Old school programmers: bow down or fear?
This is a translation of a post published in the Kaspersky Lab's English-language blog .
He is not so much about viruses as about the demoscene and the best works in this art genre.
Recently, Evgeny Kaspersky published in his blog the post “ Phantoms of a virus-opera, or Sith Assembly ”, devoted to ultra-compact and powerful malicious applications discovered recently, but written in the style of 15 years ago. My age makes it possible to remember these guys and their brilliant work - 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, were perceived by all other heroes as one of the most powerful (except for jokes, ask Yoda). Alas, it seems that there are three people who remember these master programmers (I, Kaspersky and Bill Gates). But seriously - in today's world, where the mouse driver takes 50 megabytes, it is quite difficult to imagine what an old school hacker is capable of with a very small amount of allocated resources. So I decided to show what Evgeny is talking about in a slightly different example - and you already decide how bad the news about the "old school" authors of the infection are.
In 1992, computers were not "multimedia" and were more like a large-screen calculator. On the overwhelming majority of them there were neither microphones, nor a decent opportunity to reproduce sound - and, of course, forget about webcams. There even the mouse was far from always, and the first slightly popular version of Windows 3.1 came out right in the middle of spring. But there were several groups of enthusiasts who loved difficult programmer tasks: to use all the available memory, the processor command system, and most importantly, every beat of its power to squeeze 100% of the computer what it can do. And in the absence of a sound card, a 3D accelerator and everything that every smartphone has today, they made those “calculators” draw complex 3D animations with music and special effects and do other things that at first glance were impossible. Demonstration of the impossible is very logical and briefly called "demo". To create it, you had to be a truly creative person, in details, including undocumented ones, know the principles of the system, drink a lot of coffee or something stronger, and most importantly, have transcendental 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. This was the birth of the “demo” contest-festivals, one of the largest and most famous was The Assembly, first held in 1992.
')
In 1992, a group of Scandinavian programmers called Future Crew, together 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 of "Best Coder of the Year."
Demo - 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 ones, like “Best Film” and “Best Director” on “Oscar”, became the title “Best Demo for PC”, similar titles for the Amiga and C64 platforms, as well as a separate (and especially interesting us today) nomination "Demo size of less than 64 kilobytes for the PC." In the first nominations it was required to demonstrate the maximum capabilities of the platform, which can be squeezed out with the help of optimal, even artistic, programming. The latter was not easy - only 64 kilobytes were allocated for storing the entire program part, all graphic and sound elements. This, of course, prompted to elegant and economical programming - after all, in the volume in which the picture of a medium size was barely placed today, the creators "crammed" a mini-film lasting several minutes.
In 1992, the Future Crew group won the competition with the Unreal demo. The name was not chosen for nothing - 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 light streams, etc.
And the most interesting - all-all-all to run the demo, including music, was placed in 1 MB! This could be achieved only by masterfully programming in Assembler - behind the apparent simplicity of this language, its devilish complexity and laboriousness are hidden when writing large programs, it is difficult not to make mistakes. This is what the guys from Future Crew told me about this:
Those who then participated in the competition, became the source of inspiration for the developers of later applications. No, they did not steal ideas, but adopted the very approaches to solving problems and creative vision. From the inspiration of Assembly, ALL up-to-date games, Adobe video and graphics products, weather forecasts, GPS applications and Google Earth have grown — the entire multi-billion dollar computer visualization industry.
The success of the Assembly was so great that the following year the number of visitors and the number of works at the competition doubled (this trend persisted for many years, and since 1999, The Assembly has been held at the largest football stadium in Helsinki). It again - quite deservedly - won the work of Future Crew. The “Second Reality” demo, Second Reality, raised the bar for quality to enormous heights and greatly influenced the programming world.
If the graphics do not impress you, it is worth remembering that the demo was created BEFORE the advent of the very first Intel Pentium processor and worked on x486 computers WITHOUT a graphics accelerator. Second Reality was deeply impressed by the jury and the entire programmer community, showing what can be achieved with professional work with an Assembler and a minimalist approach - compiled demo files took up about 1.5 MB. The creators, Future Crew, have become world famous.
