GTPsiU:: Cheeze and Demos - Mainpage | [Changes] [Calendar] [Search] [Index] |
Cheeze and Demos 2024 will be held on June 8th, 2024
Archives:
Cheeze and Demos 2023 was skipped because Paulie got kinda lazy. Sorry to drop the ball on the 20th anniversary like that.
Cheeze and Demos 2019 was held on June 4th, 2022
Cheeze and Demos 2021 was canceled due to ongoing concerns with hosting events at the chapter house resulting from the pandemic. There was no will to host online again at this time.
[ Cheeze and Demos 18 / June 13th, 2020, ] Online Only via https://sync-tube.de
[ Cheeze and Demos 17 / June 8th, 2019 ]
[ Cheeze and Demos 16 / June 2nd, 2018 ]
[ Cheeze and Demos 15 / May 30th, 2017 ]
[ Cheeze and Demos 14 / June 4th, 2016 ]
[ Cheeze and Demos 13 / June 6th, 2015
[ Cheeze and Demos 12 / June 7th, 2014 ]
[ Cheeze and Demos 11 / June 1st, 2013 ]
[ Cheeze and Demos 10 / June 2nd, 2012 ]
[ Cheeze and Demos 1-3 / 2003-2005 summary ]
and a few questions for the curious.
Q: What is a 'Demo'?
A: Generally, a realtime computer generated audiovisual display, coded and constructed by amateurs, usually high school or college kids in Europe. The demoscene is the community that supports this activity by websites, forums, and throwing demoparties where there's prizes for the best products produced. for more information about what a demo is you can check:
http://www.pouet.net (Demo reviews and forums. Warning: not for the faint of heart)
Q: What hardware is this all on?
A: Running it all on a PC with a newish graphics card. But there usually are a few platforms represented through videos and emulation, including Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64, and pretty much any new or old platform that can have code written for it, just so people can show off what they can do with old/weird hardware. This includes any old computer ever (IBM AT, Vic 20, Spectrum ZX), cell phones, any console or handheld game system, various microcontrollers and controllable devices, and more. Sometimes there's also videos made by the same people (often part of the anything goes category referred to as 'Wild Demos'), but it's not the main focus.
Q: Are all of these Demos like a tiny amount of code? 28 bytes or something?
A: There are different types of limits placed in demo competitions , and size limits are one of these. The primary demo competitions are not really size limited (they vary from a few hundred kilobytes to as many megabytes as they can get away with), but they have to be realtime generated graphics, not videos (with the exception of 'Wild demos'). Size limited competitions are common, and the most common size limited competitions are 64 kbyte and 4 kbyte demos, thought there tend to only be a few really good ones in any given year. Smaller size limitations exist (1k, 256 byte, etc), but are notoriously limited and don't play well for a party generally, though they are shown occasionally.
Q: So what's cheese got to do with this?
A: Very little other than I like cheese (as well as demos), and I thought a party where I get all my friends to bring cheese was a good idea.
Q: Somehow I ended up on this page without receiving the email with helpful instructions. Should I bring cheese?
A: Probably. Contact me or one of the active undergrads members of PsiU GT for more info.
Q: What is the history of this party?
A: In 2003 after Paulie completed his undergrad, he found this really cool cheese shop near Georgia Tech, and it sparked an interest in hosting a cheese tasting. Somewhere around this time, due to excess spare time resulting from not getting a job after graduation (don't ask why) and viewing a friend's copy of the recently released
[
Mindcandy DVD Demo Collection (DVDs now downloadable for Free!)
]
it rekindled a dormant interest in the demoscene and it's productions (I'd seen a few as a kid and a few more early in undergrad). So when summer semester rolled around, it had been decided that particular year that both house and brother's meetings would be held on every other Wednesday for the summer, and Strick was looking for events to host on the open Wednesday nights at the house, so Paulie gathered a bunch of new productions and got a couple of friends to kick in for cheeses and put together a cheese tasting party and demo viewing. So far it seems to work pretty well - and here we are.
Q: You know "Cheeze" is actually spelled "Cheese", right?
A: Yes. Initially I just felt like using the other spelling to be silly. The joke is pretty old after all these years, and I've mostly fixed the emails I've sent out, but far as I'm concerned the name of the party has the 'Z' in it. Why change it now?
(last modified 2024-05-03) [Login] |