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.Start.of.DemoNews.126.........................................................
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/ | \ _) \ \_/ \ | \ / \ \ _) \ | \______ \
/ | \ \ | \ | \ / \ \ /~\ \ / \
\_____ /______/___| /________/ \____\_____/______/_________/________/
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DemoNews #126 - 15 Jul 1996
Subscribers : 2401
DemoNews is produced by Hornet. Change : +24
The Hornet Archive is at ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos Archive Size : 2803M
==[Contents]===================================================================
Calendar
Sites
Top Downloads
Uploads
Articles
Introduction................................Snowman
Life of a Music Contest Organizer...........GD
Visigoth and the Graphics Compo.............Rimbo
NAID Log - Part 2/3.........................Trixter
Closing
==[Calendar]===================================================================
Date Event Location Concact Points
--------- ----------- --------- ---------------------------------------------
30 May 96 Rage Hungary t_mort@ludens.elte.hu
31 May 96 Naid Canada naid@autoroute.net
www.autoroute.net/~naid
naid.conceptech.qc.ca
02 Jun 96 The Scene Singapore ckiang@singnet.com.sg
www.singnet.com.sg/~ckiang/tsc96.html
07 Jun 96 Abduction Finland maurala@cc.hut.fi
www.hut.fi/~maurala/abduction.html
28 Jun 96 Porno Finland suhonen@sci.fi
* <-- YOU ARE HERE
19 Jul 96 Flag Hungary tomcat2@ursus.bke.hu
25 Jul 96 Euskal Spain sabino@redestb.es
www.dit.upm.es/~alba/euskal
28 Jul 96 Summer Enc. Denmark rvc@vision.auc.dk
www.vision.auc.dk/diffusion/SE96
04 Aug 96 Summit Israel asafm@noam.co.il
www.noam.co.il/summit96
16 Aug 96 Assembly Finland assembly@assembly.org
www.assembly.org/asm96
22 Aug 96 TPTB France brunel@quaternet.fr
www.imaginet.fr/~dadu
30 Aug 96 AntIQ Hungary aubert@ttk.jpte.hu
www.jpte.hu/~aboy
21 Mar 97 Mekka Germany amable@aol.com
==[Sites]======================================================================
Category Location Contact Points
-------------- --------- ----------------------------------------------------
Hornet Archive USA ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos
HA Mirrors Sweden ftp.luth.se/pub/msdos/demos
S. Africa ftp.sun.ac.za/pub/msdos/demos
USA (FL) ftp.uwp.edu/pub/msdos/demos
USA (PA) ftp.co.iup.edu/code (from /demos/code)
Other Archives Belgium hagar.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/demos
Sweden ftp.arosnet.se/demo
Spain ftp.siapi.es/blastersound/demos/incoming
Finland ftp.fm.org
Web Sites Germany www.th-zwickau.de/~maz (MAZ Sound Tools)
Canada datex.ca/trax (images of #trax people)
USA www.jax-inter.net/users/mblocker/demos
Belgium hagar.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/~sdog/party.html
==[Downloads]==================================================================
Category Times File
-------- -- ----- -----------------------------------------------------------
Demos 01 00160 /demos/1995/a/animate.zip
02 00151 /demos/1993/s/symbolog.zip
03 00143 /demos/1995/n/nooon_st.zip
04 00135 /demos/1993/0-9/2ndreal1.lzh
05 00133 /demos/1993/u/unreal11.zip
Music 01 00093 /music/songs/1996/s3m/g/globalun.arj
02 00069 /music/disks/1996/f/fm-soul.zip
03 00053 /music/songs/1996/s3m/f/fm-mech8.zip
04 00050 /music/songs/1996/s3m/a/athought.zip
05 00050 /music/songs/1995/s3m/c/ccs-ddrm.zip
Graphics 01 00084 /graphics/disks/1996/de-rips.zip
02 00069 /graphics/disks/1996/pls_sun.zip
03 00059 /graphics/images/1996/t/tigerkid.zip
04 00054 /graphics/images/1996/c/chantal.zip
05 00043 /graphics/images/1996/g/godsarmy.zip
Code 01 00051 /code/tutorial/fh-3dtut.txt
02 00041 /code/tutorial/graphpro.txt
03 00040 /code/tutorial/dn116_3d.zip
04 00037 /code/tutorial/otflip.txt
05 00035 /code/tutorial/dn114_3d.zip
Incoming 01 00149 /incoming/demos/campino.txt
02 00147 /incoming/news/demonews.125
03 00136 /incoming/code/m32abd.txt
04 00132 /incoming/demos/dbwedtro.txt
05 00125 /incoming/demos/mir_nvas.txt
Total number of files downloaded : 0085308
==[Uploads]====================================================================
All ratings are subjective.
