_//\\________________________________________________________________________ _\\__T_A_T_I_C___L_I_N_E_______________________________________ August, 2000 __\\_________________________________________________________________________ \\//__ Monthly Scene E-Zine ________________________________ 137 Subscribers _____________________________________________________________________________ --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Table Of Contents ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Opening: Message From the Editor Features: The Root -- How they Got Involved (This Month: Vincent Voois) Inscene 2K Report FLaG 2000 - European Demoscene Meeting -- Final Results Columns: Music: In Tune -- Flashback: The Trax Weekly Days Guest Song Review -- n-voice ep by dizmal The Listener -- Music from Sense and Lime Retro Tunage -- Blue pearl by Basehead Demo: Screen Lit Vertigo -- Horizon'00 double review and "This Is" by Orion Guest Demo Review -- Flag 2000 Demo Reviews Intro Watch -- Flag 2000 and Inscene 2000 Intros General: Scene Dirt -- News & Rumors Editorial -- Are MP3s destroying the Music Scene? Link List -- Get Somewhere in the Scene Closing: Credits --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Message From the Editor ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- It's official! Static Line has been around for Two years. That's right, we've been here for 24 complete issues since 1998. Thanks go out to all the readers and of course my staff. We got an incredible issue for you all this month. For one, we got reviews up the...uhm...you know. Gekko out-did himself this month. Aside from his normal intro reviews, he also did a few extra demo reviews. Seven has three demos to review himself...so if you're a demo fan, you got a lot to read this month. For you music lovers, you got a whole bunch to read as well. For starters, we have a guest review from Eino Keskitalo. Also as special for this issue, I have included the very first "In Tune" from the Trax Weekly days. Then there are all the tunes reviewed by Tryhuk. Did I mention all the features this month? For starters, we got another installation of "The Root", brought to you by Tryhuk. This month, Vincent Voois shares his views of the scene and a bit about his own history. We also got a party report from Seven (king of the party reports) for Inscene 2k, and the final results for Flag 2000 (prepared by Gekko). Lastly, let me thank you all for your patience. My brother is now officially moved in to Florida, and I am back from my vacation -- if you could call it that. So, it's a week late, but I'm sure you all don't mind. I've been working on this for 5 hours now, and my head is spinning. I think I'll release it to you all now. Enjoy the 24th Issue. Thanks for keeping us around for two years. --Coplan --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- The Root How They Got Involved Sponsored By: Tryhuk By: Vincent Voois ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- About my involvement into the scene for as long as there was a period that people noticed me, the steps that got me into it were quite a loadsome before i got to the PC-scene... My music-activities done by computer started around 1985 on a Commodore C64, funny enough i got my fame in that scene when i wasn't active in the C64 world anymore, since 1990 / 1991 i bought a Commodore Amiga on which i learned using samples to compose modules. The fact that i could use four tracks or by use of some tricks: eight tracks (Oktalyzer) were my reasons to step over to Amiga. At that time the PC-scene was really awful regarding the music-parts around it. A truely good soundcard was, at most expensive level, an 8 bit soundcard that did not even came close to half the quality and warmth the Amiga had. The Amiga period for me was a learning stadium, I did release a couple of mods but nothing seriously, a period not really worth mentioning though it was important for my way of improvement. The only four-track mod that got online was the release of Dance Booster on the Party III in Herning (It did not make the bigscreen but was at least made downloadable). Nice to know that the guys i looked up to on that machine were people like Dr. Awesome (/Cryptoburners), Nuke (/Anarchy), Dizzy (/CNCD) and a lot more people. The only two tunes from Dizzy i got determined my way of looking at samples and how to use them totally for the rest of my tracking career. It was at Herning were I noticed that development of the musical hardware for the PC improved incredibly. It did not take me longer than a month after the Party III (Dec. 1993) in Denmark before i got a soundcard for my 486-Dx 25 Mhz machine (a soundblaster pro clone). Scanning the PC bbs's for decent tracker programs that did at least as much as Protracker 3.x on Amiga, I was a bit disappointed to find crappy DOS-trackers that were not even capable of playing the mod formats decently IF they supported the soundblaster card (meaning: no speaker-only output). On one BBS I was lucky and found the Future Crew's ScreamTracker 3. Finally a music application that offered me more than I (I'll