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Text File | 2003-02-06 | 17.7 KB | 339 lines

<head> <title="...forever..."> <font=monaco10.fnt> <font=newy36.fnt> <font=time24.fnt> <image=back.raw w=256 h=256 t=-1> <buf=5070> <bgcolor=-1> <background=0> <link_color=000> <module=console.mod> <pal=back.pal> colors: 251 - black </head> <body> <frame x=0 y=0 w=640 h=5070 b=-1 c=-1> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRIPPING TO UNCONVENTIONAL 2002 (Lengenfeld.de 30.09-01.09.2002) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FIRST ACT It has been a sunny morning on Friday, August 30. This had become quite unusual regarding the past weeks. Actually we wanted to take the train from Dresden to Lengenfeld, where Unconventional was going to take place. But the flood had destroyed the train connection. As both, NO!/Escape and me (505/Checkpoint) don't own a car we had a problem. This problem was solved as Christin, NO's girlfriend organized something for us. So her parents picked us up (and drove two hours for that) brought us to the convention and brought us back when the party had ended. In other words, without Christin and her parents help, we couldn't have been there. Thanks a lot! :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REFLECTION This was already the third edition of the <link=g8.scr>Unconventional.</l> Still taking place in this hall on the hill as the previous years, which is a nice place for a party, except the missing showers. This was our second time there, as we missed last year's edition due to an important party in Dresden. However, I remembered the Unconventional 2000 party not like a usual demo party, rather than a gaming and fun event strongly referring to Atari Computers.The compos two years ago were a kind of unserious, last years there was no beamer, as I heard, and for this year, well, I didn't expect any serious demo competition at all. First, because of the lack of entries, second, because Unconventional in my opinion is not focussing on demos (although everyone there knows them and watches them and likes them). Fun, gaming, talking and doing weird stuff is in the foreground at this party, which is not bad at all! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ARRIVAL AND STARTUP Finding the party place, going in, and yes.. meeting Mad Butscher of F2, the main organizer of Unconventional. It was really nice to see him again as we usually used to meet more than once in a year and talking with him is always great fun. He told us whom he expected to come, and as we assumed before, this would be a party with highlighting on the Atari XE/XL.As this was NO's and my first Atari machines, fortunately this is interesting for us, too. We built up our equipment (Falcon of course:) beside Charon/Escape who was already here. Partying with Charon is fun, said from experience, so I was glad he managed it to come. In the following hours the small rest of the ST/Falcon fans appeared (Flash/TNB Design, Moondog/.tSCc. and Remo/.tSCc, who drove around the town till the early morning or so without finding the partyplace of Unconventional. Some signs on the road could have done wonders there!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMERCIAL BREAK Sometime in the night an a bit strange guy from United Kingdom suddenly arrived, who was bringing lot of boxes with software, games, lynx and jaguar machines etc. into the hall. He was "16/32 Systems", an Atari soft- ware reseller. It was nice to look around the boxes and see games I always wanted to have (Stardust, Team, Substation for instance). I didn't buy any- thing, as I don't play games anymore. I was interested in a console, but when I saw the prices.. well .. erm.. the Jaguar game "Atari Karts" was sold for 135 Euro! Oh oh.. maybe it's seldom, maybe it's great - what do I know - it was however, definitely fucking expansive. So, seeing that some- how did make me not like the selling policy of this "company", although I know that companies are very rare on the Atari sector. But that somehow was simply uncool for my taste. However, respect for coming over the long way, especially as it made sense for the people who bought stuff there. Eating Pizza, drinking beer, chatting, watching cool demos on Atari 8-Bit and.. .. .. I woke up on this rather rainy SATURDAY and realised that I finally was at an Atari party again since a far too long time. Lovely keyclick noise here, ugly loader-beeps from 8-Bit there ;-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACORN WAS THERE Coffee was for free, so the beginning of the new day was safe. Actually, I don't really remember what I did when, but I remember to have talked to different people, for example to Detlef, a nice man who is one of the last Acorn dealers in Germany. There actually was a Acorn user meeting included in Unconventional, consisting of four participants. But seeing those Acorn machines is always interesting and as their owners are that nice people, it's double as interesting. Another Acorn user who was there was MoAco, the editor and publisher of the Triple-A-Mag. This paper mag has stopped, as support in writing articles was low and MoAco had very little time, due to his job. This is a bit sad to hear, but maybe it's coming up again, because as MoAco meant: never say never.. :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WALKING AROUND A(IGHT) BIT When I walked from table to table and looked what