### Cranking up the keyboard for - Sillyventure 2013! Preface, setting the scene and all of that. After Grey said "Never again!" He goes and organises yet another edition of the Sillyventure party series. This one is for all the people in 2013. Is it going to be another classic like the oh-so-awesome last couple of these? Well, read on, find out! Friday the eighth! 10.26hrs Polski time. The Frankenlaptop creaks into life... From the last time I was at a party (Alt 2013) when things tragically turned their toes up, the dead laptop has been transformed into a living laptop, courtesy of late night Felician transplant surgery of the still viable hard drive into a spare chassis. This is a relief for me, as I'm not left squinting at a moby screen, attempting to record an entire parties worth of happenings and recollections through a single line textual interface, as I had to at the last Alternative Party. 11.28 Breakfast, ahh, food heaven! Courtesy of the local supermarket in the bullet scarred neighbourhood. It's the first day of the party, the 2013 edition is taking a 'start early, hit 'em hard' approach. There is lots of competing blippage and bloppage. Mostly POKEY sound, but with the hint of something heavier and bassy in the background. This is with only a preliminary party presence, as there is a huge empty space in the middle of the floor, waiting for more visitors, desks and chairs. I might add at time of writing, that we are still sharing this building with its normal users. The small people receiving education are shrieking and yelling upstairs, as if they are being torn apart by a pack of wolves. Or else fuelled by adrenaline and sugar snacks, impatiently waiting for 13.00hrs, when they are allowed to go home. Whilst the settling in period takes place, maybe a word about the journey over, previous day's proceedings and all that? Luton didn't suck, world ends... The roulette wheel of chance, responsible for how damn early we have to set off for these trips, decided to favour us with a late afternoon departure for once. This made a lot of things easier. (Sometime before 07.00, Thursday 7.11.13 - Mind you, this is every morning, currently.) Wake up and look up. A pair of eyes stares intently back at me. These eyes are included in a long haired calico cat called Molly. Her - "Oh good, you're with us now, I'm hungry!" Me - "Muuugh!" Her - "I love you daddy, I really really love you, TIME TO GET UP!" I'm staying at the maternal residence, whilst she recovers from a (pre-planned) surgical operation. One of the 'extra's' you get is the reliable feline alarm call service! Suitably awakened, I am able to get organised and travelling over to the Cambridge residence of Felice in a leisurely unhurried manner. This is bearing the scars of an early morning attack from gunpowder plotters, who didn't remember remember that a lit firework and a letterbox do not combine well together. We get to Luton airport in plenty of time, and with a small lump of dread rising in our throats, prepare to negotiate the cattle control to get to our flight,. The security staff are thorough, bordering on over-thorough, but good tempered. Maybe the later departure gives them time for early morning caffeine and breakfast which overcomes the 05.00hr shift blues and inbuilt passenger loathing surliness? One of them was slightly confused by Felice's extra special surprise in his rucksack, the Atari 800XL he's bringing for Lotharek to upgrade. Once she recognised it as "Old stuff, yeah!" then everything else was okay. Luton itself isn't insanely busy. We are able to sit in considerable comfort, for a good long while. Our flight is called on time. Another nice feature, probably unintentional, is that the departure gate is an overhead walkway, which lets us watch the ground crew activity around our aircraft, other aircraft moving around the airport, luggage being loaded and all the other things to convince you that departure was due soon. So a world record has been broken, Luton Airport didn't suck today! The flight is a couple of hours of uneasy semi consciousness, coming to an end once our descent started. More of that passenger applause when the Wizzair pilot slams down onto the runway at Gdansk. I think it was relief. The female immigration officer actually smiled at me at the passport control. Maybe it was the rough charm of my 'elephant man' passport photo? Better still, a waiting AdamK and Sqward are getting ready to pick us up from the airport. It is a cold, damp and foggy evening in Gdansk, when AdamK's car speeds us to the school of destiny, where the party is taking place. There is an early beach head, in the form of Grey, party organiser waiting for us in the empty school gym. Why he is waiting becomes clear, as a number of tables and chairs have to be transferred rom a classroom upstairs into the