### Sillyventure 2014 Party Report The return of the vengeful, or something... Dateline:- Is right now! (Erm, 10.28hrs, Friday 5.12.14.) Ok, we're back again and very much live from the party place on my Asussss! lapdog. This has got a battery in it, unlike the last time. This may well become crucial a bit later on. Also unlike the last time, Felice has bravely opted for oldschool hardware, as he has an STE, not just any old STE, but one with a proper '4160 STE' badge. What he doesn't have currently, are the correctly shaped UK-Europlug adaptors to plug it into his Euro-ised multi-socket strip. An Ebay seller managing to offload some Hong Kong adaptors as legitimate Europlug things. One wonders if his Ebay username was 'Trotter Independent Traders'? (Apologies for the very very UK specific joke.) So we're going to have to beg, borrow and possible steal a series of suitable connectors to get up and running. One of the 'borrows' may well be my correct UK-Europlug adaptor, which is why it is a good job that this year's laptop has got a battery in it! Setting up our work stations. Coincidentally for this year, I've decided to opt for a concentrated writing session info dump approach to the party report, rather than keep on updating it constantly with little textual stabs of next to nothing. This was before the plug calamity was discovered, so no last minute changes have been forced on to this text from that event. So we're going to start with: Day Zero. All about the journey in, a day seemingly prolonged without an end. Yet again, we commenced operations at far-too-early hundred hours, as lovely Luton Airport and Wizzair like to get up for the crack of dawn and appreciate the sunrise, it seems. Not too much sleep ensued for the night previously. It never does for these sort of things. When spotting Felice awake for the first time, he's not had much sleep either. This is not helped by a massive cold in his case, most of which is streaming down his nose and continued to do so throughout the day. The bit going down to Luton airport and the carefully hidden in the countryside airport parking is quickly and efficiently done. We get to enjoy ten minutes or so of epic windchill until we are taken to the airport. The always dreaded 'Luton Airport Security Experience' actually goes a bit more easily this morning, We manage to interact nicely with a nice young lady official, who clearly hasn't been in the job for too long. Even Felice's 4160 STE is not questioned. As we are completing the necessary breakfast preliminaries, contact is made with our fellow traveller. This is John 'Tronic of Effect' Cove, who is also going to the party. In his case the first ever demo party. Also the first time he's been to any Atari related event since the mid-nineties glory days at the Atari Shows in Osterley. He is located at the other end of the departure lounge, but is soon found and pleasantries are exchanged. He's happily married and doing all the respectable grown up things now, but he is coming with a little bit of code from the coder of a reconstituted Effect! Soon enough, our flight is called. An initial misunderstanding (guilty shrug of shoulders) nearly puts us on the plane to Poznan, but the correct gate is found and we make it onto our Wizzair sky-chariot of dreams. The flight passes uneventfully, mostly in a stupor on my part, and as Tronic isn't a frequent or happy flyer, he passes the time by blocking out his surroundings as well. The first indication of a big upset to our travelling plans comes when the captain speaks. It appears that Gdansk Airport is not suitable to land with their current weather conditions, so we may have to divert to another airport. A period of flying around in long slow circles commences, whilst they wait and see if we can get into Gdansk, but the next announcement hits with the force of a muffled hammer of doom, that we are going to have to divert after all. To relieve the airborne uncertainty, Tronic has got his laptop out and is showing extracts of some code on the STEEM emulator. A little while later, we come in to land at what appears to be an (ex?) military airbase, the camouflaged hardened aircraft shelters) are still in place. This place has a name, Bydgoszcz. A city located in a southerly direction from Gdansk. Fortunately, Wizzair do have a plan, and a replacement bus service from that airport. (Post party note:- There was a reason for the unplanned journey change. Gdansk airport is having building work done. During the course of that building work, a Clumsy Colin, who was operating an excavator, managed to cut through the main cable for their instrument landing system (ILS). This brings down Gdansk airport to a 1930's technology level and it becomes unsafe to land with any bad weather, such as the mist and fog we had that day.) A long while later, whilst another official painstakingly checks off the names of everyone who was on the flight, I'm not regretting my