people where doing, I could see a lot of interesting things. I mean, that harddiscs and big memory for the Atari XE/XL already exist is known. There, one could see big towers behind the small 8-Bit machines, with SCSI or IDE built in. Many 8-Bitters had their Atari connected to a Laptop as diskdrive and a handful of them used XE/XL emulators on the PC, too. Impressive topics about this "small" computer are for instance the networking possibility and the IP, which has been converted to this system. Other interesting issues were new software developments for the 8-Bit, such as updates of BOSS X, a GUI featuring the start menu and all the comfort stuff you know from other OS's. Mad Butscher/F2 showed me a preview of his new game "Bremspunkt", which means as much as "breakpoint" and is a little car racing game for 4 players. Other people were composing musics, programming or just playing games. The most interesting issue on 8-Bit in those day however, was a new demo by Taquart. This crew is pretty well known on this machine and has already released several great demos ("Really Unreal" to name one). And now.. some weeks ago a new demo came out with a total play time of 14 minutes or so. It is called "NUMEN" (is Greek, means "genious" or so) and starts up loading both sides of the floppydisc into memory. This means the demo only runs on extended XL's (320 kb minimum I think). After loading you can see many nice effects, some of them would be blasters on ST for sure, beside a nice pokey music. Great graphics and all, but to come to the point, the most interesting thing about this demo is the built in 3D-engine. It is the same engine that was supposed to be included in the game "VECTOR". The realisation of that game is unsure now, as the coder misses a good level - designer. However, the routines are great and also the base for the most effects. You can see a 3D-vector world with opening doors, stairs and things like that, which have never been done on 8-bit before. The speed of the effects is hard to estimate for me of course, but it was fast enough for sure :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ST/FALCON PEOPLE Charon and NO! were coding for hours. That was mostly trying out some new things, but it surely had nothing to do with building a new demo or intro. The same went for the other coder, who was there: Remo/.tSCc. - the GFA - Basic genious. His crew had forbidden to show any previews, so he didn't. But it was really funny to spend some time with him, especially when he gave me an introduction into the depths of GFA-Basic. And before, I never could understand, that one can be so happy about a pixel on the screen, but now I can! Well, he showed me how to write pixels into screen memory and some basic things.. I made it to an circle on the screen, which was making me happy enough :-) Moondog was supposed to release a new UCM issue on that party, but as rain has put his cellar under water and other unexpected stuff happened, the next issue will be released later on, but as we all are used to that.. ;-) He worked on some articles for it though. Flash/TNB-Design was working hard on some graphics for a Lynx-conversation of Reservoir Gods' "Bunion Canyon" - until his harddisc fucked up. This did not make him give up and he drove on using a disc and restarting the whole issue. When the party was over the next day, he said he had reached about 1/3 of what he had before the party ;-) Of course, it would have been nice, if some more people from the ST and Falcon would have been there, but after all, I cannot complain to have had not fun - in contrary, I really enjoyed the entertaining and friendly Atari climate as well as the good pizza and beer.. btw.. the prizes for drinks were more than just fair.. I would call it rather like buying something in the supermarket. You could went to the corner of the mainhall where the bottles were put at, and left those few required cents for it on a plate nearby. That is what I call trusting people! And indeed, on a party like that there will never be stolen anything. It is just to familiar and all. Actually I sometimes thought, that Unconventional is a kind of the German Imponance party.. people that know each other already (or not) meet and have a weekend full of fun and without real releases ;-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMPETITIONS! Not really the core of Unconventional parties for sure - but there were compos in "different" categories. One should forget the demoaspect a bit when thinking about Unconventional competitions. It is rather like doing weird things: The first compos were hold on Saturday afternoon. Three teams were set up and competed against each other in the following disciplines: => 1. harddisc throwing => 2. harddisc into-the-beerbox-throwing => 3. commodore-keyboard-baseball, whereas a pentium I is the ball => 4. golf (normal(!) golf) The outdoor compos were probably the most exciting part of the whole day, as almost everyone was out there trying its best or just watching the others. Mad Butscher insisted on dividing the three teams in the Acornteam, the 8- Bitteam and the 16/32-team. The most practised team(as they do those contests every year) won, the 8-bit team. 16/32ers ranked second (with a big effort by Charon/Escape) and the Acornteam jumped on 3rd place. I just want to _try_ to explain the funny atmosphere with one example. In category 2, you had to throw a harddisc