Push'n'Pop | Amstrad CPC Demoscene

One Year of PnP

Written by Hicks on 01 September 2011
Today is a special day on Push'n'Pop. But what's going on? Is Iron cured of his Tourette's syndrome? No... Did NoRecess learn self mockery? Not yet! Did Vanity stop to be arrogant? Ahah! Today, Push'n'Pop was launched 1 year ago to the day! It justified a little retrospective in the past, present and future of the website. Yeah, you guess it, it's only the beginning of the road. The Push'n'Pop philosophy Let's start with a little synthesis of the Push'n'Pop philosophy. It's naive to believe that it's possible to do a "neutral" website, because each website is led by a specific orientation. More, neutrality seems very counter-productive, and produce website without identity. So Push'n'Pop was created as a "kickass website" because we really thought that CPC scene needs to change in depth. Of course, it implies that some sceners will disagree with our orientation, but that's what we can call a collateral damage. We can sum up our philosophy in 7 points, 7 "anti-poisons" (Push'n'Pop cures the scene!): 1. "France is not alone": it's totally incredible to see that almost all the websites and forums created by french people use french language. CPC scene is small, do we really need to divide it by country? Fortunately there were some great initiatives like the CPC Wiki, but a real website in english was still lacking. The first lesson in order to gather CPC users all together is to use english language for everybody. 2. "CPC is not alone": it's equally amazing to see that CPC scene grew in a total indifference regarding to the demoscene in general. So it's not surprizing to see very few innovations in CPC demos until a recent time. A little anecdote can illustrate that. When I spoke during my trip to Breakpoint 2010 to 2 (well known) ex-CPCfriends, they said exactly the same thing: "In demoparties, nobody knows anybody, it's dirty, and people don't know anything about demomaking". I exactly saw the opposite, and it was the same at Main #5 and Revision 2011. CPC sceners must be more humble and understand that they could learn a lot of things from the other scenes, that's the second lesson. 3. "Twilight of the (old) Idols": despite all our respect for the ancient coders, we prefer active people and concrete work. One of the scene's poison is the total submission to these old ages, and the ridiculous phantasm that "if they where doing something, it would be at least thousand times better than all that we currently see". It would be more honest and realist to admit that they simply retired -there is no problem about that-, and to support newcomers and motivated people. 4. "No Carebears": a lot of websites and forums are just a list of soulless news. Feedback is rare, and it's always full of honey. That's what I call the "just for fun syndrome" (do you really think that The Demo, Moody or Batman Forever were developed in a "totally fun atmosphere"? It was a hell!), which led to another poison: everything is good! Push'n'Pop assumes a critical and caustic approach. Maybe we read Hara Kiri and Drapeau Noir too much. Susceptible people can unsubscribe here. 5. "Anti-Me, my and I": Push'n'Pop is a collective work, not the vision of only one person. It means that it's a solid project, and each decision comes from a discussion between his main dictators. 6. "Quality instead of quantity": our goal is not to be the most consulted website, on the top of Google, showing some buzz, exclusivity or this kind of shit. Push'n'Pop is more interested by the quality of the informations (analysis of a demo, interview of the authors, etc.) in a sustainable perspective. 7. "Newcomers support": we attach a great importance to CPC newcomers. Then, one of our objectives is to help people to learn more about the CPC scene and CPC development. So, beginners are very welcome. Only impolite and unconstructive people are not welcome. Consequences of this philosophy A strong and demanding philosophy, isn't it? Some people say "totally utopic". Here is the list of the consequences of this philosophy, not at all utopies, but very concrete things: - Sub-Pop radio, managed by Grim, streaming AY3-8912 musics coming from CPC games, demos and discmags. - a forum, where everybody is free to express his point of view, ask some questions, take part in a discussion, etc. It's a free place, but there will be no mercy for obviously stupid and impolite guys. - an archive: a big FTP with a lot of (messy for the moment) things, especially meetings photos. Everybody is free to add something in order to fill it. - parties support and reports. We attach a big importance to the real life of the demoscene (and not only the virtual one). We support the only 100% CPC meeting, the ReSeT party in Coutances, organized by Eliot. A dedicated website was created for this occasion. We also try to promote "not only CPC" events like Breakpoint, Main, Revision, Forever, Evoke or else, and each time we write some reports of these parties in order to show the nice ambiance and motivate people to come the next year. - a splendid T-shirt to be more elegant at the parties. A good opportunity to advertise Push'n'Pop and the CPC! - some articles, like interviews, reviews, or miscellaneous. One more time, everybody can submit something so if it's often the same writers, don't complain but congratulate them, they are the most active contributors! - almost 100 users from 14 different countries (and no ghost users here, because a profile is disabled after 6 months of inactivity). It's very funny to hear people saying that we failed to federate the scene, because we have never seen such an amount of active CPC users on a website. - a PM system, in order to invite people to contact each other in an easy way. - a lot of anonymous readers, our favorite ones. Our KGB section is working hard on this point. Thus, I would like to give a kiss to Longshot and Madram. I would also like to thank our best sparing partners: NoRecess, Iron, Plissken, and PapyCPC. Thank you so much, Le Corbeau Acharné is born! To be continued This is the result of one year of Push'n'Pop. In the near future, we plan to inaugurate some new features: - Hall of fame (Grim, Beb, Toms, Hicks): in the spirit of ADA, a selection of the best intros, onescreens, demos, and megademos. One page per prod, with some informations, description, anecdotes, and respectful screenshots. The "must see" for a newcomer, and "must break" for an experimented scener! - CPC development guide: another rubric mainly intended to the newcomers. At the moment we can't find a real "how to develop on CPC step by step" on Internet, explaining which tools are useful, how to use them, which extensions are existing, where can we find them, etc. Note that there will be two sections: native development and cross-development. - Game section (Barjack, Tom&Jerry, Fano): the nucleus of Push'n'Pop team is mainly interested by demomaking, but we are of course not hostile to the games. So, a "game section" will be soon opened, dedicated to the games reviews, interviews oriented on a game project (Fano's one is coming soon), and maybe a games hall of fame. - English proof-reading (EgoTrip): it's not a real problem to speak an average english on the forum, because everybody can develop his thought in a next post. It's a little bit different with articles, where a better level of english is welcome. Then we decided to submit our articles to native english people in order to make a proof-reading of them, and make them more understandable for everybody. - Sub-Pop radio website (Grim): a new well-polished website for the radio is coming, with the possibility of requesting a song, have some playlists, and else. - we will of course continue to develop all the actual features, by adding new articles, new party reports, new files in the archive, supporting the ReSeT party #08, and continue our totally scandalous Corbeau Acharné. All these features will be avalaible on an updated version of Push'n'Pop, the version 2.1, always coded by Toms. Thanks to your critics of the actual version, Grim's advices, and a little bit of RVI he optimized his code, made the design clearer, and the whole website lighter. I hope you have now a better vision of the Push'n'Pop world. Our philosophy was led by a revolt against a dying scene who spread a counter-productive spirit. The results of this first year are better than anything we had ever hoped for, and a kind of unity seems to emerge. The 30 years old megademo initiated by Krusty is one of its best manifestation! Hicks Read the 42 comment(s) about this article