decision to relax my bladder at the airport. And we set off towards Gdansk. Another two or three hours pass, much of it along old style 'main' roads familiar to me from our road trip in the year 2000. These are single lane, witness to frequent reckless overtaking manoeuvres, have no barriers or safety features of any kind, but lots of trees at the side of the road to smash into, in the event of any unplanned departure! The second half is speeded up with a suspiciously new toll motorway, which is fine by us. As we get near to the airport, the mist and darkness really starts to close in. Outside, there is strong evidence of minus temperatures, as the ground is covered in a hoar frost from the freezing fog, which we mistake initially for snow, due to the thickness of the white covering. We are dropped off at the airport and left to reconstitute our earlier pick-up arrangements. For the purposes of making life easier all round, Grey had managed to negotiate discounts with a taxi company, Express Taxis. Their drivers had been pre-programmed with arrival times for those international visitors arriving at the airport. One can only imagine how well it went down with them, when our flights were diverted away. The phone number supplied for 'Mr Jack" is good. We are to get a replacement taxi, but it might be some time as they are busy. So a period of catching up with lunch in a belated fashion follows, and anxious waiting, as we'd not made it too clear how we were to identify ourselves to the replacement taxi service. After half an hour, an 'Express Taxi' is found in the car park. It is our vehicle. A delighted away team stumbles on board, the final stage of this infinitely prolonged journey is to be concluded! The driver, a genial chap with no hair, has no problems with locating our destination and soon gets us there. The Hostel Bursztynek is unchanged from last year, and it is a matter of minutes to book in. We head up to the rooms, another two person room for me and Felice and a single room for Tronic, and gratefully collapse for a while. (Realtime note:- As I was writing this, Samurai and Front 6 arrived. They were supposed to arrive an hour earlier at Gdansk than us. Lufthansa's idea of a joke was to divert them all the way to Warsaw, which added a six hour coach journey to their itinerary! Once they had waited four hours for this us to turn up! So their eventual arrival time was some point after 7.30pm.) After an hour or so, we go to make ourselves known to the party. There are life-signs, some tables have been set up and colonised. The main hall is far from full and there are a dozen or so people around. As we're contemplating heading to the city centre to get something more substantial to eat, the meister organiser himself, Grey, aka Mr Michalowski, arrives in a whirl of phone calls and suggestions. One of those suggestions is for a specific restaurant, the 'City of Angels', where a discount has been agreed for party attendees who manage to utter the magic word 'Atari'. After some time, and several sets of directions from different people later, we manage to locate the place. This is by the riverbank. Inside the decor resembles a night club, which it may well be. But food is available, and we gratefully order various combinations of meat and vegetables and sauce, with alcohol! After a couple of relaxed drinkies in tall glasses, the food arrives and goes down with a loud and heartfelt crash. We sit back in the pose of satisfied diners, lips licked appreciatively, hands clutched over bulging stomachs. There were four of us, as we picked up a Dutch 8-Bitter 'F#Ready' on the way as well. A leisurely wander back in the freezing conditions finds us back at the party place. There are about the same number of people and a few more tables in place. So we got out of the furniture removal that Felice seemed to be strangely keen on. Good! It is not too late, but we are tired, none of us having had adequate sleep from the night before, and a memorable journey, so we call it an early night. Slight Problem uncovered.. Felice has opted to use a power strip which has euro-plug connections. This approach needs multiple UK three way adaptors though. I've brought the one that I need for my laptop and likely mobile phone recharging. Felice had brought several. Only when he tested them for the first time last night, they weren't actually Europlug adaptors, but fine for use if you were going to Hong Kong instead! So we're down to a single working correct adaptor, and lots of equipment to connect and no way of being able to do this. This is something that will have to keep for the morning though, as we're too tired to give a stuff right now. Sleep hard, the essential and vital catching up sleep. Day One.. Where CiH leans back and reviews the wreckage.. Right now note:- It's Saturday morning, we're back and so is much of the rest of the party. Official breakfast is still some distance away (now 10.07hrs) so I am