gym. Fortunately, before too long, other help arrives, with people setting up banners, moving equipment into the party place, and thankfully, taking over with the furniture transferral. With a healthy pre-party running, Sqward and us decide to check in at the hostel BURSZTYNEK with its amazingly bright and colourful neon entrance sign, to secure our accommodation. This is done quickly. The room we are allocated may even be the same room that we got last year? A further shuffling movement of tired feet takes us into Gdansk old town itself, all lit up like a fairy princess in the dead of night. An extremely satisfactory meal is found and enjoyed. By the time this is done, we are getting close to calling it a day. A final check back at the school reveals the pre-party is winding down, so back to the hostel for a very much called for night's sleeping. 12.54 Coffee and coffee chocolate! Well it's been TWO WHOLE DAYS without! The pretend diskmag's second edition is ready for release. After a lot of work over the preceding ten months, a final check to remove the junk MacOS files from the zip file, and it is done. At last. 14.05 A second wave of arriving tables and chairs, suddenly there is a lot less room in the hall. Not a lot else to report, the real time text, reinstated on the old Mega STE, has been behaving less than perfectly. We have been redirecting saved output to floppy to avoid the sometimes problematic hard drive. A few fun laptop facts:- This replacement unit appears to have more RAM than the machine that died. Generally it is quicker. Felice warns that it could overheat and stop working at some point. So we're going to have to be nurturing and careful with this one. Awaiting more visitors. We are expecting to see gwEm from the UK, also the entire Checkpoint crew are arriving from just over the border down Dresden way, Not to mention a double handed presence from Paradox. Of known demo releases so far, we're expecting something from Cerebral Vortex, who aren't going to be at the party unfortunately. There is also something for the Falcon from Mystic Bytes, with Sqward coding again! I'd also expect cool things in the 16/32 bit corner from Live! Paradox and Checkpoint to name three off the top of my head. That's enough to be going on with for now. Sit back and await... 15.28 There have been Amstrad CPC demos on the big screen. Optimus put in a smart piece of work a while back with his 3-D textured wall walk, 'Wolfenstrad'. Nice coding mate! Also found out about Lubelska, which is honey flavoured vodka! Yum! 17.15 Breaking news, with Frenchie arrivals. I chatted briefly with Thadoss who revealed that his new game for this year's compo's is a racing game for the Falcon. Ukko has just introduced himself too. We're already shaping up for a classic party, and that's before we even start to confirm the rumoured stuff as arriving, Another batch of cheery arrivals, including one Amiga guy with the nick or (plausibly) a real name of 'Borys' who remembered me from Revision 2013, with this being his first time at Sillyventure. I don't immediately remember him, but friendliness is infectious. 17.41 One of the most important people at the party has made himself known to us. The guy in charge of the catering is back! Food is a priority. Not that we've done too badly so far. But helpful to know he's back for another go this year. As there are more evening arrivals, I'm getting lots of "Hi, who are you?" moments with lots of friendly strangers coming over to greet us. Actually, it's better this year, with a strike rate for getting who they are of about fifty percent. 18.25 The catering service arrived almost by stealth. This year, there was a plentiful supply as usual, and better still, the food dispensing part of the operation wasn't overwhelmed with massive delays. Needless to say, the food was the usual deliciousness. (Noodle soup and pork escalopes.) I left Felice face down in a bowl of the soup. I'm sure he'll drink his way out and come and rejoin the party in due course! 18.51 Felice has rejoined us and now gwEm is in the building! AdamK advises him not to wear a contentious yellow and blue scarf whilst out of the party and in town. These are the colours of a football team who appear to have made a pact with satan, according to native residents of Gdansk! He's been sent off by the referee to see if there is still any food left. 19.00 Now on the stroke of seven, Paradox have arrived! They've set up just a short distance away. I get the feeling that we're going to get lots of sneak previews of stuff that they're working on! 19.44 Samurai and Front 6 have now arrived. In other developments, Felice has opened the bar. Which is welcome. 