A Compo Experience or Trixter / Hornet's NAID Log The following is a log of the events and thoughts of my trip to and from NAID 96, which I'm recording for several reasons; two of which are posterity and for the benefit of those who couldn't make it to NAID. I hope you enjoy reading it. If you wanted to know what NAID was like, or what being a member of Hornet amongst demo freaks is like, maybe this log will help you. (Only handles will be used in this memento. If you want to know what someone's real name is, email me at trixter@mcs.com or jleonard@condor.depaul.edu. Also, some swearing is used, so if you don't like swearing, don't read further.) Some background for people not familiar with my life and previous demo scene experience: I'm Trixter of Hornet, and my real name is Jim Leonard. I live in Chicago. I'm 24. I'm married, and my wife and I have a baby due January 25th. This is *not* a typical demo scene person; usually, the typical 'scener is from 16 to 19, lives in Europe, and is single. Well, I started coding BBS intros in 1991, but saw my first demo (SpacePig's EGA Megademo) in 1990. So, I guess I've been in the demo scene since 1990. Maybe that's why I'm so old and goofy. :) I've been to NAID before, but it was my first compo, and I lost myself in the whole amazement of the thing. It was a whirlwind of computer freaks just like myself, and I was so overwhelmed I forgot a lot of the finer points. Not this time--I typed up this log during and after the party (NAID 1996) and I'm damn glad I did, although since I am editing this file after the party, I will probably flip between past and present tense slightly. :-) Also, the only song I've listened to during the entire creation/editing of this log was Dizzy/CNCD's "CNCD_P3.MOD" (cncd party3 slide) tune. After about 6 hours of listening to this thing loop, it is still one of my top 5 favorite tunes. Listen to it as you read this if you want to get closer to my current mental state. May 27th ~~~~~~~~ I pick up Snowman / Hornet from the airport with my wife Melissa, and the three of us go to Checkers, a local drive-through fast food joint. We talk about the demo and many other things, most of which I can't remember at this point. Sleep comes early. May 28th ~~~~~~~~ Work on the demo progresses. Phred and I have been working on this for at least four months, but it almost doesn't matter if I can't add enough effects to extend the demo past 4 minutes. Both Phred and Stony have come through, however, with the graphics (Stony) and two parts for the demo (Phred, the "Phish" and "Transparency" parts.) I integrate them into the demo fairly easily, with no compilation or linking problems. Unfortunately, we're over the size limit by about 200K. Some palette quantization/combining is in order, and Snowman and I get it down to about 70K under the limit. I hope they count by bytes and not the space used up by clusters. :-) May 29th ~~~~~~~~ Snowman and I pack up the car with my computer and all our gear, which makes me a bit nervous, and head for GD's house. The demo is a bit unfinished, but it's just about at the point where I could enter it into the compo and not cringe in embarrassment. I'll just have to finish it when I get to NAID. Snowman and I talk on the way to GD / Hornet's house about what to expect at NAID. I have no idea what to expect, other than the fact that if DCB (Da Cheeze Brigade) competes this year, Craw Productions and I will have a run for our money. I believe my exact comment on that subject was "DCB is going to wipe up the floor with my ass this year." :-) Along the 12-hour trip to Syracuse, New York, we take two wrong turns, first splitting off of 90 onto 80 ("No problem, we'll just keep going west."), then from 80 to 76 ("Pennsylvania? Uh oh."). The end result is that we waste four hours traveling straight north to get back onto 90 again. At least we didn't run out of gas like we did last year; we talked about the finer points of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat that I didn't look at the gas indicator for over an hour, and we just rolled to a stop. We were incredibly lucky that year--we stopped about a mile away from a gas station. In the middle of nowhere. *Very* lucky indeed. May 30th ~~~~~~~~ After sleeping at GD's house and packing his stuff, all three of us take to the road. We arrive in Montreal and pass through it like veterans, having prepared sufficiently this year. Unfortunately, the map we were using wasn't detailed enough, and we got lost in Boucherville. We wound up at a Ford dealership and asked for directions, which got us to the CEGEP just as Struk and Mr. Khan were leaving. (These NAID trips seem to bless us with the gift of luck and good timing. :-) We park after talking to the parking attendant in broken French and English, asking him where we should park (and how much the fee was) if we were to attend NAID. (Afterwards, Mr. Khan explains that almost everyone in Quebec under the age of 40 speaks at least *some* English, for many reasons--Friends, X-Files, and ER being a few. :-) We split up and meet at Struk's house, where we all have a nice