March 7, 2013 at 14:11Old-school programmers: bow or fear?
- Transfer
This is a translation of a post published on the Kaspersky Lab’s English-language blog .
He is not so much about viruses as about the demoscene and the best works in this genre of art.
Recently, Eugene Kaspersky posted on his blog the entry “ Ghosts of the virus opera, or Sith Assembly"Dedicated to ultra-compact and powerful malicious applications, discovered recently, but written in the style of 15 years ago. My age allows me to remember these guys and their brilliant work - after all, this is not necessarily about the creators of viruses, they were only part of the programming community specializing in “manual” code writing and assembly language programming. This is similar to the Jedi and Sith from the world of Star Wars - creatures whose weapons, laser swords, were extremely specific and, despite this, was perceived by all other heroes as one of the most powerful (except for jokes, ask Yoda). Alas, it seems that there are three people left who remember these master programmers (me, Kasperskyand Bill Gates). But seriously - in today's world, where the mouse driver takes up 50 megabytes, it’s quite difficult to imagine what an old-school hacker is capable of with very few allocated resources. Therefore, I decided to show what Eugene is talking about, using a slightly different example - and you really decide how bad the news about the "old-school" authors of the infection is.
In 1992, computers were not "multimedia" and were rather a calculator with a large screen. The vast majority of them had neither microphones, nor a decent ability to reproduce sound - and, of course, forget about webcams. There, even a mouse was far from always, and the first somewhat popular version of Windows, 3.1, came out exactly in the middle of spring. But there were several groups of enthusiasts who loved difficult programming tasks: to use all available memory, a processor command system, and most importantly, each clock cycle of its power to squeeze 100% of what it is capable of from a computer. And in the absence of a sound card, a 3D accelerator and all that every smartphone has today, they forced those “calculators” to draw complex 3D animations with music and special effects and do other things, seemingly impossible. The demonstration of the impossible was very logically and briefly called a “demo”. To create it, you had to be a truly creative person, in details, including undocumented ones, to know the principles of the system, drink a lot of coffee or something stronger, and most importantly - have a sky-high IQ. This movement itself, later called the "demoscene", originated in the mid-eighties, but according to the laws of evolution, sooner or later, its participants needed to compete with each other. So the festivals and contests of the creators of the “demo” were born, The Assembly, which was first held in 1992, became one of the largest and most famous. drink a lot of coffee or something stronger, and most importantly - have a sky-high IQ. This movement itself, later called the "demoscene", originated in the mid-eighties, but according to the laws of evolution, sooner or later, its participants needed to compete with each other. So the festivals and contests of the creators of the “demo” were born, The Assembly, which was first held in 1992, became one of the largest and most famous. drink a lot of coffee or something stronger, and most importantly - have a sky-high IQ. This movement itself, later called the "demoscene", originated in the mid-eighties, but according to the laws of evolution, sooner or later, its participants needed to compete with each other. So the festivals and contests of the creators of the “demo” were born, The Assembly, which was first held in 1992, became one of the largest and most famous.
In 1992, a group of Scandinavian programmers called Future Crew, along with friends from the Complex and Amiga groups, organized an event called The Assembly to show the world the results of their impressive work in Assembler and compete for the title “Best Coder of the Year”.
Demo is a genre of computer art, multimedia presentation, created to demonstrate the capabilities and knowledge in the field of programming, graphics, 3D-modeling and music creation.
Generally speaking, there were several nominations, but the most interesting, approximately like “Best Movie” and “Best Director” at the Oscars, became the title “Best Demo for PC”, similar titles for Amiga and C64 platforms, as well as a separate (and especially interesting us today) nomination "Demo size of less than 64 kilobytes for PC." In the first nominations, it was required to demonstrate the maximum platform capabilities that can be squeezed out using optimal, artistic, even programming. The latter was not easy - only 64 kilobytes were allotted for the storage of the entire program part, all graphic and sound elements. This, of course, prompted elegant and economical programming - because the creators “shoved” a mini-film lasting several minutes into the volume in which today barely fits a medium-sized picture.