20.10 Zerkman has arrived. Now the party can start properly. Chuck is staying at home this time. At least he won't lose his passport there. gwEm is talking to us, he's got half a tune ready, and hoping to get the rest of it done. Right now he wants to drink beer! A lot of people are queuing as an admin blitz is taking place and they are being registered. There nearly isn't even standing room right now! It seems that getting here a day ahead has been helpful in all sorts of ways, including getting a guaranteed desk place from where we can sit and smugly type. In a tempting fate and hubris moment, the Frankenlaptop has held up well today. It has been on pretty much most of the day, and the overheating issue has not yet manifested itself. It might be due a rest later on though. 20.50 Defjam, aka lsl is now in the building, after a train journey of many hours. He hasn't brought Norman and 505, who are coming tomorrow. He has brought the Checkpoint ST demo with him, which is not missing after all! He's even found time for a quick Jaguar intro, which he finished coding at 06.00 this morning. Yep, classic party is coming up! The free beer is now operational! Someone has got Kioea running on the big screen. Some deluded souls on the drunken table near us believe it is the Amiga version! Guess they didn't hear of the CT60 being able to do it as well, and smoother. 21.12 UltraSyd has been chatting to us. He is a great bloke! I took him on a guided tour of Mag! both past and present issues, and he understood what was going on. He was impressed by the friendliness and lack of egotistical drama on the Atari scene, also by the sheer numbers of people cramming into the hall here. UltraSyd is better connected with the Amstrad and PeeCee scenes, but is keen to get to know us better, In the Paranoid corner, I'm really trying hard not to look, but glimpses get through nevertheless. There's something going on which almost looks like excerpts from a French style demo. The Black Lotus classic, Ocean Machine, is now occupying the big screen. 22.18 The opening ceremony has taken place now. The free beer is flowing. I've even glimpsed the disk on which the Checkpoint ST demo is waiting. I moved towards it entranced, Defjam snatched it away again. He did not want to share his preciousss! I want the preciousss! But there's all the other precioussses waiting too. Half a dozen we know about already. Others which we're still waiting to surface! 22.25 Loud noises, free beer, and power outages. Like the original laptop, Frankenlaptop has had its battery removed. This removes dead weight, but leads to embarrassing loss of data in a less than optimal party environment, where the power supply is as stable as a drunken Commodore 64 scener from 1990. 22.35 Moar power outage! I was going to say something about Frankenlaptop being comfortably warm underneath, rather than preparing to melt down, but the power disappeared again. I'm not sure if this is a proper outage, or misbehaving after a very long day's continuous operation, so I might close this session down for tonight. 22.38 Earx is here!! So are snacks!! It's an uneasy tradeoff between fulfilling social obligations and refilling the stomach. I think I managed to satisfy both of these? 23.37 Half as much lady, twice as much flesh! The ever popular floor show, or 'devils show' took place. I'll be hung by the anti-sexism police, but this one was the best effort yet. There are a bunch of pictures on the phone, but I doubt any of them were worthwhile quality. It was better taking in the experience with good old eyeballs rather than relying on cameras, so that's what I did. Anyway, just to annoy Chuck, we saw titties, and more! Saturday 00.14 So what have we learned from day one? There's a splodge of promising entries waiting for the compo's. We're looking forward to entries from Mystic Bytes, Checkpoint, Cerebral Vortex, Paradox and Dune. We still don't know the full story, with such people as Live! just yet. The realtime article is getting more Polski and drunken as the day goes on. POKEY sound at 900 percent of normal volume is not great for your overall state of mind. The Frankenlaptop is proving to be surprisingly resilient to party conditions. My throat feels like I swallowed a bag of gravel. Ultrasyd might be starting to do something. This isn't lessons learned, but current happenings. At this point. I might bail out of here and pick up properly in the morning. DAY 2 (or 3?) A lo-o-o-o-ng time pressing down on the sleepy time reset button later... 10.19 Frankenlaptop has been sitting and waiting patiently. He's had a good long rest, so have we. The gravelly throaty feeling seems to have subsided somewhat. I'm waiting for the effects of caffeine to kick in properly and for breakfast to be served. I've also taken a quick look at the carnage that is the official party realtime article. Lots of drunken raving, much of it in Polish, much of it using parts of the Atari character set that the hardware designer did not properly fix into the machine's ROM. Not to mention a total absence of date or time stamps. It's as if the contributors were living in a blurry forever present time moment? Well there's two more days of party mayhem. Last night managed a 'final night feel' on the first night, By the time we get to the third night and the main competitions, we could all be dead from overexcitement? 