Party Report from Tokyo Demo Fest 2014
Written by Setsuko/6octaves
This year's Tokyo Demo Fest, Japan's one and only demoparty, was held on 21-23 March (3 days!) I visited the 2nd day, and here is what I've seen...
The venue was same as last year's, and it was at Institut français du Japon – Tokyo. Though it's located in quite a tradtional Japanese area, this place is very Frenchy (as you can imagine). This mixture seems very Tokyo to me, and actually this is a very convenient area too. You can just go out for a bit and check some nice shops and restaurants, or pop into the quiet shrines and ponder why you couldn't finish your demo by the deadline.
When you arrive, you're greeted by the infoteam.. oh wait, what?
Here's inside the venue (the place is usually a restaurant). Comparing with video reports from Revision/Assembly, people here were more sober :) but they looked relaxed and hang out with their gadgets, chatting and sharing their knowledge. This was my second year to visit TDF, and I felt there were more girls than last year. (Go demoscene gals!!)
There was a small "retro computer museum" in the party place. You can see Amiga, MSX, NES (Famicom). By now I know Amiga was/is very popular in Europe, but this machine is almost unknown in Japan. (Wiki says this was because Amiga initially didn't support Japanese characters... and "no Amiga in 80-90s" means "no demoscene culture was born in Japan"... hmm. I think I'll leave this to experts...) So for me, it was the first time to see and touch an actual Amiga. And it seemed like most of the visitors were same as me. There were always many amigos around it.
Last year, @syoyo san showed me his Light Transport Equation name card, but this year it was printed on a T-shirt. He delivered a seminar about browser-based raytracing on the first day.
Just because we all grew up with this. You say Goomba, we say Kuribo. I saw it on Twitter that someone brought Family Basic and coded with it on the third day.
@Wkter is a big retro game fan from Norway. He let me play Super Mario 3 on his laptop with the controller he made. (He also gave away Salmiakki and made people confused.)
From impromptu workshop table "Learning Finnish/German/Japanese at the same time". Other lineups were, "Watch Amiga demo on real Amiga", "Coding BASIC on MSX", "Check out what I've made 10 years ago" and many others.
In the garden of party place, three "latern robos" were entertaining us. When I approached, they walked up and did weird dancing (or at least it looked like it). Cute.
Caught in the act! The Revision dude was spreading party stickers at TDF (aka "great marketing"). Thanks for the sticker, mog.
This year's TDF held 5 compos: Combined music, Combined graphics, Wild, 7-lines GLSL graphics and Combined demo. Partly due to the workshop they gave on the first day, 7-lines GLSL graphics compo got 19 entries. I have no idea how it's possible to do that with just 7 lines of code, but it was like a fast-paced small magic show and I loved it. Loading, showing and people's reaction were instant. This was really a show-off act with hint of humor... Now that sounds like a compo, doesn't it?
Though there weren't as many entries as 7-lines, Combined demo compo looked very impressive to me. One of the highlights during the demo compo was that I happened to sit right next to its creator. And to defend myself, it wasn't intentional. (I don't know how to describe this, but I kept thinking "Oh my gawd, this guy made this demo..") And hearing other people's clapping/screaming or feeling serious silence were something I cannot get by watching on stream. As for technical side... ah, what am I saying, that's something you guys are very good at it, so go check out the released demo by yourself! :)
[AD] Tokyo is somewhere you'll feel like living in the demos. (But hopefully the buildings won't fall apart:D) Work out your vacation schedule around TDF and come visit! The guys at TDF will share you some hidden gems (like best PC parts shops?) that you won't find in a guidebook..
Thanks for reading!
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