This video is "Behind the Scenes of Future Crew" since the creation of Second Reality.
They demonstrated that physical calculations for realistic water display and the morphing of 3D objects could well be done using a Pentium processor.
And the winner in the nomination of 64 kb, the Prime group 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, we will give all the winners from 1995 to 2012:
This, by the way, is the forerunner of the visual solution World of Warcraft and all 3D MMORPGs.
In 1999, a massive 3DFX video accelerator appeared, changing graphics forever. And the Virhe demo of the MatureFunk group squeezed everything out of the technology, almost blowing up the brains of the first viewers:
Since 2000, the rules have changed a little - the division by platforms Amiga, PC and C64 has disappeared. Demo 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 Assembly language guru-coder can do with just 64 kb.
Here is the list of winners in the Combined demo category, where the highest skill of owning an Assembler is demonstrated:
These impressive lighting effects - don't forget! - created on the technology of thirteen years old!
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 it was then that the vision was born of what the Nintendo Wii will be:
The creators have reached a new level of complexity in graphics programming. I would say, the bar rose again, and strongly:
Another fantastically beautiful job
A more precisely - the Pyrotech Group Within Epsilon demo:
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 a professional, I’ll give you some of the best examples of demos in the up to 64 category:
Well, three years later, in 2008, the same group showed up to which it honed its skills during this time and managed to cram in a 64 kb this demo, which won the first prize in the category - Panic room:
And now back to today. All of 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 Assembly Wizard, which is not too 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 such a programmer or group like Future Crew throws all these exercises with 3D and directs all the energy and enthusiasm to create a small application that steals your financial information or helps to change the calibration of industrial equipment - from a centrifuge to a nuclear reactor. What do you think they will succeed? How big will this application be, given their success in the field of 64k? Will they find a way to bypass the protection built into Microsoft or Apple products? Do they have enough money if they successfully held an event with free admission to 5,000 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 recall Second reality and start praying.
Fortunately, the guys from Future Crew are very busy today too. Of course, the demo was a hobby of youth, and today they are engaged in serious business. As a group, Future Crew did not release anything after the musical editor Scream Tracker 3 (December 1994), and, although there was no official dissolution, the guys parted ways in the second half of the nineties. But partially or entirely from the former participants of Future Crew are many well-known projects today: Futuremark (3DMark tests), Remedy (Max Payne, Death Rally, Alan Wake games), Bugbear Entertainment (FlatOut, Glimmerati, Rally Trophy), Bitboys (company- graphics hardware manufacturer, later purchased by ATI), etc.
I want to say thanks to them - they changed the world, and showed how much is possible, if you think about it and make an effort. We use the same vision when developing Kaspersky Internet Security . Thanks for the inspiration guys. And I sincerely hope that no programmer who has ever participated in The Assembly has used their knowledge and skills for bad deeds.
He is not so much about viruses as about the demoscene and the best works in this art genre.
Recently, Evgeny Kaspersky published in his blog the post “ Phantoms of a virus-opera, or Sith Assembly ”, devoted to ultra-compact and powerful malicious applications discovered recently, but written in the style of 15 years ago. My age makes it possible to remember these guys and their brilliant work - 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, were perceived by all other heroes as one of the most powerful (except for jokes, ask Yoda). Alas, it seems that there are three people who remember these master programmers (I, Kaspersky and Bill Gates). But seriously - in today's world, where the mouse driver takes 50 megabytes, it is quite difficult to imagine what an old school hacker is capable of with a very small amount of allocated resources. So I decided to show what Evgeny is talking about in a slightly different example - and you already decide how bad the news about the "old school" authors of the infection are.
