"Anything less than the best is a felony"
Yet another Easter, yet another trip to Germany.
Let me start flat out with a confession: I wasn't looking forward to it. Not a week before, not an hour before, not in the car. And I don't mean that lightly: I was actively wondering about why I'm wasting my funds and (otherwise useless) time on this again when I don't actively contribute anything interesting or permanent. I wasn't buying the "fun" argument anymore because for me, making great things is fun. That's what gets me interested, that's what excites me, that's why I got into it in the first place. If I'm not doing that, I'm useless and I best step aside because I'm overstaying my welcome.
Conversely, let me say that I did enjoy the party since we did get to finish something against all odds, with relatively little swearing and without much rush. I'm satisfied with how it ended up - of course it could've been better if we would've planned it properly, but we didn't, so compared to the fact that I first saw the reference picture at the party, I think we did fine. Or well, Zoom did fine.
Overall, however, it despairs me that this is all I've been capable of after a year. I have a demotool now, so certainly the technical issues on the surface should've disappeared, but I think things have finally reached a chokepoint where passing along without talent isn't enough anymore; I can't creative-code. I can implement and I can structure, and I can follow formulas, but I can't come up with something that is my own.
I had a bit of a talk with the Pandacube guys, and they noted how Machine could've been a fun demo if it hadn't looked so godawful; I had to explain to them that it's not that I can't model or I lack the technical knowledge to make it look good, but that I looked at that robot and that corridor and that arm and they looked complete to me. It felt like there was nothing to add, even though e.g. the wall was just a plain wall with a texture on it, I had no idea how it could've been made any better. With music I've been lucky for a while, but my recent hiatus has taken a toll on my production skills and my current attempts to mix a track have been so far disastrous.
Similarly, I have no idea how to code an effect. I know how to do the basic ones, how to render a plasma, how to write a 3D engine, how to raymarch, etc., and I could probably implement 80% of the demoeffects I saw, but to come up with them is beyond me. My original plan for Revision was to make a raymarch-based 4k graphic, I made concept-photos, I had the actual marcher ready (with fairly competent tech) and finally after spending a weekend on actual content, I ended up with two shit-looking buildings that could've made a newborn claw out their eyes, although they had really nice looking AO and shadows on them.
And the ultimate problem with this is that making a good demo is all about these things. Solid basecode and a masterplan will only get you about 30% of the way, the rest is "the creative solution", which is where the whole thing falls apart. Threads like this truly showcase the true creativity of most artists in the scene, whereas I look at the first picture and think "this looks fine" except it has been done before a shitton of times, and I wouldn't want to do anything that has been done before, but it is what I seem to be confined to.
I know this isn't easy to process for someone who isn't concerned about these things, and for the most part I guess most of this comes across as unnecessary, but let me assure you that is a very real problem to me. I'm losing motivation in its entirety because I refuse to do anything worse than what I've done before, and that not only narrows the set of possibilities down considerably, but usually alienates anyone else I would try to involve.
Let me tell you a story about how debilitating the problem is.
About 2-3 years ago I become acquainted with the djent genre, and with it, a musical project called Cloudkicker. I've gradually started to listen more and more of it as it was the kind of progressive metal I really enjoyed; it was a stimulating experience. I slowly started to focus on some of the tracks, wondering if they made good demo-soundtracks. Within a few months, I worked out an entire script in my head for something that is truly an epic, and it seemed like the perfect project: Pulling in a (to the scene, fairly unknown) non-scener for a demoscene project, with fairly non-scenish music, and doing something non-scenish-but-still-very-demoish in the first place.
And then nothing happened; I never dared approaching anyone about it, because it would've been a project that hinged very much upon whether Ben himself would've okayed the project AFTER we've made it, and then, making a massive 10-minute demo in itself is something that would've taken a year and a group of artists, would've been a hit-or-miss, and would've depended largely on both my management and my system, both of which are dubious. So I stayed silent and kept playing the demo back in my head over and over.
Of course, you know the rest: about a month ago, when Smash was lamenting his lack of a soundtrack due to the strictly enforced non-BIEM rule, I looked at my Cloudkicker-card up my sleeve I was so eager to play one day. Deep down I knew that the card would never get played if I kept it, and I knew Smash was more than capable of playing it well. He deserved to have the card, so I gave it to him. The rest you saw already.