10.51 Breakfast done. CiH is replete. There is an undercurrent of twenty or so people around the party, many of them opting to create their own breakfast in place of the official one. A small group near the back of the hall seems to be happy with a solely liquid version? 11.07 Frankenlaptop comes with a different network card from the one that was in the original machine. Consequently this does not recognise an outside connection without being installed first. Of course we do not have the installation disks. So to get the second Mag! out to an eagerly waiting world. I'll have to borrow Felice's Macbook sometime. 11.25 Movies are being shown. 1. On Felice's Macbook, an action replay of last night's tittyfest. 2. On a Falcon, there is what appears to be the entire Star Trek movie (the first of the recent reboots) playing. Getting close up and talking to the owner of the machine reveals that it is running on a standard Falcon at a resolution of 160 x 68 pixels (sound is 16 kHz mono.) This does not look too bad on the Aniplayer fullscreen setting, at a reasonable distance. A hint of blockiness becomes apparent when you are close up though. If you're wanting to compare with something else, it would be like movie footage from an early mid-nineties CD-ROM game. A very close look reveals this is divided into two files or around 180 megabytes each. Which is one way of getting feature length stuff onto a standard TOS partition of 1 Gigabyte or less. Paranoid is showing off effects to Earx, whether these are intended for tonight, or a future release is not clear yet. 11.41 The other parts of Checkpoint, 505 and Norm have arrived. 505 has brought a POKEY chip tune with him to enter into the music competition. Norman is just pleased to manage to be here. We're pleased for both of them. 12.06 Landing in a Dead Hackers email inbox shortly. the finished Mag! issue 2 release. 13.21 Mission accomplished! - Mag! issue 2 is now available for download from the DHS website. Time for a supermarket visit. 13.59 Quote from Bonus, who isn't here - "Programming marathon trying to get a working version of my game ready for SillyVenture 2013. Seems to work after a lot of bugs/pitfalls and other unexpected errors. But I seem to get it done just in time!" So it looks like the games compo is livening up. Is this a release version of 'BeGEMed' or something else? 14.23 The party realtime article is covered in sick and yelling incoherently. It is wearing only a vest and one sock. No underpants. Even the 'Anti-Lamer VODKA demo team' at the back of the hall are looking at it, as though it is doing something deeply wrong and telling it to sort its life out. 15.14 Whilst speaking to Defjam, it seems that their Sillyventure release isn't a Suretrip demo. There have been screens made for part 3 and this is still in progress! 15.30 It kinda looks like the 'VODKA DEMO TEAM' have been encouraged to take their act outside? Another in a long line of sceners training to be alcoholics. It might be revealing to get into their backgrounds to find out if any actual demoscene activity got in amongst the monster epic feats of drinking? Pormorska TV are doing interviews with people close by. UltraSyd has had the treatment, now they are stealing Grey's soul through their infernal videocam trickery! The cameraman is getting too close and personal to my stuff right now. Some people have gone out, Felice is in the Lotharek corner awaiting his Atari 800XL upgrades. He's still awaiting these. 16.19 I was dumping a few random words on to the realtime text, when the Pomorska TV cameraman started filming me. I guess if it is used, its a filler shot for a second or so. Elsewhere, the Falcon that was making a good fist of Startrek the movie has also been running the new version of 'Tron' and one or two other things as well. It seems that multimedia with movie playback is possible on a standard machine, if you're not too fussy about screen resolution. 17.07 Toilets on the first floor include primary school sized toilets with no paper. Peeing into something that is better suited to a doll's house presents certain aiming challenges. 