=---------------------------------------------------------------------(alpha)-=
/pub/demos/alpha Size Rated Description
=-----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
/1995/f/fixed.zip 56 **+ TP95:in64:XX: Fixed by Bug 2 Fix
/1995/f/fractia.zip 32 **+ TP95:in64:XX: Fractia by Euxinus
/1995/m/mood.zip 933 ** TP95:demo:XX: Mood by Sector 7
/1995/s/slur.zip 64 *** TP95:in64:21: Slur by Grunt
/1995/s/somethng.zip 41 *** TP95:in64:12: Something by Noware
/1995/s/sug.zip 45 **+ TP95:in64:XX: Sug by TBL
/1995/t/tuc_dp20.zip 940 ** ASM95:demo:XX: Dea Parca (v2.0) by The
| Underworld Corporation
/1995/w/wasgeht.arj 799 ** TP95:demo:XX: Was Geht by Dental
/1996/0-9/42.zip 1 *+ BBS 42 by Maniac
/1996/b/bmb4kbp3.zip 5 **+ BP96:in4k:??: Optical Illusion by Intellius of
| Bamboosh
/1996/b/brntrip.zip 65 *+ BP96:in80:03: Braintrip by Dr Dyregod &
| Kompany
/1996/c/calvin17.zip 105 * BP96:demo:??: Happy Birthday Calvin by Proxima
/1996/c/cmy-demo.zip 134 *+ BP96:demo:??: AU by Calamity
/1996/c/ctx_jafo.zip 8 *** BP96:in4k:??: Jafo by Cortex of Index
/1996/f/fademo.zip 171 + BP96:demo:03: Fademo by Dr Dyregod & Kompany
/1996/f/famous.zip 830 **+ BP96:demo:02: Famous by Maak
/1996/f/fast_bfh.zip 567 *+ Baygles From Heaven by Trixter+Leviathan
/1996/g/g35.zip 6 *** BP96:in4k:??: G35 by Erlend of Nocturnal
/1996/h/heitro.zip 6 * BP96:in4k:??: Heitro by Paladin of Dr Dyregod
| & Kompany
/1996/i/idx-thun.zip 61 * BP96:in80:??: Thunder by Index
/1996/i/inf_sati.zip 86 **** BP96:in80:04: Mainstream 2 by INF
/1996/i/isitadrm.zip 234 ** Is It A Dream by VA Design
/1996/k/kvalitet.zip 4 * BP96:in4k:??: Kvalitet by Fidgety+Thumbz of
| TP+??
/1996/n/nct_hmph.zip 65 **+ BP96:in80:??: Hmmph by Nocturnal
/1996/n/neb_glow.zip 58 *+ BP96:in80:??: Glow by Nebula
/1996/p/pr96-hol.zip 133 *+ REM96:infs:??: Hola by Leroy & Co.
/1996/p/pr96-ipa.zip 160 * REM96:infs:??: Inklusive Panda by Phase Voice
/1996/p/prx-evil.zip 73 ***+ BP96:in80:01: Evil Killing Toys by Proxima
/1996/r/rc-bie4k.zip 9 *+ BP96:in4k:??: Bie by Piffi of Rectum Cauda
/1996/r/rc-latex.zip 40 * BP96:in80:??: Latexmania by Rectum Cauda
/1996/r/rc-tur.zip 52 * BP96:in80:??: Tur I Skogen by Rectum Cauda
/1996/r/rc_ergub.zip 5 ** BP96:in4k:??: Surgi Ergub by Frutopia of
| Rectum Cauda
/1996/r/rc_fjmp3.zip 6 + BP96:in4k:??: Fjomptro 3 by Heizahn of Rectum
| Cauda
/1996/s/sl_enig.zip 76 **+ BP96:in80:02: Enigma by Sublogic
/1996/s/sl_fokus.zip 82 *** BP96:in80:??: Fokus by Sublogic
/1996/u/unkari.zip 322 **+ BP96:demo:??: Gertrude in Red Hungary by TPOLM
/1996/y/yo_am_i.zip 67 ** BP96:demo:01: Yo Am I by Rectum Cauda
==[Articles]===================================================================
=-----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
:: "Introduction"
:: Snowman / Hornet
:: r3cgm@ftp.cdrom.com
Hello all, and welcome to DemoNews issue 126.
