Did the 68k machine have a presence in the demoscene?

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

I was enthralled with the demos for the Atari ST and MS-DOS machines coming out in the 80s and 90s. Future Crew's 2nd Reality was the hottest thing I ever saw since trying to stare at the sun one time.

I don't remember seeing or hearing of any demos that flexed the processing power of the 68k machines ... but I also wasn't paying much attention at the time.

Anything I should check out?

 

[Phipli]

I'm sure there is something, but long and short...

No!

I don't know why not.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Amiga.

 

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

Well, yes. Amiga. Not much else to say there.

Amiga and Atari ST machines only had 68000 processors running at around 8 MHz. My Centris 650 rocks a 25 MHz 68040 with a FPU and the machine has higher native resolutions with greater color depth. It ought to rock and roll! I would venture this machine would give a 486 a run for its money.

 

[Phipli]

Well, yes. Amiga. Not much else to say there.

Amiga and Atari ST machines only had 68000 processors running at around 8 MHz. My Centris 650 rocks a 25 MHz 68040 with a FPU and the machine has higher native resolutions with greater color depth. It ought to rock and roll! I would venture this machine would give a 486 a run for its money.

Hardware colour tables too, so all the high speed animated colour tricks are easy on a mac. The bouncing Amiga ball should be doable (it used animated colour tables for the rotation). The early compact Macs had two screen buffers that could be switched to help with clean animation...

I don't know why we didn't have a demo scene. Perhaps a mix of price, target market and perhaps that we had some impressive graphics software anyhow?

Or perhaps not enough people did low level programming because the platform used abstraction, in the form of the toolbox, from the very beginning? The standard draw routines were pretty good though. Hardware level optimisations would be limited to only groups of machines. The hardware constantly changed and there were a lot of different macs.

I do have some early demos from the compactors. Fractals and geometric patterns and bouncing wirefeame shapes. Some at least seem to have been done by universities.

 

[Phipli]

There is this :

prodlist :: pouët.net

pouët.net - your online demoscene resource

www.pouet.net

 

[joshc]

The Daystar PowerCache demo is the closest I can think of.

But really, Macs didn’t need demos to show off their capabilities because the sheer amount of software and dominance in DTP/graphics spoke for itself, I think. For quite a period, up to Windows 95 coming out, the Mac had very little serious competition in most markets.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

This video was done on a IIfx. Don’t know how they played it back though.

 

[ymk]

Amiga's video hardware was far more advanced and capable than just a simple framebuffer.

The Sega Genesis is a 68K machine too, but it has silicon dedicated to painting the screen.

A game like Abuse on the Mac is comparable to a side scroller on the Genesis but requires a much faster CPU because it's handling all of the graphics work alone.

 

[Melkhior]

I don't remember seeing or hearing of any demos that flexed the processing power of the 68k machines ... but I also wasn't paying much attention at the time.

The point of such 'demo' was to show off the skill of the guys doing them, by programming 'to the metal' and leveraging all available hardware as far as they could go - usually a bit beyond what was originally intended. Amiga were kings because of all the weird hardware.

I'd say the reasons Macs didn't have a thriving demo scene is the same reason they survived long after the usual demo scene machines were lost to the sand of time: a little because they didn't have weird hardware, and a lot because they did have a rudimentary hardware abstraction layer (QuickDraw, the rest of the Toolbox). You could do some to-the-metal programming on a compact, but any code talking directly to the 542x342 B&W display was utterly broken by the introduction of the Mac II. Not only did it not have the 512x342 B&W screen (let alone at the same physical address), but you couldn't know what it had as there were multiple graphic options. Amiga, STs, and a lot of other hardware of the era couldn't move on without breaking backward compatibility of software - and not just demo, but a lot of the games and other software people wanted. Neither ST nor Amiga survived the obsolescence of the 68000 - even a simple upgrade to the 68020/68030 didn't really work. Apple could upgrade the hardware by just fixing the ROMs to ensure the Toolbox still worked. The proved that flamboyantly with the x100 PPC, by changing the CPU architecture. The PCs (the 'IBM compatible' ones) of the era also survived because of this- the BIOS, for all the ugliness, did offer a minimalist HAL that enabled backward compatibility to a sufficient extent.

Dedicated video hardware didn't succeed globally for consumers until there was an adequate abstraction layer; GLide popularized 3D games with the Voodoo, and then came OpenGL & DirectX/Direct3D to open up the market. (NuBus acceleration did exist using QuickDraw as the HAL, but wasn't 'globally successful').

Edit: typos, NuBus

 

[avadondragon]

Might be common knowledge but I just discovered that someone made a version of the Amiga Boing Ball Demo for Macintosh back in 1986.

 

[Unknown_K]

Macs only have "decent" 2d video chips in the quadra era so coders worked on the Amiga/ST.

 

[ymk]

Another weakness: DMA

PCs, Amigas and game consoles of the time had it. Macs didn't.

 

[Phipli]

so coders worked on the Amiga/ST.

Shame there were no coders on Mac. It would have been nice to have some software.

 

[aeberbach]

At the time of the IIfx... the fastest Mac you could get was an Amiga 68030 @50MHz running a Mac emulator, and it worked out far cheaper then the real Mac too. 68k Macs were great for many reasons but demo capabilities were definitely not one.

 

[Unknown_K]

DEMO coders, sorry.
The price of the systems compared to the Commodores would have also been a factor.

 

[mikes-macs]

MacWorld was often where items were released and demonstrated at the same time. Although I remember Jobs on Good Morning America doing a demo with speech recognition on a Quadra.

 

[Phipli]

the fastest Mac you could get was an Amiga 68030 @50MHz running a Mac emulator,

What about the Radius Rocket? That would outperform a 50mhz 030?

 

[Byrd]

There are a few "demos" available for 68K, PPC and OS X here:

Demoscene demos for Macintosh - Macintosh Garden

16 October 2021 Update - Disinfected the demo "Four Knights". (Mac Demo Amassment 1.2) Many thanks to mrdav and MikeTomTom. 14 August 2019 Update - Added two new demos: Liquid and Hell! (Mac Demo Amassment 1.1) Many thanks to Daxeria.

macintoshgarden.org

OS X Demoscene Collection (PPC + Intel) - Macintosh Garden

The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audio-visual presentations whose purpose is to show off programming, visual art, and musical skills.

macintoshgarden.org

The Demoscene Quest: Resurfacing Old Demos! - Macintosh Garden

Greetings, my good folks! In the past few days, I decided to completely submerge myself in the activity of unearthing and rediscovering now-ancient demos, intros, (visual) effects and whatnot. That is, demoscene stuff, for our beloved pre-Mac-OS-X Macintoshes.

macintoshgarden.org

... none are a patch compared to Amiga and PC demos of the time. The lack of low resolution and basic hardware acceleration did that. We just looked from afar during this time enjoying our high-resolution displays sipping a latte.

 

[LaPorta]

When I read the title, I thought it was some sort of era like the Pleistocene.