making up my own with the remnants of yesterdays supplies and a large bucket of restorative coffee, from the lobby at the front of the school. So how did yesterday go down. Having accomplished a successful nights sleep at the hostel, CiH and Felice arise from their temporary pit of repose and head back to the party. CiH and Felice meet a friendly and quite well fed moggie outside the hostel who is keen to open purring frequencies. Perhaps the two things are connected? Hostel cat says hi!. Breakfast is by the established catering team from the California Baja Grill, and is astonishingly quick in arriving. Afterwards, I settle down for an hour or so in activities very similar to these ones. The power connector crisis (see yesterday) has been largely overcome. Felice has managed to borrow a Euro kettle lead to power the STE, someone had already made arrangements to bring a screen, namely a classic SC1224 Atari colour monitor, so that is put in place too. It only remains to borrow my single remaing correct Euro adaptor for the UltraSatan, and we're off. (Another realtime note:- Ukko of Live! has put his face around the door. They are entering a music disk featuring UltraSyd's tunes.) Felice has a few early issues with various combinations of memory cards and his UltraSatan. The UltraSatan was previously set up and used with a Mega STE which already had a hard drive of uncertain status, which complicated things slightly. These are overcome in a leisurely fashion and an acceptable desktop GUI is cobbled together and adapted from my SD card. From there, it is time for Atari ST demos! When we arrive, we are roughly in the mid-part of the hall. By the time we are established, more tables and chairs are arriving behind us, and more people arrive through the day. After updating the report, I briefly venture out into the bitter cold, to the local store for local people and stock up on essential supplies. Whilst at the supermarket, I locate Tronic, who is also doing the same thing. His hostel accommodation was less than satisfactory, lacking a working radiator, so he relocated to another nearby hotel. Our room was fine, but other people had encountered issues with the hostel. A glum and tired AdamK also lacked heating for his room, and stated he had to endure an overnight temperature of 12 degrees Celsius! For the late morning and afternoon period, there is not any focused activity. A brief power outage cost Stu, the special guest performing musician, a new chiptracker tune that he hadn't saved out in time. "It went to data heaven." as he put it. We get registered and paid up, being the second or third names on the list to do so. Samurai is not troubled by power outages! Of some concern is the delayed arrival of other international guests. Gdansk Airport isn't working again today, so people have been diverted elsewhere. gwEm updates his Facebook status to say that he ended up at the same airport that we did. He also adds that he's "flying with Ireland's finest". Oh dear, that's him stuck there for the duration then. As far as Ryanair is concerned, Bydgoszcz probably *IS* Gdansk as far as their schedules are concerned! However, it seems that even Ryanair need to maintain some semblance of customer relations, as he is bundled onto a replacement bus service in the same manner as we were. Other guests are delayed too. Baggio and Deez were taken to the extremely convenient for Gdansk Warsaw. It seems their original flight was cancelled, so they flew down to Warsaw and hired a car to cover the rest of the trip. The chaotic trippy mayhem even affects people closer to the party, as the attending members of Checkpoint have had to relocate to a train journey from a planned flight. Everyone does get here eventually, gwEm in time for the early evening, the Swedes make it in time to go to Stu's concert. When we get back at midnight, the Frenchies have just arrived. They had undertaken a fourteen hour car journey and cut out the flight based mayhem, in a chilly and dark reminder of our anno 2000 road-trip. The real "Party is saved!" moment comes when Defjam, erm, lsl arrives. He had finally finished his demo at 04.00hrs this morning. He was not sure what day it was, so 'this morning' could have been two or three days ago. There will be a new Checkpoint demo, it is for 1 Meg ST, on two floppy disks. The only other spoiler he is prepared to reveal is that a very well known PeeCee musician has been/is? a chip tune cover. (Spoiler note:- 11.12hrs Saturday - We've just had breakfast and ran into massed French guys. Thadoss revealed there will be the updated 'Racer' game for the Falcon, 'Racer 2' and also a demo! We chatted with SPKR who has a demo ready, apart from a final bug. He ruefully said that there was very litle design! We have also spotted the Finns, including Emphii and Britelite, which answers the last of my unanswered questions on the status of the international visitors.) But we've still got the rest