admit: a bit arrogantly) demanded for my method of composing. Inspired on how the Vibrants used the possibilities of the OPL3 FM chip on the soundblaster / adlib cards even triggered me to compose a couple of Adlib songs in Screamtracker. When I noticed the Second Reality Demo I thought it was done by Kefrens since they made Desert Dreams II on Amiga which was alomost the same kind of demo but definately the same kind of music. Then I found out that it was done by the same Future Crew and that it won a PC demo compo... :) people should have known about Kefrens at the time :) At the Party IV, which was the last party that I attended abroad, I released an ST3 song, and that one of course did not make the big-screen either. But at least I was glad to find out that they have nice girls in Denmark :) In 1995 my soundblaster burned out, the next soundcard that I implemented was a Gravis Ultrasound Max, a choice merely because 90% of the demos that I downloaded held some kind of embargo against Creative Labs and their Soundblasters (and their clone mates). Also the second release of FastTracker became an important issue for me that year. It took me a couple of BBS sysops before i downloaded FT2 since i knew FT1 and that one really "sucked major" to use oldschool terms. The fact that I downloaded FT2 (just for fun to have a very original version of nibbles) opened a new world for me. Also a good application that made the GUS patches a whole lot more valuable to use besides MIDI purposes. Up to 1995 I still was busy improving my methods of composing, around 1995 i decided to make a debut attempt by joining a music-group and so my choice fell on the group "Destiny". The majority was against my admittance to the group with the reason that my style did not fit the group. Okay, that decision got me somehow into Acme. AAP (group leader Steven Ter Heide) contacted me with the request if i was intrested in joining to supply some songs for the bigger projects. I knew a couple of Vic's songs that I found pretty good (which later turned out to be even not his best work when I got the rest). And to clear one confusion some people had: I'm not Vic and Vic is not me so stop putting his name on my music and mine on his. I had to put my focus onto Lone Ranger's PolyTracker which was a private tracker only cirulating within the group and a couple of the closest friends. That also meant I had to go back to less extended possiblities. PolyTracker is something similar to ST3 though is way more focussed on tracking with one extra effect i have not seen in any other tracker yet up to date (Reversed sample offset playing, this is also not explained in the doc that describes its format). Also PolyTracker is limited to GUS use. What Lone Ranger did to the samples is still a riddle to me, but the way Polytracker played them and the way FastTracker II played them was something equal to playing your music on a dolby hi-fi set (PolyTracker) and playing the music through a tin can on a string (FT2). I made a couple of songs in Polytracker, the only serious demo-implementation of my work was done in "Afrodesiac", Acme's intension was to release it at the Party V in Denmark. I probably have some curse over me because that particular demo did not make the big-screen either. If you still have it, save it because it's a collectors item, I believe not many people have a copy of it anymore. I kept composing to compile a music-disk. I had aproximately 15 Megs of modules and only one was seriously used. I could not blame Acme for that, the problem was that the modules were a bit too complex and expanded to make a nice demo around. I don't mean good but just to much CPU intensive to have something for other things. Psychologically my mind was not very good as I lived in isolation for a very long period (that's how I got all my inspiration). In the end of 1996 I got online and noticed the Hornet Archive. A good chance to download the demo's I could not get my hands on.... One of the better demo's that caught my eye at the time was Caero (EMF / Plant). From that period demo's only became better and better and significantly smaller and smaller (meaning:becoming truely a worthy opponent against Amiga). Not all demo's were there for my reach as my GUS only had 512K and my video card was not always supported not only that, up to late 1997 i still ran my 486 DX 25 while a P60 or P100 became minimum standards for the Demoscene. Considering my options (my low income and my vision for the upcoming years) made me decide to quit composing at that time and uploading the music-compilations to Hornet instead of letting Simm or Lone Ranger build a player around it. So watching demos and composing music went to the background until I had the money to upgrade to the faster standards. At least for watching demos. Most demos that I eagerly wanted to see, I had to wait a year or two before I had a CPU fast enough to view them. Once I could do that, I caught up pretty quick. It's very funny to actually "see" the evolution of demo-creations through two years in two days :) As composing went on.... Yes, throwing up all the music onto the