Alchimie Party 5
in a Nutshell
The fifth session of the Alchimie took place in Tain
L'Hermitage, France, from October 29th to 31st. The Alchimie is
a meeting for alternative computers and digital creators. It is
also an Amiga-meeting open to non-Amiga machines. Three days of
good mood and lunacy with about 160 participants which are
mostly regular attendees but some new ones as well.
Who was there?
Like previous years, Amiga-fans turned out in full force to show
what their weird machines are able to. Retailers, associations,
demomakers or simply enthusiasts, a lot of them answered the
roll. PCs with Windows were alas more numerous than usually to
the detriment of Atari computers. Sure, it's easier to move
around with a PC laptop running STEem than a real ST with its
monitor. Let's note there was some Mac Minis: the little Apple's
beast seems to be the victim of its success. Concerning the
Atari corner, there were some MJJ Prod dudes, Rajah Lone (author
of Cresus, Troll and D-Gem) and members of ST Magazine. Shazz of
MJJ Prod was working on a soundchip player for Sony PSP. It was
possible to listen to several music formats (ST's YM, Atari 800,
C-64, NES...).
The conference corner
Conferences took place in a corner of the main room, like every
year. The one concerning the progress report of AmigaOS 4.0 was
a huge success. Members of the audience were able to see the
development since last year's presentation. On Atari, we haven't
such a software activity, maybe because users and developers are
less numerous. An Amiga developer showed a PowerPoint
presentation viewer. He made a titanic work. Indeed information
about Microsoft's products is extremely rare, and even non-
existent. Another interesting conference concerned ZetaOS. It is
a free version of BeOS. Perhaps another serious rival for
Windows? Among other presentations, let's mention: Linux
software, Pegasos and some Amiga applications.
Competitions
Another attraction of the week end was the digital creation and
competitions. Productions were rare but better than last year.
The award-winning demo runs on AmigaOne: it is "One: Geometry"
from Universe crew. A nice demo with a visual strength and some
excellent technical effects. No Atari demo this year, but let's
note the first Amiga 1200 demo of Tobe‚ / MJJ Prod. Although he
is an atarist, Tobe‚ designed a whole demo screen in only three
days, with no knowledge about Amiga's art of coding. However, he
told us he has much more pleasure to code on ST than on Amiga ;-)
By the way he won the prize of the best intro: a 1040 STE, a
Megafile 44 and about ten cartridges.
Halloween Party
Big surprise on Sunday evening: the party staff had organized a
Halloween party. They dressed themselves up as witches, vampires
and undeads. The meal consisted of pumpkin soup with streaky
bacon and chocolate mousse. Both supported the festive and
morbid atmosphere due to the nature of the event. During other
days we had good meals: pasta carbonara, paella, without
forgetting bottles of local rose‚ and red wine (the city of Tain
L'Hermitage is well known for its wines).
Next year?
Yes there will be another Alchimie next year. Let's hope
atarists will come with real hardware and some productions to
win prizes :-)
Strider / MJJ Prod for Alive, 2005-12-05
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