I think i was pretty clear in my original post.

Its about people doing the seemingly impossible with technology, not technology doing whats possible with technology. If you use AI, you did nothing but ask it, and i could never be impressed by that.

And how would you vote in the competitions at demoparties? By tokens used?

Most parties strictly forbid the use of AI in production, but im afraid some people aren't honest enough to abide to that rule.

Because building something with AI is not as impressive as building something without it.

The demoscene is all about showing off technical skill.

Using AI requires next to zero technical skill.

That's the key.

I think the problem is that you think of demoscene as just fancy videos, but it's actually about making a fancy video while dealing with serious constraints. In the classic demoscene of the 80s/90s, that constraint was processing power or RAM. In the modern day, processing power is immense, so people make the constraints artificial, such as putting a limit on your executable size.

Using AI to produce a demo within constraints is simply not impressive.

AI isn't a tool the way a debugger, compiler, or IDE are. It's more like outsourcing your work to someone else, then taking the credit for producing it.

> you can output more faster

I think the point is your not outputting anything. For crud apps that's fine but an activity where the whole point of it is to show off your technical skills it seems quite pointless.

That's a bit nonsense though isn't it? The bot isn't showing up to the party and coming up with a plan to present. The person is operating the machine, and without the person there's no output.

If I can beat someone's technical skills with AI what are their technical skills worth? That's the question that a lot of people are struggling with right now.

If you can come up with a problem that a human can solve better without AI, then that's an interesting competition and the tools involved wouldn't end up mattering much.

Now if the contest is "who can develop the best/smallest/fastest app without AI" that's completely fine, there are similarly "who can cut the most grass with a scythe" competitions and everyone involved knows what they're signing up for and has a good time. Nothing wrong with that.

> The person is operating the machine, and without the person there's no output.

> If I can beat someone's technical skills with AI what are their technical skills worth? That's the question that a lot of people are struggling with right now.

I could turn up on a chess competition with a chess machine and beat my opponents with it, but that is not the point of chess competitions

Well of course, they have rules preventing it. No one's saying "you can't have rules that ban AI from demoscene" or "Demoscene must use AI." There are also exhibitions where chess pros compete against machines.

This isn't about a chess pro competing against a machine, this is about someone showing up and saying they're going to enter the competition but instead they run a chess program, and claim that they played against the chess pro and beat them.

if it's not explicitly forbidden that would be part of the game, no?

You should have a little bit more respect.

Because, in the demoscene, that would be utterly lame. You'd be a lamer. You'd be a disgrace for even suggesting such a thing. You would not be welcome.

> if everyone is using AI, wouldn't the bar also be raised for everyone

Why would I care about vibe coded a demo when I could just ask Claude to make the same thing for me?

If you have two demos side by side, one AI and the other human, the human version is immediately more interesting because it showcases a high level of skill that you may aspire to achieve one day. The AI version is as forgettable as the person who prompted it, because it does not demonstrate that person's skill.

Same reason why we generally find weightlifters to be impressive even though machines have been able to out-lift anyone for thousands of years.

That said, I don't think most people dislike using it for tedious work or information searching. Similar to how most are still impressed by a lifter using a Smith machine to stabilize an absurd weight.

Why would you care about any code product when you could ask Claude to make the same thing for you? Again, this is a question many are struggling with right now.

There will always be competitions that limit tool use, and competitions that don't. There are many examples that go either way.

If you don't care or want to understand the demoscene's culture, then what are you arguing about.

The demoparty Assembly actually has an vibe coded demo competition. And maybe that is a solution to the problem, but it just does not interest me.

Sceners are no strangers to imposing artificial constraints on themselves. Just look at high end 64k, 8k, 4k, and 256byte intro coding, there is no real reason for it other than the challenge. So I really hope this mindset can be applied to AI use as well.

It's about how much control over the tool and the output the artist has. A photocopy machine and a pencil are both tools that can be used to make a copy of a photo. The machine is much faster than the pencil and produce a very accurate result, but only the pencil version has artistic value. The resulting artifact artistic value is a token that represents the creation process.