Hornet Archive caused some heavy response, for sure the goodbye message I included triggered people to write me to reconsider that. Even current days I sometimes get a reaction from a person asking me why I quit. January 1997 I just could not sit and do nothing. As I viewed the first spots of Impulse Tracker 2.10 - 2.12 I decided just to try and see if IT 2 was suitable for me. Well, it was a good eye-opener that supplied me the the power of necessary instrument handling without needing to manually edit multiple tracks for the effect I wanted to reach. But even today I still use multiple tracks to extend effects building up a sound environment that swirls through your head. I don't make Hi-Fi audio-set music, I make music that sounds proper on headphones but required more CPU power throughout the last years. The effect of DemoNews and TraxWeekly gave me some good insight on various trackers being busy in the PC-scene as I also learned from Acme's personal module archives (where i got the rest of Dizzy's songs) and I downloaded a whole smuck of modules from HA. I entered MC5 and MC6, I did not enter them to win, but to release some test songs wondering what the critics would say. I needed some good criticism on my work, and I acted upon what i got returned if the critics were objective and meaningfull. With the ending of HA in 1998, the hunger for critics was not over, so I entered the first couple of Groovy Compo's, having a supplied set of samples and limitations offered a new challenge to me, I found it pretty amusing and I enjoyed the opportunity of judging eachother's songs on smaller scale. With the coming of TraxInSpace -- the combination of HA and weekly or bi-weekly tracking compos -- a continueing story for the both of them became a fact. Next to it was actually right after HA died, the rising of scene.org. Currently even scene.org is into financial problems keeping the server running, like HA at the time lost it's support by Walnut Creek and the system maintainers have no motivations to keep the parts running.... I still enjoy the scene and now and then I pick out a track from a musician to listen to. The modules grew in size and the limitations seem to be vanished in the use of tricks, stereo samples (large samples) and no less than 44Khz 16 bit if not 32 bit. The amount of people tracking currently is so large that each style-devision has it's best performer but are no longer the persons that rule the scene like Purple Motion / Skaven / Necros or music groups like FM, Analogue, KFMF.... I still have some unfinished songs laying and waiting to be finished but it will take a while before I will continue with them as I'm currently in hibernation mode in tracking land. I have a nice girlfriend which is about to become my wife. I have a pretty busy job and a pretty busy life. I did learn a couple of important things during the years when tracking: -Feedback upon your work is important no matter how much self-critism you can apply on your own work. -Listen to a lot of other peoples work, it supplies inspiration at moments when you think you went out of it. -Good sample / instrument arrangement and mixing can make or break your song, as long as you don't use my mixing techniques you won't spoil your music that quickly :) -Never give up and think twice before uploading rather than working a bit more on your creation. Something that bothered me a couple of times during the past few years: -Don't bite the hand that feeds you; I notice when archive maintainers like TiS and scene.org have to do things to keep the servers alive and upgradable to meet the ever increasing audience and users, they get a lot of flame mail about going commercial. The world of free stuff always has been an illusion but up to the moment before it gets out of hand it is affordable and the moment when the people can't maintain it from own funding anymore, they turn "commercial" as most sceners call it that way... That is the moment the archive meets its doom or its fortune depending if the users appreciate the existance of the archive and it's background by tolerating those measures. Consider what your benefits have meant to you so far and how they might benefit other artists. If you upload your work there to become a known legend you attach a value to the service of the site but moral support is at a certain point not enough anymore for survival. Flaming archive maintainers for their survival techniques is pretty hypocritical when those same people did something good to you. For sure that you can't fix such things as soon as they're broke(n). Good... A lot has been pinned down, not everything but globally you're reading my complete scenical biography. There is a lot most people don't know about me because most of the work done has been background material for years before it was ever released and even afterwards most pieces done would never fit into any demo-concept. I do hope that the purpose of releasing versatile material can be noticed as I never kept my musical styles into one corner, I tried many styles to prevent being pushed into a corner. Hiding like a Chameleon is what I stand for, the