Scenergy
#02
31 декабря 1999 |
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Demo Party - репортаж Gasman'a с 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 5-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 L.A.Esq 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 13 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
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