The Huge Hugi Newscorner - Part 4

Written by Adok

PARTY NEWS

Abort '98 [supplied by: Black/Twilight]

Abort '98 us a demo party that will be held in Slovenia in December. Invite intro / info soon. Care to go? Stay tuned.

Assembly '98 - http://www.assembly98.net

Although Assembly '98 has been over for a while now, you can still find an e-zine about this party and other things at http://www.assembly98.net. The article are of very various quality. For example, the article about Future Crew is written in a very professional style whereas there are also loads of tiny, less interesting texts. But check it if you want to have more info about the party.

Bizarre '98 [supplied by: Network (http://www.scene-central.com)]

Bizarre '98, the second largest demo party in The Netherlands after Takeover, has been held at the end of August.

There is a huge collection of photos from this party (400 pieces) available at the Quad homepage: http://www.quad98.net

A small/medium size party report by Skin/Quad is on Network.

Bustrip to Evoke - http://www.surfinn-hoy.de/busevoke/ [supplied by: mg]

mg (Ex-GNPmaster/Cyberpictures) wanted to organize a bustrip from Hoyerswerda (East part of Germany) to Aachen/Germany which is very close to the Western border. Unfortunately it didn't work out because too few people were interesting, but anyway it was great from you, Maik, to do that and in this way start your real scene activity!

Coven '98 - http://www.wantree.com.au/~spoonman/shots.htm [supplied by: spoonman]

Loads of photos from the South Australian demo party Coven, held in July, are available on Spoonman's web-site both in thumb nail and big format.

Dreamhack '98 - http://www.dreamhack.org [supplied by: Orange Juice (http://ojuice.citeweb.net)]

According to the online magazine Orange Juice, it is now confirmed that Bjorn Lynne (Dr.Awesome/Crusaders) will be at the party selling CD's, and he's also sponsoring with compo prizes. It's also decided that there'll be an Atari Demo Competition on request.

Emission '98 [supplied by: Quad homepage (http://www.quad98.net)]

Quad writes on their homepage:

"The Dutch demo scene is getting bigger and bigger but the amount of parties is even growing faster. Some Dutch sceners have decided to start a demo party in Almere, NL. Emission '98 won't be a big one like TakeOver but a small party like Ambience '98 (NL) or Evoke (Ger). The problem at the moment in the Dutch demo scene (and global scene) is the huge amount of parties. The parties are cool and nice to visit but the quality and competition of entries is getting worse."

However, the party date is unknown yet.

Mekka & Symposium - http://ms.demo.org [supplied by: M&S homepage]

Next year's Mekka & Symposium party will be called "Mekka & Symposium 2k-1" although 2k would be 2048, i.e 2k-1=2047. The MS99 page was opened on July 3rd.

Furthermore, a list of all known MS98 party reports has been uploaded to the M&S page. Some are also directly available there. Enjoy, it's great!

Myth '98 [supplied by: MasterB0y/LYNX]

The Israeli Summer party Myth '98, scheduled for the end of August, was cancelled because the organizers are in lack of sponsors and don't have a place. Anyway for a small scene like to Israeli one, one demo party per year (Movement) is enough.

.pt.party'98 [supplied by: Psychic Symphony in demojournal]

The first Portuguese demoparty will probably come soon. Cremax is fond of this idea, and therefore Psychic Symphony will organize it. It will probably be held on 19th and 20th of December.

Quast '98 [supplied by: Radi/Interror]

All PC releases of this large Polish party, one of the major events in the Atari scene escpecially, can be found at the Amber FTP site:

ftp://amber.bti.pl/scene/parties/poland/quast98/

Slach Party '98 - http://www.mygale.org/~myke666 [supplied by: Slach Organizers]

The first Slach Party was held. The results and photos are available at http://www.mygale.org/~myke666, however, in French.

Th3 Italian Gathering - http://www.metro.it/tig98 [supplied by: TIG Organizers, surfing/ramjam]

This Amiga+PC Italian Demo Party will be held from 11th to 14th September 1998 in Pescara (Italy).

At the same time and at the same place (the outside) the Italian Boozembly, the sequel to the Boozembly '98 at Assembly '98, will be held. It's organized by RamJam and Damones. An invitation intro is out (since August 21st), get it from Surfing when you catch him on IRC (#thescene).

Unlike TIG, there will be no computers but many naked girls, fun, and booze, Surfing promises. [Well, if that's the real fun for a scener...]

Trip '99 [supplied by: Quartz/Officium]

Trip (The Real Italian Party) '99 will be held in march in Florence/Italy. If the place is the one I knew of, it's a nice fortress!!

Maybe some Austrian guys will come down?

Organizing is Froyd.