conversation about what to expect this year, the pending excitement, who gets to do the NAID report, and so on. One of the more interesting conversations is how they got the first one going--it was initially going to be a small school project for a class that just grew and grew from about 30 people expected to attend, to over 700! Struk also explains a lot of the work that goes into NAID. I had no idea that it takes about 8 months of planning, a ton of money, sponsors to supply the money, and over 100 volunteers! I want to ask him why they volunteer, but I forget; I hope I learn later what their motivation was. After some Chinese food, Struk sets up his Dolby Pro-Logic Surround Sound decoder, puts some surround-sound speakers on the back wall, and blasts Jurassic Park. *Quite* cool. GD has never seen the movie before, which is probably an indication that he should get off of IRC more often. ;-) The sound is just fantastic; I am mesmerized the entire time. May 31st ~~~~~~~~ 8:15am: All of us (Struk, Snowman, myself, and GD) arrive at CEGEP to help set up for NAID. We missed the moving of the tables and chairs out of the cafeteria, but there is still plenty to do. One of the most generous things about NAID is the free Internet and Doom/Falcon/Duke3D/Quake computers that are set up. Guess who sets that up? The volunteers. Since we're more than happy to help make this party great, we offer our services to Struk. We head up to the computer labs two floors up to start unpacking the MediaTrix sound cards, speakers, etc. As we are riding the elevator up, we learn that there will be over 10 computers set up for just general use, for people who couldn't bring theirs or had something broken. (I learn later that one of the intro compo entries was completed on one of these computers; Snowman also completed the Explicit.nfo and MC4 rules files on these.) I am floored by the thoughtfulness of the organizers for this. I am also astonished that this means we'll have to carry over 50 computers down two floors. :-) I just hope that my back doesn't give out... I hope someday that the organizers and all the volunteers get their respect someday--or some money! They worked hard. Hopefully someone else will organize a party that they can attend as normal 'sceners and relax. 1:00pm: We are reunited with White Noise and his friend Tony. I dump all the pictures from my digital camera and give it to White Noise to use for his real-time NAID WWW site. I hope that the camera works okay. :) I can't resist setting up my computer so that I can work on the demo. Of course, some people see what I'm doing (I'm one of the first three computers set up, probably because the party hasn't even started yet ;-) and come over to take a look at what I'm doing. I hope this doesn't blow the "surprise" factor later. 1:30pm: IOR / Hornet arrives. Snowman and I just can't wait, so we ask him for the shirts. They are just perfect--Black tee-shirts with our new Hornet logo on the back and our individual names on the front. The new Hornet logo is an H with a circle around it. It looks like the Anarchy symbol, but with the point of the "A" broken up at the top. Personally, I think it's fucking cool, although some people are beginning to call us "Hanarchy". I immediate change into the shirt, and my spirit is lifted. We all look so elite. ;-) 2:30pm: The party is still being set up around us. I feel bad, a bit, but I'm just too caught up in the excitement... I make myself promise that I'll ask MED if he needs any help later on. I met Mellow-D and Khyron, and took a digital picture of them holding up (and standing behind) the #trax banner that IOR wants everyone to sign. Mellow-D is a funny guy, making faces and jokes the whole time. That wacky Finn! ;-) Khyron is pretty cool too. I should really hang out on #trax more to talk to these guys more often, but every time I get on, I get buried alive in tons of /MSG's. Hmm... Some people are starting to look for me just for the sake of meeting me. This is new to me: While I've become more known in the last year, I'm just a regular person that you can approach and talk about demos with. It feels a little weird. Now I know what Necros was talking about. 4:00pm: I ask MED if he needs help, and he offers a curious response: "Not right now, but follow me around. You guys need to learn how to do this." I have a feeling he thinks that Hornet will organize the next North American party. I don't have the heart to tell him that we don't have the coherent organizational skills that the NAID organizers have... But anything is possible, so I keep my mouth shut. To be honest, I don't think anyone knows what really goes into making a party like this work. Arrangements for 600 volt power lines drilled through the walls had to be made almost 6 months in advance; the sponsors had to be contacted before the event even happened. Even the sound system -- worth over $500,000 (!!) -- had to be rented way in advance. I have the utmost respect for Struk, MED, and Mr. Khan. 6:00pm: Mr. Khan asks us to leave the party place so that they can close it and then officially open. Snowman and I