For the past several weeks, I've been sitting in front of three telnet
sessions to wcarchive, coding coding coding Perl scripts in the name of HA4
(our new archiving system). You'd think with all this experience I could
write some sort of script to generate an idea for each DemoNews introduction.
Hey, I got an idea. Why don't I go to a recent issue of TraxWeekly, take
the 7th word from its intro and try to talk about it?
"Unforeseen" - You'll notice that there are no music listings this week. Due
to _unforeseen_ circumstances, I couldn't get them. Last night, my
supervisor modified one of the Perl 5.002 system libraries and all my scripts
broke. At least I was able to repair the damage enough to pull out listings
for the /alpha tree.
Hey, that worked pretty well! How about I take out the 7th word of the first
.txt file in /incoming/music/programs.
"XM" - Well, the Music Contest IV entry deadline passed this week. Hope you
got all your ITs, MODs, S3Ms, and _XMs_ in on time. GD has put a lot of work
into keeping this contest moving and is finishing up the processing of
entries. Doh! I just realized I should get that voting pack ready.
Now let's take the 7th word (real mode) from io.sys (DOS v6.22).
"00" - You'll be happy to know that all of the index.html and 00_index.txt
files on our site are being updated 4 times a day (thanks to HA4). While I'm
off the topic, I might as well let you in on a little surprise. Diablo is
almost ready to totally convert the /music archive over to HA4. Know what
that means? It means you can search by author, search by rating, list all
songs that have been cataloged in the past 3 days.
Let's finish up this intro by taking the 7th random word to pop in my head:
Trixter told me _Explicitly_ that I must finish up some text for him tonight.
I won't tell you exactly what the first 6 words were, but they all had
something to do with sleep.
(Don't worry folks, I promise next week 'll be better)
=-----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
:: "Life of a Music Contest Organizer"
:: GD / Hornet
:: gd@ftp.cdrom.com
_____Introduction
The hours on the clock inch ever so slowly towards the impending deadline.
Somewhere in the northeastern area of the U.S.A. in a modest two-story house
sits a lad, tapping his fingers nervously as millions of thoughts take
hostage of his brain.
This is what it's like to be in the mind of a Music Contest organizer...
_____Morning
The digital display alarm clock is showing 2:09 pm. A small fan is blowing
fresh air in through the window to help keep the bedroom at a reasonable
temperature.
Sleep has been and gone. He has just opened his eyes, and stretched his arms
above his head. The bedsheet is kicked away and he sits up. A cool breeze
coming from the fan hits him in the face.
Stepping on to the floor, he reaches for the dresser with which to steady
himself and acquire his balance. He looks outside for a few seconds and then
ends his exposure to sunlight for the day.
Thoughts begin to fill his head. "I must check my e-mail", "I wonder if
(enter nickname here) is entering", and "I hope my internet access will be
stable today." Other less-important activities such as personal hygiene and
eating are pushed to the end of the list.
_____Afternoon
The clock reads 6:00 pm, which is much later than it would be in a typical
"afternoon". However, he was awake until 5:00 am the night before, and the
structure of the day has been changed to suit the situation.
He has listened to the 15 megs or so of the entries he downloaded overnight.
The songs are checked to insure song title accuracy and blank sampletext.
This he finds boring, although it must be done.
Time to load up his mailer program. "My god! I have 43 new messages!" A
few mails are sent telling entrants that they must upload again. "Corrupt
zip file", "remove sampletext", and "invalid filename" are some of the
reasons this must be done. Again, its a fairly dull task, and people don't
like to receive such a message. Too often, replies to such e-mail messages
contain a few choice words which can't be printed here.
_____Evening
Around 11:00 pm, he tries to log on to IRC and see what is going on in
channel #trax. He barely has poked his head in the door when a massive
amount of messages are aimed in his direction.
He quickly leaves the channel and continues the conversations through private
messages. After just a few minutes, his energy is gone and he leaves IRC.
He then flops onto his bed and stares at the ceiling for a very long time.
With no current event demanding absolute attention, the racing thoughts in
his mind have room to travel and begin to accelerate. Ladies and Gentlemen!
Welcome to the Brain Overload Speedway! In other words, excedrin time!