of yesterday to cover! The day carries on, more and more people arrive and by early evening, the party is very crowded. Already reminiscent of the final night when the compo entries are being shown. You will finish that intro, or YOU WILL DIE! The other international visitors appear, one by one, dinner is served. Then there is the little matter of an opening ceremony. This appears to have been combined with the 'Devils Show' burlesque act. A very Sillyventure specific tradition, where a couple of nice brunettes performs for the mostly male audience. gwEm, who was talking about his current Polish girlfriend just now, was caught sneaking a picture of the act. "Just the one!" he protests, shying away and hiding his incriminating phone, roleplaying a perfect future echo of his life for the day after tomorrow. After taking that little pictorial appetiser, he comments about the hungriness of the audience when watching the performance, which is a fair point. Very swiftly after that, we make our way to the front of the school, where coaches await to transport us to the venue for Stu's concert. The coaches are a welcome upgrade from the stretch Humvee limo concept, which was great for the novelty aspect, but not quite suited to moving the vast numbers of Sillyventure around. The venue is the same place, a nightclub on the edge of the university campus, as last time. The door staff are vigilant in checking that we are not bringing in any concealed weapons, drugs, or illegal boot sectors, but no-one has any issues and we are in. Stu plays a stonking set, as expected. The sound is pumped out through the speakers used on Satan's Hi-Fi, so we are really properly aware that a chiptune concert has taken place. Stu eventually bows out, the audience being duly entertained, a little bit before midnight. The departure is quickly accomplished back to the party from there. Grey is quietly satisfied! Arrival back at the party place finds the freshly arrived Frenchies, as already discussed. There are no further organised activities for tonight, the original plan to screen the first batch of compo entries being scrubbed due to delayed and missing people. As the only remaining disorganised activity is for people to get louder and drunker overnight, it catches up on us that we've had a very long day, and we are aware that there is an even longer one for tomorrow. So we call it a day and head back for some more of that essential sleep. (Another spoiler note:- Britelite has got his Falcon 060 demo done! He has got his demo system to the point where it can effortlessly compile for both the Amiga and Falcon 060 systems, so some ports of earlier Amiga demos are still on the cards. He is intending to do a demo for an unexpanded Falcon sometime, and he has brought a Jaguar Skunkboard and other hardware, so is a Jaguar demo on the cards next?!) Day Two.. This final day of the party, as opposed to the ritual journey home, started quietly. Our feline friend from yesterday reappeared, a little more trusting and confident with the strange humans who had invaded her territory. We arrive at the party place to find a happy group of Frenchies and join them at breakfast. We are updated on some of the possible releases due later on (See earlier note). In the breakfast room, we confirm the arrival of the Finnish contingent, namely Emphii, his son, and the eagerly awaited Britelite. A little later on, we confirm the arrival of Earx, who has also had an 'interesting' journey to the party as well. The first post-breakfast business of the morning, after updating this text with the first day's log entries, is to resolve Stu's UltraSatan woes. He has one of the later issue Lotharek built devices, but does not seem to be able to get on with setting up an SD card to work with it. I have brought along my 1 GB card, intended for hot UltraSatan action with Felice's device, so I am able to help. Setting up both a working main card, with some useful utils, and a transporter card for dual PeeCee and Atari compatibility with a little further help from AdamK. I earn the undying gratitude of a grateful Stu. There is a little chat with a Polish retro magazine dude, so I'm able to show him around Mag! in its various iterations. Including the fact that Linux is a fussy bugger for case sensitive filenames, hmmm. Fresh from that encounter, a new arrival is nervously completing the registration process with Grey. This is none other than Optimus of Pouet infamy. He also codes a mean Amstrad CPC demo from time to time. Much talk and beer and Lubelska flows. I remind him of his expressed ambition to code something for the ST. But he is wistfully looking at another niche platform like the Sam Coupe to express his nerdish desires onto next. The mid-afternoon period is described in my notes thus: "Lots of Polish talks and presentations." Which meant a lot to the local audience, but was of limited appeal to the rest of us. By now, the main hall is very very