|
Demoscene
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual art, and musical skills. Demos and other demoscene productions (graphics, music, videos, games) are shared at festivals known as demoparties, voted on by those who attend and released online. The scene started with the home computer revolution of the early 1980s, and the subsequent advent of software cracking. Crackers altered the code of video games to remove copy protection, claiming credit by adding introduction screens of their own (" cracktros"). They soon started competing for the best visual presentation of these additions. Through the making of intros and stand-alone demos, a new community eventually evolved, independent of the gaming and software sharing scenes. Demoscene productions can be made with the latest consumer techno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demoscene
The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual art, and musical skills. Demos and other demoscene productions (graphics, music, videos, games) are shared at festivals known as demoparties, voted on by those who attend and released online. The scene started with the home computer revolution of the early 1980s, and the subsequent advent of software cracking. Crackers altered the code of video games to remove copy protection, claiming credit by adding introduction screens of their own (" cracktros"). They soon started competing for the best visual presentation of these additions. Through the making of intros and stand-alone demos, a new community eventually evolved, independent of the gaming and software sharing scenes. Demoscene productions can be made with the latest consumer techno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chiptune
Chiptune, also known as chip music or 8-bit music, is a style of synthesized electronic music made using the programmable sound generator (PSG) sound chips or synthesizers in vintage arcade machines, computers and video game consoles. The term is commonly used to refer to tracker format music which intentionally sounds similar to older PSG-created music (this is the original meaning of the term), as well as music that combines PSG sounds with modern musical styles. It has been described as "an interpretation of many genres" since any existing song can be arranged in a chiptune style defined more by choice of instrument and timbre than specific style elements. Technology A waveform generator is a fundamental module in a sound synthesis system. A waveform generator usually produces a basic geometrical waveform with a fixed or variable timbre and variable pitch. Common waveform generator configurations usually included two or three simple waveforms and often a single ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demo Effect
Demo effect is computer-based real-time visual effects found in demos created by the demoscene. The main purpose of demo effects in demos is to show off the skills of the programmer. Because of this, demo coders have often attempted to create new effects whose technical basis cannot be easily figured out by fellow programmers. Sometimes, particularly in the case of severely limited platforms such as the Commodore 64, a demo effect may make the target machine do things that are supposedly beyond its capabilities. The ability to creatively overcome major technical limitations is greatly appreciated among demosceners. Modern demos are not as focused on effects as the demos of the 1980s and 1990s. Effects are rarely stand-alone content elements anymore, and their role in programmer showcase has diminished, particularly in PC demos. As for today, PC demosceners are more likely to demonstrate their programming skills with procedural content generation or 3D engine features than wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crack Intro
__NOTOC__ A crack intro, also known as a cracktro, loader, or just intro, is a small introduction sequence added to cracked software. It aims to inform the user which "cracking crew" or individual cracker removed the software's copy protection and distributed the crack. They first appeared on Apple II computer in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and then on ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC games that were distributed around the world via Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) and floppy disk copying. By 1985, when reviewing the commercially available ISEPIC cartridge which adds a custom crack intro to memory dumps of Commodore 64 software, ''Ahoy!'' wrote that such intros were "in the tradition of the true hacker". Early crack intros resemble graffiti in many ways, although they invaded the private sphere and not the public space. As time went on, crack intros became a medium to demonstrate the purported superiority of a cracking group. Such intros grew very complex, sometimes ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Warez Scene
The Warez scene, often referred to as The Scene, is a worldwide, underground, organized network of pirate groups specializing in obtaining and illegally releasing digital media for free before their official sale date. The Scene distributes all forms of digital media, including computer games, movies, TV shows, music, and pornography. The Scene is meant to be hidden from the public, only being shared with those within the community. However, as files were commonly leaked outside the community and their popularity grew, some individuals from The Scene began leaking files and uploading them to filehosts, torrents and ed2k. The Scene has no central leadership, location, or other organizational conventions. The groups themselves create a ruleset for each Scene category (for example, MP3 or TV) that then becomes the active rules for encoding material. These rulesets include a rigid set of requirements that warez groups (shortened as "grps") must follow in releasing and managing mate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amiga
Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. This includes the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Amiga differs from its contemporaries through the inclusion of custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprite (computer graphics), sprites and a blitter, and a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS. The Amiga 1000 was released in July 1985, but production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. The best-selling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The Amiga 3000 was introduced in 1990, followed by t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hacker (programmer Subculture)
The hacker culture is a subculture of individuals who enjoy—often in collective effort—the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming the limitations of software systems or electronic hardware (mostly digital electronics), to achieve novel and clever outcomes. The act of engaging in activities (such as programming or other mediaThe Hacker Community and Ethics: An Interview with Richard M. Stallman, 2002 (gnu.org)) in a spirit of playfulness and exploration is termed ''hacking''. However, the defining characteristic of a hacker is not the activities performed themselves (e.g. programmi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Cracking
Software cracking (known as "breaking" mostly in the 1980s) is the modification of software to remove or disable features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software (software cracker), especially copy protection features (including protection against the manipulation of software, serial number, hardware key, date checks and disc check) or software annoyances like nag screens and adware. A crack refers to the means of achieving, for example a stolen serial number or a tool that performs that act of cracking. Some of these tools are called keygen, patch, loader, or no-disc crack. A keygen is a handmade product serial number generator that often offers the ability to generate working serial numbers in your own name. A patch is a small computer program that modifies the machine code of another program. This has the advantage for a cracker to not include a large executable in a release when only a few bytes are changed. A loader modifies the startup flow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Judges (c64 Group)
The Judges was a Dutch Commodore 64 group from Roosendaal known for being one of the earliest dedicated demogroups. The Judges released several demos for the Commodore 64 home computer between the years 1986 - 1988. Groups such as The Judges are regarded as early pioneers of what came to be known as the demoscene. In some respects they mirrored The Lords, a "rivaling" ZX Spectrum group also from Roosendaal, to the extent that concepts, artwork and even titles were identical between the two groups. A technical milestone often attributed to The Judges, particularly the programmer Bart "White" Meeuwissen, is the invention of the FLD (Flexible Line Distance) technique, which was used in the ''Think Twice'' series of demos. As the name implies, FLD made it possible to have a variable distance every eight pixels between the individual text or graphics lines generated by the VIC-II video chip. The group's musician Jeroen "Red" Kimmel went on to compose and sell video game music com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Cracking
Software cracking (known as "breaking" mostly in the 1980s) is the modification of software to remove or disable features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software (software cracker), especially copy protection features (including protection against the manipulation of software, serial number, hardware key, date checks and disc check) or software annoyances like nag screens and adware. A crack refers to the means of achieving, for example a stolen serial number or a tool that performs that act of cracking. Some of these tools are called keygen, patch, loader, or no-disc crack. A keygen is a handmade product serial number generator that often offers the ability to generate working serial numbers in your own name. A patch is a small computer program that modifies the machine code of another program. This has the advantage for a cracker to not include a large executable in a release when only a few bytes are changed. A loader modifies the startup flow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Deenen
Charles Deenen (born 15 January 1970 in Holthees), is a Dutch computer/video game audio director, music composer, sound designer, and mixer. He is also known for his music and sound efforts for games of the C64 and Amiga era. He was one of the first demosceners. Early career His first sound achievement was the self-written sound driver for Commodore PET, which he wrote at the age of 13. In the early 1980s he bought a C64. He often wrote graphical and musical demos on it and showed demos at game exhibitions, and through his hobby he met fellow composer Jeroen Tel. In 1987 he, with Tel and some others, started the sound and music group Maniacs of Noise and composed game music for platforms such as the Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, being hired by such companies as Sega, U.S. Gold and Probe Software. Initially he was strictly a programmer for the group, working on audio drivers and sound effects while leaving all the actual composing to Tel, but after their first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apple II
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-molded plastic case, Rod Holt developed the switching power supply, while Steve Jobs's role in the design of the computer was limited to overseeing Jerry Manock's work on the plastic case. It was introduced by Jobs and Wozniak at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, and marks Apple's first launch of a personal computer aimed at a consumer market—branded toward American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists. ''Byte'' magazine referred to the Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and TRS-80 as the "1977 Trinity". As the Apple II had the defining feature of being able to display color graphics, the Apple logo was redesigned to have a spectrum of colors. The Apple II is the first model in the Apple II series, followed by A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
