Demo Party - reportage Gasman'a with Forever 2e3.

<b>Demo Party</b> - reportage Gasman'a with Forever 2e3.

                    Forever 2e3: The report



 The last Spectrum show I went to was in Horwich, which is a ten
minute drive from my house. Travelling across Europe to attend
the Forever 2e3 demo party in Slovakia was going to be a bit
different. As I trundled off in the National Express coach to
London, I had no idea what to expect, other than that I'd make
an arse of myself at several major airports across Europe.

 My first flight was delayed, and I missed the connection from
Prague. As airports go, Prague is probably quite a good one to
be lost and bewildered in. Lots of helpful English-speaking
staff were on hand to sort out an alternative flight, and not
once did I have to go into Noisy English Tourist mode. While I
was waiting around and imagining what a good time everyone else
was having, I remembered that the organisers had arranged to
meet me at the train station in Trencin, so I tried to send them
a message on one of the public internet thingies they had at the
airport. Imagine a keyboard that's slightly more irritating to
use than a ZX81 and you'll get the idea. Fired off the email,
thinking that they probably wouldn't get to read it on time.
They didn't. Spent the rest of the afternoon watching what
appeared to be the German equivalent of MTV. German pop music is
very bad.

 Several hours and numerous modes of transport later, I stumbled
through the entrance to the school in Trencin where the party
was being held, tired and freezing, some time after midnight. I
breathed a sigh of relief as I heard 8-bit computers bleeping
away, although the bleeps had taken on a new life through
being pumped through a whopping great big sound system. I was
greeted by Ellvis (no, really), and before long I was being
introduced to all sorts of people who I'd previously only known
through the internet. In my own inimitable style, I instantly
forgot who everyone was.
 It wasn't just Spectrums at the party - the Atari and Commodore
64 scenes were also represented, and I started off my visit by
watching some classic Atari demos. Rather than being loaded from
just any old disc drive, there was a PC running a program to
emulate a disc drive. The Atari had been suitably cannibalised
to get the whole setup to work, with wires strewn all over the
place between the two computers. Mmm, nice! The demos themselves
were all very impressive, and I was struck by how smooth the
action was, but being an ardent Speccy fan, I'd say it could do
with a splash more colour. Heh heh heh. At this point I was
badly in need of some sleep, and going up six flights of
stairs to my room made sure of that. I woke up the next morning
in time to catch the last five minutes of the realtime
competitions. The idea of these was to write an intro or a 
piece of music, on the spot, against a time limit. Sure enough, 
the results were ... interesting. In the end Factor 6 claimed 
the title on the music side, with TDM in second place. The intro

competition attracted three entries: a self-playing Breakout
game on the Atari; the totally bizarre Haluzky; and the winner,
Zero Divide, full of sparkly starfield effects. Meanwhile, I got
talking with Matsoft, editor of ZX Magazin. It seems they're
really hot on hardware modifications in Eastern Europe, and in
between a healthy selection of reviews and show reports, the
pages were brimming with circuit diagrams for everything from
sound cards to hard drive interfaces! Unfortunately, the hard
drive is still in need of a proper operating system, but
nevertheless, at the recent Zlincon 99 show the visitors were
treated to an animation from Star Wars and an entire episode of
The Simpsons, being played straight from the hard drive.

 I spent most of the afternoon searching through X-agon's demo
collection for rare gems that hadn't found their way onto my
website. For some of them, it was clear why they'd been
previously kept hidden away in the Czech Republic, but I
grabbed a copy anyway. It was at this time I had my first real
experience of the Didaktik Kompakt, the most common Spectrum
clone in these parts. Quite a nice 'boxy' design, with
reassuringly chunky keys ... I think I could get to like these
things. Next to me Dron was giving the Art Studio treatment to a
scene from South Park, expertly copied from someone's T-shirt.
 The C64 group DMAgic were on hand to give a demonstration of
their new box of tricks, the Super CPU, which speeds up the
processor to 20MHz. They showed off Stunt Car Racer running so
fast as to be unplayable, and Driller running, er, fast enough
to be playable. The finale was a specially written shoot-em-up
with full screen animation and a sampled soundtrack, to which
the Spectrum delegation cheerfully responded by loading up
Hypnotic Dreams (a demo with full screen animation and - yes! -
a sampled soundtrack).

 Tiger's Claw took this opportunity to give me the latest issue
of his disczine Scene + and the accompanying paper magazine
SUC-Session. And not just any old issue either - this one
happens to be a special 'X-rated' edition, so it's just as well
that the customs officials at the airport didn't search too far
into my bag ...

