Breakpoint 2003 report
After nearly 8 hours of train travelling we (Rob and me) arrived at the train station Bingen. The shuttle bus to the party place (and some other locations in the city) arrived in time and so we reached the party at around 14:35 at the former military depot in which the uc 6.22 had been held last year. Breakpoint is the successor to Mekka-Symposium, that's why we expected quite a lot of visitors. And indeed, the party hall was already pretty crowded, but with enough space for a few 100 more people. The quality of the big screen was really good, but the screen itself imo not big enough for the hall. The organizers hadn't been able to get a bigger one, the next available size was already too big for the hall. I had taken along some Mindcandy DVDs and I was able to sell them quite fast. The same happened to my 'planet scene' CD.
At some places of the hall it was quite cold even in the sunny afternoon and now in the evening some heating would have been nice. outside, however, there was a huge camp fire where you could warm yourself up.
Breakpoint proved to be a very international event with several US visitors (Dan Wright of Fusecon, Sir Garbagetruck at his first party after more than 15 years active in the scene, and others) and also visitors from Australia (Shock). The opening ceremony at around 21:00 mainly consisted of some minutes of music, followed by a short speech by Scamp. Later in the evening the cold air in the hall was the main theme. One of the heaters wasn't working like it should and so the temperature dropped a bit more with every hour. Anyway, the general party atmosphere was relaxed. The live act with doj at the guitar and kb singing started with a little delay. It was quite strange. ;-) Afterwards the last event of the first day started: my demoshow, and everything was running without any problem. This time I also showed four amiga demos using Rob's a1200. Later in the night many people gathered around the camp fire.
The freezing in the hall continued also after some hours of sleeping under the table (since the temperatur in the sleeping hall was too low), but the organizers promised that they would fix the problem during the day. Meanwhile my Mindcandy DVDs had been sold out and I took a shower break due to which I missed parts of the c64 4k-compo, but what I was able to see was quite good. The short Amiga 4k-compo was dominated by two entries from Spaceballs + Ephidrena (Timur Lenk) and Scarab with 'Fact'. The hall gradually began to get warmer now after the problems had been fixed. Frenetic &emp; r0k rocked the PC 4k-compo massive with their stunning intro, you must see it to believe it's real! But also Fuzzion, Freestyle and Hazard Design were showing nice stuff. In the afternoon Steeler announced the rules for the fast compo: overcrowded bus, camp fire, big and fat heating tube, 'ms is dead'. The 96k game compo in the early evening wasn't that spectacular, but the games by ainc and Calodox were quite good.
The prize giving for the scene.org awards was a 'plugin' of this year's Breakpoint party and started around 19:00. 'Variform' by Kewlers was the big winner: it placed best in the categories "best soundtrack", "best effects" and "best demo". 'Squash' won in the category "breakthrough performance" while Potion's 'Planet Potion' was declared "best intro". The next scene.org awards would be given at Assembly.
A norwegian guy demonstrated to us at the camp fire place how the consume of too much alcohol affected your control, but also several Finnish guys were boozing all the time. My table neighbours were told by the organizers to stop playing their porn shit all the time - after all, we also had female visitors.
The c64 demo compo had only 4 entries and the overall quality wasn't that great. The wild compo had 23 entries, but luckily most of them were really enjoyable, some animations were even excellent (rollercoaster simulation by Deichshaf for example). A funny entry was the 'emulation' of a c64 demo just with paper (pappe light 120%). The compo ended with an an entry from nosfe against the US led war on Iraq - not all sceners remained silent.
The first competion on Sunday, the Amiga 64k-compo, was cancelled due to a lack of entries. So I had the time to take the bus to the sports hall where the showers were located. Immediately after my return the PC 64k-compo began and the best stuff was shown at the end of the compo. Conspiracy rocked the house with their 'Project Genesis', but also farbrausch's 'Candytron' and the coop intro 'Subversive' by Bypass + Black Maiden were very nice. Also the weather was really fine now and so quite many people stayed outside (where the real party was going on ;-)).
In the afternoon a fun-compo was announced: build your own balloon. Also in the afternoon a big mystery was revealed: the identity of the legendary ohase (#szene.ger flooder and probably the most kickbanned person on the channel). He wasn't acting cleverly enough during the party and finally he had his 'coming out'. But he is still alive. ;-)
The fast-compo in the late afternoon had some quite funny entries. The entry 'Scamp, warm my feet' by BenJam in the streaming music compo (to the music of Ben E. King's 'Stand by me') was imo one of the best. All Amiga demos would win a prize just because there were only 3 entries, but all were really nice and the demo 'Magia' by TBL really excelled. Madwizards participated with a PPC demo and Iris with their demo 'Light 2'.
Then it was time for ballooning. The balloons from the fun-compo should now rise into the sky and the biggest and it was the most complex construction that would remain in the air for the longest time.
The console compo surprised us with a kickass GBA demo by Unique called 'Phloam'.
Nearly the first half of the PC demo compo was quite annoying, but then the quality rose. Farbrausch rocked the compo once more with a killer disco demo (fr025), but also the demos by Kolor (Relais), Federation Against Nature (Still sucking nature) and Squoquo (squoquo's mansion) were really nice to watch. However, all these demos probably require more or less high end hardware.
As soon as the compos were over, the rest of the party would go on around the camp fire. For the results check scene.org.
Breakpoint was a really nice and funny party with a unique scene atmosphere. For me it was like 2/3 of Mekka-Symposium and 1/3 of the Underground Conference. Apart from problems with the toilets (which couldn't always be used) and the heating on Friday and Saturday, there were also some really positive things like the graphics compos, in which all steps were shown (even in the c64 graphics compo) and the organizers occasionally zoomed into the pictures to show details. This will set new standards for demoparties.
The food support wasn't that cheap, but the quality was way better than at Mekka. In contrast to last year's Mekka there was also no problem with theft. Kudos to the organizers for doing a very good job. This party will definitly have a future!