But wait! The only headache-relief substance in the house is "conveniently"
located in the bathroom connected only to his parents' bedroom. His parents
have gone to sleep a couple hours ago. To knock on their door or to suddenly
enter uninvited would be taboo. He rubs his temples and mutters a few
obscenities.
_____Late Night
A clock on the kitchen wall sounds its hourly chime. Looking up, he notices
3:00 am has arrived. He turns his attention back to the glass and small
plate on the table which contain his nourishment to last him while he sleeps.
Heading back upstairs, he reminds himself of his accomplishments for the day
and seems reasonably satisfied. He is very thankful to his friends who have
helped him ease the high stress levels during the event. He begins to plan
the last two or so hours for which he will be awake before turning in.
Plans for the next day are randomly arranged. Not surprisingly, the next day
is to be filled with many of the same events of today. Thus the cycle
continues in repetition with slight adjustments in each day.
_____Conclusion
Filled with a combination of excitement and stress, he reminds himself that
the deadline has passed. Being among the first to hear these new creations,
he is uncertain as to his overall impression of the entries.
The days and weeks to follow will be filled with anticipation for everyone
involved. Voting will take place, and the winners will be chosen out of more
than 200 entries from around the world.
His head sinks into the two pillows on his bed, and once again the ceiling
comes into focus. The fan is still running its motor, and a gentle hum is
heard as he drifts off to sleep.
=-----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
:: "Visigoth and the Graphics Compo"
:: Rimbo / Hornet
:: rimbo@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
The NAID graphics competition ended a long time ago, but still there have
been a lot of rumors going about, and some people's reputations have been
unnecessarily tarnished. I've spent the past few weeks gathering information
on behalf of Snowman, who has been drowned in questions regarding Visigoth's
disqualification and later reward.
Visigoth made prior arrangements at NAID, as was well within the competition
rules, to have his entry signed and entered by Lintec. He had the permission
of the organizers, who were more than willing to help.
The problem occurred at the actual graphics competition. In order to prevent
last year's fiasco, where a scanned picture won, artists had to submit
evidence of the work in progress. The picture shown for Visigoth was NOT the
latest version, finished and signed by Lintec; it was an earlier version of
the picture. Had they shown the proper picture, none of this would have
happened. As it was, Visigoth's picture was disqualified.
=-----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
:: "NAID Log - Part 2/3"
:: Trixter / Hornet
:: trixter@ftp.cdrom.com
[... continued from DemoNews.125]
_____May 31st
8:15am:
All of us (Struk, Snowman, myself, and GD) arrive at CEGEP to help set up for
NAID. We missed the moving of the tables and chairs out of the cafeteria,
but there is still plenty to do. One of the most generous things about NAID
is the free Internet and Doom/Falcon/Duke3D/Quake computers that are set up.
Guess who sets that up? The volunteers.
Since we're more than happy to help make this party great, we offer our
services to Struk. We head up to the computer labs two floors up to start
unpacking the MediaTrix sound cards, speakers, etc. As we are riding the
elevator up, we learn that there will be over 10 computers set up for just
general use, for people who couldn't bring theirs or had something broken. (I
learn later that one of the intro compo entries was completed on one of these
computers; Snowman also worked on the Explicit.nfo and MC4 rules files on
these.)
I am floored by the thoughtfulness of the organizers for this. I am also
astonished that this means we'll have to carry over 50 computers down two
floors. :-) I just hope that my back doesn't give out...
I hope someday that the organizers and all the volunteers get their respect
(or some money!). They worked hard. Hopefully someone else will organize a
party that they can attend as normal 'sceners and relax.
1:00pm:
We are reunited with White Noise and his friend Tony. I dump all the
pictures from my digital camera and give it to White Noise to use for his
real-time NAID WWW site. I hope that the camera works okay. :)
I can't resist setting up my computer so that I can work on the demo. Of
course, some people see what I'm doing (Mine was one of the first three
computers set up, probably because the party hasn't even started yet ;-) and
come over to take a look at what I'm doing. I hope this doesn't blow the
"surprise" factor later.
