pouët.net

Right, time to spark off a holy war or two...

For the next bit of development on Demozoo, I need to put together a proper classification system for all demoscene releases - not just executable ones like Pouet does - and it doesn't look like a flat list of prod types is going to cut it.

So, this is my first attempt at it. The plan is that:

• every production is assigned one or more prod types from somewhere in the tree below
  
• when a production is assigned a type such as '4k', it's implicitly counted as the parent type too - so a query saying 'show all intros' will show all prods of type '4k', '64k' and so on
  
• if a prod is any of the types marked with (*), it must have at least one platform specified - otherwise, platform is optional
  

• demo (*)[list] [*]fastdemo
  
• slideshow

[*]intro (*)

[*]dentro (no, dentro can't be counted as both demo and intro. That's too messy...)

• bbstro
  
• cracktro
  
• 4k
  
• 64k
  
• ...all the other sizes (including the silly ones like 256k that only have 7 entries on pouet. no harm in being complete...)

[*]graphics

[*]drawn (is it worth dividing this further - pixelled/painted etc?)

• rendered
  
• photograph
  
• (the distinction between the above 3 is subjective, but then so are things like demo/slideshow/artdisk)
  
• ascii
  
• ansi
  
• procedural (*) (or is this better off going under intro?)

[*]music

[*] streaming (mp3/ogg)

• tracked[list][*] 4-channel
  
• multichannel
  
• chiptune

[*] executable (*)[/list][*]collection

[*] musicdisk (*) (includes an interface)

• musicpack (just a bundle of music files)
  
• artdisk (*) (includes an interface, whereas an artpack doesn't - just like the musicdisk/musicpack distinction. Does this match actual usage?)
  
• artpack (I don't think I've actually seen an artpack without an interface. They do exist, right?)
  
• demopack (*)
  
• votedisk (doesn't necessarily have to be executable / platform-specific - could be a bunch of MODs with a vote textfile)
  
• ascii collection

[*]game (*)

demotool (*)

liveact (could this realistically go under 'music'? Are there ever going to be non-musical liveacts? VJ performances are borderline I guess...)

diskmag (*) (are there any non-platform-specific diskmags? Like, just plain text files?)

video

[*] animation?

[/list]

Stuff I've deliberately left out:

• wild - it's not a type of production, it's a type of compo
  
• invitation / report - these don't describe the nature of the production, only what it's used for; you're still going to have to record it as a demo/intro/video/slideshow/whatever. And in the full database there should always be a separate record saying 'this is an invite/report for party X' so recording it as a prod type is redundant. Although you could say the same thing about bbstro...
  
• anything which is implied by a particular combination of prod type and platform, such as 'SID tune'
  

If you've read this far, well done. Is there anything important that I've missed out? Is there anything that really ought to be expanded into more detail? (Obviously, you could take the classification to extreme levels if you wanted to: 'd&b music', 'intro containing rasterbars', 'slideshow of ripped boris vallejo pictures'. As a rule of thumb, the ones I want to include are the ones that you could reasonably ask questions about like "what are the 10 best artpacks" or "what other chiptunes has this guy done". If you really want to search for Boris Vallejo artpacks, I dare say I could implement tagging one day...) Anything else that should be moved around, renamed, whatever?

gasman: www.sixteencolors.net ... integrate that into demozoo.net ;)

gasman: What about if some retard tags some products with wrong tags? should people allowed to vote for tags?

This is going to cause problems because as far as I'm aware the word dentro has different meanings on different platforms. I believe on amiga it used to be a small demo (or big intro) but on pc it used to be a preview of an upcoming demo and has nothing to do with size. However, there aren't that many dentros on pc so you could probably just ignore that and file all pc dentros as normal demos :-)

Secondly, a slideshow is IMHO not a demo, it would probably fit better under the collection group because it's basically an artpack with a very very simple interface (start it and watch).

My 3rd point: you already mentioned that bbstros could be handled in the same way as invitations and reports, but the same goes of course for cracktros.

And I keep on going :-) Fast is also a type of compo just like wild so drop the fastdemo category :-)

Yes, there are, take f.e. Hornet news, Trax Weekly, Demo Journal, etc. They used to be called e-zines so that might be a good category to add.

Another category which you may want to add are papermags (for scanned/pdf-ed papermags)

There have been dentro compos on PC as well (256kb springs to mind, not sure).

However, about the idea; Just make it dynamic and add categories as they come. No need to do all the work at once, unless your ADHD. Just make a decent data system so you can search and then tag the production as they come.

