Gargaj makes demos, but he also writes software that lets other people perform, compete and find one another’s work. The Hungarian coder and musician, Gergely Szelei, is associated with Conspiracy and Ümlaüt Design. His work ranges from the soundtrack and code of a small executable to the website recording a whole scene’s productions.
Chaos Theory
Conspiracy’s Chaos Theory took second place in the combined 64K competition at Assembly in 2006. Its credits divide the work: BoyC wrote code, Gargaj contributed code and music, and zoom handled graphics and direction. Calling it Gargaj’s production alone would miss that collaboration.
BoyC described it on Pouët as the final intro made with the group’s aDDict 2 system. Conspiracy subsequently published a source pack containing that tool and the Chaos Theory code. The pack’s readme describes adapting the code to build other aDDict 2 intros, while warning that the released projects were prepared for Visual Studio 2010 and could be unstable. The release provides a way to study the group’s working tools as well as the finished effect.
Coding in front of an audience
Bonzomatic puts a running visual effect behind the code used to create it. A participant edits a fragment shader—the program that calculates the image’s pixel colours—and recompiles it to see the result. The code and its output can share the screen, letting an audience follow the changes.
The project’s readme says Gargaj conceived and implemented it after the live-coding competition at Revision in 2014. That contest gave two contestants 25 minutes to improvise effects head to head. The tool therefore serves a different activity from preparing a finished demo for playback: the act of making the effect is itself the performance.
Running a party
A MOME speaker biography dates Gargaj’s organising work at Budapest’s Function to 2006. Demozoo also records an earlier competition-organising credit in 2005, so 2006 should not be read as his first involvement of any kind.
His Wuhu software covers less visible work: managing competition entries, voting and the projected display. Its source separates the organisers’ administration pages from the visitors’ site, while the readme explains the slide viewer. It credits Gargaj as creator and maintainer, alongside contributors who supplied design, fixes and testing.
Keeping the records
Pouët lists scene productions, credits, downloads and discussion. Its archived version 2.0 repository credits Gargaj with the original rewrite, based on the earlier code. The successor repository records his period as a maintainer as 2007–2024.
That is a completed period of site maintenance, not the end of his creative record. Demozoo lists music for Conspiracy’s Empires in March 2024, alongside many earlier code and music credits. His published tools and production records show several kinds of contribution that would disappear from a biography concerned only with competition rankings.
Sources
- Gargaj’s home page and Demozoo profile: identity, groups and credited work. Demozoo is a community database.
- Pouët, Chaos Theory: credits, placing and BoyC’s release comment. Conspiracy’s 2012 source pack: tools, code and build notes.
- Bonzomatic repository, readme: operation and origin after Revision 2014.
- MOME, speaker biography, undated: Function organising credit. Wuhu repository, readme and competition administration source: purpose and contributors.
- Pouët 2.0 source, readme, and successor repository: authorship and maintainer dates.