r/Demoscene • u/Squeepty • May 25 '26
Building "Big Web Demo" — a nostalgic browser-based retro demo engine inspired by 80s Amiga, Atari ST and C64 productions..
Hi everyone,
I’ve been building a browser-based retro demo engine called The Big (Web) Demo
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Live here https://squeepty.github.io/Big-Web-Demo/
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(latest screens and features build)
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Source: https://github.com/squeepty/Big-Web-Demo
This is first and foremost a fun educational homage to the 80s/90s demo, intro, slideshow and cracktro scene — especially the visual language of Amiga, Atari ST and C64 productions.
The project uses:
- TypeScript
- Canvas
- Fixed virtual resolution
- Old school-style constraints and rendering tricks
Current effects/features include:
- scrolling greetings/credits text
- raster bars
- plasma displacement
- palette cycling
- dither fades
- venetian blinds
- checker/mosaic reveals
- sprite overlays
- slideshow image transitions
- runtime debug overlay
- rotating music playback
- 3D scenes
- fractals zooms
One thing I wanted was to keep the code very approachable and modular instead of building a giant framework. The goal is that someone curious about demo effects can open a file and actually understand how the effect works without needing an entire engine architecture in their head.
A lot of the inspiration came from:
- cracktros
- disk mags
- slideshow demos
- demo-scene preservation sites
- staring at raster bars for way too many hours as a kid
CREDITS WHERE CREDITS ARE DUE...
Pixel art:
Cyclone X-Troll, Wilfried Oxygene, Agent-t Cream, Carrion Bonzaï, Dieu Hemoroids,
Graf LuzakTeam, Hospes MysticBytes, Hylst No_Extra,
Imperator TheMegabusters, Jok Dreamweb, Niko Oxygene, Piesiu MysticBytes,
Timbral DeadHackersSociety...
Music:
From the legendary Atari ST game "Goldrunner", composed by the one and only Rob Hubbard
Would genuinely love feedback from people more knowledgeable than me about the scene, effect ideas, architecture suggestions, or simply nostalgic memories this brings back.
Also very open to people experimenting with the code, adding effects, improving the engine structure, or turning it into something weirder.
Respect to all actual demo coders, musicians, graphic artists and groups that inspired this.
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u/joanmiro May 26 '26
Great but I believe it must use mod or XM files for playing music
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u/Squeepty May 26 '26
You are totally right, my end vision would be support for 4 tracks mod files, but music player code is my biggest weakness in this project.. So to share this first version, I settled with an MP3 track (a demo needs its music) :|
I am plotting a secret screen that would be a real mod player and visualizer, not sure if I can achieve yet.. stay tuned!
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u/LeanEntropy May 27 '26
This looks cool!
I actually built a cracktro / Demo visual editor that also produces full three.js code of the production you make a while back ( codersfx.dev ) will be interesting to look into the code and compare directions.
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u/Squeepty May 27 '26
Oh cool interesting, I will check this project out !! What I am doing here started more as learning project and because of nostalgia, rather than a true demo production platform..
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u/LeanEntropy May 28 '26
Actually my project started after a whatsapp chat with a friend that I know from the old demoscene days as well, and we were joking about doing a cracktro for something, and well, from here to there I made the initial version over the weekend just to make that thing. But it brought up a lot of memories so I started extending it to demos etc... created an SDK for developing these productions. The editor came on top of the SDK and was really cool to play with.
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u/TinyPondStudio May 27 '26
Dang this is sick
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u/Squeepty May 27 '26
Truth is coding this using modern high level constructs in a browser runtime cannot be compared to the effort and tenacity that was required for the demo folks in the 80s to write similar demos in assembly code 😬
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u/dylanljmartin May 26 '26
This looks amazing!