decide that it is a good opportunity to get a bite to eat. Outside, there are many people; I meet the Chicago guys again--Pyromaniac, Kosh, Russ--and learn that they have formed a demo group called Beyond and will be competing. Cool. After walking a little further, we meet Kiwidog, Kneebiter, and Skie for the first time. Skie is going out with Basehead, and they seem very, very happy. In private, I kid Snowman for making a fool of himself whenever he's around Skie. Kneebiter just stands in front of me, silent, until I figure out who he is. His in-person impression matches his on-line impression: He's a neat guy who works hard until he understands things. Ms. Saigon and Moby Disk talk to me for a bit. They don't seem mad about my leaking of the Dyslexia information (it was an accident, I swear). Maybe they don't realize it was me. :) That's good; I wish the best for them. Kiwidog is introduced to me. He turns out to be just *awesome*; he's fun as hell to talk to, and thankfully, he talks *fast*, which is just great if you're talking about demos. Why? Because having a conversation about stuff like "you don't have to rotate the normals if you cull the polys with a vector pointed away from the camera" is difficult if you can't express yourself quickly enough. Kiwidog is a real down-to-earth guy, who just got a job with Raven software (the makers of Hexen, Heretic, etc.). Now that he's going to move to Madison, Wisconsin, I have a feeling I'll be seeing him more often. What a cool guy. Someone else just stands in front of me for a while; he's about 17, with slanty-ish eyes, just like mine, and he's got a hip bowl-type haircut, dyed red. He introduces himself as the guy who called me on the phone about Chromatiks, and at first, it doesn't click who it is. I remember that the only people who did that were Rephlex and LaserLore, and I know what LaserLore looks like, and it's not this person. As soon as I make the connection (that he's Rephlex, aka Vibrance of Iguana/Redzone/ACiD, aka Julian Brown), I shake his hand and make small talk. Hey, everyone deserves a second chance. Why make enemies? Life's too short, and demos are a social hobby as well as a technical one. I tell him I'll find him again to talk more, and we all move inside to enter the party place. 9:00pm: I can't believe how many people are here! It's easily double that of last year. There are so many people it's hard to talk to any one person for more than 2 minutes. I feel bad that people think I'm blowing them off, but I'm just so damn busy... I mean, people I have *no idea who they are* are coming up to me and saying stuff like "Hey, thanks for that email five months ago!" and all I can do is blink several times before stammering a "thank you". It's a whirlwind of people. I meet Daredevil / Renaissance again, and we talk enough to ask if he and his friend Mike can stay in the Hornet room. "No problem," I answer. "Anyone else? We've got room for more." He responds with, "Well, Tran might show up. Can he stay here too?" "Sure thing." I am oddly elated that Tran might show up, and if so, might sleep in the Hornet room. No offense to Charles, but Holy Shit, nobody in the USA other than Renaissance has even seen this person. June 1st ~~~~~~~~ 12:00pm: I stop in the Dinosaur room for a bit. There's a TI99/4a computer, a ColecoVision, a Coleco TeleStar, and a C128 with lots of software. They all work perfectly!! IOR works the controls of the C128 and I lose myself in nostalgia heaven for about an hour. The C128 SID music sounds even better than I remember it. It's even better than the current emulators, like PlaySID. PlaySID is quite good, but a real Commodore just sounds richer, like there's a filter on it or something. And the ColecoVision makes me want to dig mine out and set it up again. If I'd known it would've been there, I would've brought my 20-or-so ColecoVision cartridges. 1:30pm: I just can't work on the demo because of the noise in the party place, plus everyone can see what I'm working on and keeps asking about it, so I pack up the computer from the party area and move it back to the Hornet room. Several people are there working various things; Dark Avenger is showing off his game, which is simply the most awesome overhead shooter I've ever seen: You stay in the same place as the entire scene rotates around you. It's so fucking slick. It's high-res as well--640x400x16 on any VGA card. The sounds are ripped from Doom and Descent, but they sound much better here than in their respective games. I say "hi" to Solstice / Psychic Monks, who is trying to finish up his and Necros' demo as well. So, here we are, coding our respective demos in the same room. Cool. :-) I am also very impressed that Necros has coded sections of the demo. Well, he *is* a CompSci major, so... ;-) We show each other sections of each other's demo, and we are both impressed by each other's work. I am *very* impressed by the opening sequence of PM's demo -- It's just fantastic. I will get my ass whomped by these guys as well. Oh, well... fourth place isn't so bad. 2:30pm: I just squashed a stupid, stupid memory-leak bug: freemem(palette,64000); Coders will know what's wrong with the above and why I was kicking myself for a full ten minutes when I found it. I have no paper to write on, and there's still some bad syncing problems with the demo, so I get desperate and debug the demo by writing on my wristband that got attached to everyone who bought a ticket to NAID. Later, I get a kick out of this, so I decide to save my wristband so that I can scan it and show everyone for some quick coder laughs. Tran arrives. Yes, Tran *really* arrives. Someone in the hall says "Tran!" and Daredevil and I get up from talking to look out in the hall outside the Hornet room. Someone is walking this way, followed by many people. Daredevil goes into the hall, meets up with Tran, and they keep on walking, exchanging hellos and meeting again after a year's separation. They keep walking the halls until they lose the crowd. I can see why Tran doesn't attend these things; others may claim that it's because he's so anti-social, but I think it's because he gets mobbed the second people realize it's him. Well, here's my initial observations of Tran: He doesn't like pictures taken of him (I ask him nicely, he declines, and I respect that), he's a surprisingly fun guy if you can get him to talk to you, and he only speaks when spoken to. Since he doesn't like his picture taken, I think a little bit and come up with the perfect description of what he looks like to tell others: Take Robert Patrick (the bad guy from Terminator 2), put a pony-tail in his hair, and you've got Tran. 3:30pm: I'm just about done with the demo when I discover that a virus is on my machine. I had suspected as much, but I had no proof until I ran a real-mode program and saw it grow. Shit! Well, the only thing I can do is plod on and worry about the virus later. Some problems so far: A slow hard drive makes the demo lose section syncing, because I have to load and de-load all the stuff in real-time because of the space the video section takes up. Otherwise, I'll blow the memory limit (8mb). I also have to add Stony's graphics, and extend the song by about 20 orders to make it last as long as the demo. Mellow-D offers to remix the song for the demo, but I thought that that would hurt Tek's feelings, and we don't have the time anyway, so I respectfully decline. It certainly is a nice offer, though. Moby Disk sees the demo in its current state and comments on my debugging key. He thinks it is really, really cool. Personally, I do too (I'm very proud of thinking of such an idea), but I don't tell anyone for fear of making myself seem pretentious. 4:00pm: Necros holds his tracking seminar, for which he has prepared a full two pages of outlines for. The seminar turns out to be extremely professional and fun, and over 40 people show up. I hope someone is getting this on tape, because it's a fantastic introduction to tracking. I'm even learning something new: ST3 has an undocumented feature (ALT-C) that attempts to figure out the C2 speed of the current sample. It's inaccurate sometimes, but it's still cool. I look over at Kiwidog a couple of times during the seminar. He's simply amazed at how fast -- and *well* -- Necros tracks. I get a kick out of the drool dripping out of his mouth hung open in awe from time to time. I don't laugh too hard, though, since I did the same thing last year. I reflect on that a bit; it's really cool how many people in the scene are here for a reason: Many of us are truly talented, through practice, perseverance, or a gift for something (like music or logic). I love the demo scene. I wonder what I'm doing in it sometimes. ;-) About the only sore point of the seminar is Aahz / Carcass. Aahz is an interesting person: He's been around in the C64 scene for a while, and he has every right to consider himself elite in that respect. His PC knowledge is less than a year old, but that doesn't seem to stop him from contributing something, relevant or not, to every conversation, whether or not it was his conversation to begin with. During the seminar, for instance, he keeps shouting out "suggestions" that aren't really relevant to the topic at hand. I wonder if he knows that he's doing this; it's a shame, really, since he's a neat storehouse of information and ideas. He just wants to leak that information all the time, whether you want to hear it or not. 8:00pm: After Necros' seminar, I go back and finish up the demo to the point where it syncs up correctly, even if it falls behind a bit. I compile it, then zip it right up before running it to avoid virus problems. I submit the demo--finally--then catch the last five songs of the music compo, which are all very good. One Carcass musician has a really good song played, and he *just turned 15*. Sounds like another Jesper Kyd in the making, although Jesper Kyd didn't use 16 channels. ;) My own status as a member of Hornet is bringing a new level of 'leetness to my position in the NA demo scene--people are meeting me *just to meet a member of Hornet*. Weird. Cool, but weird. I go back to the Hornet room to make sure that people knew my machine might have a virus (doh!) and