Written by Hicks on 01 September 2011

Today is a special day on Push'n'Pop. But what's going on? Is Iron cured of his Tourette's syndrome? No... Did NoRecess learn self mockery? Not yet! Did Vanity stop to be arrogant? Ahah! Today, Push'n'Pop was launched 1 year ago to the day! It justified a little retrospective in the past, present and future of the website. Yeah, you guess it, it's only the beginning of the road.

The Push'n'Pop philosophy
Let's start with a little synthesis of the Push'n'Pop philosophy. It's naive to believe that it's possible to do a "neutral" website, because each website is led by a specific orientation. More, neutrality seems very counter-productive, and produce website without identity. So Push'n'Pop was created as a "kickass website" because we really thought that CPC scene needs to change in depth. Of course, it implies that some sceners will disagree with our orientation, but that's what we can call a collateral damage. We can sum up our philosophy in 7 points, 7 "anti-poisons" (Push'n'Pop cures the scene!):

1. "France is not alone": it's totally incredible to see that almost all the websites and forums created by french people use french language. CPC scene is small, do we really need to divide it by country? Fortunately there were some great initiatives like the CPC Wiki, but a real website in english was still lacking. The first lesson in order to gather CPC users all together is to use english language for everybody.

2. "CPC is not alone": it's equally amazing to see that CPC scene grew in a total indifference regarding to the demoscene in general. So it's not surprizing to see very few innovations in CPC demos until a recent time. A little anecdote can illustrate that. When I spoke during my trip to Breakpoint 2010 to 2 (well known) ex-CPCfriends, they said exactly the same thing: "In demoparties, nobody knows anybody, it's dirty, and people don't know anything about demomaking". I exactly saw the opposite, and it was the same at Main #5 and Revision 2011. CPC sceners must be more humble and understand that they could learn a lot of things from the other scenes, that's the second lesson.

3. "Twilight of the (old) Idols": despite all our respect for the ancient coders, we prefer active people and concrete work. One of the scene's poison is the total submission to these old ages, and the ridiculous phantasm that "if they where doing something, it would be at least thousand times better than all that we currently see". It would be more honest and realist to admit that they simply retired -there is no problem about that-, and to support newcomers and motivated people.