colours I put in front of you are more important to notice that the shapes and contours I will always have. --Vincent Voois --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Inscene 2K Report By: Seven ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Friday 14 July -------------- 21:22 -- OK, I've arrived at Wilsele-Putkapelle (the partyplace) one hour ago, so it's definitely time to start this log. I spend last week at Baxter/Green's house, because he held a small game/LAN party for his fellow engineer students and some informaticians like Quasar and I. I learned quickly that I have an in-born talent to be fragged 10 times a minute at Quake 3 and the like, so I abstained from gaming (except tetrinet, hehe) and instead concentrated at coding effects for a 64K intro. Too bad Baxter decided not to visit Inscene because no one else from Green would be there. Instead, he went to the Beach Rock festival with the other engineer students, and I had to travel to Inscene alone and without productions, as my 64K wasn't even half-finished (boohoo, snif, snif). Upon entering the partyplace, I almost immediately spotted Djefke, a hard-core Linux addict, who managed to make within 5 minutes some derogatory remarks about my "fischerprice operating system" Windows98 :) He had installed his stuff at the back of the hall, but remembering last year's noise level at that place, I choose a place near the bigscreen. The Aspirine guys were there too, and just like last year they were making a demo for the compos. The organizers announced the first food-run: you could order pizzas, fries and other junk food and they would go and buy it for you. Really useful service IMHO. You could also bring stuff on CD to the server-room to be shown on the bigscreen. As I had 2 CDs with wild demos in my collection, I gave these to the orgos and they were shown immediately. Legoland, Penguin Paradise, South Party, Red Dot, ... They're all way more impressive than on a monitor, although the sound quality was rather poor. 22:55 -- Thanks to Djefke, I had the network protocol details right in no time, so I could start browsing. I don't like it when my harddrive is constantly in use by other downloaders, so I tried to upload all the things I wanted to share to the main ftp-server. Well, I wasn't the only one who had that idea, cause uploading was snail-like slow. Later I saw a photo on the net from the server's statistics program: download=195.4KB/sec, upload=9753.5 KB/sec. Almost 10MB/sec upload, that's quite some pressure for a single server :) A Simpsons episode is shown on the bigscreen. I prefer demo-related stuff, but I agree it's a tiny bit better than a winamp plugin or so. Saturday 15 July ---------------- 00:11 -- Now the movie Final Destination is shown. Typical horror movie with the "which pretty teenager will die next?" theme. The network is still very slow, I think there may be something wrong with my settings :(. At the moment, there are about 60 people, which is less than last year, but probably some more people will arrive today (Saturday already). Last year there was a TV-crew, remember? The mpeg of that TV-program was on the server, I've watched it and it's even worse then I had expected. Show this to your parents and they'll lock you up in your room whenever you mention the possibility of attending a demoparty. No explanation of demos, but instead focusing on the loud music, the fast-food and the lack of sleep. Let me just quote the very first sentence: "Wilsele-Putkapelle is a place-to-be for the international computer world, thanks to the local parish hall, where about hundred computer maniacs have gathered to beat each other in a marathon of bits and bytes." I wonder how they would describe Assembly or The Party, with a few thousands "computer maniacs" :) 02:47 -- The surprise-compo rules should have been announced 4 hours ago, but when I asked the orgos, they said "Hmm? Do we have surprise compos? OK, we'll make up some rules." It seems that, after the organizing and build-up of the party, some orgos are so tired that they're not 100% focused on the party anymore (although alcohol might also have some influence :)). Well, half an hour later the rules were online, so I could start coding. I don't like to go to a party without any contributions, and a surprise entry is better than nothing. A proggy that draws a circle that morphs into an ellipse... That should not be too hard. 04:21 -- Behind me, the Aspirine crew is clearly making a surprise music tune. The rules are: make the best possible module, using the files on the Inscene website (HTML, gif,...) as samples. The resulting sounds very chiptune-like, quite funny but when you hear it in 50 different versions during 1 hour, the headache-danger is very big. Luckily, I brought my own asprin :) (Yep, never go to a demoparty without it) Drawing an ellipse is a little bit harder than I expected. Hmm, I remember we've seen some formulas a long, long time ago, in another galaxy... *think* *think* ... 