Outline 05 Report
.:;;Outline '05 Report;;:.
Some random textual paddling around made by CiH!
At and after the Outline '05 party.
Friday 25th March 1905 (hours?). That is possibly Havoc's date of birth too,
or at least this is how old he looks, after his organising feats leading up
to the party. By Monday, we may well have to carbon date him!
We've arrived at Te Boemsgoed camping place, myself, Felice, and two evil
women who claim to be of our acquaintance that we found in the back of the
car. Maybe they will come back in the midnight hour to drink our blood!?
Anyway, to protect the innocent male Atari community who have arrived here,
they have been relocated to a hut in the outermost grounds away. Rumours of
an electricity supply there abound, I'm going out to check out conditions
shortly..
Rumours of pizza ordering also abound, and after giving Tinker a severe case
of monetary brain-lock with an attempted purchase, we could have just about
managed to get some for ourselves.. Maybe?
Introductory realtime gabba bit ends..
Anyway, how did we get here?
Well the usual process of car and ferry got in there. The journey
effectively started in a relaxing fashion last night, over a couple of
bottles of wine at Felice's place between the four of us. This put us in the
mood for some constructive sleeping afterwards (after I powered down
Felice's noisy beast of a PeeCee first!) but it didn't make the getting
going process for the following morning at 05.40hrs too easy!
As I implied in the introduction, in addition to myself and Felice, also
travelling are the two female companions Nicky (me) and Paula (Felice). They
also struggle awake, but manage a semblance of life after completing the
standard morning boot-up routines. This culminates in an inadequate
breakfast based on tea, with a promise of something better when we board the
ferry.
As we prepare to leave, I look nervously at the stack of goods and wares
travelling with us, and this is after the ladies have been sensible and
packed light as well. Amazingly it all fits in quite easily? This is with a
certain amount of the gear fighting for room on the back seat with the
girls, but it is done quickly, and we set off shortly after 06.30.
The journey to Harwich, the big council estate with a port attached, is
uneventful. We are a fair while waiting around, as the numbers of people
travelling on this Easter holiday steadily build up. Of some amusement and
concern are the number of organised parties travelling on the ferry with us.
There is some kind of theme based around various combinations of sex, drugs,
and alcohol. Some of those concerned look too painfully young to attend.
Others look as if they are getting ready to export their brand of good-
humoured petty theft to the Netherlands. Many of them will hear the Dutch
words for "Sod off you oik, I'm not serving you!" over this weekend at some
point.
Some even go so far as to have specially printed t-shirts announcing their
pilgrim's pissup. The "Wasted Latinos" is a cunning disguise for a raucous
hen-night, for example. Another bunch of people display their t-shirt
tribalism as the under-fifteen's Northampton Rugby team. The youngest member
of that crew being every bit of thirty-seven. There is also a steady
procession of biker types on a mixture of sensible and posing hardware, and
speculating about these keeps us amused for a while.
The M.V Stena Discovery hoves into view at the appointed time, and we all
rush on quickly, managing to get out of the car prematurely, before Felice
had properly parked it, but we made our way up to the main decks to remeet
with him there, rather than struggle across the car deck.
For something completely different, and a bit more expensive than usual, we
opt for the brunch buffet, in a proper shipboard restaurant. At around 15
euros, this is an all-you-can eat job, so I do, taking in both english and
continental style breakfasts, yummy!
Contented and replete, we leave to take up our seats on the ship, errm, what
seats?! This Easter sailing is probably the busiest trip on the Stena
Discovery that we've done yet. There is almost NO seating space to be found.
Eventually we make a temporary HQ in the grounds of the casino bar,
surrounded by Karaoke-addled chavsters, chain smoking gamblers with ravaged
expressions, and a pair of gay hell's angels wearing the sort of leather
outfits that might have featured in a triple X version of the Terminator
movie?!
A further reconnaissance into enemy territory locates a more promising
location for a base camp, with a nice sea view out of the window, so we
swiftly grab the just vacated seats. There is no video screen to watch, as
there were too many people in the way, so the rest of the journey carried on
in bouts of fitful conversation, and random moments of tiredness.
This drowsy routine carries on to nearly the end, when Paula heads off to
update on her bladder movements. A longer than normal pause ends, when she
comes back with the shock news that she could be in major bother! She was in
the ladies toilets when a five year old kid barged into her cubicle, and was
promptly pushed out again. An altercation with her mother followed, who was
not able to offer supervision and control before? This got as far as the
ship's crew being involved, and possible police action to follow!
This could potentially kill off our involvement in the party before it
starts. So we head off to remove the car to the terminal and await
developments. Nicky is to stay with Paula to offer support.
Happily by the time we get there, we find the girls by a drinks machine and
trying to get it to deliver. The matter has been resolved amicably, nothing
further is going to happen, and it seems that the Dutch authorities are more
than satisfied with Paula's version of events, having had the chance to hear
her side of the story!
After a short pause to consider our lucky escape, and top up on fluid levels
in the terminal cafe at the Hook, we resume our slightly interrupted
journey. It is around 16.00 when we set off hopefully in the direction of
Braamt.
It took about two hours, all told, with the one minor wrong turning near the
end, quickly amended. the arrival at the site location held the odd surprise
for us too, with the campsite looming up a minute before we were to complete
our final manouvres, but following the directions to the letter works, and
we arrive at the doors of Te Boemsgoed a short while after the hour of
six...
20.30 note, we are comfortably settled in and set up, apart from a bunch of
late-arriving Swedes throwing the door open to bring in their bundles of
stuff. From the distant hut, terse text messages bounce in, demanding to
know of the whereabouts of the pizza!