1:30pm:
IOR / Hornet arrives. Snowman and I just can't wait, so we ask him for the
shirts. They are just perfect -- Black tee-shirts with our new Hornet logo
on the back and our individual names on the front. The new Hornet logo is an
H with a circle around it. It looks like the Anarchy symbol, but with the
point of the "A" broken up at the top. Personally, I think it's fucking
cool, although some people are beginning to call us "Hanarchy". I immediate
change into the shirt, and my spirit is lifted. We all look so elite. ;-)
2:30pm:
The party is still being set up around us. I feel bad, a bit, but I'm just
too caught up in the excitement... I make myself promise that I'll ask MED if
he needs any help later on. I met Mellow-D and Khyron, and took a digital
picture of them holding up (and standing behind) the #trax banner that IOR
wants everyone to sign. Mellow-D is a funny guy, making faces and jokes the
whole time. That wacky Finn! ;-) Khyron is pretty cool too. I should
really hang out on #trax more to talk to these guys more often, but every
time I get on, I get buried alive in tons of /MSG's. Hmm...
Some people are starting to look for me just for the sake of meeting me.
This is new to me: While I've become more known in the last year, I'm just a
regular person that you can approach and talk about demos with. It feels a
little weird. Now I know what Necros was talking about.
4:00pm:
I ask MED if he needs help, and he offers a curious response: "Not right
now, but follow me around. You guys need to learn how to do this." I have a
feeling he thinks that Hornet will organize the next North American party. I
don't have the heart to tell him that we don't have the coherent
organizational skills that the NAID organizers have... But anything is
possible, so I keep my mouth shut.
To be honest, I don't think anyone knows what really goes into making a party
like this work. Arrangements for 600 volt power lines drilled through the
walls had to be made almost 6 months in advance; the sponsors had to be
contacted before the event even happened. Even the sound system -- worth
over $500,000 (!!) -- had to be rented way in advance. I have the utmost
respect for Struk, MED, and Mr. Khan.
6:00pm:
Mr. Khan asks us to leave the party place so that they can close it and then
officially open. Snowman and I decide that it is a good opportunity to get a
bite to eat. Outside, there are many people; I meet the Chicago guys
again--Pyromaniac, Kosh, Russ--and learn that they have formed a demo group
called Beyond and will be competing. Cool.
After walking a little further, we meet Kiwidog, Kneebiter, and Skie for the
first time. Skie is going out with Basehead, and they seem very, very happy.
In private, I kid Snowman for making a fool of himself whenever he's around
Skie.
Kneebiter just stands in front of me, silent, until I figure out who he is.
His in-person impression matches his on-line impression: He's a neat guy who
works hard until he understands things.
Ms. Saigon and Moby Disk talk to me for a bit. They don't seem mad about my
leaking of the Dyslexia information (it was an accident, I swear). Maybe
they don't realize it was me. :) That's good; I wish the best for them.
Kiwidog is introduced to me. He turns out to be just *awesome*; he's fun as
hell to talk to, and thankfully, he talks *fast*, which is just great if
you're talking about demos. Why? Because having a conversation about stuff
like "you don't have to rotate the normals if you cull the polys with a
vector pointed away from the camera" is difficult if you can't express
yourself quickly enough. Kiwidog is a real down-to-earth guy who just got a
job with Raven software (the makers of Hexen, Heretic, etc.). Now that he's
moving to Madison, Wisconsin, I have a feeling I'll be seeing him more often.
What a cool guy.
Someone else just stands in front of me for a while; he's about 17, with
slanty-ish eyes, just like mine, and he's got a hip bowl-type haircut, dyed
red. He introduces himself as the guy who called me on the phone about
Chromatiks, and at first, it doesn't click who it is. I remember that the
only people who did that were Rephlex and LaserLore, and I know what
LaserLore looks like, and it's not this person.
As soon as I make the connection (that he's Rephlex, aka Vibrance of
Iguana/Redzone/ACiD, aka Julian Brown), I shake his hand and make small talk.
Hey, everyone deserves a second chance. Why make enemies? Life's too short,
and demos are a social hobby as well as a technical one. I tell him I'll
find him again to talk more, and we all move inside to enter the party place.
9:00pm:
I can't believe how many people are here! It's easily double that of last
year. There are so many people it's hard to talk to any one person for more
than 2 minutes. I feel bad that people think I'm blowing them off, but I'm
just so damn busy... I mean, people I have *no idea who they are* are coming
up to me and saying stuff like "Hey, thanks for that email five months ago!"
and all I can do is blink several times before stammering a "thank you".
It's a whirlwind of people.
I meet Daredevil / Renaissance again, and we talk enough to ask if he and his
friend Mike can stay in the Hornet room. "No problem," I answer. "Anyone
else? We've got room for more." He responds with, "Well, Tran might show
up. Can he stay here too?" "Sure thing." I am oddly elated that Tran might
show up, and if so, might sleep in the Hornet room. No offense to Charles,
but Holy Shit, nobody in the USA other than Renaissance has even seen this
person.