17.46 A small news update. It looks like the competitions are all being run tomorrow, but with an early start of 14.00hrs. It seems that the handing in deadlines are extra flexible? We've had supper, which was traditionally Polish and barely stayed on our plates for five minutes. gwEm is sitting down with us, Grey is still running the admissions desk for new arrivals. The hard drive has been ripped out of the realtime article machine, so that reverts back to a floppy only system, 19.08 Early evening, and it looks like the Hummer ride and the UltraSyd gig in town have been combined. There might be an early closedown for this evening? With that in mind, we move swiftly on to 'So what have we learned from day two?' - With apologies if in fact we have more time afterward, which could well be the case. Checkpoint's new demo isn't called Suretrip part 3 and this is being worked on separately. Defjam also confessed that he had an intro written for the Maggie diskmag back in the day but had never got this to us. You can get feature length AVI animations for Aniplayer working on a standard Falcon. The trick is to drop the screen resolution low. This also drops the disk space requirement nicely. The result even looks sort of okay, if you stand back a little distance. Actually, it works quite well. Bonus has (remotely) entered a game for the game competition. Toleration for drunks has a finite limit even in Poland. 19.27 Yeah, of course something else turns up. Glancing over someone's shoulder reveals something running on a Falcon called 'SToomph!' - This looks like an ST version of the 8-bit Atari hit 'Yoomph!' - The games compo's are getting very very interesting! Let's take a look back on what we've found out over the past couple of days. Demos:- We're expecting entries from Cerebral Vortex (ST/STe), Checkpoint (ST), Paradox, who appear to have secluded themselves away from the party noise? (probably STE), Mystic Bytes, (Falcon), and Checkpoint again for a quick Jaguar intro. Games:- Looking forward to Thadoss's entry for the Falcon, Bonus for the STE/Falcon, and SToomph! of course. And the 'thing' that looked like a Nintendo Game and Watch which displayed screenshots on Facebook of all places. We are still missing a lot of information, but we'll find out tomorrow, just a matter of timing whether this is premature disclosure or during the competitions themselves. SUNDAY / Day 3 (4?) 10.04 Back on track and bleary eyed. There's quite a bit to recap on as we had a big UltraSyd adventure last night. At around 9ish (memories of exact time blurred) the luxury huge jeep bus service picked us up from outside the school. Blasted by a selection of chip tunes, we sped through the night for ten or fifteen minutes to somewhere on the other side of town. This location held the night club in which UltraSyd was playing a set. The nightclub was the usual parade of heavy thickset behaviour policing gentlemen on the doors, music, and amazingly, reasonably priced drinkies! Felice asks for a glass of wine wherever he goes. I'm waiting for the day where we end up at a redneck bar in the toughest neighbourhood in the world, and he'll still ask for a glass of red wine, totally oblivious to the murderous looks he is getting from bar staff and punters alike! Still, this time around was a polite refusal. For those of us with wider tastes, the selection was appealing, if mostly beer and vodka based. But we're not here to get wasted, we're here for the music! In that respect, UltraSyd did not disappoint. He played a continuous high energy master blaster of a set, which had the suddenly filled nightclub on the dance floor, as one heaving mass of dedicated chiptune fanatics. Even people whom, we suspect, had never heard of such a thing before. After just about the right amount of time, no more, no less, UltraSyd regretfully has to stop. The regular deejay takes over and the nightclub assumes a more conventional character, as ever more people pile in, seeking mating rituals and boozy solace for failed attempts at mating rituals. Thoughts turn to leaving, and our hummy transport of delight is waiting. Unfortunately it is already full and roars off in a cloud of glitter and POKEY noise, leaving a small crowd of us, including Sqward and Earx to our thoughts, in the middle of a puddle. Time passes slowly, whilst my bladder passes on ominous warnings about its increasing size. As it happens, we did not have to find a nearby tree, as the hummer came back. A mad crush ensued, with at least two extra passengers who would have been better off waiting for the next one. They decided to get around the lack of seating by using the rest of the passengers as an improvised mattress. Unfortunately, yours truly seemed to be doing a lot of the load bearing, so that journey back was a lot less enjoyable than it should have been. Still, all bad things come to an end, paramedics weren't called. We arrive back at a still busy at 01.00hrs party, where a post midnight snack of bean stew awaits. Replenished and repaired, we decide to call it a night at that point and stagger back to the hostel, Felice unusually soberly. 