Yes, We'd like to know too, as of 20.45, we're still waiting!
Some time later, we've been told that the order has been placed. Tinker
having waited until there was enough interest, before making the phone call?
I can tell him that there was quite a bit of interest from me at that time!
The Swedish posse, having managed to locate the pizza shop whilst being lost
previously, have gone out and taken matters, or cardboard pizza boxes into
their hands. This is yet another false dawn of food arrival, in an evening
with about 3060 of them!
At least the girls have stopped complaining, I think they are getting too
weak from starvation for their fingers to work the texting buttons on the
phone?
Late update - it is 23.45, and the pizza's, with confusion, arrived around a
couple of hours ago. The food of Paula and Mr Pink didn't make it with the
first batch, so apologies and a quick despatch of the missing items followed
a bit later.
In the meantime, we managed to make quite a good improvised picnic in the
hut zone, which had been made more comfortable with the addition of heat and
light. The not so muffled crash that the pizza made, travelling down our
digestive tracts reverberated around the rest of the camp.
Right now, I'm comfortably wrapped around a post-pizza Grolsch and tapping
frantically, as fast as tiredness and ill-co-ordination allows. I'm up to
quite a high typo count, so the textual creation looks impressive from first
glance, if anyone is watching me, but in reality, coherent sentences are
stringing together very very slowly.
So far, several people important to the success of a venture such as a demo
party have managed to get here.
These include the forces of tSCc, sitting in the row opposite, Paranoid and
RA of Paradox, Evolution and Nature Brothers, also bringing Partycle.
Sitting next to us, Mr Pink, representing the RG's. Up one from is is gwEm
and his lady, Manou. A bit further up is Cyclone, the gallant co-editor of
Alive. Several French guys including Chuck and Dma Sc lurk nearby. The big
surprise, for us at least, is the arrival of parts of Satantronic. There is
an expected number of 35-40, which is a fair bit smaller than last year, but
a decent hardcore of the actively interested is represented of course.
There are a lot of people missed from this round-up, so apologies to them
for now.
Te Boemsgoed itself is a half size scale model of the place we took at
Lievelde last year. There is a rustic country club feeling, lots of tables,
for the setting up of various Atarian hardware, a bar of the booze serving
variety at the end, and a couple of sofa's in the party chillout zone
opposite. Te Boemsgoed also manages to score on having a large and
professional looking kitchen, and the extra accomodation in the form of the
hut refuge taken over by the girls. There is also a little more activity in
Braamt, including a well stocked local shoppe. It would have been nice to go
back to Lievelde, but this does a pretty good job in its place.
We have glimpsed several works in progress, from what looks like Ray's CT60
stuffs, to some Paradox material running on a Falcon, and even a couple of
very promising screens under the Equinox label on one of the Frenchies
machines! Of course, teh big Dildo Fatwa demo 'Elvis' will outshine them
all!
In the background, the inevitable Tinkercore plays, but at a muted volume,
to be fair to him.
Right now, 1564 PC sceners will be at Breakpoint '05, 931 will be drunk, of
which 297 will be sick, 41 have just passed out, the first one of those at
15.14hrs, two hours after gaining entrance to the party. Of those, 7 will be
real medical emergencies.
There will be 47 outbreaks of drunken nakedness, several of which will be
filmed. At least a couple of people will carry out a live sex act in lieu of
a real competition entry, during the party. This represents a 100% increase
on last year's figure.
The sleeping place will be 30 celcius, down to 45cm from the floor, the
average floor temperature will be -7 celcius from there. Four more medical
emergencies will turn out to be hypothermia related.
ALL INFOTEXT PROVIDED BY DODGY AND SALACIOUS, THE OFFICIAL STATISTICS
SERVICE FOR BREAKPOINT '05..
SATURDAY 26.3.05, and blumming heck, it's 00.50!
It's been a very long day, and interesting in parts. It's almost time for
bed, as my eyes are starting to blur. Still, another long day tomorrow.
The CT60 has behaved very well today, holding steady at around 36 celcius,
and not falling over apart from naturally occurring Magic things going off.
For the last hour, I've been waiting to my pizza to uncurl itself from the
ball-like formation in my stomach, and listening to some recent music demos
such as 'Just music 4' and 'Phat' to keep me in the chair a bit longer.
About half the party has gone to bed, but there is still a substantial
hardcore going on, including the Frenchies who greet us with their ritual
chants of "DMA!" and "Badger badger!"
I was chatting with gwEm a while, and a copy of MaXyMiser managed to find
its way to me, thanks matey! I'm too tired to check it out tonight, so one
for tomorrow's infotainment..
I think I'll call it a wrap for today here too.
Seeya in the morning..
9.50 hours, morning update.
Well I hit the wormbag at around 02.00, and mainly thanks to the fact there
was a bed underneath it, I slept very comfortably, thank you! There was a
certain amount of snoring competition, and speculation suggests it came from
the Slovakian contingent. (Cries of "Yehaa! I'm NOT number one!" follow from
the general direction of me....)
Anyway, to keep a dull but pleasant morning routine as brief as possible, I
got up, cleaned up, managed a very basic beta version of breakfast, pending
better things to come for when we get our act together at the supermarket
shortly.
The girls are awake, having suffered no ill-effects from the hut, and should
be joining us shortly, when the extended feminine rebooting and cleaning
routines are carried out.
At the minute, there are a few people here, an alert Swedish contingent (who
went to bed early if you remember!) Also some Frenchies who treat us to an
early chant of "DMA!" I've also got some mobycam footage of Pink the wormbag
monster, struggling to arise from his tomb on the floor! Now does anyone
have the Nokia video codec working on Atari?
