from Hacker News

Our Amiga Demo-Creator Turns 36 Years

by NorSoulx on 5/6/23, 8:48 PM with 11 comments

• by jahnu on 5/6/23, 10:20 PM

  For me the golden era of personal computers. Amiga demos filled me with unbridled joy that I wish I could convey to my children but alas this is probably impossible and a fate experienced by everyone who gets older and has kids :)

  Waiting for the post delivery, hoping that day was the day the next package arrived. Clicking the 3.5” disk in and feeling my pulse quicken.

  Then the day I got hold of the RSI Demo Maker I knew I wanted to be a programmer when I grew up.

  (47 years old now, a programmer but still haven’t grown up)

  And example of a demo made in it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0SI41uFqJpQ

• by throwaway4736 on 5/7/23, 4:58 AM

  Man, the demoscene. Truly the gift that keeps on giving and maybe of the last places where the true hacker spirit still thrives.

  Nostalgia is a powerful drug and I’m loathe to say anything is the best because it’s all so subjective, but for me personally those years in the mid-90s where computing was just a big open greenfield for new ideas was amazing.

  I was 16, modding Renegade and drawing ANSI for my BBS and toodling around in ImpulseTracker trying to be Purple Motion and learning HTML for this new thing called the web and it was all just perfect.

• by NikkiA on 5/7/23, 1:15 PM

  A "demo creator" strikes me as a bit of an oxymoron, demos are usually all about demonstrating knowledge and programming acumen of the target machine, using a generator to do all the work of making a scrolling message on a static background seems a bit like trying to open an art gallery selling clipart.

• by blooalien on 5/7/23, 8:18 AM

  Still to the day the computers I remember most fondly are all Commodore machines, starting from the C-64 onward. All my Commodore machines served me solidly for many years each. Commodore Amiga with Lightwave 3D and Video Toaster provided endless fun.

• by Enderboi on 5/8/23, 7:41 AM

  I was more of a TRSI Demo Maker kinda guy :)

• by robertpohl on 5/7/23, 3:52 AM

  +1