11.03 The party hall is quiet right now, A lot of people have burned themselves out from last night, or the cumulative excesses of the previous two days? There's a lovely soft and relaxing feeling at this time, with only a little bit of chiptune noise and background burble of shared conversations, rather than the full throated roar we will get later on. Paranoid and RA have arrived. They missed UltraSyd, as they were finishing something. Hmm, wonder that that was. It is also RA's birthday today, happy birthday mate! We had breakfast, it was helpful in rebooting me. The Frenchies are clearing out of the hostel today. They are due to be going back very early on the Monday morning, so will literally have time to watch the competitions, fill in their vote-sheet, and then leave! 11.19 One interesting breakfast conversation was with Defjam, who indicated that a further Error in Line party would be desirable. As to how possible, and what sort of timescale, there is nothing to report and I don't want to raise hopes prematurely, but at least the idea is there. 12.12 A pre-competition activity - "Name that demo tune!" Or it could be "Name that confusingly presented remixed demo tune from an unfamiliar platform." We've got Starstruck, Lost Blubb, Derealisation and might have a clue about a couple of the remixes, but the 8-bit POKEY stuff has us lost. 13.34 Felice is back with supplies, including mushroom flavoured crisps, which is a new one here. We're not sure what was happening with 'name that tune', but as no-one has been to ask, we're not going to worry too much about it. Right now, there's a lot of people sitting around intently, are the competitions about to start? There may be a re-run or new version of 'name that tune' going on. 14.35 Still waiting for compo's to start. It looks like there is a lot of copying or moving files of the 8-bit graphics and sound entries going on at the moment. Lots of activity, some of it with a purpose, but nothing we can follow right now. 16.19 Update time:- We've been in the chairforce for the last couple of hours, with nothing much happening. However, I have managed to speak to Ukko of Live! who says that they have no entry planned for Sillyventure apart from the graphics compo. However, to mitigate that disappointment, they are working on a game. This is a shoot-em-up for the Atari STE which will use that machines extra features, with lots of sprites like in modern shooters. It is missing music, which 505 should provide when he's available. They are expecting to finish this next spring, so a possible Outline 2014 release could be on the cards. Felice mentions that tSCc are putting in some sort of entry, with a new coder taking that task on. Grey now says that the compo's are starting after the evening meal at c.17.00. He's actually stood up and spoke those words into a microphone. Defjam is jubilant as his Jaguar intro is working on the competition hardware. 16.51 Kitchen is very dark and abandoned. Time to speculate. Last year had some strange combinations, such as Extream and Mystic Bytes and RNO and tSCc putting in joint entries. Are we going to get something like that for this year? Having found out that Live! aren't entering for this year, what is happening with the other parts of Mystic Bytes (Klocek) for example. Is there another RNO production waiting, or even Cyg coming back to us with more STE highcolour antics? I'd hope there's going to be at least one left-field surprise entry, from someone who hasn't entered here before. The evening will reveal all! A quick accidental reveal just now as the compo machine ST desktop has appeared briefly on the big screen, with what looks like seven entries under 'demo'? 17.53 AdamK dinnertime quote about the entries - "Seven ST demos, it went crazy!" through mouthfuls of food - There was also something about four intros. No surprises for the Falcon apart from the demo and game that we already know about. Grey is hovering around with votesheets. So it looks like lots of presents under the tree, what's in the wrapping paper, dud or treat, will be revealed in due course. 18,11 Grey speaks - Is it time for the power cut yet? Votesheets, the sign of faith that the competitions are going to happen! 20.09 The 8-bit music and graphics compos have been. There were some nice tunes on the POKEY, a few great graphics entries and some not so great ones. The leading question was, is there enough vodka in the world to be able to cope with the VCS 2600 music entries? Coming up next is the Atari ST graphics compo, then music I guess? Grey has confirmed ST demos at seven entries, plus intros. He's not so sure about the Falcon side of things, maybe two, possibly three? Time for this to revert to tabletop mode, the graphics compo is starting 21.08 ST Graphics and sound, included a real stunner of a picture from mOdmate, some nice tunes, and a very odd modfile. Now another "short" break ensues whilst they switch in for the Falcon graphics and sound. 