C64 Demo Comaland

[fladdermasken]

So. Hello. Enough about me etc.

Apparently pushing the limits of the old Commodore 64 computer, usually exploiting some undocumented side-effects in the MOS Technology VIC-II chip, can yield some pretty awesome results.

Check it out. COMADANCE!
http://csdb.dk/release/?id=133940

 

[Dr Super Good]

Too bad when the console was main stream it did not have anything like this lol.

As a computer expert I have to say that it is being over-rated. Sure the demo does look awesome for the hardware it runs on using some pretty advanced effects even and nothing can deny that however one must remember that it is a demo and not an actual game.

Probably the main bottleneck with systems like this was RAM and ROM which enforced a lot of limits to what you could do. Something scripted like a demo is possible however if you try to have any sort of game use many of the effects shown you will quickly run out of memory either in unique assets or due to game state.

There are also productivity limitations as each demo scene was likely hand crafted as efficiently as possible, something that any large game cannot afford due to the scale of work required. As such from a software engineering point of view this demo is probably a total disaster since code reusability and maintainability must be near 0, something one cannot really afford to do in modern times.

If they had used that to pitch their system all those years ago maybe the world would have been quite different. The fact they did not generally means that unfortunately this stuff would never filter to consumers in a large way until the introduction of more advanced hardware.

 

[fladdermasken]

As a computer expert I have to say that it is being over-rated. Sure the demo does look awesome for the hardware it runs on using some pretty advanced effects even and nothing can deny that however one must remember that it is a demo and not an actual game.

Probably the main bottleneck with systems like this was RAM and ROM which enforced a lot of limits to what you could do. Something scripted like a demo is possible however if you try to have any sort of game use many of the effects shown you will quickly run out of memory either in unique assets or due to game state.

To be fair, I am pretty sure demosceners doing stuff for the C64, at a demoparty event in the Netherlands attended by roughly 250 other demosceners, are more interested in penis measuring than porting any of their demo products into an actual playable game. It's an art scene, not a software marketing convention.