In 1992, Future Crew won the competition with the Unreal demo. The name was chosen not in vain - until then, no one could squeeze out similar graphic effects from a computer: rendering scenes in three dimensions and real time, complex physical calculations and modeling of light flows, etc.
And the most interesting - all-all-all to run the demo, including music, fit in 1 MB! It was possible to achieve this only by masterfully programming in Assembler - the external simplicity of this language hides its devilish complexity and laboriousness when writing large programs, it is difficult to avoid mistakes. Here's what Future Crew guys told me about this:
Those who then participated in the competitions became the source of inspiration for the developers of later applications. No, they did not steal ideas, but they adopted the approaches themselves to solving problems and creative vision. From the inspiration of Assembly, ALL modern games, Adobe products for working with video and graphics, weather forecasts, GPS applications and Google Earth have grown - the entire multi-billion dollar industry of computer visualization.
The success of the Assembly was so great that next year the number of visitors and the number of works in the competition doubled (this trend has continued for many years, and since 1999 The Assembly has been held at the largest football stadium in Helsinki). On it again - absolutely deservedly - the work of Future Crew won. The Second Reality demo, raised the bar for quality to a huge height and significantly influenced the programming world.
If the graphics do not impress you, it is worth remembering that the demo was created BEFORE the very first Intel Pentium processor appeared and worked on x486 computers WITHOUT a graphics accelerator. Second Reality deeply impressed the jury and the entire programming community, showing what can be achieved by professional work with Assembler and a minimalistic approach - the compiled demo files took about 1.5 MB. The creators, Future Crew, have become world famous.
This is the video “Behind the Scenes of the Future Crew” from the time of Second Reality.
They demonstrated that physical calculations for realistic display of water and morphing of 3D objects can very well be done using the Pentium processor.
And the winner in the 64 kb nomination, the Primefair Airframe, can be called the mom and dad of modern 3D flight simulators.
Just to show how quickly the code evolved with the development of computers, here are the winners from 1995 to 2012:
This, by the way, is the predecessor of the visual solution of World of Warcraft and all 3D MMORPGs.
In 1999, a massive 3DFX video accelerator appeared, changing the graphics forever. And the Virhe demo of the MatureFunk group squeezed everything out of the new technology, almost exploding the brains of the first viewers:
Since 2000, the rules have changed a bit - the division on the Amiga, PC and C64 platforms has disappeared. Demos began to compete in the categories Combined demo, Oldschool demo and 64kb limit intro. The latter has gone down in history since 2010, but at the end of the post you will see some really fantastic examples of what an assembler guru encoder can do with just 64 kb.
Here is the list of winners in the Combined demo category, which demonstrates the highest mastery of Assembler:
These impressive lighting effects - don't forget! - created on the technologies of thirteen years ago!
I emphasize once again that the main reason for the compactness of the demo and the reason to admire them is that this is not a pre-recorded video, but the result of real-time calculations.
Say hello to the main console 3D games :).
And, I think, just then a vision was born of what the Nintendo Wii would be like:
The creators have reached a new level of complexity in graphics programming. I would say the bar has risen again, and strongly:
Another fantastically beautiful work
More precisely, the Within Epsilon demo of Pyrotech:
And my personal favorite is Frameranger, created by the combined efforts of Fairlight, CNCD and Orange:
:
Just to understand that 64 kilobytes devalued to almost nothing is a lot for the professional, I’ll give you some of the best demos in the “up to 64” category:
Well, three years later, in 2008, the same group showed how they had honed their skills during this time and managed to cram in 64 kb a demo that deserved the first prize in the category - Panic room:
And now back to today's day. All these demos, especially 64 kilobytes, show what results a talented old-school programmer can achieve if he sets a goal, and if he is an Assembler master, which is not very common these days when products are created in visual environments and in high-level languages abstractions - Java, and the like.
Imagine for a moment that a programmer or group like Future Crew throws all these exercises with 3D and devotes all their energy and enthusiasm to creating a small application that steals your financial information or helps change the calibration of industrial equipment - from a centrifuge to a nuclear reactor. What do you think they can do? How big will this application be, given their success on 64k? Will they find a way around the protection built into Microsoft or Apple products ? Do they have enough money if they successfully held an event with free admission to 5000 visitors for 20 years?
