ecnew.font,8 «» «ac»«c1» PATCHED DEMOS?«» «» «c3»By Darkhawk of IRIS«» «»«as»«c2» It had to happen sooner or later, and now we've come right into the midst of it:«» «» Re-releases, final versions and even beta versions of new scene releases.«» «» What has plagued the PC for ages in regards to games, is now making its way to the demoscene. At parties, we have for some time experienced party versions of bigger projects like demos, with the 'final' version coming at some point after the party. Of note, TBL and Loonies both do this. Others would do it too, as most groups seem to promise stable, bug free, final releases of their products after a party, but only a few deliver before they loose interest in the project. The trend however is clear.«» «» We're not exactly at the stage where patches are released for us to upgrade our demos with (probably because we don't have a good patching system), but there seems to be a change of perception regarding this area. Before, you released your production at a party, and that was it. It either failed or succeeded, and afterwards you looked back upon it as a milestone, a release, no matter how buggy it might have been. However, usually it wasn't buggy, nor was it that incomplete, because if you didn't manage to finish your demo or rid it of bugs, you simply did not release it, and that was it. Now it is ok to decide to release something, if it can work somewhat ok on the compo machine. Then later, a final version can be released, and people seem to accept this. If nothing else, you can at least pretend you're going to release a final version, and thus get more sympathy for your buggy, halfway finished production.«» «» This is how it is now, and actually I do understand it. It's not exactly that we have played so many bug ridden PC games, and are brainlessly used to getting patches of everything before we can use it. The fact that there are not many parties to release stuff on also plays in. If you miss releasing your big new demo at Breakpoint, you can either opt to get it into the combined Assembly demo compo or wait until the next Breakpoint, provided that you want it to compete with the best and make the biggest impact. Thus, you really have no choice, if not releasing it would entail you waiting another year. Probably many feel this way, most likely TBL in particular, though the same probably applies to Loonies, MAWI and ourselves in IRIS. We also released Heartcore at Breakpoint 2004 though it was only around 50% complete and with some irritating bugs. Shame on us really, but it is hard not to, when you know you have a one year window of opportunity to time it for. Breakpoint has simply become THE Amiga party, in fact with recent party cancellations it might very well be the only one. Thus, not releasing becomes increasingly difficult. Naturally, sceners should have finished their productions before they arrive at the party, but we all know how likely THAT is...«» «» So, this thing with releasing final versions after parties is quite understandable, if not something I'd like in a perfect world. NOW however, we have come to another level of this phenomenon. Going in the opposite direction, I have just seen the first ever officially declared BETA release of a production, namely Trinity's chipmusic pack Chipmunks issue 2. Actually, this is a nice, albeit small production, but the BETA name is probably due to it only containing 5 chiptunes and no mouse input. Well, a great many other releases should deserve to be called 'beta' too then, half of the releases at parties usually. However, actually using that term marks another 'milestone' for the scene, and I don't hope this is the direction we're going in, steadily growing so small and short of resources, that we release buggy and incomplete releases, stopping short of calling it a 'beta'. As long as we are doing final releases of our products, that's something, but as it seems most groups who promise such releases fail to deliver them, even this might be too much of an effort.«» «» In the end, it would be nice if people were either less ambitious with their demo projects, so that they could realize them before the deadline, or otherwise that they simply did not release them before they were in reality finished. That would be in a perfect world though.«» «» «e»
Alek_NGI