21.26 We're off again! 21.49 More stops than a local train! We've had a couple of Acetracker tunes on Falcy, 505's entry in particular being, erm, ace! There was also a brief digression into Atari 800 256 bytetro's, with a stunning finale for that category. Now we've stopped for another indefinite '10 minute break' before resuming with games, 22.06 Looks like a resumption is on the cards shortly? Yep! 22.38 Another break, switching systems again,... Some Atari 8-bit games including a promising platformer, which did not just want to run for any length of time, and a scissors/paper/stone game which managed to capture the hearts of the audience. I guess we're on to the 16-32 bit entries, before switching back (again!) to 8-bitters for the demos. 23.11 Bloody hell, back on again 23.57 Some more games entries, including a decent little racer from Thadoss that goes a fair way to filling the 'Reekin' Rubber' gap in our lives. It looks like they are trying to get 'BeGEMed' shown, but are encountering hardware issues. Now I was sure this was not going to be finished this side of midnight, but any bets on how late this is going to go to? 2am? 3am? Anybody?? MONDAY DAY 4 01.04 We've managed a run-through on the VCS 2600 and Atari 8-bit categories. There's one definite ass kicker in a sparse VCS category, and a couple of good performers in the Atari 8-bit demo competition. One of which could be said to resemble a dark version of a French style demo with slick and smooth presentation linked to a grim back story. At least this time, the break feels deserved, and the catering team have come to flagging people's rescue with a timely pizza order. Timely pizza's after midnight rule! We're waiting for the ST and Falcon categories now. Going to be interesting how well they do with the Falcon, as the compo team managed to (temporarily?) kill one during the game compos. We also didn't see anything of 'SToomph!' in the competition, so I wonder when this is coming out? 01.22 Lights down again.. Felice is off, he's had enough for today. 01.42 ST Intros, total of four, with a rebirth from the Hemoroids, who are doing a big project. Also a good 4ktro from RNO who seem to be most effective in that format! 02.06 Early text from the ST demos. Cerebral Vortex did a cool release in STE Mono, but Checkpoint have only gone and bloody well done the entire (in)famous Future Crew PeeCee classic 'Second Reality' demo on an ST! Yes, pretty much all of it, including most of the 3D flyby at the end! 02.27 It looks like Checkpoint are the kick ass owners for tonight. However we have also seen a rebirth of tSCc, with some of their Yoomph! tunnel routines. I guess this will appear as a game later. Finally, we have the return of a rough and ready Cyg and BlaBla, Great to see them back on the scene. And there is still something for the Falcon to come.... 02.42 A pair of entries from the Falcon demo compo. A debut effort from Lamers, and something from Sqward which was very nice to look at, if a little light on effects. Jag demo compo to watch and then we're done! 02.56 Jag demo included a funny slideshow and a neat preview from Checkpoint, That's it. I'm outta here! Afterwards, the non realtime bit.. It is very clear from that last bit of realtime that every last bit of commitment has been wrung out of me by the prolonged competition showing. I don't hang around for the undoubtedly interesting Wild compo to unwind, as it is long past any reasonable concept of bedtime. Back at the hostel, before I slam-crash into my pillow to embrace the overdue unconsciousness. I delight a rudely awakened Felice with tales of really wild demos and Defjam, erm, lsl pulling off the colossally cheeky 'Second Reality on an ST' as the special highlight. It is some time later that we emerge, to make our way to the now slightly introspective and melancholy atmosphere of a thoroughly great and awesome occasion having to stop and start the long journey back to reality. There is a pause for one final breakfast from the masterful caterers, who run something called the California Baja Grill when they're not doing the food here. The final departure is not too long in coming. Thankfully before the party hall is stripped back completely to a school gym. A taxi is organised to repatriate us to the airport, gwEm adding on as he is joining the same Wizzair return flight to get us back to blighty. At the airport, we pick up assorted Germans (hi Paranoid and Samurai) awaiting their cloud chariots with cramped seating to their respective homelands and a pleasant post-party coffee and cake discussion follows. After some constructive deconstruction of the party and relaxing waiting around in various parts of the airport, it is time to go to our flight. gwEm has a larger than ideal cabin sized