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breakpoint 2004 report by rob
surprises
friday:
ok, one day after the party it is time for the usual report. friday at half past
seven in the morning i grabbed my stuff and drove to crest. this time we didn't
take a train but went by car. arriving at crest's home, i was already a bit
behind the time. then we went to dualtrax, who joined our trip this time.
shortly after nine or so we could finally leave berlin. the weather was shitty
because of raining. the only interesting thing about the whole ride was a little
"accident", where another car made some kind of side-by-side-full-contact
with our car. luckily we couldn't find any damages at the cars. the rest
of the trip went on as usual. nothing happened. it was a bit boring, since the
radio didn't work and you can't talk for seven hours or so ;-). arriving in
bingen we had some trouble with finding the way to the location (even with a
printout of the guide from their website). but at 5pm we finally arrived at the
partyplace. the first thing was to install our computers. after getting the
first beer and food i listened to a lot of songs dualtrax had made over the
years. nice stuff, especially his many chip-tunes. later the opening ceremony
took place. and at about eleven it was time for the combined amiga/pc-demoshow.
this time we even had two bigscreens. the one in the main-hall, which was
bigger than the one last year, and a new smaller one on a wall of the organizer-
tent. this one was backprojecting (don't know if it is the right word ...) so
that people outside could also watch and listen. a good idea.
for the show itself i hope that the crowd was pleased ;-). but next time i guess
i will show the infoscreens on my own system. just can't see the organizers
switching the video-outs of two computers in the beginning and at the end of a
demo in a hurry anymore ;-). after the show i went to bed (that means a sleeping-bag
in the sleeping-hall). i wouldn't say that it was much warmer in there than
last year. the heating worked, but it was rather cold outside. this shouldn't
change til the end of the party. the main-hall was probably warmer, but also
louder.
saturday:
saturday started with a breakfast together with dtrax. a bit later krill, fanta
and myself drove to the supermarket to get some more food. at around twelve
o'clock the tracked-music-compo was held. dtrax also attended (with the only
chip-tune btw) but "only" came fourth in the end. the rest of the day
was filled with the first competitions like 4k intros (c64, amiga, pc),
graphics, animations and real wild. the intro-compos were all ok, that means
with upper-, middle- and lower-class-entries. loonies ruled on amiga with their
"ikanim", while kb and frenetic did the same with "ex
fabric" on pc. krill and fanta could win once again on c64 with their intro
(after a short winning-break with a second place last year ;-). inbetween the
"ati coding-session" took place. it was very brave from the ati-woman
to talk in front of a crowd of drunken sceners, some of them behaving very
childish. ati was also sponsoring a helicopter, which interested sceners could
fly with (cost: 10e).
so, nearly 2 weeks after the party i will try to get this report done. too much
to do, far too less time.
in the evening the animation-compo, the scene.org-awards and the c64-demo-compo
took place. the anim-compo had some nice entries. some were just made for fun
while others looked at least semi-professional. i should probably also
mention bronix' live-performance-entry, which i even voted for ;-). the
awards were a bit disappointing like last year, since there was again one demo
which was nominated in more than one category and also won in more than one. it
was "ix" from moppi (remember: last year kewlers dominated with their
"variform"). afterwards the c64 demos were shown. but this time they
didn't meet my expectations. the slideshow for aeg's upcoming "turrican
3" didn't fit into the compo (and was even voted second!). and "you
know the routine 2" from camelot was far too long, becoming boring rather
soon. anyway, the following game-compo had to run without me. time to get some
sleep again.
sunday:
this day started with the mac-demo-compo. only three entries here. at least
spöntz "space invaders" could compete with a usual pc-demo (and
it is already available as win32-version). the other two entries haven't been
very impressive. but i hope nonetheless that we have also next year a mac-compo.
niche-systems rule ;-). in the time after the compo, the filesystem of my
computer fucked up one more time and i had to get disksalv to repair this thing.
some unknown (at least for me) scener did help me. thanks dude. he also
suggested to use sfs instead of the crappy ffs. this is now also done and i had
no problems so far. the rest of the graphics- and music-compos didn't get my
attention since the weather was nice and the people outside. there i found
people like nordbourgh and crest. we emptied some beers, talked a bit and had
fun watching a completely drunk bronix. in the evening it was time for the real-wild-compo
(including console- and mobile-demos) and of course the amiga- and pc-demo-compos.
from the real-wild i mostly remember nothing. but matt current had
again a nice entry for nokia-mobiles (s60-series). and then it was time. the
bigscreen already stated, that the amiga-compo will rock. and it did absolutely!
eleven entries (last year we only had three!), two of them pegasos-demos. just
two non-serious entries. up-rough surprised with a cool video-demo called
"live axxion". iris' "heartcore" was a wonderful successor
of their last years entry "light ii". madwizards pegasos-entry
"fluffy digital snowflakes" was also a great show. not to
forget ephidrena's "respirator stories" and tbl's winning
"silkcut". but for the last one i ask myself, why it takes 22mb
decrunched??? if i had known this earlier, my votes would have changed. got to
check the entry-rules. but wasn't there a size-limit of 15mb per demo? anyway,
the compo rocked and everyone was happy ;-). and everyone who thought that the
pc-compo would have the same quality - was wrong. or let's say it that way:
there was no real jaw-dropper. in the end i voted for some demos of not so well
known groups, namely nesnausk's "syntonicdentiforms" and bauknecht's
"zyprexa". moppies entry (an invitation) had just one effect, but this
one was _very_ beautiful. farbrausch also competed. and their
"fr035: deleted scenes" surely had everything a demo needs: nice
visuals, nice music and proper design. but the same time it was somehow boring.
with visualice, farbrausch seems to get the same problems like haujobb some
years before. let's see when people start to cry about farbrausch-demos looking
all the same ;-). so far, "estrange" was the only demo that did not
look like a typical visualice-demo for me. probably he tries to get _too_ much art
into the demos? other contenders were squoquo, calodox, metalvotze and mfx (cool
demo ;-). after watching a bit the irc, i decided to let the day end, since i
had to drive some 600 kilometers on monday.
monday:
this day didn't happen much. i was still looking for the amiga 4k-intros. after
some time the filesystem of my amiga fucked up again. that was the sign to pack
my stuff together. before the prizegiving there was the fast-music-compo where
you had to make a song for a short-story. the prizegiving itself was a big
surprise when it came for the pc-demos. metalvotze not only named their entry
"winnerdemo" - they even won the compo! the demo itself was at least
90 percent pron-free/non-vulgar, something you wouldn't expect from this group ;-).
technically it was far from being spectacular. but allover it was something
to entertain the crowd. and as everybody could see in the weeks after the party
on ojuice and pouet, the refrain of the music creeps into your head and won't
leave it for a long time ;-). calodox and moppi got the second and third place
(something i also would never have expected). anyway, the crowd decided - so let
it be. after the prizegiving we finally packed the car and went home, where we
arrived at 10 pm.
conclusion:
i'll keep it short: the party was again a great one. the only problem imo was
the freezing wind during the demo-compos. at least at the left side of the hall
in front of the bigscreen it was very cold. everything else worked. they even
provided (slow) internet-access through two big wlan-antennas. wow. the food-support
was average but sufficient. and i would like to see next time the
releases faster on ftp. from the amiga-entries i only had 5 or so on my harddisk
(64k complete + one demo) at the end of the party. maybe next time ;-). i'll
check it!
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