I'm not going to answer these questions. Do it yourself. But when I hear from someone: “my computer does not require protection”, I remember Second reality and start to pray.
Fortunately, the guys at Future Crew are still very busy today. Of course, the demos were a hobby for youth, and today they are engaged in serious business. As a group, Future Crew did not release anything after the music editor of Scream Tracker 3 (December 1994), and although there was no official dissolution, the guys parted ways in the second half of the nineties. But partly or wholly of the former participants of Future Crew consists of many well-known projects today: Futuremark (3DMark tests), Remedy (Max Payne, Death Rally, Alan Wake games), Bugbear Entertainment (FlatOut, Glimmerati, Rally Trophy), Bitboys (company- graphic equipment manufacturer, subsequently purchased by ATI), etc.
I would like to thank them - they changed the world, and showed how much is possible, if you think carefully and make an effort. We use the same vision when developing Kaspersky Internet Security . Thanks for the inspiration guys. And I sincerely hope that not a single programmer who ever participated in The Assembly used their knowledge and skills for evil deeds.
He is not so much about viruses as about the demoscene and the best works in this genre of art.
Recently, Eugene Kaspersky posted on his blog the entry “ Ghosts of the virus opera, or Sith Assembly"Dedicated to ultra-compact and powerful malicious applications, discovered recently, but written in the style of 15 years ago. My age allows me to remember these guys and their brilliant work - after all, this is not necessarily about the creators of viruses, they were only part of the programming community specializing in “manual” code writing and assembly language programming. This is similar to the Jedi and Sith from the world of Star Wars - creatures whose weapons, laser swords, were extremely specific and, despite this, was perceived by all other heroes as one of the most powerful (except for jokes, ask Yoda). Alas, it seems that there are three people left who remember these master programmers (me, Kasperskyand Bill Gates). But seriously - in today's world, where the mouse driver takes up 50 megabytes, it’s quite difficult to imagine what an old-school hacker is capable of with very few allocated resources. Therefore, I decided to show what Eugene is talking about, using a slightly different example - and you really decide how bad the news about the "old-school" authors of the infection is.
Load calculators
In 1992, computers were not "multimedia" and were rather a calculator with a large screen. The vast majority of them had neither microphones, nor a decent ability to reproduce sound - and, of course, forget about webcams. There, even a mouse was far from always, and the first somewhat popular version of Windows, 3.1, came out exactly in the middle of spring. But there were several groups of enthusiasts who loved difficult programming tasks: to use all available memory, a processor command system, and most importantly, each clock cycle of its power to squeeze 100% of what it is capable of from a computer. And in the absence of a sound card, a 3D accelerator and all that every smartphone has today, they forced those “calculators” to draw complex 3D animations with music and special effects and do other things, seemingly impossible. The demonstration of the impossible was very logically and briefly called a “demo”. To create it, you had to be a truly creative person, in details, including undocumented ones, to know the principles of the system, drink a lot of coffee or something stronger, and most importantly - have a sky-high IQ. This movement itself, later called the "demoscene", originated in the mid-eighties, but according to the laws of evolution, sooner or later, its participants needed to compete with each other. So the festivals and contests of the creators of the “demo” were born, The Assembly, which was first held in 1992, became one of the largest and most famous. drink a lot of coffee or something stronger, and most importantly - have a sky-high IQ. This movement itself, later called the "demoscene", originated in the mid-eighties, but according to the laws of evolution, sooner or later, its participants needed to compete with each other. So the festivals and contests of the creators of the “demo” were born, The Assembly, which was first held in 1992, became one of the largest and most famous. drink a lot of coffee or something stronger, and most importantly - have a sky-high IQ. This movement itself, later called the "demoscene", originated in the mid-eighties, but according to the laws of evolution, sooner or later, its participants needed to compete with each other. So the festivals and contests of the creators of the “demo” were born, The Assembly, which was first held in 1992, became one of the largest and most famous.