busy. There is barely even standing room in places. Checkpoint and the Swedes relocate to the deserted dining room. Which turns out a good place for me to spend a while too. More chats with Defjam and Baggio follow in the outdoors space and back in the dining room. The movements of another Swedish group are discussed. There may well be some with an invitro for the small but perfectly formed Sommerhack party and its 2015 edition, and something bigger for the party itself. It appears that Deez and Baggio are not totally out of contention for future coding on Atari. It tends to be a focus and motivation thing, both of these fine chaps being altogether too skilled at the art of relaxing when in each others company! Scary green screen irradiates all who come near it! Late afternoon, is there anything happening? As the competitions have been rolled into one, again, we're expecting a start of things reasonably soonish, but so far, no action. A promised lunchtime meal out at the City of Angels with Tronic, Samurai and Front 6 turns into an evening meal. We enjoy the great fine and competitive pricing structure of this restaurant once more. In further developments, the way back home appears to be clear, as the issue with Gdansk Airport's broken instrument landing system has been fixed. Flights are now arriving and departing normally. We have also rebooked with Express Taxis for the first stage of the regretful return home tomorrow. A specific time stamp of 18.51 hrs reveals that we returned and there were no compos run as yet. We were expecting to be rattling through the music competitions by now. Tronic at the off-licence found on the return journey, had purchased enough bottles of gin and tonic to last for three competitions of normal duration, or one of these! With Samurai helping, they didn't even last for that long. This may have had a little bit to do with their subsequent departure before the compos had finished? Finally, after a presentation with a bundle of greets, the compos started at 20.00hrs. As aways, we start with the smaller categories and build up. The music entries were nice but not fantastically memorable. For me, only the last couple of Falcon Ace tracker tunes really hit the spot The 8-bit graphics had some appealing subject matter and some potential winners. We were then pleasantly surprised when the competition organisers continued to run the remaining Atari 8-bit categories, rather than swap around hardware constantly. So we get the intro categories running in record time. The second from last 16k entry from Goblinish called 'Firstie' is a likely winner. There is a pause before we complete the final part of that competition, the Atari 8-bit demos. So it is 11.00 ish and meanwhile outside, Britelite is very very drunk! Baggio and Deez are moderating their consumption and taking it steady. The touching naivety of the evening comes courtesy of Deez with "If the demo compo's aren't run by 01.00, I'm off to bed!" - He doesn't know how things work around here! All your Atari's are belong to us! The 8 bit demos include a storytelling epic set in outer spaaace! which has some jaw-dropping screens, but horribly long loading times. The last two demos are fighting out for winning spot, which may be edged by the Agenda release. I most liked the cybernetic dystopia portrayed by Lamers. (Post party note:- This happily gets the first place after all.) Day Three.. At some point around now, we effortlessly slide into Sunday and the gaming compo. There are a few cute 8-Bit entries, including something with penguins and a Dizzy tribute. There is a Boulderdash styled game on the ST, with a few graphical knobs added on. There is also a decently executed graphical adventure, with elements of the Prince of Persia on the Atari VCS. However, this competition belonged to the Atari Falcon! Anther realtime stamp for 01.08 reveals that the FALCON IS BACK!!! We get the expected 'Bad Mood' Beta release. This has gained a lot of tweaks, and is featured in a special demo mode, custom .WAD dedicated to the Sillyventure party. This is apparently shown incorrectly in a small sized window, but no-one is unhappy. There is also a demonstration of Mikro's latest incarnation of Falcon 060 Quake, which allows for full on network play with other Falcon 060 owners and even PeeCee players. It is not clear at the time of showing where this is from. I even wonder at the time if Doug Little has gone the unnecessary several steps further with his Falcon Quake engine! Finally there is the second coming of Thadoss's Racer game for the standard Falcon. 