Party report of Convention '99
13-15th of August
Prologue
For those of you who wonder, the Convention is a demoparty held once every year in Norway. It's usually quite small, only a few hundred participants per year. This year, due to a new and larger party-place, the organisers had capacity for about 500 sceners. (Did only sceners arrive? Read on!)
Arrival
I arrived some hours after the party had begun and stumbled into the dark void while carrying my large (and heavy) 17" monitor. The strange landscape in front of me consisted mainly of strangely mixed sounds, and hundreds of flashing screens. Paying the fee and getting the ticket took only about a minute.
After I had settled, I hooked up to the LAN and checked my mailbox for important "last minute" messages. The hi-tech-jungle of stereos, speakers, PCs and monitors started to feel like home.
The People
After evaluating that my equipment was intact, I started to explore the facilities and the people present. Only a few minutes later, I could confirm the sad fact that the scene is moving in an unfortunate direction. The world is flooding with lamers! People gathered at a demo-party in order to use IRC and games over the LAN. Could anyone tell me the point of this?? Is it really that interesting to write instead of speaking to the person next to you?
In a distant corner, I discovered a few c64-veterans who were already
busy making their contributions for the c64 and gfx compo (which turned
out to be very nice). Then I met Boo of Talent and Spaceballs, who was
responsible for the compos.
A well known scener here in Norway, who currently works for the same game-developer that made Mortal Kombat. (Sorry Ulf, I just can't remember!)
Facilities
There were extremely good facilities at Convention. A designated room for movie lovers, where new and known movies where shown. High quality sound and image. A 20 hours-a-day open kiosk. A club party on the top floor, during Saturday night. (Even though most people where busy playing Quake or Kingpin.) A sale of essential hardware. Showers and wardrobes. And, finally, large projectors for the compos.
Compos
This year's compos were the usual ones: c64 demo, graphics, multi-channel music, Wild demo, and AMIGA vs PC demo.
First up was the c64 compo. As soon as they fired up the music and display I was yet astonished by the capabilities of the good old veteran. Acid trips must be boring in comparison to this!!
The graphics compo also went well, and some of the pics were quite fantastic. A friend of mine, Boo, won this compo. (Very good pixelled art!) In the multi-channel compo, there were a lot of standard techno-tunes, except for a few really amazing ones! The winner mod, called "Romance" by Chromag of Talent and Haujobb, is really exceptional with its acid-jazz style! GET IT!! The wild demos were not shown to the audience, because of lack of a cable. Disappointing for the few contributors, including me.
Amiga vs. PC Demo
Yeah guys! The amigascene is not completely dead!! (Thank god!) I was really excited about the democompo this year, maybe because we (Magic Dreams) had worked on a demo for about four months for this compo. The first demo shown was called "Delphi demo" by Paranoid. It had to be the most crappy demo I've seen in a long time.
Party Conclusion
Every year the sceners get fewer and fewer, lamers get more and more. In the compos this year, I noticed that many participated in more than one compo. This, of course, means that there are less contributors than there are productions. It's sad that people don't use their creativity instead of wasting their intellect on violent and mind twisting games. But, even though it lacked the "hardcore underground scene"-feeling, the convention was quite alright!
Some contributions from the Convention can be downloaded from the Convention's website.
Feel free to contact me if you have any comments or questions.