My point never really made it. However, just let the production belong to whatever people think it is, this way people will find the production. It's not up to you to decide whether a production is an intro or a demo, if start doing stuff that way you might just as well join adok and magic.

i wouldn't forget installers (or installtros or riptros), they usually have fewer effects than cracktros but they are more than cracktros, they are (optional) installers for ripped games. They are mixed with cracktros in messy pouet taxonomy :p



i used to collect them ^_^

about the code size categories for demos: they are, somehow, similar to "wild" - more a compo category than a demo category. For example there are lots of 32Ks categorized as 64K because they participated in a 64K compo.

I'd suggest to tag those as "the real size" (at least as long as size matters and it complies to general criteria of that size category, like only one file and not abusing the filename for storage) and instead stack the categories inside each other, so that every 512b is a 4k is a 64k is a 256k is an intro (etc.)

mihi

sixteencolors.net: cool, will put that on the list! (And I guess I need to add 'ansi collection' above, then...)

Wrong tagging: Haven't really thought about edit/delete permissions yet, but most likely I'll just make editing and deleting tags a free-for-all. So far, all indications are that I've been too paranoid about permissions, and it's just getting in the way of people entering useful data.

Dentros: ah, now this is exactly the sort of sub-scene-cultural thing that I would never have known about myself :-) I think it makes sense to stick with the Amiga definition then - for the PC definition I can make the same argument as I have done for invitations/reports (i.e. it doesn't actually describe what sort of production it is, and it's better represented as an "X is a preview of Y" relation than a prod type).

Slideshow: Yeah, I was kind of wondering what the difference between an artdisk and a slideshow was... eventually I came to the conclusion that a slideshow is an artdisk where the pictures weren't artistic (because they were either ripped or photos of unconscious drunk people) :-)

Papermags: Hmm. I need to draw a line *somewhere* about what demozoo should cover and what's best left to another site, and I think I'm best sticking to things that are a) digital and b) free (in money terms). Yes, there are borderline cases like liveacts and Mindcandy, but nothing is ever simple...

I say skip the dentro class and include it as a "demo", at least in my book a dentro is a demo without a loader...which differs from a trackmo, mega demo and all the other subtypes of "demos" noone really cares to distiguish between.

Skrebbel: yep, maybe I should have made it clear that none of this is unchangeable set-in-stone stuff - but we do need some sort of initial structure in place, so that we know to group '4 channel', 'multichannel' and so on under 'music', for example.

and where would you classify tomthumb by TPOLM ?

Statix (Little Big Planet on PS3) gave the executable that generates marvelous random videos, as real-time wasn't possible on mainstream machines at that time...

generative video ?

mihi: hmm, I'm not so sure - certainly, any 32Ks that participated in 64K compos should be labelled as 32Ks, and if they aren't then I'd say that's something for the fix-me-beautifull thread. I just think that 64Ks (and the rest) have their own identities, outside of the compo they happen to be in. People understand what a 64K intro is, and it's not the same thing as "program which would technically qualify for a 64K compo" - it would be very counter-intuitive indeed to say that Tube is the 4th best 64K intro on Pouet.

So, what about old DOS 64ks that are re-released on windows with bigger executable. And what about the "finals" of 64ks bigger than the party version (imo the FR idea is rather stupid, i prefer more settings and faster loading than smaller size)?

there are no ansi collections. there are ansi packs, also rather simply called artpacks., which basically solves your question if there are artpacks without interface - yes, the majority of them!

in intros i would also definitively add fucktros, wedtros and birthtros sub-categories, as they usually don't enter any compo (their sizes don't really matter).

Zest: Ooh, good one. Add 'generative' under 'video' then, perhaps? I was about to ask if the executable for tomthumb had ever been released (and if not then it would only count as a video), but then it occurred to me that a game is still a game even if it's only been released as a video.

skrebbelsuperfan: A 64k with a bigger final / Windows port is still a 64k. It's the only reasonable way to approach it - it would be insanely unhelpful to have a production that everyone *knows* as a 64k intro, and expects to find listed as a 64k intro, missing from that list on a technicality. I'm not so sure how to deal with intros that were disqualified from a compos for being too big though :-)

Birthtro? always thought the more widely used term was borntro.

dipswitch: I did notice from a bit of quick browsing that some of the archives on sixteencolors.net contained pixel images (and the occasional mysterious .exe), so that makes sense - cool. I just want to be sure that there's nobody about to kill me for having 'ascii collection' but not 'ansi pack'...

You will however need to have support for multiple categories per platform.

A production can very well be a birthro,wedtro,invitro and a 64k at once. (Imagine Smash happy b'day your kid is a gamer - come to outline 2008 and see - released in Assembly 2008's 64k compo).

gasman: fundemo might be a category worth considering to add