'Racer 2' is a much more polished and finished product than the original beta version. It has several different new modes of play, new track layouts and redrawn cars. We get a demo of a wildly deranged and funny 'oldschool demo track' with a landscape made up of the worst nightmares of The Lost Boys and Care Bears! In another blow struck for common sense, we're going straight into the Falcon demo competition. Felice is taking some stuff back to the hostel whilst this runs, and managed to miss this. Emphii is back with a nice Falcon demo claiming to be made of 'Old Stuff'. It is well presented, nothing too much departing from things we've seen before, but definitely more than just a 'will this do?' screen. It turns out that he is clearing the decks for Dune to completely own the standard Falcy with something mystical and soulful with beautiful presentation and design, that will surely feature in everyone's lists of Falcon top ten all-time greats! 'Tere Ra'i', as it is called, may even be better than the 060 demos that arrived in great profusion shortly afterwards! Actually, it's the combined talents of Dune, Sector One and Cerebral Vortex for this one. Oh - my - God!! For the 060, we get a great 060 code from Britelite as a form of 'Payback'! There were some initial starting issues with FastRAM. This is a smart and cynical parody of the all too common party invitro's seen at bigger parties on high end platforms. Then there is a great and 'Unexpected' return to the CT60 from Orion which is 'Fun'. He has moved on greatly since the first demo, with a much more accomplished second production with complex 3D stuff. The final 060 demo was known about in advance by me. This was the Falcon port of the Black Lotus Revision 2014 Amiga winner, 'Rift'. This was shown outside of the competitions as it was a port. However, this seems to have gained kick-assedness over the original? Have extra features been added? So, from my excited realtime notes, this is already the best Sillyventure party for releases, and we're still as yet to see the ST demos. Can the standard be kept up? Another pause follows for the party compo showing team to swap hardware and grab a breath, pizza's and bean stew to be sold by the omnipresent catering team, and swift drinks and nicotine to be taken outside. Eventually, the ST contributes its share of memorable moments to this party. A couple of 4ktro's first, both from Checkpoint, with the latter, 'Nebeprodukt' being the most accomplished, with skilful use of line vectors and complex 3D objects. The 96k entries feature a big comeback for 'Tronic of Effect' and his friends, with some rather nice menu disks. These are complimented with a very old piece of 1988-perfect code from Inter, appropriately entitled 'Oh God!' It is left to platform newcomers, Masters of Electric City and Acid Team to make the new and original entries here. Acid Team give us 'Lots of Dots', including accomplished 'mid school' vector dot effects and some things that go a fair way beyond that too. Masters of Electric City consider themselves to be 'Unbeatable' with the second stab within a year, into the ST mono mode. The design for this one is a little less smooth than Cerebral Vortex, but the effects are more modern. As for the main ST/STE demo competitions, these aren't necessarily written down in the order presented, mostly for reasons of building anticipation. There is the 'Lovetro', quite a lot like the 'Love Boat' TV series, apart from the fact it isn't set on a cruise ship. This is by various Frenchies including a returned ST Survivor under the Paradize label. Great to see you back Seb! It is simplistic in code and unbearably cute and happy. What happened to you whilst you were away Seb? We have the 'Industrially Safe Demo' in a disk of its own. Yes a proper demo from Effect. Could be uncharitably described as 'filler', but it is a higher quality than that. It is in the Paradox spot, doomed to be eclipsed by greater productions tonight. And speaking of Paradox, the Germans have bowed out this year, just offering a small teaser for the future. Will 'SaboTage' be the ultimate STE demo for next year? I hope so! Yanartas, SPKR combines forces with Checkpoint and some other friends. A nice production, but not much remembered as it is having to fight with all sorts of other memories. I do vaguely recall that it is further onward and upward for SPKR, may there be more from him in the future. We're getting close to the climax, a great demo from Lamers called 'Takeover' builds momentum, with a buttery smooth production and lots of nods to Anonymous and the general good cause of defying the surveillance society. But it is Checkpoint who were the inevitable highlight. We get to see Defjam/lsl at their wildly uneven best with another famous demo. Some chap called 'Wizard' with his thundering dome gets lots of airtime in the first half. The second half features some of the most ambitious code ever attempted on a 1 Meg STFM, with such delights as ray marching, 3D Metaballs, 3D bump-mapping with 3D distortion, as well as a proper 3D version of the Wizard chappie. After that, there is not much more to come. There is the Wild compo, which kicks off with a Music disk from Live! as expected. This lovely package features music from UltraSyd and some pixel perfect visuals from Live! I