I can assure you that people have done very cool things with photocopiers that are more creative than some pencil drawings

I also heard that people did cooler things with apples than oranges.

One is building a thing using your own knowledge and creativity and the other is building a thing utilizing the largest collection of stolen knowledge and stolen creativity

Because demoscene has principles. Always has. Always will be.

Have you heard of the "wild" category before

> Demoscene was always about doing

Yes, but “doing” with AI is not actually doing it, is it? Yes, something gets done, but the end result was never the point of the demoscene. The finished product was merely the proof-of-work.

How far do you want to go? Obviously many demos were not written using ones and zeros and most likely the coders used compilers and assemblers to produce the binaries. They were also using linkers instead of merging the files by hand. Many learned the stuff using books, so it is just regurgitation of what they read in those books.

As with AI it's no different than delegating work to a group member. What counts is vision and execution.

What a weird argument, I can't believe people say that sort of thing and mean it sincerely. Compilers and assemblers and linkers and books are not the same as using AI. They're not just both tools and equivalent. One is using your brain power to gain knowledge and learn how things work. The other is asking someone to make the thing for you. But I don't think we'll agree on anything here.

> As with AI it's no different than delegating work to a group member. What counts is vision and execution.

If I delegate something to somebody else, I can’t then claim that I made it, because of my “vision and execution”.

Not sure. Corporations do it all the time. They create vision, hire employees to make it real and then it is the company's vision and execution. The demos are typically released under demoscene group name, not individuals who contributed.

I think many people are confused what's AI has given to them. An ability to be a boss. Something that used to be afforded to the rich. Now you can assemble a "team" and deliver whatever idea you have in mind without spending thousands or millions.

> I think many people are confused what's AI has given to them. An ability to be a boss.

And most people have personal experience with how much a boss actually contributes.

They could of course start their own business to find out.

No. The demoscene was about showing the raw skill of its participants.

This obviously intersected broadly with getting the most out of technology, but the main purpose was always (and still is) showing skillsets.

You can show raw skill with AI used as a tool. Demoscene is not a suffering contest otherwise you might start questioning why the demos in the past were not written using ones and zeros, but they used assembler that makes it soooo easy!

What is gate keeping about it? Please answer.

From discussing with demosceners I think people pretty unanimously agree vibecoded prods are lame, if sometimes fun. There's nothing impressive about a vibecoded demo, and even if they are visually impressive, that isn't really the point. The point is that people actually made it, the demo itself is an artifact of the talent of the group that made it. If anything it's a bit awkward when people submit heavily vibecoded demos.

Yes demoscene is about doing the impossible with Technology, but its also about proving that your group is good at performing miracles with computers. Modern demos are still technically impressive, but art direction is much more important for a high-tier demo. It's not "we are doing this impressive thing" as much as it is "Look what WE are able to do with this technical trick we are harnessing". The group and people behind the demo is a brand and part of the experience.

My personal opinion is that if you think a 100% vibecoded demo is cool, you don't really "get" the demoscene. Nobody is impressed that you could vibecode a visually impressive demo. You aren't winning anyone's respect. Nobody will work to beat you (they will at best push Claude harder - its a question of money not talent). The point of the demoscene is to pull off impressive feats with computer hardware, and if you didn't even do it yourself, nobody cares, because it's not impressive.

I think few are going to hate you for outsourcing basic, repetitive work to an LLM. But if you go "hey claude make me a particle engine" it kind of misses the point?

Then again I'm not really a hardcore scener myself, with just a few mediocre prods, so maybe someone from Farbrausch, ASD, TBL, or others will show up and tell me why I am wrong.

There is no shortage of crap demos that were not "vibe" coded.

I am just saying that AI is also something to harness, show it can help create something mindblowing. I am not saying that everyone should now go and type: "Make me a blob animation with phong reflections, put a bouncy scroll bar with 80s looking fonts and craft Ikari style chip tune and book tickets to the next demoscene party".

>Why gatekeeping?

Because there is no natural right for you to be part of a scene. The right is earned, and every scene does well by keeping posers and mouthbreathers out.