prosthetic knowledge

Text Mode Demo Contest

Text / Unicode Art taken to computational extreme in this demoscene contest.

Anyone familiar with the demoscene knows that it is a programming festival / activity where groups create graphical demos, programmed art pieces to demonstrate the graphical powers of computers.

Sometimes, with some competitions, it is to get as much out of the computer within certain limits (for example, a full demo in a small amount of memory space such as 64k or even 4k), and in this case, the graphics can only be displayed in the most limited mode a computer has available: Text Mode.

The video above is from the winner of the most recent contest. It is called ‘Lick Weed’ and is by the demo group Brainstorm. It has to be said, though, that the video above doesn’t really do it justice to the visual effect, and should be seen in it’s original executable form [you can get it via the Demoscene portal Pouet here, although it is PC only]. Second place was ‘Disambiguation’ by npli [Youtube link here]

More about the Text Mode Demo Contest can be found here

This post was discovered via the Tumblr Blog The Demo Scene, and is a good resource for those that may want to find out more about it.

Source: tmdc.scene.org