COMPETITIONS

The 256 bytes Gaming Compo - http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~fiedler/ [supplied by: Gnome/Sulnudu]

This compo series have got a new homepage URL, but the e-mail address of the organizer, Gnome, remained KaareC@usa.net.

Recently a 256 bytes digger compo has been held. The winner is Iustus/Dazed from Finland. According to Gnome, all five entries were in pretty high quality for 256 bytes.

Hugi Size Coding Competition - http://home.pages.de/~hugi-compo/ [supplied by: Adok/Hugi himself, who else... :)]

Hugi Size Coding Competition #2 is over, and Hugi Size Coding Competition #3 has been held from July 13th to August 10th. This time you had to code the smallest Pong clone possible. Check out the exact rules and the winning entry in this Hugi issue. Furthermore, Hugi Size Coding Competition #4 (expression evaluator) has started on September 4th. Check out http://home.pages.de/~hugi-compo/ for rules, sources, world league table, and all you need.

Starfield Compo - http://www.angelfire.com/sd/hornedgod/ [supplied by: HeadSoft aka Demilich/RamJam]

A while ago, HeadSoft announced the Starfield Compo at the ircnetcoders mailinglist:

Yea, you read right.... A *starfield* compo!! And it's not a size-optimized one either... I suppose you're thinking, "BUT IT'S 1998! WHO WOULD HOLD A STARFIELD COMPO THAT ISN'T SIZE-OPTIMAL???" Read on...

Entries will be judged based on:

1. Realism... Get as minutely detailed as you want, the more the better. A mode 13h entry might win, but if it does you'd BETTER do one helluva job.

2. Animation quality... This basically means smoothness, sub-pixel accuracy, constant framerate, FAST screen update, are all taken into consideration.

3. Originality... Yea, as long as you don't deviate from #1 too far, the more unusual you get the better. If you put some REALLY odd effect on the screen and call it an undiscovered stellar phenomenon, it'd better look BELIEVABLE. In most cases, it's safer to stick with things your average astronomer knows about.

4. Style... Yea, you don't see this one listed in most judgement criteria lists, but I think it's that invisible quality that all code should strive to have

5. Cleanliness... Not in the executable, but the source code. NO sourcecode does NOT have to be included to qualify, but you get a lot of points if it is.... And even more if the code LOOKS good, has good style, and well-commented.

Entries may be written in ANY language you see fit (although if interpreter, include your runtime system with the entry and it DOES count toward your final entry size.)

Entries must run either in Win95/98 dos box, or in DirectX/OpenGL/Glide under Win95/98. (YES you heard me, Direct3D and Glide entries will be accepted, but if you let hardware do your dirty work, you'd BETTER show me equally powerful CODE behind it.)

Entries must be less than four megabytes, total. (Source may be sent separately if necessary to keep within these limits.)

Entries may have sound, but I see no point in this unless you think it helps your realism or style (see judgement criteria #1 and #4).

Entries must be reasonably bug-free and stable, I won't count against you if there are minor glitches but if it crashes and/or locks up frequently, or fails to detect the existance of required hardware/resources it needs, you will be notified and given a chance to fix it IF within the deadline. A broken entry won't qualify.

Entries must be received no later than midnight, (GMT -7), 15 August, 1998. Entries MAY be re-submitted to fix bugs, add new features, etc. UP UNTIL THIS TIME. Late entries won't qualify.

The compo system is:
o Genuine Intel P200mmx
o 64 megs SDRAM
o SoundBlaster Awe 64 soundcard
o Intergraph Intense 3D (Voodoo RUSH, 4 megs 3D, 2 megs 2D) (on-board VBE20 BIOS)
o Windows 98

The entries SHOULD however run (or refuse gracefully) on machines without the above hardware. A *few* extra points are awarded if the entry takes advantage of the above hardware's special features but that also include a back-up mode for systems without this hardware (ie mode 13h for non VBE20 machines.)

Spread this textfile to other sceners/coders you know, and good luck! Let's show the world that a starfield can STILL kick some ass in 1998!

-- Richard T. Elmore AKA HeadSoft AKA Demilich/RamJam --

Well, and what happened? Not a single entry, up to September 9th only 350 hits to the web-page...

Organizing a coding competition over the Internet is not that easy as you think!

TextMode DemoCompo #3 - http://www.compart.fi/~solar, http://www.crest.de/tmdc/ [supplied by: Crest]

Organized by Sol of Trauma, the third TMDC will end on November 11th. The web-pages were updated, get further infos about how to compete with your demo there.

MISCELLANEOUS

An Introduction to Wavelets can be found at http://www.amara.com/IEEEwave/IEEEwavelet.html.