that they shouldn't really use it. I caught Beyond's demo in the process--they were doing some final testing. It looks very nice--it runs very slowly, though, since it's in 640x400 VESA. For a compo, you really want as much speed as you can get, since a high frame rate looks impressive. Well, hopefully they'll learn that later on. It certainly looks crisp. Dark Avenger wants me to beta test the game. I suck at it, but another Chicago demo freak loves it and plays it for half an hour. He's getting good at it. The game has more techno music since I saw it at Pyro's last party. I just can't wait until this thing is finished. I look around me and notice that the Hornet room is now *the* place to be: Daredevil, Tran, and other Renaissance guys are here; some KFMF people are here; and, of course, Hornet is based here. Snowman returns here occasionally to sell Hornet CDROMs, which are selling like hotcakes. Snowman playfully walks over to Necros, and asks, "Can you touch these?" Necros touches all of the CDROMs, and Snowman now jokingly raises the price for "a CDROM touched by Necros". I then come up with the following pay scale: A Hornet Underground CDROM: $20.00 A Hornet Underground CDROM touched by Necros: $40.00 A Hornet Underground CDROM touched by Tran: $150.00 A Hornet Underground CDROM touched by PeriSoft: $3.95 Poor PeriSoft! He gets a lot of fun poked at him. But he takes it well, and we all have a good laugh. 8:30pm: It's almost the deadline for submitting demos, and I'm called back to the main party place because MED wants my opinion on something (I'm flattered): He's gotten several requests to extended the demo deadline a bit, and wants to know what I think. I ask him how long, and he says, "Until 12:00am; another three hours." I think that it's a good idea, since it will only decrease the bugs in the demos, which increases overall demo quality. "It's not like you're extending it another 12 hours or something." He then extends the deadline to 12:00. I smile and walk away, but inside I'm elated that someone asked my opinion on something fairly important when it comes to demos. Hey, it's nice to feel like someone thinks highly of you. I've never had that in my life before--well, from a guy anyway. (Melissa thinks the world of me. ;-) And I think the same of her.) 9:00pm: I have a very, very pleasant talk with Snibble of DCB. We met only briefly last year, but finally we have a chance to talk while Psycke (sp?) cleans up their demo in the few extended hours they have until the new deadline. We talk about how the quality is going way up, and how their demo will hopefully show the Europeans that we can match their quality and style, and also come up with our own style in the process. He is very friendly; I find myself wishing I spoke French fluently so we could talk more comfortably. I then walk over to Kiwidog's "beginning demo coding" seminar, which is just starting. Snowman thinks it would be a good idea to help out in case someone asks a VGA hardware question or something. He's partially kidding me, because he secretly thinks I'm a fake and I don't know what I'm talking about, and he always wants me to prove myself. (This doesn't bother me, actually, because about 18 months ago I would've agreed with him.) :-) After the usual beginner stuff (memory allocation, real vs. protected, etc.) and a few blank stares, Kiwidog throws out the iteniary and asks, "Is there anything specific someone wants to know?" "Polyfilling!" someone shouts out. We then cover polyfilling, and then he demonstrates how to convert a flat polyfiller into a Gouraud one. Later, someone asks a question about VGA hardware tweaking, and I answer it, and refence that person to the TWEAK16B package. Then the guy next to him explains that the TWEAK package is in one of the VGA Hardware tricks articles on ftp.cdrom.com. I wrote that article. Someone actually read it. Cool. :-) 10:30pm: Moby Disk / 3some is having problems getting DemoVT to work for a partial joke demo entry. I wish I could help, but I have no idea what's wrong. 11:00pm: Crisis: Psychic Monks can't get their demo to link and/or run correctly. All the parts work fine if you run them stand-alone, but with the music system linked in and all the code in the same .exe, it locks up. Necros and Solstice are frantically trying to fix it. 12:00am: I offer any help I can give to them, but it's not looking good, and the demo compo deadline is at hand. Tran observes what they're doing, to possibly offer help. I think to myself that if anyone could help, it's him. He knows what the problem is, but doesn't want to touch it, which gives me the impression that something is seriously wrong. 