Tiny Assembly '98 Report
Written by giffe and nightwind
Friday
10.00.....................The doors opened a few minutes too late, as usual.
(10.40)
14.00.....................Sign-up for the outdoor compos
16.00.....................Outdoor compos
19.00.....................C64 competition deadline
22.00.....................Deadline for all other compos
23.00.....................C64 compos begin
Saturday
01.00.....................C64 compos end
12.00.....................Graphics compo
13.00.....................Music compo
14.00.....................Raytrace compo
15.00.....................PC 4k intro compo
16.00.....................Amiga 64k intro compo
17.30.....................PC 64k intro compo
19.30.....................Java demo compo
21.30.....................Windows demo compo
23.30.....................Wild demo compo
Sunday
07.00.....................Amiga demo compo
09.30.....................Animation compo
11.00.....................PC demo compo
14.00.....................Vote counting ends
15.00.....................Prize ceremony
20.00.....................Next year again...
.Party place
Assembly was held at Helsinki fair centre. Its B4 hall was about 4000 square meter in size and it housed 1500 computer places. A computer place was quite small, 100x80 cm. Another hall was reserved for sleeping but some people preferred to sleep in B4. Sun had also some couches at its section and then there was Holiday Inn next to the fair centre so some people slept there as well. There were four restaurants in the fair centre and at least three of them were open 24h.
.Compos
All the entries were pretty much the same as last year. Even the Windows compo sucked again. The Java demo was a surprise. Some of the entries were really cool and everyone was pretty sure that if Complex has an entry it will win - and so it did.
The only thing we start wondering what is the idea of putting the deadline for compos on the same day as the party starts. No one has time to do anything there - one way of killing the meaning of the parties. And also squeezing up 4 and multi channel music compo to a same compo was a very bad stroke. The question remains: are we going to see 4-channel modules at Assembly parties anymore?
Anyway, no super cool demo was seen, but everybody was waiting for the Trauma's demo. Even FC was pretty sure that Trauma is going to win.
The animation compo was pretty amazing, maybe because of the first prize: SGI o2.
.Future Crew
'After 5 years of...
...silence the original gang is back...
...to unleash the beast.' - FC's flyer
Future Crew is back in business after 5 years of silence, but no demo entry was seen. Anyway some entries were seen like Pixel's entry for the wild compo and some graphics. Pixel's studio made Wild Compo entry was pretty boring. We think everyone hoped that it will not win anything - and thanks to smart voters it didn't.
We look forward to see and hear some releases from FC in this fall, especially music from Skaven. Some of the latest releases from him are pretty boring. Has Skaven lost his skills or what?
.Lamers at Assembly'98?
Assembly as a party is getting worse and worse every year. Mainly Assembly is becoming more and more a whole family computer festival, where you can play as much as you want to. This kind of lame activity appears as 500 or more lamergamers. Most of them playing Quake 24 hours a day. Okay, almost 24 hours but when they weren't playing Quake they were watching hard core porn. Also the a Finnish magazine Mikrobitti helped to get more gamers by setting up some game tournaments. But this is just a sign of commerciality, on the other hand the Ho ho ho - what have we here - values of the prizes are increasing as a bunch of lamers well. So, lamers or money?-)
We just wonder if the compo topics after few years will be something like "12.30 - Quake level design compo" or "Quake skin compo", anyway.
And if all those Quake-lamers weren't annoying enough, some people had even brought their laser pointers. This didn't make the demos much more interesting. And not all people wanted to kill these persons - some wanted to have their own pointers as well.
Also there were some people who didn't only want to have their own back when leaving. We lost at least one twisted pair cable, two BNC terminators, two t-connectors and one power cord. We even saw an announcement "The person who has taken infrared mouse from table XX should also take the receiver because it won't work without it. Or then return the mouse."
.Audio and video
According to the Assembly organisers, the sound amplifying power was 10000 watts although they probably didn't use all of it. It would probably have sounded nicer if there had been some subwoofers on the floor than having those tremble speakers so loud.
The 'big' screen wasn't big at all! We hope all those Quake-lamers paid enough money to buy a new one for next year. Some people said that it would be nice to follow the compos from a restaurant on the other side of the hall. We think it was a bad suggestion.
Of course, almost everyone had brought their own sound reproducing systems - and they liked very much 'Josh Wink's Higher State of Consciousness'. Also Scooter and Sash were quite popular - regular party music.
.Boozembly
Sorry, we didn't have any time to visit Boozembly, but we can tell you that Surfing's (/Ram Jam) condition was telling everything about it. Some members of pwp were also playing
.Other Assembly features
Nothing special to say about the party network, worked pretty well (if you weren't using ethernet). So the warez-elite dudes loved it. The 'sauna' was also available, We just wonder how many sceners visited it.
.The End
It's a pity that Assembly is getting more and more commercial, but that's the way the system works, but anyway we have no intention to ban or to boycott this major party. Some good news now... we have been hearing rumours everywhere that Assembly is a four day party next year and there will be lots of new cool compos also... but remember this are only rumours, until then be cool.
cya there...
- giffe/fungi
- nightwind
For more information: http://www.assembly.org / http://www.assembly98.net