_____June 1st
12:00pm:
I stop in the Dinosaur room for a bit. There's a TI99/4a computer, a
ColecoVision, a Coleco TeleStar, and a C128 with lots of software. They all
work perfectly!! IOR works the controls of the C128 and I lose myself in
nostalgia heaven for about an hour.
The C128 SID music sounds even better than I remember it. It's even better
than the current emulators, like PlaySID. PlaySID is quite good, but a real
Commodore just sounds richer, like there's a filter on it or something. And
the ColecoVision makes me want to dig mine out and set it up again. If I'd
known it would've been there, I would've brought my 20-or-so ColecoVision
cartridges.
1:30pm:
I just can't work on the demo because of the noise in the party place, plus
everyone can see what I'm working on and keeps asking about it, so I pack up
the computer from the party area and move it back to the Hornet room. Several
people are there working various things; Dark Avenger is showing off his
game, which is simply the most awesome overhead shooter I've ever seen: You
stay in the same place as the entire scene rotates around you. It's so
fucking slick. It's high-res as well--640x400x16 on any VGA card. The
sounds are ripped from Doom and Descent, but they sound much better here than
in their respective games.
I say "hi" to Solstice / Psychic Monks, who is trying to finish up his and
Necros' demo as well. So, here we are, coding our respective demos in the
same room. Cool. :-) I am also very impressed that Necros has coded
sections of the demo. Well, he *is* a CompSci major, so... ;-) We show each
other sections of each other's demo, and we are both impressed by each
other's work. I am *very* impressed by the opening sequence of PM's demo --
It's just fantastic. I will get my ass whomped by these guys as well. Oh,
well... fourth place isn't so bad.
2:30pm:
I just squashed a stupid, stupid memory-leak bug:
freemem(palette,64000);
Coders will know what's wrong with the above and why I was kicking myself for
a full ten minutes when I found it.
I have no paper to write on, and there's still some bad syncing problems with
the demo, so I get desperate and debug the demo by writing on my wristband
that got attached to everyone who bought a ticket to NAID. Later, I get a
kick out of this, so I decide to save my wristband so that I can scan it and
show everyone for some quick coder laughs.
Tran arrives. Yes, Tran *really* arrives. Someone in the hall says "Tran!"
and Daredevil and I get up from talking to look out in the hall outside the
Hornet room. Someone is walking this way, followed by many people.
Daredevil goes into the hall, meets up with Tran, and they keep on walking,
exchanging hellos and meeting again after a year's separation. They keep
walking the halls until they lose the crowd.
I can see why Tran doesn't attend these things; others may claim that it's
because he's so anti-social, but I think it's because he gets mobbed the
second people realize it's him.
Well, here's my initial observations of Tran: He doesn't like pictures taken
of him (I ask him nicely, he declines, and I respect that), he's a
surprisingly fun guy if you can get him to talk to you, and he only speaks
when spoken to. Since he doesn't like his picture taken, I think a little
bit and come up with the perfect description of what he looks like to tell
others: Take Robert Patrick (the bad guy from Terminator 2), put a pony-tail
in his hair, and you've got Tran.
3:30pm:
I'm just about done with the demo when I discover that a virus is on my
machine. I had suspected as much, but I had no proof until I ran a real-mode
program and saw it grow. Shit! Well, the only thing I can do is plod on and
worry about the virus later. Some problems so far: A slow hard drive makes
the demo lose section syncing, because I have to load and de-load all the
stuff in real-time because of the space the video section takes up.
Otherwise, I'll blow the memory limit (8mb). I also have to add Stony's
graphics, and extend the song by about 20 orders to make it last as long as
the demo.
Mellow-D offers to remix the song for the demo, but I thought that that would
hurt Tek's feelings, and we don't have the time anyway, so I respectfully
decline. It certainly is a nice offer, though.
Moby Disk sees the demo in its current state and comments on my debugging
key. He thinks it is really, really cool. Personally, I do too (I'm very
proud of thinking of such an idea), but I don't tell anyone for fear of
making myself seem pretentious.
4:00pm:
Necros holds his tracking seminar, for which he has prepared a full two pages
of outlines for. The seminar turns out to be extremely professional and fun,
and over 40 people show up. I hope someone is getting this on tape, because
it's a fantastic introduction to tracking. I'm even learning something new:
ST3 has an undocumented feature (ALT-C) that attempts to figure out the C2
speed of the current sample. It's inaccurate sometimes, but it's still cool.
