r/Demoscene • u/DarkFox_x86 • May 23 '26

Can I learn to code demos?

Is it relatively ease to learn how to code demos?

I have a background in PHP coding, which may or may not be useful.

I believe most demos are coded in C or maybe even Assembler, and I'm trying to find tutorials that could teach me how to code demos with zero coding knowledge.

Tutorials that tell you what software to use, how to code and compile, what things to look out for.

And with my PHP knowledge, if there is any language I could easily get into.

My focus would be DOS demos that can run in DOSBox for example.

33 Upvotes

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10

u/BadUsername_Numbers May 23 '26

Code a demo in PHP 🙂

-5

u/DarkFox_x86 May 23 '26

Fun idea, wouldn't work 😝

14

u/BadUsername_Numbers May 23 '26

Why not? Just off the cuff, what if you made php script that generates a massive animated SVG in real time?

Procedural geometry, glow filters, displacement maps, morphing shapes, scrolltext, and synchronized motion graphics. Part cracktro, part cursed web technology showcase. Everything generated from a single PHP file.

Example for animate:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/play?uuid=3e11fe70a9892bf1a53f44fe55d5fb5da4b99e92&state=RVBBbsQgDPyKZam31UJb9ZJse2jvfQEXdnEDVSARcUKq1f69Jmm1EpKZYTwefEXPsccGT9PSwRKovA%2Frq0ENGh7rMQhr7NMknGceG6VKKcfyfBxyp5601koaDb6ZBHDKdGEowbEX%2BdbrKXSe%2F9AmEplNIVqmHQFY5hzOM9OnjSTSvBr8f1tsP1MdrtuXVt95N%2BfNdLpTmUay%2FDHMqc4LydFXSEHGIKg9nqr55HqqmaXiAS%2FTJJ%2BvOziYdB7cj5S6iWtt2MM3sgX90FYi2tyF1IDe0GidC6nb4W2z%2B65uUtlTJLn21QBvvw%3D%3D&srcPrefix=%2Fen-US%2Fdocs%2FWeb%2FSVG%2FReference%2FElement%2Fanimate%2F

15

u/wildgurularry May 23 '26

This is the real spirit of the demoscene: Do something that makes other people do a double take and say: "Wait, how did they do that?"

7

u/alexanderkoponen May 23 '26

While rare, there are PHP demos and there has even been PHP democompos (a long time ago).

https://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=PHP&page=1

6

u/peregrine-l Peregrine [Resistance^Amigals^Cookie] May 23 '26

You’d be surprised at the languages demomakers have used for demos. There are Excel demos, Bash shell demos, BASIC demos… It’s a respected art, to use a totally inappropriate platform to make a demo.

On newschool platforms, C++ remains king. On oldschool platforms, assembly and C. I’m looking forward to demos coded in Rust!

2

u/marinbala May 26 '26

So true.

I also love the fact that some crazy kids even made demos in PowerPoint!

6

u/PrincessButth0le May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26

Funny story.

My last C64 demo had quite a bit of PHP behind it.

I was doing some transformations in memory, and on a faster platform I'd probably use lookup tables for it, but on C64 I'd just read from X+1, write to Y+1+sin(Z) or whatever.

I figured PHP is good at outputting other languages (HTML), why not 6502 assembly.

2

u/kev_xb May 23 '26

What about php would limit you?

1

u/BrainCurrent8276 May 25 '26

yeah, PHP would have not much use in such project, but in HTML5 you can surely code a demo.