 Before long it was time to settle down for the main event - the
competitions. A far cry from the frantic hacking of the realtime
competitions, these were the things people had been working on
for days, weeks, months beforehand. First up was the music, and
as I sat clutching my votesheet, I was blown away by the
quality of all the entries (or was it that whopping great big
sound system again?). I started off trying to give them all
marks out of 10, but I found it so hard to choose the top three
that my notes were full of crossings-out and marks like 8.1295.
I've no idea what I finally picked, but I'm sure they were so
amazing that they deserved to win. Probably.

 The graphics competition was easier to vote on, not least
because there were considerably less entries, but a certain few
stood out. Judging from the 'ooh's and' aah's coming from the
crowd, I wasn't the only one with that opinion. Following this
came the intro competition, the big event for me. The challenge
here was to squeeze as much as possible into 1K of code. I'd
sent in my entry a few weeks beforehand, and the organisers must
have liked it because it appeared they'd dropped a few hints
about it. I'd spent so long writing it that it didn't seem
anything special to me any more, but I think the main attraction
was the music that I'd dropped in to fill up my quota of bytes.
The first few entries to be shown were good standard 1K intro
fare, and then it came time to show mine. The music started up.
The crowd gasped. Applause erupted around the room. I was
grinning like a Cheshire cat, but fortunately the lights were
down low, so no-one got to see that.

 The best entries, it seems, had been cunningly left till last.
For his 'Mathricks' intro, Baze had come up with a spinning 3D
figure, accurately lightsourced against a fractal background,
and intro king Serzh had teamed up with Ravager for a visual
treat entitled Artifice. Serzh has become well known in demo
circles for making his 4K intros into five-minute, 25-part 
epics, and this entry certainly didn't break the trend. Despite 
only having 1K to play with this time, the duo managed to fit in

three parts, each one a work of art.

 Unfortunately there weren't enough demos to make up a
fully-fledged demo competition, but nevertheless we were treated
to a selection of new releases. The Atari section had the
wonderfully silly Superboy demo to show off, and we had a
preview of a forthcoming C64 megademo, the name of which totally
escapes me (oops). On the Speccy, 'BASICdemo' and 'FDT' pushed
Sinclair Basic to the limit, and the evening was rounded off
with 'Bobering 2000' from Syndrome, a typically Russian
'Greyscale' affair doing not-so-typical things in 3D. After
scribbling down our final votes, everyone congregated around a
pair of Ataris, to witness the most retro-oriented presentation
of the party - NetPong, a two player Pong game played across two
machines connected by another spaghetti of wires. Being a former
owner of a Binatone machine (you know, the one where you can
choose between five games, each one of them being tennis), I can
say that it was a perfect conversion.

 The show continued well into the night, with classic demos from
all three scenes being shown on the big screen. It was a sort of
Desert Island Demos affair, with the organisers of each section
picking the very best from each computer. The atmosphere here
was amazing, and I'll never look at these demos in the same way
again - watching them on a telly couldn't even begin to match
the experience. The next morning, for me, consisted of sorting
through tickets and other bits of paper that I'd need for the
frantic journey back (involving three planes and a horrendous
number of trains). But everything stopped for the announcement
of the results ...

 I was pleased to see fellow Raww Arse member LAEsq pick up
third place in the music category for his track 'New
Generation '. 'Dispazio' by Baze claimed second place, and in my
not-so-humble opinion, the moral victory. In the selection of
sleek dance tracks, one entry, a joke version of the Titanic
theme, had stuck out like a sore thumb, and the Atari crowd all
picked that one for a laugh. As a result, it was Darkman and
Justinas of Constellation who clinched the top spot with their
rendition, entitled 'Titanas'.

 GAS 1913 has been a top three contender for graphics at most of
the recent parties, and he finally made it to the top spot this
time with 'Don't Pass By', a stunning colourful countryside
scene. Agyagos and Diver also impressed the crowds enough with
their pictures their pictures 'Robin' and 'Alone' to achieve
second and third places respectively.

 Baze took his second podium position of the day, with
'Mathricks' making third place in the intro competition. My
intro 'Madrielle' was knocked into second place by 'Artifice',
and Serzh and Ravager had done such an impressive job on it
that I couldn't really complain.

 All in all, the organisers had done a fantastic job, and it was
an unforgettable experience for me. The show attracted 62
visitors - at least half of whom came from outside Slovakia -
and from what I've heard, that's pretty big as these things go.

 The journey back passed with no problems whatsoever, and by
3:00 the next morning I was back home to get some rest. But not
for long, because I'd promised to get the results and downloads
on my website as soon as possible. And that's exactly where you
should go now ...


                                                          Gasman