Back Orifice - http://www.cultdeadcow.com

If you are a Windows user, neware of this program by the Texanian hacker group "Cult of the Dead Cow". Several people on #coders have Back Orifice and try to get not-so-experienced computer users, also including sceners that don't expect anything bad, infected by this program. That is very dangerous because it allows the infector to control your computer as long as you are connected to Internet, and he can also read all your files, delete them and do what he wants.

There exist several removing/scanning programs for Back Orifice, and soon the regular anti-virus programs will be able to detect it. Meanwhile, start regedit.exe and check the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/ CurrentVersion/Policies/RunServices. If you are infected with Back Orifice an entry to it is located there. Remove it.

Also, check the port activity during the net with "netstat -a". If you spot any unusual port, close the connection and contact some anti-virus expert. Back Orifice usually uses the port 31337 but that can be changed by the aggressor.

BiG in MS Word against Bill Gates! [supplied by: Network (http://www.scene-central.com)]

On Network, Civax reports that in a local newspaper in Israel he read about a new backdoor in Microsoft Word: "If you write the sentence 'I like to kill Bill Gates' and press Shift + F7 (check for replacement word), then the words you will find are 'I'll drink to that' and 'I'll appreciate it'... Go on - try it!"

Biggest photo archive of scene ppl around :)) http://hem1.passagen.se/sbng/scene_people/

Real or fake, that will be no question for you after looking at once of these pics. :)

Chat4u.Com - http://www.chat4u.com [supplied by: mcbyte]

mcbyte and DarkLegend have opened a new service with which you can access all the IRC channels on Networks like IRCNet, EFNet, or UnderNet via the World Wide Web. You currently need to have Netscape 4 or Internet Explorer 4 because it is Java-based, but soon a CGI-based version will be finished that works with every browser. Check it out!

#coders.ger

The german scene channel #coders.ger was taken over on August 19th, just after the bot PinHead had been upgraded with new features like !faqs, news etc. The channel could fortunately be retrived on August 21st by the bots BoBe and PinHead during a netsplit in night. The German readers should check out an article in this Hugi issue that explains everything in extensive detail.

Coding tutorials - http://members.tripod.com/~aparusel/ [supplied by: X-Ray's Programming Page]

Loads of demo coding tutorials (all tuts by Denthor and many from other people) can be found at X-Ray's rogramming Page. Quote from the introduction to this site:

Welcome to my homepage!

This page has been created with the intention to get in contact with other people who like the beauty & art of game- and demo-programming. I am very interested in everything that has to do with this subjects... like:

 Graphics programming (2D and 3D)
      Raycasting
      Effects (Water, Fire, Plasma, Particles...)
      Real 3D programming (Texture mapping, Shading, ...)
      ...
 Sound programming
      Sound mixing
      MOD-Player
      ...
 Other
      Artificial Intelligence
      Hardware programming
      Compression
      ...

If you're also interested in one of this subjects, then mail me (parusel@yahoo.com)!

Take a look at my projects-page to see what I am currently working on! Some work of me and other people, or utilities may be found on the download-page. Get some tutorials, programs,... from the download-page. Here you'll also find downloads of my projects (in future!)

I put my favorite links on the links-page, if you want me to add your page, mail me. I'll put up a (serious) link if your site is programming related, promise!!!

Have phun!

Democoding, 3D-Graphics mailinglist [supplied by: Adok himself... and Michael Maier...]

Not long ago I got a mail with the following content:

This is the eGroups.com service.

The moderator of the democoding@egroups.com group would like to invite you to join the group. To join, YOU MUST REPLY to this message.

If you join, you can read group messages in your e-mail in-box or on the Web.

Here is a welcome statement provided by the group moderator:

------

Democoding...
Advertise to your Friends!
Moderators: BJ^Bionix & KB^ToM^Purge^SD
:)

------

To accept this invitation, please use the "Reply" function of your e-mail program and send back a blank message.

Or you can accept by going to this Web location: [...]

If you do not wish to join, please just ignore this invitation.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact the moderator of this group at mmid6@octlabs.de or visit http://www.eGroups.com/info/help.html

Thanks!

The eGroups.com Team

A new mailinglist by the elite coder KB? I immediately subscribed! And then I realized that this mailinglist doesn't come from KB but from Michael Maier, as the line "If you have questions, please feel free to contact the moderator of this group at mmid6@octlabs.de" reveals.

Well, anyway, nothing has happened in the group so far, no message has been posted yet except of Michi's welcoming message.

There's also a second mailinglist by Michael Maier for his IRC channel #3d-graphics.

To subscribe to one of these lists, send an empty mail to:
. democoding-subscribe@makelist.com or
. 3d-graphics-subscribe@makelist.com

Freebasic [supplied by: alt.lang.basic.compiler]

A new UseNet newsgroup called alt.lang.basic.compiler has been recently opened as the result of a strong interest in a new, free, multiplatform Basic compiler. The project is still in the planning phase, and I doubt that there will come out something rational ever if they are still talking about details without a real concepts like they do now, but if you are interested, check this newsgroup.

