TacticalCoderon Hacker News • Recommends
On “As much Stack Overflow as possible in 4096 bytes”
In a different style, the "Elevated" demo, coded in 4K (you'll have a hard time believing it if you haven't seen it yet): link to this video
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#demoscene#proceduralgeneration#4kintro
Elevated by RGBA and TBC
BUTTONTANG
378 subscribers • 1 video on Hallway
- Recommended by 7 people: 7 on Hacker News.
- A classic. People kept recommending it from 2009 to 2025.
Advanced. Deep dive for people who know the field.
973K views17 years ago7 recommendations
Graphics and audioRenderingCreative coding
A groundbreaking 4-kilobyte executable that procedurally generates a realistic 3D mountain landscape with synchronized music and post-processing.
PC 4k demo by RGBA and TBC entered at Breakpoint 2009 HD version is at youtube.com/watch?v=I5CTFMuFvb0 Get the original file at pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938Why it's here
7 people recommend thisWhat people say. Highly recommended as a legendary masterpiece of demoscene engineering, showcasing extreme code compression and procedural generation.
barrettcolinon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Awesome Procedural Terrain Generation”
Check out 'Elevated' - winner of the 4k PC demo category at Breakpoint 2009. It's a fly-through of a realistic looking procedurally generated terrain model with music and some fancy post processing effects all squeezed into a <4096 bytes executable. Even my moderately high-end PC can't run it (I suspect because it shoves an overwhelmingly huge triangle mesh at the GPU) but there's a video here: link to this video
z303on Hacker News • Recommends
On “The Demoscene -- an Overview”
Two more by Farbrausch the.popular.demo link and Candytron (64K) link For some newer releases blunderbuss by Fairlight link is very different is style but still very cool and two post about the particle system behind the demo link link Elevated by Rgba & TBC link to this video is a great example of what people can do in 4K, and they even have a presentation about the technical details link and State of the Art by Spaceballs link is a highpoint of the amiga scene (edited to add, which I should have clicked on the link to see it had already been embedded)
vmindon Hacker News • Recommends
On “Infinite complexity in 4096 bytes”
Cool, but I think my favourite 4k demo is still Elevated, which is much less obviously procedural. ( link to this video )
userbinatoron Hacker News • Recommends
On “Show HN: A simple infinite world in WebGL”
Indeed, keep going, and you may reach this level of awesome: link to this video (Quite realistic terrain generated by a 4 kilobyte binary, along with music . Source code and its discussion here: link )
dwrodrion Hacker News • Recommends
On “The Vanishing Of Ashlar: 4kb demo using GPU for sound and pathtracing”
I know that a huge part of the demoscene culture is keeping your trade secrets close, but I'd love to see a YouTube playlist where authors or people with significant graphics experience do in-depth teardowns. Those of us like myself who only take a passing interest from afar are still blown away by how amazing results of demos like "elevated" from 2009 1. I've heard Iñigo Quílez, but I am curious if there are people interested in doing teardowns of winners moreso than elementary concepts (although of course the latter is much more applciable outside of the demo scene). 1= link to this video
karteumon Hacker News • Recommends
On “The demoscene as a UNESCO heritage in Sweden”
It's 12 years old now, but I am still extremely impressed by this 64k intro link and also by this 4k intro link to this video :) And overall this website is extremely interesting with tutorials and code and great explanations link
thristianon Hacker News • Mentions
On “"Elevated": Landscape generation and music synthesis in 4KB”
For the impatient or people without sufficient hardware, a YouTube recording is here: link to this video One of the guys who created this little gem gave a presentation about the technology behind it; slides are here: link
slackitoon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Procedural Building Generation in Unreal Engine 3”
> For doing data compression has anyone ever heard about using these techniques to generate other things besides 3D game levels? These techniques are routinely used in the demoscene for making 4Kb/64Kb intros. In this kind of intros almost everything is generated procedurally, not only meshes, but also textures and sound. If you are interested you can watch one of these examples: - Elevated (4K intro) Binary: link Youtube video: link to this video - .kkrieger (96K game) Binary: link Gameplay video: link
klodolphon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Things That Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than (2011)”
> The article's tone implies that these were the 'good old days' when compilers were small and fast. That's reading a lot into two short paragraphs. Tone doesn't come across well in text, and the shorter the text is, the harder it is to figure out tone. I don't hear nostalgia for the 'good old days' in the article, what I hear is, "Wow! What a feat of engineering to fit an IDE and compiler into 40k!" We get the same kick out of watching demo competitions. Have you seen the "Elevated" demo? Including the music, sound effects, textures, everything, it's only 4k... link to this video
userbinatoron Hacker News • Mentions
On “Realistic terrain in 130 lines of JavaScript”
Reminds me of this - pretty good looking terrain + animation + sound in a 4 kilobyte executable: link to this video How it was done: link
d_silinon Hacker News • Mentions
On “Memories – 256 bytes demo winner of Revision 2020”
A couple of other famous short demos: link to this video ("Elevated", 4k) link ("One of those days", 8k)