Future Crew is back from the future
In 1992, a group of Scandinavian programmers called Future Crew, along with friends from the Complex and Amiga groups, organized an event called The Assembly to show the world the results of their impressive work in Assembler and compete for the title “Best Coder of the Year”.
Demo is a genre of computer art, multimedia presentation, created to demonstrate the capabilities and knowledge in the field of programming, graphics, 3D-modeling and music creation.
Generally speaking, there were several nominations, but the most interesting, approximately like “Best Movie” and “Best Director” at the Oscars, became the title “Best Demo for PC”, similar titles for Amiga and C64 platforms, as well as a separate (and especially interesting us today) nomination "Demo size of less than 64 kilobytes for PC." In the first nominations, it was required to demonstrate the maximum platform capabilities that can be squeezed out using optimal, artistic, even programming. The latter was not easy - only 64 kilobytes were allotted for the storage of the entire program part, all graphic and sound elements. This, of course, prompted elegant and economical programming - because the creators “shoved” a mini-film lasting several minutes into the volume in which today barely fits a medium-sized picture.
In 1992, Future Crew won the competition with the Unreal demo. The name was chosen not in vain - until then, no one could squeeze out similar graphic effects from a computer: rendering scenes in three dimensions and real time, complex physical calculations and modeling of light flows, etc.
And the most interesting - all-all-all to run the demo, including music, fit in 1 MB! It was possible to achieve this only by masterfully programming in Assembler - the external simplicity of this language hides its devilish complexity and laboriousness when writing large programs, it is difficult to avoid mistakes. Here's what Future Crew guys told me about this:
Learning how to program a demo is a long and complicated process. It takes years to learn how to properly. You can start with a high-level language (Pascal or C), and then start experimenting with Assembler. It takes a lot of time, a lot of experimentation to master everything, and there are no ways to shorten the time. The main lesson is to understand what you have done, then change the program and follow what happens, and gain experience in how best to solve certain problems. Learning high-quality programming requires patience, enthusiasm and a cloud of time!
Those who then participated in the competitions became the source of inspiration for the developers of later applications. No, they did not steal ideas, but they adopted the approaches themselves to solving problems and creative vision. From the inspiration of Assembly, ALL modern games, Adobe products for working with video and graphics, weather forecasts, GPS applications and Google Earth have grown - the entire multi-billion dollar industry of computer visualization.
1993 - Year of Second Reality and Eclipse
The success of the Assembly was so great that next year the number of visitors and the number of works in the competition doubled (this trend has continued for many years, and since 1999 The Assembly has been held at the largest football stadium in Helsinki). On it again - absolutely deservedly - the work of Future Crew won. The Second Reality demo, raised the bar for quality to a huge height and significantly influenced the programming world.
If the graphics do not impress you, it is worth remembering that the demo was created BEFORE the very first Intel Pentium processor appeared and worked on x486 computers WITHOUT a graphics accelerator. Second Reality deeply impressed the jury and the entire programming community, showing what can be achieved by professional work with Assembler and a minimalistic approach - the compiled demo files took about 1.5 MB. The creators, Future Crew, have become world famous.
This is the video “Behind the Scenes of the Future Crew” from the time of Second Reality.
In 1994, the first place went to the Verses demo from EMC
They demonstrated that physical calculations for realistic display of water and morphing of 3D objects can very well be done using the Pentium processor.
And the winner in the 64 kb nomination, the Primefair Airframe, can be called the mom and dad of modern 3D flight simulators.
Just to show how quickly the code evolved with the development of computers, here are the winners from 1995 to 2012:
Winner of Assembly 1995: Stars of NoooN
Winner of Assembly 1996: Machines of Madness by Dubius
Winner of Assembly 1997: Doomsday Boost
Winner of Assembly 1998: Gateways of Trauma
This, by the way, is the predecessor of the visual solution of World of Warcraft and all 3D MMORPGs.