12:30am: Necros and Solstice give up, 30 minutes after the deadline has passed. I feel so bad--their demo was just magnificent, with an opening scene that had good style. As Necros packs up his computer to lock it up, I can see that their spirit is crushed. I feel terrible. I wish there was something I could do. 1:00am: I walk around and talk to as many people as possible, since I lost six hours making sure our demo ran fine. I learn the following rumors about the music compo (I had missed the first 80% of it): - Julian Brown (Rephlex of Redzone, Vibrance of ACiD, etc.) supposedly left NAID in disappointment after his song didn't place top 20. It's possible that he left because his ride was leaving, but I heard that it was because his song didn't place. Instead of sulking (if that's what he did), shouldn't he have stayed to hear the songs that *did* place, so he could study them and learn from them? You're supposed to learn from your mistakes, not ignore them. Besides, the compo is supposed to be fun, not a platform for failure. In any case, he hasn't responded to my email since then. - Some ACiD guy complained when his 4-minute mega-breakbeat-loop song didn't place top 20; Basehead had been the judge on that one and given it a C-. The ACiD person complained so loudly that they played it anyway, which did nothing to improve ACiD's image ("ACiD--we complain until we get our way"). I can't believe that he contested *Basehead*, of all people--Base has had *way* more experience in this area than this guy had. Still, the organizers played it to shut this guy up, and after it was finished, the only people clapping were the ACiD guys. Someone shouted "Stick to ANSI!" when it was over. RadMan needs to keep a tighter reign on his members. Aahz is drunk and hanging off of me -- literally, not figuratively. He is still a bit fun to be around, but he is getting louder and harder to like as the party progresses. I just hope it's the alcohol talking and not him. 3:30am: I show Kiwidog a quickie effect that Phred thought up: Use a real-time plasma for a bump map, and it looks like the surface is made up of water. He thinks I should enter it in the new effect compo. I compile it up and enter it. 4:00am: The effect is quickly disqualified in the new effect compo because the size limit is 32K, and my exe+ovl+DPMI server is 220K. ;-) Two guys come up to me after the new effect compo and ask me if I did the effect using blah blah or using yadda yadda (I am pretty tired at this point) and I agree with the second guy. He turns to the first guy and says, "Hah, I was right. You owe me lunch." :-) 5:00am: Slept in the Dinosaur room, since the Hornet room was locked and the lights were off. The nostalgic hum from the ColecoVision should lull me to sleep, but I have difficulty sleeping because Melissa is not here with me. June 2nd ~~~~~~~~ 12:30: Drove with Snowman to White Noise's house to take a shower. Snowman, being as anal as he is, :-) takes the first shower while I sit in the reading room awaiting my turn. White Noise's father, who I was told speaks no English at all, sees me and says "salut". I respond with "salut", being as courteous as I can. He then says something that completely blows by me, so I respond with my best attempt at "Je ne parle pas francais, parce que ma francais est tres mal," which was meant to be "I don't speak french, because my French is very bad." He then responds in very good English, "No it's not! Your French is just fine." I am so surprised that I stammer something unintelligible. He then laughs and continues on his way. Quebec is really cool. :-) 1:30: Snowman and I return to the compo, only to hear that the demo compo has been delayed a bit. I'm nervous. We go to Subway to get a bite to eat, and see Snibble / DCB eating there already. He's not nervous at all. :-) 1:50: The Wild compo has started, and is turning out to be a more fun than I thought it would be. Some of the things that have happened are: Miss Saigon sang a song; some guy rapped to an .IT module he wrote; a really cool animation of a Star Wars sequence was played on the big screen; and one of the NAID volunteers did a magic/comedy show. The magic show was a bit corny, but better than I thought it would be. 2:30: The demo compo has started. The organizers have gotten into a habit of switching into the entries directory, then typing "cd " and then just waiting. Many coders in the audience, myself included, wait for what seems like an eternity for them to type the first letter of the directory they're going to switch into, so they can see if it's their demo or not. My demo is the 4th or 5th demo to play. All I can think while it's playing is "Please don't bug, please don't bug, please don't bug..." My demo ends, and the credits screen stays for a bit before exiting. *There is absolute silence*, probably because people expect a little bit more. My heart is stopped -- why isn't anyone making a sound? Do they hate it? A moment later, when the DOS prompt appears, I hear the loudest applause I've ever heard. All the people around me start shaking my hand. I am so happy! I feel like it was all worth it, regardless of the final placement. DCB is *NEXT* (dang! :-) and my feeling of being #1 quickly fades, since the effects got the crowd speechless, and they deserved to. I especially liked the robot walking in time to the excellent music. It is clear that this demo is going to win if something equally impressive doesn't happen. Craw Production's demo is next, "Into the Infinity", and it has (again) a really great theme. Some of the code could be a little tighter, but the effects are *seamless*, which is a coding nightmare and hard to perfect (although LaKEE has a good handle on it). I am very pleasantly surprised to see my name in the greets section at the end of the demo, although I can't fathom why I'm greeted, since I've exchanged about one or two pieces of email with them, tops. I can't say I object, though; they'll get a greet in my final version. 