.fr-08: .the .product

November 27, 2001 6:03 PM

.fr-08: .the .product (download) a 63.5 kb demo of what good data compression can do. [Requires Windows + DirectX 8, may not work with your graphics card.]
posted by riffola (21 comments total)

Wow.

Seriously, that's amazing considering the size of the file.
posted by Mark at 6:12 PM on November 27, 2001

For us non-Win users: explain please?
posted by rodii at 6:13 PM on November 27, 2001

It's basically a fly through of different 'maps' of what could be a first person shooter game such as Unreal or Half-Life.
posted by Mark at 6:16 PM on November 27, 2001

I was going to post this a couple of weeks back, but I totally forgot. Someone forwarded the file to me and I almost fell out of my chair. It's very sweet.
posted by eyeballkid at 6:20 PM on November 27, 2001

I agree that it's pretty cool. As a matter of data compression, however, it's not all that revolutionary, considering that DirectX is doing all the rendering. When you can do that kind of thing with no DirectX in a small file, then I'll really be impressed.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 6:21 PM on November 27, 2001

This is really old. And not actualy data 'compression', but generative art. They didn't take some huge data and 'compress' it, but rather they wrote a little program that could create intresting graphics, and then gave it a script. Kind of like graphical MIDI almost.
posted by delmoi at 6:32 PM on November 27, 2001

It is a pretty damn impressive piece of work.
It reminds me of my friend's old Atari ST demos he downloaded from European BBS sites (pre-internet days). These groups would be competing with each other to make a demo that was more impressive than the last one. I even remember seeing a demo that had the text scrolling by that said "Atari says you can't put any animation in the border of the screen." and then would burst the borders open with colours and animation and text that was scrolling AROUND INSIDE the borders saying "I guess you're not seeing this then."
posted by Grum at 6:41 PM on November 27, 2001

The days of true small-file (64k) demos are over with the advent of all-inclusive APIs like DirectX, but the artistic flair and "wow-factor" are still there, I see.

And here I am trying (and failing) to write a primitive DOOM engine for my graphics project. Sigh.
posted by Succa at 6:44 PM on November 27, 2001

The entire demoscene has been around for a long time now. It's hugely popular in Sweden and Norway, especially. And it's not quite so frivolous; the most popular group recently (Future Crew) actually makes up most of Remedy Entertainment (the Max Payne dev guys).
posted by aphelion at 6:47 PM on November 27, 2001

The days of true small-file (64k) demos are over with the advent of all-inclusive APIs like DirectX, but the artistic flair and "wow-factor" are still there, I see.

Hey, wasn't that what the 5k was all about?

It reminds me of my days with the Amiga 500. Then again, most things do.
posted by holloway at 6:55 PM on November 27, 2001

this is a good list of demos to check out. fr08 is pretty old, and (in my opinion) not really that exceptional. Good 64kbs are heaven 7 (real time raytracing in 64k), leitmotiv, hplus, and bakkslide7
posted by atom128 at 7:02 PM on November 27, 2001

Thanks for the links aphelion & atom128, you are right there are better demos out there.
posted by riffola at 7:15 PM on November 27, 2001

Considering this thing makes use of the DirectX API (what, 10+ megabytes of bloated code?), this isn't really all that impressive coding-wise (visually, it's not bad).

If you want something cool, check out the 4k demos -- and specifically, Animate, which is one of the best intros ever.
posted by Kikkoman at 7:25 PM on November 27, 2001

This is so funny, I spent hours yesterday looking for a specific demo. Ah the good ol' days. Scene.org is good, so is Orange Juice.
posted by tomplus2 at 7:25 PM on November 27, 2001

People seem to do the really clever stuff when they're programming for fun instead of profit. Maybe they can build me a 64kb web browser next.

(btw - this was also discussed here (I'll get that MeFi Police Badge yet))
posted by Gary at 7:26 PM on November 27, 2001

My current favorite is the 256byte Tube demo. Doesn't do much, but it's amazing that they make that tiny a file do anything at all. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I found it at the moment. Anyone have a clue? If anything, I can e-mail to anyone(running Windows) who wants it.
posted by Su at 7:33 PM on November 27, 2001

My current favorite is the 256byte Tube demo. Doesn't do much, but it's amazing that they make that tiny a file do anything at all.

Heck, I once wrote a line editor for Apple BASIC programs in that many bytes.
posted by kindall at 8:47 PM on November 27, 2001

Here's That Tube Demo... The main link doesn't work right now, but some of the mirrors do (it's the 3.5k tube.zip). I have no idea how you can do that in 256 bytes, but it's very cool.
posted by Gary at 8:50 PM on November 27, 2001

this is pretty cool stuff
i like leitmotiv that atom128 mentioned
posted by juv3nal at 1:44 AM on November 28, 2001

If not everyone can see it, it's not much good, is it...

(Unsatisfied Mac user)
posted by schlaager at 8:08 AM on November 28, 2001

Bah. Not everyone can fly to France to view the Mona Lisa, but that hardly makes it less of a work of art. If you're looking for mac demos, try here or here.
posted by Kikkoman at 9:43 AM on November 28, 2001