PARACON 6 party
report
Autumn time is Paracon time. Luckily also this year Paranoia striked back with
organizing the traditional Paracon party in November. The place was as always
the little DLRG-house in Niederselters near Frankfurt. This year only NO/Escape
and myself made the trip from Dresden by train. The travelling was just as usual
so we arrived in the also usual dark, cold and wet November climate at the
partyplace. The chaps from Paranoia, RA and ZWF of Paradox and also Manou and
GWem where already there. The later two came over extra from UK which as I have
been told wasn't as expansive and complicated as one would expect (thanks to
those cheap airlines). However, we built up our stuff and went to some italien
restaurant to have some dinner. Coming back some demos were presented on the
bigscreen and general Atari business could be seen. So the show just went on.
Actually I remember this Paracon party as the one with the most creative mood.
Lot of party attendees were doing things with their computers (with about 18
people the partyplace was really crowded). Also the amount of Atari computers
present was quite amazing especially regarding the amount of people present (I
counted about eight or nine Falcons and four STs, where two or three of the
Falcon had a CT60). This all was nice to see.. a little army of Atari computers.
However, as Paracon don't feature a competition anymore, I also cannot spend a
lot of words about releases. Therefore I could have a short look at the one or
other interesting thing in development: Paradize (Cooper and Simon Sunnyboy were
present) did some finishing touches on two nice games for the ST which cool
graphics. Paradox were busy working on their upcoming demo for the Atari STE.
ZWF was forced by his groupmates to paint some pictures and logos meanwhile
Paranoid did some code on his Falcon. RA coded on some special STE-only music
software, which already looked pretty promising. But I don't want to loose too
many words about this one, as much more needs to be done on that. Speaking of
music software: GWem showed the latest version of his Atari YM-tracker
"maxYMizer." The interface is really well "thought-through" and seems to be very
handy and comfortable. And well, GWem also showed me some new demo sound.. and
would should I say, what I could hear just sounded like Acid-samples used in a
modtracker, but it was YM-generated. This filter effect (with adjustable cutoff)
was just amazing! On the party itself GWem was working on the sidvoice
implementation while STS did some painting for the title picture. On the Falcon
side of things specially Ray/.tSCc. and EarX/Lineout were hacking their
computers. Ray worked together with LotekStyle on the "Beams" demo and it
actually looked as well as finished (only some small design and timing things
along with the endpart need to be done!). Later on Ray was also sniffing some
DSP-air with the help of NO and Charon of Escape. EarX was coding Falcon
effects, as I was told impressive stuff (I only managed to see one great screen,
but I don't want to break the tension). We can however be looking forward to
another Lineout demo sooner or later :) Well what else? People were talking,
doing strange things like comparing Benchmark programs on the CT60 Falcon tower
of David Galvez, watching demos and movies. Myself spent quite some time with
ACE-tracker and also backuping my internal harddisk, as it started to make
strange noises after a while (you know.. I remember any harddisk causing strange
clicknoises while loading crashing sooner or later).
Although, as mentioned before, there was no competition at the party (which just
makes sense as there probably wouldn't have been entries as well:) a kind of
show was presented later on. The guys of Paranoia recorded some scenes at the
party and put it together to a movie with music and text, which was a funny
thing to look at.
Well, what should I say more. The atmosphere was great, the breakfast was a
kingdom (again), the monstersnorer was there in the sleeping area (again) and I
guess it was a great weekend for all people present. Thanks Paranoia! :-)
Hoping to see you all again next autumn!
- 505 / checkpoint^creators -
|
