Ancient

The demo Ancient (1995) took part in the Painless Compo 95 and eventually became one of the most enduring pieces of evidence of the Brazilian demoscene in the 1990s. In the demoscene, technical knowledge is shared as code is passed down, adapted, and reimagined by generations of coders, forming an informal collective lineage. Many of the visual effects come from algorithms refined over decades, shaped by an overlap between underground practice and formal research.
In contrast to the algorithmically generated visuals that dominate many demos, some segments feature hand-crafted still images using low-level graphic tools such as Deluxe Paint, GrafX2, or Amiga pixel editors. These works rely on techniques like dithering, limited palettes, and direct bit manipulation, closer to digital painting than code, each pixel placed with gestural precision. 
Developed by a team that included ...Sunset... and Thunder on code, Sledgehammer, Lost Kluster, and Starf0x on music, and E-Mage on hand-drawn digital graphics, the work presents a sequence of classic real time generated visuals: an intro with fades, a vertical blue fire effect implemented with a heat buffer, "facebobs" with rotating face sprites calculated using trigonometric functions, "shade-starbobs" with twinkling bright sprites, old-style plasma calculated pixel by pixel using sine and cosine functions, and a final scroller with text masked over the previously generated images. The entire visual experience is generated live by the computer, using ultra-compact code written in low-level programming languages like Assembly or C, and optimized to run on the limited graphic mode of old PCs: 320 by 200 pixels, with just 256 colors. As the authors note, the routines used in this demo draw from early, well-known techniques, especially the classic plasma effect, highlighting the demoscene’s tradition of reusing, editing, and passing down codes. 
As was common in the Demoscene, the credits for the demo were included in a .nfo file containing stylized ASCII art: https://rednuht.org/files/demos/ancient.nfo