Lucky and Tigrou Party 3 Report
The LTP 3 was held the last weekend of August at Crosnes near Paris in France. This party was organised by some of the best French demo groups (Pulse, Bomb, Nomad, Orange Juice).
A few months ago, the LTP 3 website was opened, we could read the competition rules and ask questions about these rules on a web forum. This was a really nice idea: we submit our ideas and we adapt the rules to our vision of the scene. There wasn't any stupid rule like we see in other demoparties. This site was only in English and this was very cool for a French demoparty. The entry price wasn't very expensive (120 FF or $20 for French people, 100 FF or $16.5 for foreigners). There was an online reservation center with secure payment for all the reservations. On the site the LTP 3 was presented as a "real demospirit", "no gamers" party. It was a good idea to say that on the site: it's the first party I've been where the organisers said that gamers aren't welcome. The days before LTP 3, on the LTP 3 website and on the #demofr topic we could see "No places left for LTP 3!". Of course I had reserved my place before.
The party was held 12km south of Paris at Crosnes. The party place was really cooool: a large room (capacity for 500 sceners), a very nice screen, a powerful sound system. The organisers were upstairs so they could see all of the room. There were many parking places around the location. The food wasn't very expensive but we didn't have much choice, btw there were some fastfood places nearby. The screen was really nice, usually party screens are too dark or they don't show the colors exactly as they appear on your monitor, here it was perfect. The sound system was correctly set up: it was very strong without any saturation and it didn't destroy our ears. I didn't notice any echo effect like I noticed at Wired 98. The network worked very fine, we could submit our votes via a web server and our produtions via an ftp server.
The major problem came during friday night: a power failure. The organisers were really active: they called an electrician to help them, and 3 hours later our computers worked again and all the deadlines were delayed by 3 hours. I think they were very professional because it worked perfectly during the rest of the party. Another problem was the heat: about 35 degrees (Celsius) in the room.
Many foreigners were here: 13 nationalities were represented. I saw a lot of international groups: Tpolm, TBL, Calodox, Haujobb, Imphobia, Scoopex, Aegis... Also, there was most of the French groups: Nomad, Bomb, Ribbon, Pulse ('cause they organised this party), Eclipse, Move, Cocoon, Orion, Knights, Popsy Team and many Arf!Studios member groups were here. I didn't see many gamers, only one playing alone. Most of the people were real sceners. There was a wonderful ambience in the room: most sceners were working, the organisers displayed many demos on the screen, from C64 to 3dfx, from Amiga to ST. An example of this wonderful demospirit: When they displayed State Of The Art, two sceners went in front of the screen and danced! We had many funny animations: outdoor football with Djamm, singing competition with Yes... We waited for the opening ceremony until Saturday, because the opening movie wasn't finished. When we saw it we understood why... it was marvellous! They used one the scene of the ltp3 invitation they made and and they added trains, spaceships ... It was really fun to see. If you have the opportunity to download it (200 mb) go on !! Thank you Traven and Xbarr, your opening movie is wonderful!
The first competition was the chiptune competition: the goal was to make a modfile with a 10kb size limit. Rez (the chiptune man) came first with a classic chiptune, Traven/Syndrome made an Arabic chiptune that was very different to the other chiptunes and finished 2nd.
The 2D graphics competition had 37 entries: many good pictures and only 3 votes, a hard job. As usual Made/Bomb finished 1st with the wonderful Leo's World, Alias/Digital Murder was 2nd with Adam & Eve. There were so many good entries, it was really hard to make a choice.
The 4 channel music competition was won by Will Be, and the multichannel competition was good: Rez won with a goa track, MedCg finished 2nd with a nice groovy track. The mp3 competition was won by Zodiak/Cascada, I liked the Radix track which finished 3rd, Will Be (the French Hip Hop touch) ranked 2nd with an instrumental hip hop mp3 track "Move On".
The game creation competition was disapointing: only one game was good. Were the rules too hard (100kb size limit)? I don't know...
The wild competition was as usual very strange: Mentasm finished 1st with a tiny animation of Lego games. Moxica/Move made a scream remix that was fun to see; it ranked 2nd. KP Pictures presented an animation which came 3rd, their animation was nice but it wasn't coherent, they just put pictures without any storyboard. Melting Pot made a funny wild, they cooked 512 cookies and they gave them to us.
I was sleeping during the oldschool competitions and the website competitions... And now the code competitions.
The 4kb was a bit disappointing. Only one entry was very good: Arthur and Sylex won with "What is art?". Popsy Team made a Matrix remix, it was fun to watch but the music was very awful. Titou made a Linux 4kb using the frame buffer device. The rules were "4kb limitation, must play sound". I think it was really hard to include sound in a 4kb, Arthur's 4kb used adlib devices, and this can explain why it sounds well.
The 64kb intro competition was nice! Only 4 entries but only good productions. The first entry was Tpolm's, their 64kb intro was very artistic, a lot of design, good music, good job Tpolm! Haujobb's intro was in my opinion better than all 64kb intros from TBL, a wonderful 3d engine, nice textures, much better than many "size unlimited" demos. This was, I think, the best 64kb intro ever seen. Eclipse made a good 64kb intro called 1992, with this name it must be oldschool! And it was nice, hi-resolution oldschool effects, nice music, good graphics. Calodox' "Hiatus" intro was very nice too, a nice design, antialiased 3d. Haujobb finished 1st, Eclipse 2nd and Calodox 3rd.
The demo competition was awaited by everybody here at the LTP 3. There were 12 entries. Orion won with a Direct3D demo "NightFall". This is one of the best D3D demos I've seen: it works and it's perfectly smooth on most cards. The music is a trip hop mp3 track by Will Be and it fits exactly to the ambience of this demo. The 3d scenes are really nice, the textures are good and it looks really realistic. The bitmaps are comic book style. Thank you Kacy, Pitbull and Splif for your artwork. At the beginning of Nightfall, we see dark middle age 3d scenes, then there is the greeting part with a wonderful 3d effect and afterwards, a very cool scene in a big city with cars and buildings. Niakool made the d3d engine, Jaylee made the system code. Good work Orion!
The second demo was Synaps by Cocoon. Their 3d engine is the same as the one from their precedent demos (Shad I & II), it isn't very fast, but the 3d scenes are nice. Compared to their precedent demos, this one looks much more techno. It's a very good demo, it isn't as fast as Orion's Direct3D but it looks very good.
The third demo was "Nothing New" by Popsy Team. This demo was done in one week. It looks very nice, they have a nice design. Usually Popsy Team's demos are with techno music, in this demo, Traven made the music, it's very groovy and it fits the style of Nothing New. Thank you GHell,U2 and Taggy!
T-rex's demo "Sexual Agression" ranked 4th: it's the first time I've watched a demo like this one, it's soft sex with good gfx and nice code. Usually sexual demos aren't very artistic, but this one is.
All in all the LTP 3 was my best party, not only because we had many good productions, this party was a really good party. Every attender was a real scener. I had a lot of fun at the LTP: Will Be singing his recent success Arf Mafia in front of 500 sceners (I was just behind him), the madeleine's throwing competition, Yes and Skal on the mike... It'll be very hard for the LTP 4 to be better.
Cya at the LTP 4 next year!!