Back later, when stuff starts to happen.
12.25hrs or 12.25 hz?
It is quite warm outside, in fact you could call it sunny. The CT60 ambient
state is around 38 degrees celcius, which reflects the general warmth,
bodies and Atari cpu power crammed in this room. It has been left on idle
since it was switched on first thing, and is behaving impeccably.
The girls have left for parts Amsterdam, but not the same parts that used to
interest Felice so greatly. The fact that they are girls might have
something to do with that, of course!
We've also managed to sort out breakfast, including some Al-Quaida inspired
fiddling with a propane cylinder next to our hut to power the kettle inside
it. I lit up, and got out of the way, waiting for the inevitable "K-Boom!"
That would represent the ultimate crude attempt at energy transfer to make a
cup of tea! But it didn't happen like that. Now if it wasn't for you
meddling safety inspectors (curses!)
We even had time for a reprise of the Alt party demo compo winner, the
Dreamcast entry, courtesy of Paranoid and his Dreamcast. And there was me
thinking for one brief moment, that they had coded a killer CT60 demo as a
nice surprise! Still, never mind, maybe next time..
The atmosphere is very laid back and relaxed, which is as things should be,
and I'm wrapped around an icy bottle of the beer that cheers (Grolsch). If I
get stuck into the wine a bit later on as planned, then I'll be fit for
precisely nothing by the evening!
There is a lot of coding/pixeling/tracking going on, and just a little bit
of playing around (hello Baggio!)
12.40, Nemo has arrived. He likes to do this latecoming thing often.
13.35. Now I've tweaked and corrected some of the other Alive articles, I'm
sure I had in mind some other stuffs to do, but I can't recall them at this
moment. Instead, I'm feeling very lazy, but contented, as if all is right
with the world right now, which as I'm in the party universe, it is!
13.40, Havoc is in conversation with an animated and excitable person. Is
this the owner of the site? What transgression have we caused? And will we
be able to stay on the site? Ahh, no, it looks like they are trying to sort
out the beamer and big screen. Which lowers down onto the far wall.
One of the things I did late last night, was to take a look at Ray's CT60.
He's gone for the 'convertible' open top option, removing the lid to
disperse the heat. There is an extra reason for the heat, as he's
incorporated a mini-ATX inside the casing, roughly analogous to where the
internal IDE normally goes in a standard Falcon. There is a 3.5 inch IDE,
where the floppy used to be. An interesting solution to a lot of annoying
problems, and seems to work pretty well. I didn't really feel up to finding
out how he got around the displaced floppy disk problem though..
14.45, I did find something to do, which was to update the Atari demo
gallery for the 'CiH-HQ' pages. At least the text parts, there's a whole lot
of screenshots to get, as I've been adding lots of new entries, and allowing
two grabs per demo, against one before. (Post-party note:- And now I've got
to add 'Beams', question is, should it go in as a 2003 or 2005 entry?)
Now Tinker is testing the big screen, with the inevitable H-Demo IV.
Strangely, this looks rather good and well put together from here! And still
very funny. Amazing how much demo mileage you can get from one brief foolish
moment of video, said he, the creator of the 'Elvis' demo!
16.15 note. The afternoon wears on, and the temperature is dropping. There
is an open door policy with huge gulps of fresh air coming in, so CT60 is
happy. It got quite warm in a sticky midsummer sense earlier, and it peaked
at 38-39 degrees, which meant it stayed working without anything vital
falling off, such as Magic for instance. We're now coming back down to the
less giddy heights of 34-36 celcius.
Of the rest of the time between updates, we've been back to the local store,
to fill in some potential looming gaps in the junkfood inventory, and fitted
in some non-constructive messing about with various music programs. A lot of
people are busy with tracker screens, 505 and Nemo both on Ace tracker, but
there is a fair smattering of other formats in the house. We're kind of
looking forward to hearing MaXyMiser in action, and last night, I was
attempting to twist gWem's arm into either entering a tune, or the program
itself into the wild compo.
Been outside, trying to avoid the Tinker who insists on roaming the hall
with his camera. There should be at least one picture of me coming after him
with a meat cleaver that I located in the kitchen!
People who are reading that previous statement with some concern, don't
worry, it was all a spur of the moment bout of play-acting, there will be no
Tinker-bits in the wild competition pie-making entry, and subsequent arrests
afterwards!
Anyway, it was a rather small meat cleaver, clearly inadequate for any
homicidal purpose!
17.50, An extended period follows outside, all the better to top up on our
suntans. Did I mention the weather has been quite pleasant here? We're
spending some time talking with Havoc, and various Swedes keep inserting
themselves in the picture too.
There's something that Cyclone will have to be made aware of, when he next
turns up here. Alive has got a fifth birthday this year! In fact the
birthday could be considered to be the 10th November release date for issue
1. We'll have to start planning a birthday celebration, as it looks like it
will be for the issue after this one!
Back in the party hall, the setting sun streams in, and oh, that's annoying,
we're missing sunglasses!
18.30, Not a great deal happens, a bit more pixelling is going on. The demo
rumours? We'll have to wait until these become a bit more concrete, in order
to comment properly. However, there may be some contributions from outside
the party, if we are fortunate? But too early to tell yet.
I'll put in a special shout for the Nature Brothers, sitting with Evolution
on the table facing us. I've finally seen the EtherNat prototype board. I've
yet to see it *working* mind, as they are having some problems with their
CT60, but we remain hopeful.