rucksack. He has paid for cargo hold save but not opted to use it. This causes some problems slightly later on. A queueing time later, and gwEm finds out that his pre-payment and non-use of the baggage space is of no account to the fifteen year old schoolgirl at the departure gate. After some raised voices, gwEm reluctantly pays the additional charge to let his big pack into the plane cabin. Stun guns are not required. As we don't have to carry a twitching and urine soaked gwEm onto the aircraft, Felice and I breath a quiet sigh of relief. A stiff letter of complaint to Wizzair customer service will surely follow though? The rest of the journey back, even the potentially awkward 'exiting Luton easily' part is without further incident. So it ends on a damp and dark note as I repatriate Felice back to his Cambridge residence, then back to temporary CiH GCHQ where various parties are pleased to see my return. The furry purring one in particular is pleased that her main breakfast server has returned. Some final thoughts on the party.. The return to a three/four day format is appreciated. We were maybe cramming in too much in a lesser time period. It was also great to come a day early and see a little bit of Gdansk at night and take part in the early stages of setting up the party. The facilities seem to be better organised than ever. Even the previously superlative catering team managed to make a bigger effort this year, with lots of extras. Plus they'd cracked serving the food, so no waiting around Extra entertainments were, erm, entertaining! The UltraSyd trip out and night club gig was a resounding success. The hummer came into its own as a proper taxi, if overcrowded on the trip back. Competitions.. Something needs to be done if there is another edition of Sillyventure. Running all the competitions proved too prolonged and exhausting for one night. Also there were too many pauses and unscheduled and prolonged 'breaks'. What can be done? Many of the entries are very much 'party code' with very late submissions, so prerecording is probably not an option. also there is a great expense of kit to do this to a sufficiently high standard. 1. Suggestion, split the compos across two nights, GFX/MSX and demo/gaming/wild to finish at a reasonable time. (After party note, this is what appears to be proposed for SV2014.) 2. Tighter control over running the compo's, with not so many breaks, and strict time limits imposed on the breaks that are taken. 3. To aid item 2, above, run all categories on a given platform, then only change this when all entries are done. Games and Wild compos would be exempt, but these can be left to run at the end. This means less swapping over and fewer breaks, and a smoother run through of entries. I also suspect that this would be less stressful on older hardware too, with less time wasted trying to resolve mystery hardware deaths. I would suggest scheduled breaks and predefined time limits on these at the end of each platform, say 10-15 minutes. For all of that, SV 2013 was a resounding success in bringing the highest level of compo entries yet. This party is THE major fixture for all parts of the Atari scene to shine. It has been comparable to the 'golden age' epic party series such as Fried Bits and Error in Line. Performance of various parts of Atari scene. The VCS and 8-Bit are strong. The 8-Bit computers more so, with their pronounced home advantage. There were some very nice demos and reasonable games. For some reason, much of the sound chip music seemed to manage to emulate styles and formats that had no trace of POKEY in them. The Atari ST was the strongest platform. Even if I'm biased! Checkpoint owned the night, but he had strong competition from Cyg/BlaBla and others. There was a welcome return of tSCc, a new take on mono demos from Cerebral Vortex, a welcome return from Hemoroids, not to mention some new stuff from Genesis Project who made the ultimate 'cute' demo. RNO demonstrated mastery of the 4k format. Paradox had another stab at the cute marketplace. There are almost too many to sum up. The Atari Falcon is still sputtering back to life after a long absence. The Mystic Bytes new demo from Sqward is promising, but a bit short on content. It appears he is relearning long forgotten coding. There was a first time code with a debut entry from Lamers. The Falcon is performing stronger with gaming, as Thados's new racing game a hit. The Atari Jaguar is a new category this time, but it was celebrated in fine style with debut code from Checkpoint. There are questions still to be answered with things that did not make it this time. What happened to the Game and Watch style thing for the ST? When is SToomph getting released? Will Bonus ever finish BeGEMed?? Maybe some of these questions can be answered in a Sillyventure 2014! CiH - 2013-2014.. Back to the Index.