into a 10 meters distanced beerbox. A beerbox is this case for 20 bottles of beer, for those who don't know. Actually no one ever managed to hit into the box, but once, when Charon was throwing, the harddisk landed about 4 centimetres beside the box and when it landed the watching crowd was enthusiastically releasing comments like "Woah!", "Oooohh!!" or "Booaah ey!" .. and even I was saying so. Some seconds later my brain started thinking and realized about what sort of senseless issue I was so thrilled about some seconds before. That released a kind of fit of laughter in me and almost comes back when I remind this situation... :-)) It rocks! Inside the building some other compos were going on since Friday already. The Gaming competitions. They were hold on different Atari systems: On the VCS2600 you could fight for the most points in "SPACE INVADERS" and "QIX" (how much I love that game!), on Atari ST it was some Minter-game, whose name I forgot and on the Jaguar you could play "SUPER BURN OUT" until you never wanted to touch it again. However, you could play those games as often you wanted and noted the points down yourself on the highscore list on a paper nearby. In the meanwhile everyone could relax a while and go out where the grill - master Helmut Weidner (thanks!) was preparing some tasty sausages for the visitors. This BBQing thingy just always is a great idea on parties! :-) Another interesting gaming compo started sometime in the afternoon: the Lynx compo, where 6 or 8 (don't really remember) Lynx machines were linked and the game "Checkered Flag" was the centre of interest. As almost always Gamingwizzard Mr.XY/Light won all competitions. This way he won his 6th Lynx machine or so.. :-) The evening went over with FUTURERAMA running on the wall.. especially this one episode about "what would be if world would be a computer game".. just incredibly funny and not possible to explain :-) The competitions in the usual categories started sometime in the night then too. To summarize them: They were weird ;-) No one of us seriously expected some great demos or so, so it wasn't a big disappointment when there were none. On the graphical side of life, five or six pictures were presented, almost all showing manga motives. They were no masterpieces for sure, but not the worst gfx I have ever seen either. After all nothing special in this compo. People voted by raising hands, which turned out to be an ok method for voting under this circumstances. The music competition featured one Pokey song by RIK/F2. The visitors (about 30 btw) stand around his XE and were starring on the screen, which displayed scrolling hexadecimal commands all the time. Funny situation to look at, this was.. :-) However, RIK made first place of course. The last compo was the strangest of all so far.. the history about it is, that two 8-Bit guys wanted to write a sector copy program together but both started independently at home programming on it. So two different versions were created and this competition finally should reveal, which of both is the better one. So the visitors of the convention stood around the 8-Bit machine and watched the copy programs copying. The first one needed 2 minutes to copy the disc, the second one only 1:98 minutes. :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE REST The evening went on.. I had this lucky hour when GFA basic and me together succeeded in putting that circle on the screen and beside me, Charon and NO! were coding and coding and coding.. Charon felt asleep once and slept with the head on his falcon. The funnier was the red mark he had on his head when waking up again some hour later. The two Escape coders were apparently not coding on a new demo but rather on a program in order to give those 8-Bit freaks back what they gave us the whole time: the discdrive-loading-beep-beep! Everyone who knows it gonna understand that it is going to make aggressive sooner or later,especially when it comes echoed from every corner of the hall (okay.. it's not really that bad, but probably the Escape coders just wanted to do something relaxing and needed a good reason for that;) So Charon and NO! took the Atari Profibook and did some funny BIOS patch which caused a loading noise on the Falcon, w henever the machine accessed or wrote on harddisc or floppy discs. It should be released by now. Whenever you are going to visit an 8-Bit party make sure you have downloaded this program from the Escape-sites before! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BYE BYE As promised, we were picked up on Sunday afternoon. Before we had endless chats and coffee drinking again and as always, plans are quickly created for what to work on in future and all.. I have to say, I wonder a bit about myself, as the demoside of things has always been the most interesting part of it all for me. But once again (like on Unconventional 2000) I am really looking forward going there again, and that although I am not a big gamer. Mad Butscher and the other organizers did a good job again (when one realizes, that Unconventional is not a demoparty in the classic sense, but has a different concept). It is a really special atmosphere, which is hard to explain for me, let's say it like that: I felt somewhat like home there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- August, 2nd, 2002 fiveofive/checkpoint ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- </frame> </body>