5:00pm: After the compo, I go with Craw productions and DCB (and others) to eat dinner at Harvey's, a local fast food joint right across from the CEGEP. We all sort-of know that we are going to be fighting for first place, but we talk about much cooler stuff instead. DCB and Force 10 sit in one area, making it a French-only section, and Craw and I (and Kiwidog, Basehead, Skie and Diablo) sit in the other, making jokes about demos and silly coding problems. They laugh at the "freemem(palette,64000)" problem I had earlier, because they *understand* what is funny about it, which made me feel good. Basehead and Skie are publicly intimate for the first time during the party, and I am reminded of Melissa. I miss her very much, and wish that someday I can show her firsthand what this experience is like. 6:30pm: It seems as if almost half the people left after the compo was over. Tran had to leave right before the compo even started because otherwise his ride would leave without him, which really sucked. I think he would've been intrigued by the entries this year--The DCB demo, for instance, was full of fakes (just like every demo, actually), but the fakes were very clever, like the lights coming out of the cube. 8:00pm: The closing ceremonies are underway, and already I am pleasantly shocked: PeriSoft won 2nd place in the graphics compo! Who would've thought? I will stop making jokes at Peri's expense from now on. I had no idea he could draw that well. The person from ACiD wins 1st place in the graphics compo. Even though he deserves it, the only people who are clapping are ACiD people because of the previous music incident. After he goes up to accept his award, he makes this completely retarded "homeboy" speech that is really dorky. At this point I lean forward to Basehead and say, "I'm getting the feeling that the ACiD guys act the same way in real life as they do online." He responds with, "The iCE guys don't, but yeah, the ACiD guys do." I seriously hope ACiD works on this--they really do have talent buried somewhere underneath all that eLiTe attitude crap. The demo compo results are announced--3rd place is Hornet. I can't believe it--Phred and I did it! I am so happy that I don't stand up at first, and someone has to give me a push. The entire 7 of us tee-shirted Hornet crew go up, and I make a short goofy speech that goes something like this: "I'm not good at giving speeches, so I'll make this short. I started coding demos in 1990, and while I entered the demo scene for the cool things you can do with computers, I've stayed in it for the last two years because of the people. I hope that we can all take the lead of these wonderful organizers and hold our own compos next year, so we can continue the tradition." Yeah, it's a little goofy, but I didn't have a speech planned--I thought that the demo coded by Grimace, or the team #coders demo, or the Surrounders demo would beat me, since they were longer than mine and had some nice code. Craw Productions gets 2nd place; DCB gets 1st. No big surprise to me, actually, since the Craw demo had great design, and the DCB demo had great code. Instead of announcing the 1st place by speaking into the microphone, they play the demo through again with all the lights turned out. It is still a good demo. :) 9:00pm: Everyone books to get their stuff packed up because NAID is being taken down in a hurry and we'll all get thrown out at 10:30. Goodbyes are quick, as everyone is harried to get everything out of CEGEP. I feel quite guilty at this point, since I really wanted to help Struk, MEd, and Mr. Khan clean up. I hope they understand... While I pack up my stuff, I find myself trying to figure out why I placed higher than Grimace's demo, the Surrounder's demo, and others; I finally tack it up to a couple of things: - Mine had a clean feel (no bugs--well, none that showed on-screen) - Most effects (except transparency) ran at the full frame rate - It was synced to the music more than most demos - Had real big audience impact at the end. :) The inverse of those can be said for the others that I was worried about: some had bugs that showed up (pixel over/underflow on the poly rendering). Some parts weren't synced to the music--in fact, I don't think any demos were synced to the music at all except for me, Craw's, and DCB's. (Whoa, a trend--all three of us placed in the top three. Something to note...) Some demos went from effect to effect to effect so quickly that the audience didn't have time to catch it. But most importantly, never underestimate your audience. A good demo has new effects that have never been seen before. The scene is at a loss for new effects, and the audience only applauds for new