For folks who want to see some seriously intense development work, there's both a 4k and an 8k competition this year.
Because these segments have to care about some incredible compression techniques, imagine having to think about the entropy of your music score and code as you write it. And it still has to be real-time and it still has to do something cool.
The demoscene is one of the most astonishing major software movements around, and it predates the internet.
Yep, that's about right. In the heyday of the 8-bit & 16-bit machines, US users were more focused on user groups than a demoscene. We didn't "party" much. It never became a thing here.
There used to be one in Salt Lake City, but I think it hasn't run for a number of years. If you check pouet.net you can see what's around. Back in the mid-late 90s there used to be a fairly vibrant local scene on the East Coast of the U.S. and up into Canada, but it seems to have kind of calmed down and spread out. Lots of very small parties back in those days.
I imagine there's still lots of small parties in the U.S., but they just aren't as advertised?
Historically, no, there is no active demo scene in the United States. I was one of the few demo scene programmers in the US during the 1980's - 1990's, but it's never really been a thing over here.
Because these segments have to care about some incredible compression techniques, imagine having to think about the entropy of your music score and code as you write it. And it still has to be real-time and it still has to do something cool.
The demoscene is one of the most astonishing major software movements around, and it predates the internet.