20.15, The topic of food came along, although we received our pizza's, yet
another communication failure mislaid our garlic bread to go with it. I also
had a struggle with the first bottle of wine, which either had a bitch of a
cork, or the most ineffectual corkscrew in creation, or probably both.
Eventually, a long while later, after digging out half the cork, I managed
to remove the offending item. The wine was lovely! There's a little bit
left, so hurry if you want to catch it! (Sorry Earx, too late!)
The last little while, I have been previewing gwEm what to expect from his
CT63, showing various demos, the Earx-made VLM, and even a little foray into
SDL Wolfenstein. Not to mention the multi-media escapades. gwEm was
impressed, and I had to promise to carefully look after the rev 1 68060
currently resident in mine, until I swap it for my pre-ordered revision 6,
and hand it over. He is having difficulties thinking up a final topic for
the 'In the Trashcan' article, as the party is putting him in such a good
frame of mind!
The hands of gwEm are busy indeed!
Meanwhile, a sort of formal entertainment programme has been going on, over
at the big screen, with several favourite ST demos playing. Currently up, is
Froggies over the Fence, but we have also been watching the Aggression Brain
Damage demo, Grotesque, and several others.
20.45 - Cuddly demos, including the STe-cacked main menu is up now.
Also it looks like the girls have finished their day's adventures in
Amsterdam, and just have the final bus-station bit to negotiate. Expect
breathless shopping tales soon!
Outline '05 eternal mystery #1 - How did they manage to show the Cuddly
demos, without getting around to the Spreadpoint screen, probably the best
screen of the whole demo?!
Cyclone has (re)entered the building! (as of 20.55hrs.)
21.30, The missing garlic bread has turned up, x2, which is a nice thought,
but a bit much for this time, so we've donated the second instalment to the
pizza-eating masses, where it will no doubt be kicked around and forgotten?
(I think Baggio helped out there, so it wasn't.)
There is a suggestion that the graphics and sound competition may well run
after the pizza feeding frenzy has calmed. If this is so, we will probably
miss it, as the girls will arrive back shortly, and have asked us to meet
them off the bus.
There is one piece of release gossip I can share with you now, actually
culled off the generally underfed realtime text. Which is that it finally
actually looks like the mega-delayed 'Beams' demo will be getting its final
release, or at least showing as the definitive finished version, before they
spend another year sitting on it to clear further bugs out or something? If
this turns up as a real live download on DHS soon, I'm going to be amazed!
(Post party note:- Ok, I'm amazed! There is a review elsewhere this issue.)
23.55, We're coming up fast on Sunday, and we've got a little bit of a story
for you!
Right after I had finished off and saved the last bit of this report, the
girls summoned us to meet them, as they were on the final bus back to here.
By the time we reach the roundabout, the bus sails past. We are heading up
to the bus stop a bit further up the street, but there is no sign of anyone.
Immediately we have to find out whether they have got off early, or worse,
are still on the bus. We soon get a text message back to tell us that they
have got off, but have no idea where, but it clearly isn't where they are
supposed to be.
We manage to establish, through repeated text messages, that they are at the
bus stop before, so we tell them to head in the direction the bus was going,
and Felice went off to meet them. This is done quite quickly, and another
five minutes later, the whole party is reunited, and we are on our way back
to Te Boemsgoed. It turned out that the bus driver had given them duff
information, and told them to get off a full stop before they should have
done!
So we've been away all this time, as they have been telling us of their
Amsterdam sojourn, and getting rapidly drunk, just as we are sobering up.
This boiled down to a rapid shopping expedition for mainly chocolate items.
So we've missed the graphics and music competitions, which were described as
small numbers of entries, but of very high quality.
So we've had violence (Friday), and getting lost at night in the countryside
(tonight). What have they got in store for us on Sunday?
SUNDAY! Which is now today!
01.30, Tinker and Earx try to figure out the alternative meaning of the word
'knob' as used in an English colloquial fashion. So I'm not telling them!
The bedtime hour is almost upon us, and I've spent the last hour postponing
the evil moment by pumping up the Flaysid volume. I've also managed a
conversation with Cyclone, who seemed to be surprised that the 5th birthday
of Alive was coming up for November the 10th this year. Still, now I've
seeded the idea in his brain, let's see what will transpire?
I think I'm going to call it a night fairly soon, as about half the rest of
the partygoers have as well. There are some hardcore deadline beaters
smashing keys away, but quite a lot of other people also standing around and
watching the movements of the productive members very closely. Atari scene,
too many managers, not enough workers, Cah!
And I think the clocks go forward very soon, so it's tough shit to deadline
beaters at coding parties across the European landmass. Last time I
encountered such a time-shift at a coding party, was at the rather
unfortunate Mekka Symposium in 2002, where it was frankly a relief to lose
an hour there!
11.00 - Morning!
I went to bed at 03.00, adjusted for summer time 04.00. This was after
spending some more time showing Nemo around the CT60. Upstairs was cooler
last night, but dressed for bedroom survival I managed to get to sleep
easily. I'm pretty sure there was one Satantronic inspired interruption to
the blissful repose sometime later, but I slept some more to 09.00ish, but
didn't make a move until an hour later.
Getting a shower this morning was somewhat overcomplicated. The girls had
recommended the coin-op showers in the toilet block, so I went hopefully,
with my 50 cents to check these out. The location was fine, the tranquility
perfect, but the blummin' showers weren't working, or at least my 50 cents
wasn't working! Which is kind of annoying when you get to the bare feet
stage, and the tiled floor is so cold!