I look over at Kiwidog a couple of times during the seminar. He's simply
amazed at how fast -- and *well* -- Necros tracks. I get a kick out of the
drool dripping out of his mouth hung open in awe from time to time. I don't
laugh too hard, though, since I did the same thing last year. I reflect on
that a bit; it's really cool how many people in the scene are here for a
reason: Many of us are truly talented, through practice, perseverance, or a
gift for something (like music or logic). I love the demo scene. I wonder
what I'm doing in it sometimes. ;-)
About the only sore point of the seminar is Aahz / Carcass. Aahz is an
interesting person: He's been around in the C64 scene for a while, and he
has every right to consider himself elite in that respect. His PC knowledge
is less than a year old, but that doesn't seem to stop him from contributing
something, relevant or not, to every conversation, whether or not it was his
conversation to begin with.
During the seminar, for instance, he keeps shouting out "suggestions" that
aren't really relevant to the topic at hand. I wonder if he knows that he's
doing this; it's a shame, really, since he's a neat storehouse of information
and ideas. He just wants to leak that information all the time, whether you
want to hear it or not.
8:00pm:
After Necros' seminar, I go back and finish up the demo to the point where it
syncs up correctly, even if it falls behind a bit. I compile it, then zip it
right up before running it to avoid virus problems. I submit the demo --
finally -- then catch the last five songs of the music compo, which are all
very good. One Carcass musician has a really good song played, and he *just
turned 15*. Sounds like another Jesper Kyd in the making, although Jesper
Kyd didn't use 16 channels. ;)
My own status as a member of Hornet is bringing a new level of 'leetness to
my position in the NA demo scene -- people are meeting me *just to meet a
member of Hornet*. Weird. Cool, but weird.
I go back to the Hornet room to make sure that people knew my machine might
have a virus (doh!) and that they shouldn't really use it. I caught Beyond's
demo in the process -- they were doing some final testing. It looks very
nice -- it runs very slowly, though, since it's in 640x400 VESA. For a
compo, you really want as much speed as you can get, since a high frame rate
looks impressive. Well, hopefully they'll learn that later on. It certainly
looks crisp.
Dark Avenger wants me to beta test the game. I suck at it, but another
Chicago demo freak loves it and plays it for half an hour. He's getting good
at it. The game has more techno music since I saw it at Pyro's last party.
I just can't wait until this thing is finished.
I look around me and notice that the Hornet room is now *the* place to be:
Daredevil, Tran, and other Renaissance guys are here; some KFMF people are
here; and, of course, Hornet is based here. Snowman returns here
occasionally to sell Hornet CDROMs, which are selling like hotcakes. Snowman
playfully walks over to Necros, and asks, "Can you touch these?" Necros
touches all of the CDROMs, and Snowman now jokingly raises the price for "a
CDROM touched by Necros". I then come up with the following pay scale:
A Hornet Underground CDROM: $20.00
A Hornet Underground CDROM touched by Necros: $40.00
A Hornet Underground CDROM touched by Tran: $150.00
A Hornet Underground CDROM touched by PeriSoft: $3.95
Poor PeriSoft! He gets a lot of fun poked at him. But he takes it well, and
we all have a good laugh.
8:30pm:
It's almost the deadline for submitting demos and I'm called back to the main
party place because MED wants my opinion on something (I'm flattered): He's
gotten several requests to extended the demo deadline a bit, and wants to
know what I think. I ask him how long, and he says, "Until 12:00am; another
three hours." I think that it's a good idea, since it will only decrease the
bugs in the demos, which increases overall demo quality. "It's not like
you're extending it another 12 hours or something."
He then extends the deadline to 12:00. I smile and walk away, but inside I'm
elated that someone asked my opinion on something fairly important when it
comes to demos. Hey, it's nice to feel like someone thinks highly of you.
I've never had that in my life before--well, from a guy anyway. (Melissa
thinks the world of me. ;-) And I think the same of her.)
9:00pm:
I have a very, very pleasant talk with Snibble of DCB. We met only briefly
last year, but finally we have a chance to talk while Psycke (sp?) cleans up
their demo in the few extended hours they have until the new deadline. We
talk about how the quality is going way up, and how their demo will hopefully
show the Europeans that we can match their quality and style, and also come
up with our own style in the process. He is very friendly; I find myself
wishing I spoke French fluently so we could talk more comfortably.