Now imagine that I have dozens of cards like that still, too scared to even think about playing them.
Let me start flat out with a confession: I wasn't looking forward to it. Not a week before, not an hour before, not in the car. And I don't mean that lightly: I was actively wondering about why I'm wasting my funds and (otherwise useless) time on this again when I don't actively contribute anything interesting or permanent. I wasn't buying the "fun" argument anymore because for me, making great things is fun. That's what gets me interested, that's what excites me, that's why I got into it in the first place. If I'm not doing that, I'm useless and I best step aside because I'm overstaying my welcome.
Conversely, let me say that I did enjoy the party since we did get to finish something against all odds, with relatively little swearing and without much rush. I'm satisfied with how it ended up - of course it could've been better if we would've planned it properly, but we didn't, so compared to the fact that I first saw the reference picture at the party, I think we did fine. Or well, Zoom did fine.
Overall, however, it despairs me that this is all I've been capable of after a year. I have a demotool now, so certainly the technical issues on the surface should've disappeared, but I think things have finally reached a chokepoint where passing along without talent isn't enough anymore; I can't creative-code. I can implement and I can structure, and I can follow formulas, but I can't come up with something that is my own.
I had a bit of a talk with the Pandacube guys, and they noted how Machine could've been a fun demo if it hadn't looked so godawful; I had to explain to them that it's not that I can't model or I lack the technical knowledge to make it look good, but that I looked at that robot and that corridor and that arm and they looked complete to me. It felt like there was nothing to add, even though e.g. the wall was just a plain wall with a texture on it, I had no idea how it could've been made any better. With music I've been lucky for a while, but my recent hiatus has taken a toll on my production skills and my current attempts to mix a track have been so far disastrous.
Similarly, I have no idea how to code an effect. I know how to do the basic ones, how to render a plasma, how to write a 3D engine, how to raymarch, etc., and I could probably implement 80% of the demoeffects I saw, but to come up with them is beyond me. My original plan for Revision was to make a raymarch-based 4k graphic, I made concept-photos, I had the actual marcher ready (with fairly competent tech) and finally after spending a weekend on actual content, I ended up with two shit-looking buildings that could've made a newborn claw out their eyes, although they had really nice looking AO and shadows on them.
And the ultimate problem with this is that making a good demo is all about these things. Solid basecode and a masterplan will only get you about 30% of the way, the rest is "the creative solution", which is where the whole thing falls apart. Threads like this truly showcase the true creativity of most artists in the scene, whereas I look at the first picture and think "this looks fine" except it has been done before a shitton of times, and I wouldn't want to do anything that has been done before, but it is what I seem to be confined to.
I know this isn't easy to process for someone who isn't concerned about these things, and for the most part I guess most of this comes across as unnecessary, but let me assure you that is a very real problem to me. I'm losing motivation in its entirety because I refuse to do anything worse than what I've done before, and that not only narrows the set of possibilities down considerably, but usually alienates anyone else I would try to involve.
Let me tell you a story about how debilitating the problem is.
About 2-3 years ago I become acquainted with the djent genre, and with it, a musical project called Cloudkicker. I've gradually started to listen more and more of it as it was the kind of progressive metal I really enjoyed; it was a stimulating experience. I slowly started to focus on some of the tracks, wondering if they made good demo-soundtracks. Within a few months, I worked out an entire script in my head for something that is truly an epic, and it seemed like the perfect project: Pulling in a (to the scene, fairly unknown) non-scener for a demoscene project, with fairly non-scenish music, and doing something non-scenish-but-still-very-demoish in the first place.
And then nothing happened; I never dared approaching anyone about it, because it would've been a project that hinged very much upon whether Ben himself would've okayed the project AFTER we've made it, and then, making a massive 10-minute demo in itself is something that would've taken a year and a group of artists, would've been a hit-or-miss, and would've depended largely on both my management and my system, both of which are dubious. So I stayed silent and kept playing the demo back in my head over and over.
Of course, you know the rest: about a month ago, when Smash was lamenting his lack of a soundtrack due to the strictly enforced non-BIEM rule, I looked at my Cloudkicker-card up my sleeve I was so eager to play one day. Deep down I knew that the card would never get played if I kept it, and I knew Smash was more than capable of playing it well. He deserved to have the card, so I gave it to him. The rest you saw already.
Now imagine that I have dozens of cards like that still, too scared to even think about playing them.