effects. (Well, not always, but my limited compo experience (two compos) has shown that.) That last paragraph sounds a bit pretentious; I'm sorry. I'll move on. 11:00pm: DCB, the organizers, Hornet, White Noise, Mellow-D, and other people are hanging around outside, trying to figure out what to do. We can't all decide on a place to go; the "natives" want to go to a local restaurant, but the "outsiders" want to go to Draggy's house to go to an all-night restaurant in Montreal. Snowman comes up to me and says, quite matter-of-factly, "Mellow-D is now a member of Hornet. He asked and I accepted." Now *that's* something I never would have expected. Wow. 11:30pm: We are still outside talking to everyone, trying to decide what to do. I've learned from a demo judge (that will remain anonymous) that: - My position in 3rd place was always a given; only the 1st and 2nd was a debate. - The debate for 1st and 2nd was the classic struggle between design and code--one had great design; the other had great code. While it was wrong for someone to tell me this, I would be lying if this particular piece of information didn't secretly make me very happy. I also hear people talking about Mellow-D's song--it got 4th place. 12:00am: After about an hour of debate as to where we should go to eat, we split for the last time, and I say goodbye to Struk, having just met his girlfriend, who I realize was the one helping him with the final ceremonies. After a 15-minute trek to Montreal, we find Draggy's house, and with DCB in tow, we go to find a local restaurant. 12:30am: I can describe this restaurant in one word: Dennys. ;-) (It's not Dennys, of course, but it's very similar to it.) I am introduced to an item that White Noise tells me the society of Quebec invented: Poutine. It's a made up word that describes french fries covered in gravy and cheese. It sounds gross, but at 12:30am when everyone is a little punchy, it's the *perfect* food substance. Late-night food incarnate. Aahz tags along with us, and I get my first indication of everyone else's impression of him: All 19 of us sit down at three six-person tables, and Aahz is the odd man out. He looks around solemnly, like the kid who didn't get picked for the baseball team. Someone takes pity on him and makes room. Like I wrote earlier, I wonder if he knows how he affects people. 1:00am: We are getting very silly, probably from being so tired. Floss is helping me recreate the scene from MAD TV about the hillbillies that help "fix" a doctor's patients. ("He's a purty one!" "He sure is!" "We're gonna make you alllll better!") Khyron is cracking us up with his impression of a honkey black man, calling himself "Khyronella". ("Yo, take this dope tip from Khyronella.") I haven't finished my Poutine because the serving is so big. Snowman obliges me. ---------------------------------------------------------------- And so, here I am, getting ready for bed at GD's house and typing this up, and wondering where to go next... Probably to sleep, actually, and then driving home. I don't know what having a baby in January 1997 will do to my involvement in the demo scene, but whatever happens, I'll always remember the culture and friendship for the rest of my life. Maybe I'll code a demo to be released just for fun, not at a compo or anything... Maybe I'll lay low and do the dirty coding work for Hornet... Maybe I'll start writing letters to people in the scene--real hand-written letters--and sending disks through the mail, just like the best scene ever, the C64 scene. I don't really know. I don't have any role models to look at; most people my age and experience have dropped out the scene by this point due to "real life", which I'm about to enter. Well, whatever happens, I'm sure I'll be the 40-year-old guy at some future compo explaining to the new blood in some older, wiser voice that "in my day, we didn't code everything in Java! We wrote programs in hand-optimized assembler and reprogrammed the video card for speed--and we *loved* it!" Actually, that pertains to the entire demo scene and always will: The C64 people like to point out that they did 3D vectors in *assembler* on a *1 MHz* machine with *64K* of RAM that *couldn't even divide.* And the scary part is, they're telling the truth. With apologies to Andy Warhol, I've had my 15 minutes of fame. It felt damn good. Signed, Trixter of Hornet (trixter@mcs.com) (Jim Leonard, age 24; June 3rd, 1996) (Epilogue: Since the three weeks I originally wrote this, I've coded and released an intro just for fun, and I did some of the dirty coding work for Hornet, so I guess I know what track I'm on. :-) I hope I can give my son/daughter some of the same joy that I received at NAID being with several friends with similar interests--although it might not be computers; it might be baseball instead. :-) Also, since June 1st, Byterapers returned from the grave and entered a PC demo that won a compo. Also, Vibrants are officially on the PC now, and so is Oxygene, with their excellent demo Contrast. Maybe there's room for old-timers like us after all. :) -- Jim Leonard (Trixter / Hornet) trixter@mcs.com