wonder where they have been recently, as it's been fairly quiet for the last year or so? There isn't much more to remember. But we manage to finish sometime before 03.00hrs. This is an improvement from previous years. Overall, the competitions felt better handled this time. A hasty departure with a quick farewell to Grey ensues with horrible speed, so we are off to bed. There are just a few short hours until we have to head home. The clock is ticking nastily. We're not exactly greeting the rising dawn with great enthusiasm, but don't feel as shitty as I might expect. Felice has to go back to the party place to fetch back a towel that wanted to get drunk with some of the 8-Bit guys and spend a few final precious hours there. The pre-booked taxi is on time with the same guy who picked us up (Mr Jack). He also considerately remembers the same 40 ZL price as for on the way down. He gets 50 ZL for being such a nice bloke anyway. As previously discovered, the airport is now working normally. There are no delays or issues awaiting us, or replacement buses. The only painful thing is the cost of breakfast, which is even expensive by western standards. We manage to time our arrival at the security check with superb timing, as no-one else is there. The official is even more interested in a nice way with Felice's STE, than the Luton security team. The flight is more or less on time, the arrival at Luton is the same, and leaving the airport and returning to Felice's car pretty much straightforward, apart from a small blip with Felice's facial scanning passport. They let him back into the country, which is a good job as he's providing the final transport back. We're back at Felice's place at around 15.30hrs. Nicky and Paula are awaiting, a pleasant few hours of cooking a state of the art chilli con carne, eating it, lazing around and pleasant contemplation of the last few days follows to end matters there. Final Thoughts.. Firstly, we have to deal with the possibility that this might be the final Sillyventure! I have some further thoughts in a separate article, but at the very least, with the amount that he's done for the greater Atari scene over several years, Grey has really earned a decent break. Who would have thought that in 2014, there would still be an active Atari scene, represented on all major platforms?! This has been shown to greatest effect. The releases on the Atari 8-Bit are a delight as always. Amongst other things, there were three really big demos to stretch that platform, one of which had some problems running and with loading times. All of them managed to combine superb effects and a compelling narrative in their various ways. The best news for me personally in 2014, was a BIG return of the Atari Falcon both in standard and 060 formats. A couple of stunning games, and no less than five new demos! (Okay, one of these was an Amiga port but I'm still happy.) Dune and friends have managed to produce a deserved first place winner, with their sublime effort for the standard Falcon. One for the all-time top ten, surely? We also got to see some lovely releases from Emphii and Orion, and Britelite's debut onto the Falcon 060 too. Meanwhile, Checkpoint smashed the ST demo compo completely. Other demos tended to have just very slightly less impact than some previous years, but all were still good. Several of the well known previous groups had not entered, but the slack was taken up nicely by relative newcomers and one very old timer with great 'Effect' indeed! Old and new friends, Tronic enjoyed his first demo party, Baggio and Deez dropped right back into place from several years ago, as if they hadn't been away at all. Other people such as the French guys and Defjam picked up from last year. More quality time was spent with Front 6 and Samurai. Also I got to be helpful to Stu. New people included F#READY, with whom we shared a pleasant evening meal and got to meet SPKR. It was also nice to re-meet Britelite, a hardcore scener if anyone could be described as such, in various states of sober and not-so-sober! Of course we have to give it up to Grey, who brought his family to witness the mayhem on Saturday night. All of the extra's that are part of Silliventure's uniqueness were intact, Stu's concert was a blast worthy follow up to UltraSyd's set last year. The catering team did their usual excellent job. The clothing challenged ladies were (ahem!) nicely featured! The not so easy area of the competitions felt better handled and they certainly finished quicker than before. Maybe more emphasis on platform rather than category could pay off. So running all entries on a single platform then change over to the next one to save time perhaps? If we're trying to go for summing up the Sillyventure 2014 experience in a single sentence. This party was like swallowing a bottle of hot Atari flavoured Tabasco sauce down in one gulp! CiH - December 2014, realtime and not so realtime! Back to the Index.