As for cracktros, probably not. I should spelunk through backups. However, the most technical and competitive people generally transitioned to the demoscene in the early 2000s and that scene is far more open.

You can find a lot of groups/individuals publish a lot of esp. their older stuff now.

Two off the top of my head:

- https://github.com/ConspiracyHu (and they made a W32 port of Future Crew's Second Reality, which is public domain: https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality)

- Farbrausch published their original demo tool source ages ago: https://github.com/farbrausch/fr_public

He's still alive and well! While he's not super active and let his website(s) die, you can follow him on Facebook where he generally seems the most active these days: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063887643279&ref=...

And instead of YT/archive (though, shoutout to textfiles.com, which is now part of archive), https://www.pouet.net/ and https://scene.org/ is still where things are generally at

I'm so happy every time I see the demoscene on HN's front page. Hi pandur!

Hello ;)

Holon and MFX rocks!!! Big up the demoscene massiv, see you at next Revision

wow <3

Same here. I came in on the back end of having to write your own engine from scratch (not just 3D, but general graphics.) MOV AX, 13h; INT 10h will forever be burned into my memory.

The transition was definitely odd. What brought it around for me was when fr-08 was released and the broader scene realized what _could_ be done with procedural generation and whatnot.

Huge shoutout to Digitale Kultur e.V. for that -- that club was founded by the folks that organize the Evoke demoparty!

If you'd like to know where the demoscene came from, look no further than The BBS Documentary[1]

The whole thing started w/ cracktros in the 80s and through the artscene it eventually evolved into its own scene that was entirely disconnected from its roots in piracy.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dddbe9OuJLU&list=PL7nj3G6Jpv...

Steal everyone's samples! I recall my brother thinking they'd hate him for doing it, or he'd be a lamer.. it didn't matter, and eventually others used his samples and his techniques.

The scene these days is much more welcoming than it ever was in the past. Just get in there and do something, anything :)

Gave my baby brother FastTracker when he was 13 I believe, not only did he become one of the best chip musicians ever, it effectively shaped his entire life toward pursuing music in some form or another.

After this unexpected HN post today, I'll be queueing up some bleeps.

I remember trying to replicate a sine scroller at age 9, not having the slightest clue what a sine wave is, I just let sprites go up and down linearly on a C64 and couldn't for the life of me figure out a way to make that a smooth wave until years later :D

Which is, in fact, a demotool made by sceners and released at a party (check their about!) Just like Shadertoy and others :)