Eventually, I had to resort to the crowded 'public' showers in the main
building, which did the job, but were barely warm in places, and very
waterlogged in general ambience. To get dry feet, you had to remove yourself
completely barefoot from the shower, and take your towelling elsewhere.
Baggio quote from in the shower - "Oh no, I've wet my pants!" (Not with a
shower of the golden variety, we hope?!)
I've sort of made a 'pre-breakfast' out of some of the bits lying around, in
order to keep me going before "official" breakfast when the four of us are
back together. Speaking of which, we found an empty hut earlier? Are they
having more luck with their 50 cents than I did, or have they just been
kidnapped?
Meanwhile, in a dark dimension where only he has the key, a sleeping Pink
stirs..
12.05, Coffee at last! My first cup in three days! And it makes up in total
caffeine content for what I've missed from lack of my normal intake.
We have filled the last hour with organising 'official breakfast' in the
hut, a sort of continental style with added cheese and bacon snacks. The
ladies have disappeared with Felice to look for the faint possibility of an
open shop that might sell some sort of white coloured vino, on Easter
Sunday. Right, this part of rural Netherlands keeps very similar (non)
opening hours to Germany. I decided to stay at the party, to monitor the up
and coming action, such as it is right now.
Frustrating point:- Everyone delights in telling me how high quality the
graphics and music competition was. The competition that we didn't get to
see whilst looking for lost people! I think I'll nail their feet to the
floor today, to rein in the misguided wanderlust, and so we can get to see
the main demo competitions tonight!
Here's some demo news at last! Evil came through with a 4ktro. Which if it
is like previous DHS releases, will be worth 64kb of anyone else's effort!
So I'm trying to put together a picture from the very fragmentary
information to hand, of what we might be watching this evening.
Confirmed:- DHS 4ktro (bet its CT60!), Dildo Fatwa (cough!) fake demo.
Pretty damn likely:- Beams release version, Paradox STe demo, Some kind of
preview from Earx (Falcon), some kind of preview from the Frenchies (ST).
Also, game compo entry from RG, Evolution working on 4k shootemup. According
to the official laptop-based realtime, this managed to compact down to 2k!
And what else:- Satantronic, are they here for the good of their health or
doing something too? I also spotted some kind of dancing monkey screen in
the French corner, is this for a fake demo, do Dildo Fatwa finally have some
competition at last!?
(Post party note:- Apart from the well stocked bootsector compo, this is
kind of how things turned out. The cool and pleasant surprise was the final
release of 'Beams', and the stronger than average field of entries for the
games competition.)
13.05, I've been browsing the pictures of the SV2000 party, and I even found
a picture of our heavily loaded car! Also the big 'banner' style jpeg of the
whole coach party on the war memorial at Gdansk. This depacks to something
like 15 meg, over what even a 14mb Falcon can cope with! No problem with
this lot of course. Now that really was a party to cherish good memories of!
13.40 Nicky has been here, and looking with stunned horror and amazement at
some of the past parties we have been to, including a boot opened shot of
the super-stuffem SV2000 car, some fairly naked pictures from the ALT party
sauna, and more. Now she knows what we've been up to all this time! At least
that stuff which she chooses to believe!
14.37 And now we've been boring and domestic, and sitting in the gently warm
and pleasant Sunday afternoon ambience of the hut, indulging in a picnic
with our pre-hoarded from Saturday supplies. Now we're back, and so are most
of the rest of the party.
15.37 I've been playing games, I reloaded Starball SE onto my CT60, meaning
to see if it works with it, and I found out today, it does!! Yeahh! One of
my favourite games is back on the '060! I also found time to play Lasers and
Men (Pre-preview) and Spice at suicide speed. Maybe an idea for a future
party, playing Spice on an accelerated machine, at the sort of speed that
Defender is really meant to go!
Meanwhile, Felice is immersed in old back issues of Maggie, whatever keeps
him happy!
A bit further along, gwEm struggles to fix the sound replay code for the
'dancing monkey' screen I mentioned earlier.
15.50 - This diary might be closing down for a while, as this machine could
be borrowed for the competition entries. It looks like there are two CT60
entries, which are both 4ktro's from Earx and DHS. But it seems there are
lots of complications with entries on hardware with no floppy drives, and
needing to network in a complex fashion or something to get them off. Watch
this space..
Otherwise, I could be getting a preview of the CT60 stuffs before the
competition, which would be cool!
The demo entry deadline has been moved to 17.00.
17.05 - Things are happening with the entries, the competition running time
will be around 22.00hrs. I'm still not sure at which point this machine will
be needed, but I might as well carry on here whilst people decide what they
wish to do next.
We're going to attempt food at around 18.00, all the better to be ready for
the evening's events.
I've had a preview of Earx's CT60 4ktro, which is a voxel thing, in a mellow
and misty sense. He's nervous of what might be coming with the DHS entry...
We're kind of waiting around for something to happen, or to be summoned with
CT60 to the organisers organising area, so it's kind of hard to maintain
momentum at this time. Even now, some people are coding, which kind of
suggests a further extension of deadline?
From reviewing the pictures taken on my feeble mobycam, there are some
classics, not at all in the picture quality sense, but instead in the
subject matter. Like a motion-blurred Paranoid striding purposely past me
for example, or the one of Mr Pink who is clutching his head in his hands in
a "Omigod, what have I done?!" moment. Then there is the Satantronic 'Atari
car', a picture of Baggio clowning on a length of rope tied to a tree, and a
really neat wallpaper for the front end of my phone, taken entirely off the
reflective patterned surface of the waiting room table at Harwich terminal!