Calculators under load
In 1992, computers were not "multimedia" and were more like a large-screen calculator. On the overwhelming majority of them there were neither microphones, nor a decent opportunity to reproduce sound - and, of course, forget about webcams. There even the mouse was far from always, and the first slightly popular version of Windows 3.1 came out right in the middle of spring. But there were several groups of enthusiasts who loved difficult programmer tasks: to use all the available memory, the processor command system, and most importantly, every beat of its power to squeeze 100% of the computer what it can do. And in the absence of a sound card, a 3D accelerator and everything that every smartphone has today, they made those “calculators” draw complex 3D animations with music and special effects and do other things that at first glance were impossible. Demonstration of the impossible is very logical and briefly called "demo". To create it, you had to be a truly creative person, in details, including undocumented ones, know the principles of the system, drink a lot of coffee or something stronger, and most importantly, have transcendental 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. This was the birth of the “demo” contest-festivals, one of the largest and most famous was The Assembly, first held in 1992.
')
Future Crew are back from the future.
In 1992, a group of Scandinavian programmers called Future Crew, together 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 of "Best Coder of the Year."
Demo - 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 ones, like “Best Film” and “Best Director” on “Oscar”, became the title “Best Demo for PC”, similar titles for the Amiga and C64 platforms, as well as a separate (and especially interesting us today) nomination "Demo size of less than 64 kilobytes for the PC." In the first nominations it was required to demonstrate the maximum capabilities of the platform, which can be squeezed out with the help of optimal, even artistic, programming. The latter was not easy - only 64 kilobytes were allocated for storing the entire program part, all graphic and sound elements. This, of course, prompted to elegant and economical programming - after all, in the volume in which the picture of a medium size was barely placed today, the creators "crammed" a mini-film lasting several minutes.
In 1992, the Future Crew group won the competition with the Unreal demo. The name was not chosen for nothing - 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 light streams, etc.
And the most interesting - all-all-all to run the demo, including music, was placed in 1 MB! This could be achieved only by masterfully programming in Assembler - behind the apparent simplicity of this language, its devilish complexity and laboriousness are hidden when writing large programs, it is difficult not to make mistakes. This is what the guys from Future Crew told me about this:
Learning demo programming is a long and complicated process. It takes years to learn how. You can start with a high level language (Pascal or C), and then start experimenting with the Assembler. It takes a lot of time, a lot of experiments, and there is no way to shorten the period to master everything. The main occupation is to understand what you have done, then change the program and follow what you get, and gain experience in the best way to solve certain tasks. Learning quality programming requires patience, enthusiasm and a cloud of time!
Those who then participated in the competition, became the source of inspiration for the developers of later applications. No, they did not steal ideas, but adopted the very approaches to solving problems and creative vision. From the inspiration of Assembly, ALL up-to-date games, Adobe video and graphics products, weather forecasts, GPS applications and Google Earth have grown — the entire multi-billion dollar computer visualization industry.
1993 - Second Reality and Eclipse year
The success of the Assembly was so great that the following year the number of visitors and the number of works at the competition doubled (this trend persisted for many years, and since 1999, The Assembly has been held at the largest football stadium in Helsinki). It again - quite deservedly - won the work of Future Crew. The “Second Reality” demo, Second Reality, raised the bar for quality to enormous heights and greatly influenced the programming world.
If the graphics do not impress you, it is worth remembering that the demo was created BEFORE the advent of the very first Intel Pentium processor and worked on x486 computers WITHOUT a graphics accelerator. Second Reality was deeply impressed by the jury and the entire programmer community, showing what can be achieved with professional work with an Assembler and a minimalist approach - compiled demo files took up about 1.5 MB. The creators, Future Crew, have become world famous.
This video is "Behind the Scenes of Future Crew" since the creation of Second Reality.
In 1994, the first place was taken by the EMC Verses demo.
They demonstrated that physical calculations for realistic water display and the morphing of 3D objects could well be done using a Pentium processor.
