Vision and Sound From the Ideally Bare Numeric Impression giZmo 38
jones_supa writes "Ville 'viznut' Heikkilä presents us with an interesting project. 'As demonstrated by the video, IBNIZ (Ideally Bare Numeric Impression giZmo) is a virtual machine and a programming language that generates video and audio from very short strings of code. Technically, it is a two-stack machine somewhat similar to Forth, but with the major exception that the stack is cyclical and also used at an output buffer.' The main goal of IBNIZ is to provide a new platform for the demoscene. Something that would have the potential to displace MS-DOS as the primary platform for sub-256-byte productions."
The potential to displace fuckall (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, I can appreciate the novelty factor, as this is very much one of those things guys like me would toy around with, maybe for an evening or two. I don't see a demoscene rising out of this, at best a few dozen guys circle-jerking on Facebook about it. To say it could display MS-DOS as a "platform" is to completely ignore the fundamental tenets of the demoscene. Rotozooming tunnel-mapped munching squares are what you do when you're learning to code graphics effects, and this IBNIZ tool abstracts the real math away in favour of random-looking gibberish. Just because typing "7KJHBB&*@#$B" yields a spinning bitmap doesn't teach the user anything about how to actually spin a bitmap on an algorithmic level, nor the problem-solving methodology involved in building far more impressive effects upon those foundations.
It used to be that demo coding was a precursor to game programming, at least in the Amiga and DOS days. Now with all these abstract graphics and sound APIs, it's a bit less so, though there is still plenty of opportunity for new demo sceners to cut their teeth on DirectX demos, focusing on graphical polish and synced A/V interplay rather than the vicissitudes of software rendering. IBNIZ really misses the boat for all of that, it's more like a Winamp visualizer with its own crappy digital monosynth, and who's going to bother with that illegible syntax ?
Sorry but I don't see the technical merit in a virtual machine that basically shifts garbage around. You could accomplish the same by feeding random noise into your TV's composite input.