment:
http://demozoo.org/sceners/8956

I still need to spend a bit more of time to complete my profile (yeah, I was that active :P) but it will be the first place where someone can finally see all the things that I've done.

Sometimes sorting all the stuff that happens in the demoscene is quite complex (people with more than 1 handle, people that moves to different groups, unkown people...), but I think that Matt has done a really good job here.

Now he only needs to keep fixing some bits, and everyone should start help adding all the data to the database, credits for each demo and stuff.

Nice stuff Matt!

I needed to convert a couple of .PNGs to .SWFs for a project today. I did a quick search and I wasn't able to find something easy to use for this, and the ones I found usually just embedded the .PNG in the .SWF, which is exactly what I didn't want.

At the time of publishing a flash project with .PNG images, if you set the images on your library to be compressed to .JPG, if there is any PNG with alpha channel, flash will save the color information with JPEG compression and leave the transparency information with PNG lossless compression.

The end result it's like having a JPEG with Alpha channel, which, actually, it's something you can only have in Flash (compared to html).

Seems like the easiest way to handle the issue was creating a .JSFL file to automatise all this. I never had to do a .JSFL script before, so forgive me if I did something bad on it.

Anyway, in case you ever need it, here you have:

png2swf.jsfl
(Flash IDE script, Run it from Commands)

Enjoy!

PS: The files that I had to compress went from 4mb in total to 900kb :)

Right, this was weird, really weird. At the moment I don't know what to think about anything.

Where is the demoscene going?

First of all, about the demoscene. Seems like it's not for fun anymore, I mean, seems like you have to spend 6 months working on something so the people are happy with you.

Just an example, kb/farbrausch giving his thoughts about Media Error by Fairlight, CNCD & Orange:

This must have been a shitload of work. Still the result is as incoherent as it can get, the soundtrack is annoying (don't get me wrong, I can enjoy music like this when it's done live by three stoned people with some synth equipment at some small club, but there's a reason those sessions almost never get recorded), and the whole thing is SO not my cup of tea.

Some sporadic visual beauty in between saves it from a thumb down tho... in the hope that next time you all think about what you're doing instead of being so desparately wannabe post-modern.

This is just silly, specially coming from a group that has (imho) no design taste at all (just check his site, or farbrausch site, or any of their prods, they still live in the 90s, even with Debris (of course, their stuff is good for other reasons, but not specially for their visual taste :)). I just felt that saying "wannabe post-modern" after all that amount of good work makes him totally opinion-ignorable from now on. It's also funny that weeks ago, kb was complaining that the demosceners didn't let he do a fast prod just for fun.

Seems like years ago being able to do "good" stuff for what they expect was easier. As always it's all about beating the last demo released. But as there are no hardware limits anymore, what you have to beat is the amount of time the last group spent on the prod. So, if you want to be the new demoscene god, you need to spend at least 1 year working on a demo (Debris was done in 2 years afaik, working in a relaxed way I guess). All for what? I don't know... But this doesn't look fun anymore, looks like a job, with people expecting too much.

Maybe this is why there is every year less people doing stuff, the people can't be bothered to spend that much time on it. I guess I'll eventually move out of the PC category.

15th on the democompo

I'm usually quite pessimist, and even after watching the democompo, I was even considering that *maybe* we could even get the 5th position. Even with a prod that we mainly put together at the party place. So, when I saw that it got 15th (last) frustrated me quite a bit, mainly because this time I was just showing my "art", I wasn't following nobodies style, just trying to put something original together, and I think the music was quite cool too. So, it's weird... At least, people which I admire (navis, loaderror, preacher, nytrik, critikill ...) seemed to like it, so that's saved me of getting really frustrated.

The prod didn't shown alright on the democompo, we have an issue with the demo launcher and the aspect ratios so in the demo compo was shown distorted, but you could only see that on the first scene...

However, what do you expect of a party where Chimera was disqualified years ago, and also Platipus.

So, right now, I don't know what to think/do... start working on a stupid chown-pleaser demo and try to compete "seriously" on next year's Assembly or just forget about Assembly and don't ever attend...

Final words

Congrats to ASD and the Fairlight&friends guys. Both demos are really nice.

Oh wait!

There was something quite impressive, something that I can't see it being done at Euskal, which was that whenever a compo was being shown everyone was stopping everthing they were doing, turning off the sound, and the screen and watching the compo (probably motivated by the 'kill all the video & audio' movie tho). It was really impressive.

The best (and only) demoparty in UK has its site up and ready for you to go there and see pictures of some geeks having fun ;) Also, if you never went to one of those, and you live in UK, you may consider spending one weekend of your life in one, just to be able to share the story with your kids.

http://www.sundowndemoparty.org

I'm on the "who is coming?" list, but seems like my parents are just coming to London the same weekend... however, we may just go visit the town, and then I'll pop there (and release if possible) for a couple of hours (demoshow maybe? :D), and then go back London the next day.

Tomorrow we're flying to Helsinki (Assembly), Heathrow seems to be very busy these days, so maybe it will be a bit of a pain. But finally, after so many years, I'll be able to see the demoparty where the best prods are usually released o/ As blackpawn mention in his post, we're working on a little prod for it, something -not great-, but cute and solid :)

We've also the tickets ready for going to bcnparty (although we weren't planing to go). Now that the party is back in the right track again, we can't do other thing that support it. So, for the spanish guys, we'll see you there :)