And I think I already mentioned the "Pink awakes" mobycam movie that I did
yesterday ;-)
We tried out the "Elvis is still Dead" fake demo on the competition viewing
machine. This looks like it has an early TOS, which tends to worry me
slightly, but the all-important DMA sample replay seemed to work ok. Hope
this is not a one-off?! Lovely, something new to worry about for the
competition!
Still, might go and double check on here now, back in a bit...
17.55 HUGE WAVE OF RELIEF!! - A niggling random fault with the DMA replay
turns out not to be a problem with the software, but a problem with the
frigging annoying defective from day one headphone jack on my machine! The
only thing extra that is needed on TOS 4.01, is the Fpatch or similar. So
Elvis will be singing in clear dulcet tones tonight! Tweaking the headphone
lead to the 'wrong' position made the soundchip replay extra quietly, and
the DMA part hiss. I managed to reproduce the fault that had been bugging me
since the demo was started under party laboratory conditions, in order to
find out what it actually was. So everything is cool now!
Might be time real soon to collect the girls, and attempt the maze of
kitchen instruments in cooking some food. I can see the headlines, "Te
Boemsgoed destroyed in huge explosion!" (Right after the one involving the
hut earlier?!)
Back laters, as by the time I finish, Earx may well have blagged this
machine for the compo viewings. If you are unlucky, then more of my tepid
insights will follow!
19.05 - the Earx has still not intervened to take my machine away, but here
he is, sitting beside me. The idea for a big cook-in, using the kitchen and
a heapful of pasta worked well, brilliantly, even if I say so. So we're
comfortably stuffed, actively tackling the final bottle of wine, and pretty
content with the overall situation. Especially after what I found out
earlier about a certain demo. It also looks like there has been more
interest in the realtime article, which is rapidly gaining a respectable
weight. (gWem logs on, as I write this, to prove that last point...)
The Earx speaks, it seems we're okay until the time of the viewings at
least, thanks pal!
Now we're waiting for something to kick off, which won't be until 22.00hrs
anyway.
19.35 - CT60 temperature note, the ambient conditions are nicely hot, so is
this, peaking at 40 celcius, but still nothing collapsed. Cyclone has kindly
opened the door to let some fresher air in for a bit, and we're steady at
38-39 degrees..
Won't have to worry about this lame temperature shit with a revision 6 '060!
Still, I've managed to sort out with gwEm to get it changed over, when he
gets his CT63.
20.20 - There's something about a big Easter fire in the field. (Teh Fier!)
This is deliberate, but no, it's not arson! Question is, who is going to be
thrown on it. And no back-talk from you, Nicky!
Now there are a lot of silly buggers eating pizza. And it's getting quite
warm in here again, cosy in fact.
20.30 - Time for a refill. (And 'wine' not?)
21.05 - We've been out and watching the fire, at least whilst it was going.
It was a disinterested fire, and no amount of flammable help was going to
get it going again. When someone added edam-flavoured napalm to the wood, it
flared up in an interesting way, but only for a short time. Now, it seems to
be in a slow decline, and not doing much of anything at all now. So after a
while, Felice, Nicky and myself left it to die slowly.
As Paula is tired or unwell, or both things, she's been left in the warm
embrace of the hut, and Nicky has joined us in the main hall for the
eventual competition start. There was also a mention of pizza made in there
somewhere as well.
Nicky subsequently went back to the hut, and didn't stay for the compos, but
she managed to fit a session of SDL Wolfenstein in, prompting her to wonder
where her own disks with the PeeCee original had got to. Next door, and
purely by coincidence, Ray was showing off the last but one version of his
Wolfenstein conversion. There are some bad guys running around there now!
There are sound effects! We need a gun and soon! I wonder what the most
recent version has got up to in it, and how soon a new version will come
out, now it seems that 'Beams' is finally going to be released?
00.40MONDAY..
The competitions have been and gone, and whilst there has not been any real
advance from last year, there have been some decent entries, in fact if you
consider the lower numbers attending from last year, then the overall
production rate and standard has held up quite well.
As predicted, this machine went off to spend some time in the organisers
den, and suitably prepared, it was easily up to the task of running the CT60
stuffs shown. This is getting ahead of ourselves, as we consider the entries
in front of them.
A smattering of sixteen colour entries came up first, there are just three
or four pictures this year, from p01, Flash, and Cooper. Cooper's entry
casts an affectionate nod at the current commercially successful cartoon
format, SpongeBob Squarepants, who is depicted using an ST. Flash's entry
'Outline', seems to follow on from the style of C-Rem, depicting some
scarily accurate cameo's of Havoc and Earx in a very Dutch themed pastoral
picture. And p01 picks up a more conventional subject matter with a lonely
looking female being painted.
A new category, the bootsector intro, was run for the first time here. This
gives more possibilities than the basic 128 bytro, not least in the area of
design. There is a varied bag of entries, such as a Keftale bootsector from
Cyclone, or a basic zoomer, with music featuring, and many more. With some
entries coming from outside the party, this was a well supported and
successful category.
Several of the main competitions were amalgamated into one, and with the
somewhat blurred output from the bigscreen beamer, I was not expecting a lot
of the first entry for the wild/Demo combined competition, the rather
familiar "Elvis is still dead!" However, it seemed to survive on the big
screen quite well, the captions managed to be readable, and with it running
in RGB mode the timing was just about right. I doubt if 'Elvis' will win any
prizes, but the audience reaction was positive enough, even from Baggio!
(Who said he appears in too many demos!)
There was a nice slideshow from YesCrew and others, called M-Pong. This drew
and blocked in various static screens from classic old arcade games, with
another gwEm zik playing.