The era of total 3D
In 1999, a massive 3DFX video accelerator appeared, changing the graphics forever. And the Virhe demo of the MatureFunk group squeezed everything out of the new technology, almost exploding the brains of the first viewers:
Assembly in a new way
Since 2000, the rules have changed a bit - the division on the Amiga, PC and C64 platforms has disappeared. Demos began to compete in the categories Combined demo, Oldschool demo and 64kb limit intro. The latter has gone down in history since 2010, but at the end of the post you will see some really fantastic examples of what an assembler guru encoder can do with just 64 kb.
Here is the list of winners in the Combined demo category, which demonstrates the highest mastery of Assembler:
Winner of Assembly 2000: Spot Exceed
These impressive lighting effects - don't forget! - created on the technologies of thirteen years ago!
Winner of Assembly 2001: Lapsuus of Maturefurk
Assembly 2002 winner: Liquid ... Wen? Haujobb bands
I emphasize once again that the main reason for the compactness of the demo and the reason to admire them is that this is not a pre-recorded video, but the result of real-time calculations.
Winner of Assembly 2003: Legoms of Doomsday.
Say hello to the main console 3D games :).
And, I think, just then a vision was born of what the Nintendo Wii would be like:
Winner of Assembly 2004: Unsole Voodoo Obsoleet:
The first prize of Assembly 2005 was awarded to ASD's Iconoclast demo:
In 2006, Black Lotus's Starstruck demo flipped again
The creators have reached a new level of complexity in graphics programming. I would say the bar has risen again, and strongly:
In 2007, ASForce Group won LifeForce:
Another fantastically beautiful work
2008 - year under the sign of Epsilon
More precisely, the Within Epsilon demo of Pyrotech:
2009 Winner
And my personal favorite is Frameranger, created by the combined efforts of Fairlight, CNCD and Orange:
Winner of Assembly 2010: Happiness is right around the bend of ASD
:
Winner of Assembly 2011 - Spin Group ASD:
And the phenomenal work of 2012 by Spacecut of the Carillon and Cyberaid CNCD groups completes this series:
64 kilobytes as a challenge to mastery
Just to understand that 64 kilobytes devalued to almost nothing is a lot for the professional, I’ll give you some of the best demos in the “up to 64” category:
Che Guevara Fairlight - 2005:
Well, three years later, in 2008, the same group showed how they had honed their skills during this time and managed to cram in 64 kb a demo that deserved the first prize in the category - Panic room:
But the best compact demo in the history of the competition is the 2010 work of X marks the spot of the Portal process group:
And now back to today's day. All these demos, especially 64 kilobytes, show what results a talented old-school programmer can achieve if he sets a goal, and if he is an Assembler master, which is not very common these days when products are created in visual environments and in high-level languages abstractions - Java, and the like.
Imagine for a moment that a programmer or group like Future Crew throws all these exercises with 3D and devotes all their energy and enthusiasm to creating a small application that steals your financial information or helps change the calibration of industrial equipment - from a centrifuge to a nuclear reactor. What do you think they can do? How big will this application be, given their success on 64k? Will they find a way around the protection built into Microsoft or Apple products ? Do they have enough money if they successfully held an event with free admission to 5000 visitors for 20 years?
I'm not going to answer these questions. Do it yourself. But when I hear from someone: “my computer does not require protection”, I remember Second reality and start to pray.
Fortunately, the guys at Future Crew are still very busy today. Of course, the demos were a hobby for youth, and today they are engaged in serious business. As a group, Future Crew did not release anything after the music editor of Scream Tracker 3 (December 1994), and although there was no official dissolution, the guys parted ways in the second half of the nineties. But partly or wholly of the former participants of Future Crew consists of many well-known projects today: Futuremark (3DMark tests), Remedy (Max Payne, Death Rally, Alan Wake games), Bugbear Entertainment (FlatOut, Glimmerati, Rally Trophy), Bitboys (company- graphic equipment manufacturer, subsequently purchased by ATI), etc.
I would like to thank them - they changed the world, and showed how much is possible, if you think carefully and make an effort. We use the same vision when developing Kaspersky Internet Security . Thanks for the inspiration guys. And I sincerely hope that not a single programmer who ever participated in The Assembly used their knowledge and skills for evil deeds.