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The aRTS Y2K Report
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By Strider for Alive!
strider_thn@hotmail.com
The aRTS Y2K is the sequel to the RTS (Return to The Source) party, a
French coding party. This year, it was co-organized by Atari sceners from Sector
One and Supremacy teams. The last French coding party organized by atarists is
so old that I even don't remember its name (hmmm... maybe the Place To Be ???).
The party took place in Seyssins, near the Alps, at the beginning of September.
What was the aRTS Y2K ?
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It is mainly an oldschool party, even if PC gamerz were numerous. Yeah
boys, good old demos rock ! There were some authentic home computers, such as
Atari ST, Amiga 500 and Amstrad CPC. A little (hum !) word about Amstrad CPC's
should be necessary. At the party, there were 4 Amstrad CPC Plus, and some of
them were put into PC towers. That's very impressive, you can believe me ! One
of them has an IDE drive, a network interface (with a running TCP/IP protocol),
an ISA bus (this is a very big board, bigger than the CPC's motherboard itself)
and so on.
The Amstrad CPC weren't the only 8 bit computers because some computer
fanatic brought an Atari 800 XL (the demos are VERY impressive !) and a good old
Commodore 64 (gee whiz !). On the giant screen, we were able to see very nice
demos from the good old time. Commodore 64 demos still have a great success. No
ST demos were showed but I've made a selection of Falcon demos and I've put them
on the big screen. Do you want to know which Falcon demo had the greatest
success ? Hey, it's that good old Eko System ! Even if this isn't a recent demo,
we must remember this Eko production had excellent graphics, design and musics.
Seeing Falcon demos is quite rare in French coding parties (ST Survivor should
understand me), that's why I've digressed about this topic.
Which sceners were there ?
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Among the organizers, those Sector One homosexual dudez were present :
-> Hello : the best cooker and sandwich maker on Earth, actually ! He came with
his PC.
-> Splash : he's as good with a computer than with his skate board. You have to
see him to believe it ! ;-) He came with his Falcon.
-> Zerkman : the well-known author of CD-Lab. He brought a PC with Linux.
-> Exyl : the only one who was coding at the party, he shown us his future ST
demo, it really rocks (hey Exyl, when it will be ready for ?) ! He came with
his nice CT2-ized Falcon.
And concerning Supremacy, there were :
-> Razaac (you can call him "razaac.com" if you prefer :-)) : still recording
his CD's, as usually. He came with his PC, as usually.
-> SNK : the man who has coded a Neo Geo demo with Devpac on his ST. This time
he only brought his PC (with a Japanese version of windows, yes sir).
-> Telsud : the king of movies and manga. Do you need some CD's ? He surely has
them ! He came with his PC.
-> Strider : I've made a little invitation intro for this party. I've brought my
faithful Falcon (MiNT rulez !) and a PC (for the network).
Some other atarists were present : ALDN (his nick on IRC), for example,
came with his ST, his 800 XL and his PC. His favourite hobby consists of ripping
ST digitized musics (e.g. from An Cool demos) and to convert them into YM format
thanks to his PC. There was also Cicile, maybe the only active atarist girl in
the world, and his boyfriend Fabounio, a MIDI musician. As all the atarist demo
makers were busy with the organization, there were neither ST nor Falcon demo
presented at the party. Hey Moondog, don't be afraid, that ex-Overlanders guy
called Blue didn't present the same intros one more time ! ;-)
And what about the ambience ?
=============================
It was peaceful and we all had a lot of fun. The food was very varied :
pizzas, French fries, tabbouleh, churros, yoghurts, paella, sandwiches, hot
dogs, fruits...
Concerning the computers, so bad there were so few Atari and Amiga. The
demos weren't numerous, but the wild compos (mostly MPEG animations) were
exceptionally great this year. If you want to know more about this party, some
snap shots are available on these sites :
My homepage : http://strider.atari.org (Coding Parties section)
Supremacy web site : http://supremacy.atari.org (members section)
So bad the aRTS won't take place in 2001 because the room won't be
available (it will be too expensive for us). But who knows... ?
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