The Paradox demo 'Pacemaker' was one of the anticipated productions for
this party. Expectations were dampened down by the authors describing it as
a preview, but it still managed to sparkle in places. There was a tunnel
which would not have disgraced a much higher end machine, and the final
screen of the preview was the real moneyshot moment for many people, with
Sonic the Hedgehog running down a solid-3D half-tunnel in a Stun-Runner
fashion! The full and finished article is keenly awaited!
Paranoiablur! As NOT featured in the Pacemaker demo!
There was a wild compo animation 'Japanim' from Cooper, Paradize and others,
which was genuinely cartoon-like, and impressive, and about 800 frames
crammed onto a standard double-sided disk! Not the sort of thing usually
seen on Atari, and another high spot in the competition. Yes, it turns out
subsequently to be an adaption of something on the net, but all the same, to
get it onto a double-sided disk was neat. I think gwEm got in there with
some music again.
The gwEmster was called out to demonstrate MaXYmizer, which he did, keen to
show off his presentational skills for this stunning new ziktracker, and
played a whole new song made for it at the party.
My CT60, the only one with a floppy drive present at the party, was pressed
into service for the next part. This was for showing the pair of 4ktros made
for the CT60. Earx gave us a short but sweet 'desert dream', gliding through
endless sand dunes in 'Scape'. The killer demo in this category was the DHS
entry, "Episode 666", which happily lived up to the tradition benchmarks set
by their wave of killer 4ktros written in the '97-98 period, but with much
more complex 3-D objects, which Evil loved showing off! There was even some
music with it too.
There was a brief corrective to all this high-end malarky, with the 'monkey
intro' or "Monkiki", that I had seen in various states of being made over
the weekend.
The final lap consisted of the well-attended games competition, with the
presentational skills of Mr Pink called upon to show off "Clix". This is a
columns type game, with Matt 'Neo' Smith behind the design and graphics, and
with the characteristic Reservoir Gods shedload of definable options. No
they haven't forgotten last year's entry, "Clogged up"! There was a a
further CT60 based entry from Evolution, called 'Evo-fighter', which was
slung together in-party, in lieu of anything else being ready, but that was
not shown to best effect by Baggio, in his rush to get back to his chair.
There was a serious competitor, with a game called 'Pooz', this had the
design talents of many Frenchies under the Paradize label, such as STS,
Exocet, and DMA-SC. A good game was slightly let down by a presentation
overpowered by the high sound volume.
Finally, we had the Mad Buscher in a multiplayer 'Tron' type game. With a
Jagpad team tap, up to eight players on the same screen were possible, but
we had to make do with four.
Shortly after, when it was assumed it was all over, there was a presentation
of the final mix (we hope!) of the lost since EIL 3 "Beams" demo. This had
been remixed yet again, with parts that were tantalisingly familiar, but
not, at the same time? This is a real high-end presentation, that could hold
up to the best on other scenes. Perhaps looking a little slow in places, to
critical eyes getting used to CT60 levels of smoothness, but still top notch
presentation, and a strong design makes this one of the all-time classics
for the Falcon demo hall of fame.
Questioning the tSCc dudes, apart from an issue where they were still
testing for working on 4mb, and a few final bugs, the demo is effectively
finished, and we can expect to see it in "the next couple of days"(!) Hmmm,
we're watching you guys! And I still think that 'Elvis' did the whole
talking heads thing better ;-)
(Post party note:- And they did!)
Satantronic and friends have started their long journey home, and a lot of
people, Baggio and Felice among them, have retired. And I've been updating
this text up to now. It is 01.30 hours.
01.50 - Rumour of a prize ceremony impending.. Wonder if I should go to bed
now, hmmm!?
02.15 - Winners for the competition are being announced!
4Ktro competition - DHS (No surprise there..)
Combined demo/wild - Paradox, of course. (Dildo Fatwa got 3rd place, which
is three better than expected!)
Game competition - Paradise Computing (The RG's came second for once.)
Graphics - C-Rem (I don't remember this entry?)
Chip music - 505, with a debut maxyMiser tune.
Multichannel/MP3 - Nemo, still supporting 'Ace' tracker.
I think seriously it will be time for bed real soon now..
10.08 - MORNING! And it's the final one for this party. I've slept (from
03.00) and after a cup of fresh coffee, I'm almost back with the world
again. One thing from last night, I started to go to bed, with no
expectation of anything from the prizewinning, but Earx retrieved me from
the upstairs dormitory lair, just as I was taking my shoes off. So barefoot
and bleary-eyed, I went down to choose from the remaining selection of
prizes, eventually opting for Imagecopy 4, with the manual, and got given a
copy of a strange PeeCee game 'Kartoffelpuree', which is the German for
instant mashed potato! I know a bit of German, amazing!
I ended up donating the Imagecopy 4 to Mr Pink, keeping the currently
useless game, with no PeeCee to play it.
Anyway, there will be a party summing up, but probably after we've got back
home, which is the best time to do it, right now, time to look for
breakfast, then get this lot in bags for the journey home.
As is often the case, the end comes quickly for the party. The majority of
people are packing, some, like Satantronic have already gone. It is not too
hard to pack our own stuffs, first persuading some of the available people
to record their last thoughts on the laptop realtime. Some others have a
less hurried perspective, as Mr Pink is not due to leave until the evening.
Then we head to the hut, and the girls report a tale of creeping system
failure with the showers. We make breakfast out of what is left of the food
for the last time, and Felice fetches the car around to the main hall.
Loading up our gear only takes a short time, and we carry out a quick round
of farewells and leave Te Boemsgoed around 11.30.