And the winner in the nomination of 64 kb, the Prime group 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, we will give all the winners from 1995 to 2012:
Winner of Assembly 1995: Stars of NoooN
Assembly 1996 winner: Machines of Madness from Dubius
Assembly 1997 winner: Doomsday Boost
Assembly 1998 Winner: Trauma Group Gateways
This, by the way, is the forerunner of the visual solution World of Warcraft and all 3D MMORPGs.
The era of total 3D
In 1999, a massive 3DFX video accelerator appeared, changing graphics forever. And the Virhe demo of the MatureFunk group squeezed everything out of the technology, almost blowing up the brains of the first viewers:
Assembly in a new way
Since 2000, the rules have changed a little - the division by platforms Amiga, PC and C64 has disappeared. Demo 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 Assembly language guru-coder can do with just 64 kb.
Here is the list of winners in the Combined demo category, where the highest skill of owning an Assembler is demonstrated:
Assembly 2000 Winner: Spot Group Exceed
These impressive lighting effects - don't forget! - created on the technology of thirteen years old!
Assembly 2001 Winner: Msufurk Lapsuus
Assembly 2002 Winner: Liquid ... Wen? Haujobb groups
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.
Assembly 2003 winner: Legomania of the Doomsday group.
Say “hello” to the main console 3D games :).
And I think it was then that the vision was born of what the Nintendo Wii will be:
Winner of Assembly 2004: Obsoleet Unreal Voodoo Group:
The first prize of the Assembly 2005 was the demo of the Iconoclast ASD group:
In 2006, the Black Lotus Starstruck demo again revolutionized
The creators have reached a new level of complexity in graphics programming. I would say, the bar rose again, and strongly:
In 2007, the ASD LifeForce group won:
Another fantastically beautiful job
2008 - Epsilon
A more precisely - the Pyrotech Group Within Epsilon demo:
Winner 2009
And my personal favorite is Frameranger, created by the combined efforts of Fairlight, CNCD and Orange:
Assembly 2010 Winner: ASD Group Happiness is right around the bend
:
Assembly 2011 Winner - ASD Group Spin:
And this series completes the phenomenal work of 2012 by the Spacecut groups of Carillon and Cyberaid CNCD:
64 kilobytes as a challenge to mastery
Just to understand that 64 kilobytes devalued to almost nothing is a lot for a professional, I’ll give you some of the best examples of demos in the up to 64 category:
Che Guevara Fairlight Group - 2005:
Well, three years later, in 2008, the same group showed up to which it honed its skills during this time and managed to cram in a 64 kb this demo, which won the first prize in the category - Panic room:
But the best compact demo in the entire history of the competition is the work of 2010 X marks the spot of the Portal process:
And now back to today. All of 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 Assembly Wizard, which is not too 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 such a programmer or group like Future Crew throws all these exercises with 3D and directs all the energy and enthusiasm to create a small application that steals your financial information or helps to change the calibration of industrial equipment - from a centrifuge to a nuclear reactor. What do you think they will succeed? How big will this application be, given their success in the field of 64k? Will they find a way to bypass the protection built into Microsoft or Apple products? Do they have enough money if they successfully held an event with free admission to 5,000 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 recall Second reality and start praying.
Fortunately, the guys from Future Crew are very busy today too. Of course, the demo was a hobby of youth, and today they are engaged in serious business. As a group, Future Crew did not release anything after the musical editor Scream Tracker 3 (December 1994), and, although there was no official dissolution, the guys parted ways in the second half of the nineties. But partially or entirely from the former participants of Future Crew are many well-known projects today: Futuremark (3DMark tests), Remedy (Max Payne, Death Rally, Alan Wake games), Bugbear Entertainment (FlatOut, Glimmerati, Rally Trophy), Bitboys (company- graphics hardware manufacturer, later purchased by ATI), etc.
I want to say thanks to them - they changed the world, and showed how much is possible, if you think about it and make an effort. We use the same vision when developing Kaspersky Internet Security . Thanks for the inspiration guys. And I sincerely hope that no programmer who has ever participated in The Assembly has used their knowledge and skills for bad deeds.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/171931/
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