#ilcoders [supplied by: MasterB0y/LYNX]

This is a new channel on IRCNet for all Israeli coders, founded at the end of August.

FAQSYS - http://www.neutralzone.org/home/faqsys/

Having mentioned X-Ray's Programming Page, I also have to mention the currently very best democoding web-page, FAQSYS, maintained by Steff/Sorrox. It has a really huge collections of faqs, articles, and documentations about graphics programming, demo effects, technical stuff, programming techniques etc. You can either get online from this page what you want or download a 7-MByte-big archive with all the text files and a handy browser.

FAQSYS, which was last updated almost a year back (19th of November 1997), will be updated soon, as Steff says.

GooRoo searches for a new group [supplied by: GooRoo/Kosmic]

It is a fact that GooRoo, coder in the big North American music group Kosmic, is looking for a new group. He wants a group that wants to make 3D card only demos, in other words, people who want to rebuild the demo scene. Talk to him on #coders in case you are member of such a group.

Linux Kernel Size Coding Competition ;) [supplied by: IOPL]

IOPL has reduced the Linux kernel to a very small size with only the most necessary things in it, so that it is possible to create a Linux emergency distribution that fits to a single 3.5"-disk. The source code can be downloaded at: http://members.xoom.com/teekiah/tlinux-1.1.0.tgz (18809 bytes)

mIRC [supplied by: frenzy]

A little gag: If you use mIRC 5.4x, go to "About" and click on that chap's nose. :)

#nlcoders [supplied by: Quad homepage (http://www.quad98.net)]

Also this Dutch scene IRC channel was takeovered, to be exact at the end of July. As #nlcoders2 was taken over, too, the users had to move to #nlcoders3.

On August 4th, #nlcoders got back on IRCNet. Quad writes:

"ThePeric returned from his hollidays and set up a takeover for our beloved channel #nlcoders. Luckily the connection between VS - Europe was unstable (surfnet.snet-ip) and after a couple of hours filled with joins and splits #nlcoders was brought back to the people."

Ralf Brown's Interrupt-List [supplied by: Ralf Brown, posted to comp.lang.asm.x86]

The latest version of the x86/MS-DOS Interrupt List is Release 59. Available at: http://www.pobox.com/~ralf/files.html

Sri Lanka Scene - http://www.cm.cf.ac.uk/Sri_Lanka/sl_demos.html [supplied by: scene.au mailinglist]

Did you know that there exists a demo scene in Sri Lanka? Well, there is! On the page above, which was recently found by an Australian sceners by accidence, you can download the demo "Ground Zero" from the only Sri Lankan demogroup. It was released back in 1995 but obviously not too well spread.

Get it, the level (also the English grammar/spelling) is quite good considering the age of the demo and the lack of contact from Sri Lanka to the European/American scene!

#thescene - http://the.scene.org [supplied by: surfing/ramjam, shade/TRSI]

#thescene, the IRCNet channel for the Amiga, C64, Atari, and PC scene that was founded on January 24th, has got its homepage on July 12th by shade/TRSI. You can find general information, news about this channel, a userlist (self-introductions) and the list of the users that are currently online on #thescene there.

Scene Plus, a famous C64 diskmagazine by Fairlight, will open their online version at http://the.scene.org. The same goes for one of the top rated Amiga dismagazines around, Insomnia by Tristar & Red Sector Incorporated (of which shade is main editor).

trakked.com - http://www.trakked.com [supplied by: Sol/Trauma, trakked.com homepage]

www.trakked.com is finally online. It's the webpage of "Trakked Records Int'l", a company which wants to get tracked music more known in the outer world and also distributes albums etc.

FINALLY...

New paper magazine for Atari and PacifiST fans? http://lgd.fatal-design.com/ [supplied by: Network (http://www.scene-central.com)]

As the Atari-scener Agrajag/Digitech reports on Network, "discussions have been taking place on the mailing list for the PacifiST Atari emulator for the PC about a new magazine for Atari fans, with special emphasis on the 'retro' market created by Pacifist!!! This would include advice on how to best emulate Ataris on other systems such as PCs, and from there, how to best use the Atari enviroment e.g. programming, demo coding, etc. ... The current plans are for the mag are to be quarterly (i.e four issues per year), partly in colour [...], and have loads of "inside info". The people behind the mag, are surprise, surprise, the team behind the Atari emulation site The Little Green Desktop. The site is currently canvassing it's visitors as to the sort of price they would be willing to pay for a new Atari mag..."

I think that could be interesting for both PC users that are interested in Atari emulation and Atari sceners!

And that was all for the news now. Now go on reading the many other articles in this Hugi issue!

- adok^hugi