Mekka^Symposium '97 - A revision -------------------------------- By T.C.P. / Diabolic Force First there is to say that Mekka/Symposium '97 was a great improvement compared to Mekka'96 (I can't say anything about Symp.'96 because I wasn't there and I haven't found any Party reports). M96 wasn't bad, especially the organizing, but this year everything was a little bit more, hmm, big. This might have been mainly because of the many non-PC people from Symposium (I won't say if this was positive or negative ;). However, the party place was already very crowded as we arrived (about 1 o'clock pm on Friday), so we took place in one of the last rows. As last year, the amout of attenders had been overguessed, only 750 people were there, while 2000 had been expected. The party place was not very central, and the promised McDonalds was about ten minutes away - by car. And because of Eastern, one could only buy food during seven hours Saturday morning, so everybody who wasn't equipped with food for 4 days and a refridgerator (somebody really was!) packed his bags and "stiefelted" into "town" (what Fallingbostel was called) to the Aldi supermarket. Besides this, the party was very cool, it had that special kind of feeling, many krewl attenders, fun compos, prizes, an alcohol-prohibition to break, internet-access for everyone (had been even cooler if it had worked ;), live-acts (not THAT cool, because some people wanted to sleep or concentrate, because they had to code (hi shadow!)), and of course all things which make a scene party a scene party. Quite annoying were those TVs all over which were running all day long, showing pornos and people slashing PC-Hardware. What I also have in mind were those people shouting the word 'ficken' loudly during some compos. Dunno why ;). The usual party network was also full of porno, and tons of warez too, which seemed to be ignored by the organizers, but, hmm, I didn't see anyone complaining ;). Until the intro/game-deadline on Sunday I was very busy coding, so I missed some of the compos, maybe I also have confused their order, though here is what I can remember of... The compos ---------- The compos started with PC gfx-compo, which was the first time including raytracing, but it seemed that almost nobody contributed a rendered picture (except our contribution, which became 16th, btw). 36 pictures were presented and the leading three were: 1. Springtime Feelings by Cyclone/Abyss 2. Denis by Norm/Essence 3. Krysia by Sketch & Unreal/Pulse Next was Wild Compo, I think, showing some very 'abgespackt' contributions. Mainly videos, but also an animation and a real demo (don't know on which system, guess it was a nintendo or so) 1. Ninjaforce MegaDemo by Ninjaforce 2. Chocolate Autobahn by Adam Parry 3. Obsterscherzbrief by In-Sect On with 4-channel and ANSI, don't know the right order anymore. Both weren't very spectacular, some hilights, but the rest all very plain vanilla stuff. ANSI: 1. Day-X by Leonardo/Black Maiden 2. The Edge by Mr 4Tune/CIA 3. Freefall by The Knight/Fuel 4-channel: 1. Culture Bag by Virgill/Artwork & Essence 2. Notion disaster by Barman/Capsule 3. Get High Together by Parsec/Elven Eleven Then, some time later, the (delayed) PC 4k intro compo followed. And what a 4k compo that was! Fucking amazing! Pinker/Sanction really rocked the place with 'omniscent', a 'descent'-3d-engine in 4kb! With sound!!! You have to see it to believe it! Well, after this, the other intros looked very pale, although they weren't bad at all. 1. Omniscent by Sanction 2. HIAS by Ethos9, FINIX 3. Meyer 2 by Funk! Next was multichannel. For Gods sake the organizers had chosen to do a pre- selection this time, because last year's >30 songs with up to 5 minutes each sucked!!! Very nice tunes here, indeed, although not very much variety in styles. 1. My Spring in December by Falcon & Medicus/Pulse & KLF 2. Chaotic Mindwork by Dac/Sac, Radical Rhythms 3. Focus by Lord & Scorpik/Pulse & Noiseless 3. Elements II - Water by The Acid God/Diabolic Force The intro compo was also very nice, some new effects, anyone seen 2d-bump- mapping yet? ;). No, really, Purge's intro was a fabulous designed one, and Funk!'s had one of the best 3d-engines I've seen lately. You should really watch them. 1. Totraum 209 by Purge 2. Spotlight by Funk! 3. Velvet 4 by Fatal Justice As usually, there was a fast intro compo. All entries should include something about the silly convention, a radar trap and some grafitti. Well, this was in most cases understood as "silly convention, radar trap OR grafitti", because most entries only contained one of those. However, there were much more entries than last year (2), I think there were 15 or so. 1. Fast by Glue/Real 2. Convention by Soney/Smash Designs 3. Juicidely Hurry by PigPen/Poison On with C64 demo compo, I missed that sorry, so here only the results: 1. Project Pitchfork by Smash Designs 2. No by Smash Designs 3. Kotze Inside by Metalvotze After that was the 32k game compo, which only exists at Mekka yet, I think. So here were 12 entries, of which most looked very unfinished, I mean, a game must have a goal, or not? But how can a game have a goal without a score, lifes, levels, or anything else? I think the compo rules had to be more strict in this point, because some of the games lacked all of this, and so they were unplayable. A bad thing about this compo was that Amiga and PC-entries were mixed-up, although Hardball had promised that they would not... I you're a Microsoft-hater (I think there are 2 or 3 ;), you'll love Wak-A-Bill. In this game the goal is just: Kill Bill! Ain't that fun? Yes! Also very nice is TREXX, a shooter equipped with a nice 3d-engine and one of the few games with sound fx (although they were quite poor ;( ) 1. Wak-A-Bill by Diabolic Force 2. TREXX by Polka B. & Submissive 3. Rise of the Rabbits by Abyss The last compos were PC and Amiga demos. Acorn and Atari demos were cancelled. The Amiga demo compo was as the only compo announced with a nice 3d-animation, some partialising here, organizers??? Despite that, the Amiga demos were very nice, some even included phong-shading (yes, this was satiric ;). On PCs, the trend to use SVGA was more and more recogniseable. All demos were shown on a Pentium 166, so what? A real killer was Claudia by Deathstar, which featured a spectacular 3D- engine, good graphics, nice sound and an overall good design. (yes, I know, not a very special valuation, but I'm no demo-reviewer ;) Amiga: 1. Megademo IV by Artwork 2. Fear Factory by Arsenic 3. Thug Life by Essence PC: 1. Claudia by Deathstar 2. Segmentation Fault by Strontium 90 3. Toon Town by Kolor Some more compos I've missed: C64 Music: 1. Schn”mpf by KB/The Obsessed Maniacs 2. Sonic Impression by Brizz/Panic/Soulcore 3. Starlight by Fanta/Oxyron C64 Graphic: 1. Too M.F. evil by Rayden/Alpha Flight 1970 2. Firespell by Hoogo 3. And Let Live by ALG/Alpha Flight 1970 C64 4K: 1. 4K by Smash Designs 2. Elven Magic by Hitmen 3. 4K Intro / WOW by Warriors of Wastelan Amiga 40K: 1. Diskobox by Abyss 2. Kenguru 64K Intro by Impulse 3. Changing by Capsule Amiga 4K: 1. Extel by Ambrosia 2. Abyss in Wonderland by Abyss 3. Newt by Focus Design Yeah, that was all I think. Big thanks to the organizers for making this event possible, thanks to all attenders who made it a great party, and finally: See you all next year!!!