4. "No Carebears": a lot of websites and forums are just a list of soulless news. Feedback is rare, and it's always full of honey. That's what I call the "just for fun syndrome" (do you really think that The Demo, Moody or Batman Forever were developed in a "totally fun atmosphere"? It was a hell!), which led to another poison: everything is good! Push'n'Pop assumes a critical and caustic approach. Maybe we read Hara Kiri and Drapeau Noir too much. Susceptible people can unsubscribe here.

5. "Anti-Me, my and I": Push'n'Pop is a collective work, not the vision of only one person. It means that it's a solid project, and each decision comes from a discussion between his main dictators.

6. "Quality instead of quantity": our goal is not to be the most consulted website, on the top of Google, showing some buzz, exclusivity or this kind of shit. Push'n'Pop is more interested by the quality of the informations (analysis of a demo, interview of the authors, etc.) in a sustainable perspective.

7. "Newcomers support": we attach a great importance to CPC newcomers. Then, one of our objectives is to help people to learn more about the CPC scene and CPC development. So, beginners are very welcome. Only impolite and unconstructive people are not welcome.

Consequences of this philosophy
A strong and demanding philosophy, isn't it? Some people say "totally utopic". Here is the list of the consequences of this philosophy, not at all utopies, but very concrete things:

- Sub-Pop radio, managed by Grim, streaming AY3-8912 musics coming from CPC games, demos and discmags.

- a forum, where everybody is free to express his point of view, ask some questions, take part in a discussion, etc. It's a free place, but there will be no mercy for obviously stupid and impolite guys.

- an archive: a big FTP with a lot of (messy for the moment) things, especially meetings photos. Everybody is free to add something in order to fill it.

- parties support and reports. We attach a big importance to the real life of the demoscene (and not only the virtual one). We support the only 100% CPC meeting, the ReSeT party in Coutances, organized by Eliot. A dedicated website was created for this occasion. We also try to promote "not only CPC" events like Breakpoint, Main, Revision, Forever, Evoke or else, and each time we write some reports of these parties in order to show the nice ambiance and motivate people to come the next year.

- a splendid T-shirt to be more elegant at the parties. A good opportunity to advertise Push'n'Pop and the CPC!

- some articles, like interviews, reviews, or miscellaneous. One more time, everybody can submit something so if it's often the same writers, don't complain but congratulate them, they are the most active contributors!

- almost 100 users from 14 different countries (and no ghost users here, because a profile is disabled after 6 months of inactivity). It's very funny to hear people saying that we failed to federate the scene, because we have never seen such an amount of active CPC users on a website.

- a PM system, in order to invite people to contact each other in an easy way.

- a lot of anonymous readers, our favorite ones. Our KGB section is working hard on this point. Thus, I would like to give a kiss to Longshot and Madram. I would also like to thank our best sparing partners: NoRecess, Iron, Plissken, and PapyCPC. Thank you so much, Le Corbeau Acharné is born!

To be continued
This is the result of one year of Push'n'Pop. In the near future, we plan to inaugurate some new features:

- Hall of fame (Grim, Beb, Toms, Hicks): in the spirit of ADA, a selection of the best intros, onescreens, demos, and megademos. One page per prod, with some informations, description, anecdotes, and respectful screenshots. The "must see" for a newcomer, and "must break" for an experimented scener!

- CPC development guide: another rubric mainly intended to the newcomers. At the moment we can't find a real "how to develop on CPC step by step" on Internet, explaining which tools are useful, how to use them, which extensions are existing, where can we find them, etc. Note that there will be two sections: native development and cross-development.

- Game section (Barjack, Tom&Jerry, Fano): the nucleus of Push'n'Pop team is mainly interested by demomaking, but we are of course not hostile to the games. So, a "game section" will be soon opened, dedicated to the games reviews, interviews oriented on a game project (Fano's one is coming soon), and maybe a games hall of fame.

- English proof-reading (EgoTrip): it's not a real problem to speak an average english on the forum, because everybody can develop his thought in a next post. It's a little bit different with articles, where a better level of english is welcome. Then we decided to submit our articles to native english people in order to make a proof-reading of them, and make them more understandable for everybody.

- Sub-Pop radio website (Grim): a new well-polished website for the radio is coming, with the possibility of requesting a song, have some playlists, and else.

- we will of course continue to develop all the actual features, by adding new articles, new party reports, new files in the archive, supporting the ReSeT party #08, and continue our totally scandalous Corbeau Acharné.

All these features will be avalaible on an updated version of Push'n'Pop, the version 2.1, always coded by Toms. Thanks to your critics of the actual version, Grim's advices, and a little bit of RVI he optimized his code, made the design clearer, and the whole website lighter.

I hope you have now a better vision of the Push'n'Pop world. Our philosophy was led by a revolt against a dying scene who spread a counter-productive spirit. The results of this first year are better than anything we had ever hoped for, and a kind of unity seems to emerge. The 30 years old megademo initiated by Krusty is one of its best manifestation!

Hicks

Read the 42 comment(s) about this article

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