The journey back is straightforward, with just the one traffic related
slowdown somewhere between Arnhem and Utrecht. It is also an increasingly
foggy journey back, and by the time we are getting close to the Hook, it is
so misty that we can't see the tops of tall buildings!
In fact, we get back to the ferry terminal, with more than enough time in
hand. We get tangled up with a confused batch of people who seem to be
waiting for a delayed earlier (14.30) sailing, who may have actually missed
their boat? The extremely low-end booze market, and very crowded restaurant
at the terminal distract us for a short time only, and we opt to sit it out
in the car.
In spite of the potentially hazardous maritime conditions, the Stena
Discovery is on time, and unloads the next batch of travelling hordes, the
loads us up patiently. To avoid the seating glitch we encountered during the
trip out, we grab our usual places by the video wall early on! This is done
before the hordes swarm in. In fact, the journey back was probably just as
busy, but it felt less claustrophobic.
We are addressing the topic of food by the time the ferry is pulling out of
the terminal dock, and opt for a refresher course in the humble 'Discovery
Burger'. This seems to have had a major revamp over the past year, as their
double cheeseburger is the best damn burger that I've ever tasted, that I've
not made for myself! A single burger is something like everyone else's
quarter pounder, and we had two of them in the same bun. This proved good
enough to solve the food problem for the rest of the day.
The girls get to see for themselves the cheesiness content of the video wall
for the first time, but no Venga Boys were showing! There was an extremely
dubious Freddy Mercury tribute which sounded nothing like him, and looked
like a caricature version instead. There are one or two trips to the shop,
and a quick look out of the spray-blasted rear viewing platform, where Nicky
appreciated for the first time, how fast the ship was actually going!
There were no incidents of violence, either with little people, or their
careless guardians, and we got off the ferry without complications. The
journey home took us, via various places until 23.00, and that was another
party over and done with..
Outline '05, an assessment..
Firstly, it was a worthy follow-up to Outline'04. There just seems to be a
knack on the part of the Dutch team in organising a superbly relaxing and
hospitable party with above average amenities. The other Dutch parties I've
experienced, such as Outline '04, and the STNICCC 10th anniversary, were
some of the most relaxing and easygoing I've ever been to. The Pre-Millenium
party, which I didn't get around to, must have been the same as well.
The numbers were fewer, but never critically low. It seems that too many
people would liked to have come, but were prevented by various
circumstances, like work/life balance distortion, or stupid staggered public
holidays in France (hi Seb!)
Te Bomesgoed was just about right for this party, and a perfect replacement
for the place at Lievelde. And another point in their favour was that their
beds didn't collapse!
As always, it is great to see the lovely Atariscene people again.
If you are looking at defining success through the narrow but crucial
criteria of releases, Outline '05 successfully maintained the standard from
last year. If we are considering this against the lower numbers attending,
it could even be seen as an improvement. It was not an EIL standard party,
which some pre-party rumour seemed to be hoping for, but there was some nice
stuff shown regardless of that.
The party succeeded in its food, provision. In spite of some non-delivery
confusion, the pizza service was very good and the quality high. The
provision of alternatives was at a decent level in the seething metropolis
of Braamt, with one well-stocked local supermarket. For at least one of the
days, we were able to successfully cook an alternative to the pizza service
in the lavishly provided for kitchen.
The Grolsch and soft drink provision was top notch! Havoc will be drinking
the surplus until 2008, having guesstimated likely demand on last years
consumption levels, but not taking into account that some of us brought our
own booze!
On a more personal level, Nicky and Paula enjoyed it too, as far as we can
tell ;-) The extra accomodation on site was useful, as an off-party
sanctuary for them. We also managed to fit four in a small car successfully
as well. The mass ownership shift to TFT monitors is helping. It would have
been a lot more difficult carrying a couple of intransigent boxes containing
cathode ray tubes in our car boot!
A partial attempt to avoid total pizza dependency was successful, the
kitchen was very good, and what we cooked didn't hang around for too long.
Still on the personal level, this party was good for helping to run down
some of my surplus stocks of red wine (hic!)
The CT60 behaved itself, with the new additional finger-removing cooling
system installed on top of the casing. It was switched on most of the days,
and handled party conditions with ease, including writing this report. It
also stood in as well for one of the competition viewing machine.
I managed to get much of what I wanted to do there done, if not all of it.
The realtime article provision, via Felice's laptop was a success. The
robustness of Ubuntu Linux can be proven as there was not not one failure
through the whole weekend.
And of course, Wee got teh third plaice for the 'Elvis' demmmo!
There was a small amount of less good stuff. The pizza delivery on the first
night was far too late for my taste, which I could have done with tasting
hours earlier!
Demo-wise, the CT60 revolution has been postponed, again.. (Although to
balance that, a good authority has it that we should expect something to
"Kick the CT60's arse!" in the summer months!)
Of course, what sucked the worst was that too many people were prevented
from coming, who really would have loved to be there.
Finally, there was that stupid problem on the ferry over, which fortunately
turned out to be nothing in the end.
But these are only a few small bad points, to set against the overwhelming
goodness coming from Outline '05.
I guess there won't be another Outline party, just yet. Havoc made it clear
that organising two in successive years was okay, but a third year running
would stop it being enjoyable for them, which is fair enough. The Dutchies
have done a great job for the last two Easter's, so it's someone else's turn
now.
Who might that be? Will it be a new edition of the mighty Error in Line? Or
will it be something else? This is the crucial question for next year.
Anyway, to Havoc, Earx, and Tinker, so long, and thanks for all the Grolsch!
CiH, for Alive Mag,April '05.
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