I then walk over to Kiwidog's "beginning demo coding" seminar, which is just
starting. Snowman thinks it would be a good idea to help out in case someone
asks a VGA hardware question or something. He's partially kidding me,
because he secretly thinks I'm a fake and I don't know what I'm talking
about, and he always wants me to prove myself. (This doesn't bother me,
actually, because about 18 months ago I would've agreed with him.) :-)
After the usual beginner stuff (memory allocation, real vs. protected, etc.)
and a few blank stares, Kiwidog throws out the itinerary and asks, "Is there
anything specific someone wants to know?" "Polyfilling!" someone shouts out.
We then cover polyfilling, and then he demonstrates how to convert a flat
polyfiller into a Gouraud one.
Later, someone asks a question about VGA hardware tweaking, and I answer it,
and reference that person to the TWEAK16B package. Then the guy next to him
explains that the TWEAK package is in one of the VGA Hardware tricks articles
on ftp.cdrom.com. I wrote that article. Someone actually read it. Cool.
:-)
10:30pm:
Moby Disk / 3some is having problems getting DemoVT to work for a partial
joke demo entry. I wish I could help, but I have no idea what's wrong.
11:00pm:
Crisis: Psychic Monks can't get their demo to link and/or run correctly. All
the parts work fine if you run them stand-alone, but with the music system
linked in and all the code in the same .exe, it locks up. Necros and
Solstice are frantically trying to fix it.
12:00am:
I offer any help I can give to them, but it's not looking good, and the demo
compo deadline is at hand. Tran observes what they're doing, to possibly
offer help. I think to myself that if anyone could help, it's him. He knows
what the problem is, but doesn't want to touch it, which gives me the
impression that something is seriously wrong.
12:30am:
Necros and Solstice give up, 30 minutes after the deadline has passed. I
feel so bad -- their demo was just magnificent, with an opening scene that
had good style. As Necros packs up his computer to lock it up, I can see
that their spirit is crushed. I feel terrible. I wish there was something I
could do.
1:00am:
I walk around and talk to as many people as possible, since I lost six hours
making sure our demo ran fine. I learn the following rumors about the music
compo (I had missed the first 80% of it):
* Julian Brown (Rephlex of Redzone, Vibrance of ACiD, etc.) supposedly left
NAID in disappointment after his song didn't place top 20. It's possible
that he left because his ride was leaving, but I heard that it was because
his song didn't place. Instead of sulking (if that's what he did),
shouldn't he have stayed to hear the songs that *did* place, so he could
study them and learn from them? You're supposed to learn from your
mistakes, not ignore them. Besides, the compo is supposed to be fun, not a
platform for failure. In any case, he hasn't responded to my email since
then.
* Some ACiD guy complained when his 4-minute mega-breakbeat-loop song
didn't place top 20; Basehead had been the judge on that one and given it a
C-. The ACiD person complained so loudly that they played it anyway, which
did nothing to improve ACiD's image ("ACiD--we complain until we get our
way"). I can't believe that he contested *Basehead*, of all people -- Base
has had *way* more experience in this area than this guy had. Still, the
organizers played it to shut this guy up, and after it was finished, the
only people clapping were the ACiD guys. Someone shouted "Stick to ANSI!"
when it was over. RadMan needs to keep a tighter reign on his members.
Aahz is drunk and hanging off of me -- literally, not figuratively. He is
still a bit fun to be around, but he is getting louder and harder to like as
the party progresses. I just hope it's the alcohol talking and not him.
3:30am:
I show Kiwidog a quickie effect that Phred thought up: Use a real-time
plasma for a bump map, and it looks like the surface is made up of water. He
thinks I should enter it in the new effect compo. I compile it up and enter
it.
4:00am:
The effect is quickly disqualified in the new effect compo because the size
limit is 32K, and my exe+ovl+DPMI server is 220K. ;-) Two guys come up to
me after the new effect compo and ask me if I did the effect using blah blah
or using yadda yadda (I am pretty tired at this point) and I agree with the
second guy. He turns to the first guy and says, "Hah, I was right. You owe
me lunch." :-)
5:00am:
Slept in the Dinosaur room, since the Hornet room was locked and the lights
were off. The nostalgic hum from the ColecoVision should lull me to sleep,
but I have difficulty sleeping because Melissa is not here with me.
[to be concluded in DemoNews.127 ...]
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