05:08 -- Stupid me :) For some reason, I had the brilliant idea last week to put my network adapter in full-duplex iso the default half-duplex mode. Now I've switched it back to normal and voila, my transfer rate jumps from 30KB/sec to 800 KB/sec. So the network is indeed even faster than last year (if you've sensible settings, that is). Although the foodrun at 2 o'clock was announced to be the last for tonight (next one at 8 o'clock), the orgos have decided to add an extra "surprise foodrun". This news is received with enthusiasm by the ever-hungry audience. An old Apple Macintosh is used as an presence list: everyone is invited to sign it. I like this kind of weird ideas that increase the scenish feeling, just like the name-cards everyone got at the entrance. 07:29 -- The main soundsystem is playing some dumb housetracks, which I can't really appreciate in my tired state of mind. I thought for a moment that the dance-compo had started, because Impulse Tracker is visible on the bigscreen. But that would mean that the compo has started one hour *before* the announced time, and it will freeze in hell before such a thing happens on a demoparty :) Since my code is almost working (in 320*200 iso 320*240, as required), I'll escape the noise by taking a nap in the sleeping room. See you again within a few hours. 11:57 -- Wake up just enough to get up and walk to my PC without crashing into walls or innocent bystanders. Djefke is taking pictures for a party-report he wants to create (with code & music, not just a picture-pack). I order a Pizza Hawaii for breakfast (love the food support here), and start to look at the pile of TXT/DOC-files that reside in the INFO/DEMO/VGA section of my HD. I have to find out whether mode X or VESA is the smallest way to get a 320*240 mode. On the bigscreen, they show powerpoint-slides with info about the compos, the surprise-compos and the IP-addresses of servers. A simple but efficient way to keep people informed. Watch and learn, Ambience orgos! 14:24 -- Oh my god. Besides the foodruns, you can now also order spaghetti for this evening! What happened to the "demoparty = 3 days unhealthy food" tradition? And why can't those +1000-people parties provide the same services? (Imagine an organizer entering the pizza shop: "75 big pizzas of this kind, and 120 small ones of that kind, and ... :)) There were some rumors that due to problems with sponsors, there would be no prizes, but it was announced that several Linux releases and a harddisk were added to the prize pool. Good thing, because more people have arrived now, so now there are about the same number of attendants like last year (about 80). 15:01 -- The first compo (dance music) has started. There are 4 songs, but I don't like most of them. I'm not a fan of the genre, although I'd describe that last tune (New Millenium/Cyborg Jeff) as "above-average quality noise". The normal music compos has also only 4 tunes, but they range from a 36K chiptune to an 1,4 MB song with full-time vocals. Hmm, will be hard to vote, they're all quite enjoyable... 17:46 -- Djefke has finally managed to burn his first CD at the party, and wants to celebrate this with an Unreal-deathmatch. Of course, rather than playing with the experts, he wants me for an easy target :) Alas, there's something wrong with his connection and he left the CD with the drivers at home, so we can't compare our lack of skills... (And we can still look down upon all those lame gamers, hehe) Fed up with non-working mode X code, I've just slapped my standard VESA routines on the ellips-proggy, and entered that. It's now a bulky 371 bytes big, but I don't feel like optimizing it since I'll probably be the only one to compete in the surprise code compo. No other assembler coders can be seen when I check out the monitors... The harddisk and XT-throwing compos are delayed due to the typical Belgian bad weather. 18:10 -- The 100KB game compo has been held, with two entries. The first was a small space shoot-them-up by PPP-team, with very good graphics and an OK chiptune, but the levels clearly weren't finished. The second was a 1155 byte TSR-program in textmode that changed the background-colors to show a tetris-game. So you can use any monochrome textmode utility and play tetris at the same time :) 19:30 -- The rain has stopped for a while, and the harddisk throwing compo has taken place. I really wonder for which computer that harddisk was designed, probably the ENIAC or so: it was at least 10*20*35 cm big and weighted a lot of kilos. Space, one of the orgos and 2 meter tall, threw the thing over 7 meters far just for demonstration, and no one was able to do better. Your weak reporter got only 4 m and some cm, so I was the 14th out of 18 competitors (clearly, the unhealthy food and the lack of sleep had already negatively influenced my powers :)). To my surprise, A0a/Green arrived during the compo. A0a is short for Andromeda, if you need to pronounce it. He told me that he was actually there as A0a/Velocity, since that Finnish group had asked him to submit a 64K intro at Inscene, so he was now also a Velocity member. As this was a very recent thing, he hadn't knew beforehand that he would visit the party, and hence Baxter hadn't know it either. A0a took a chance on the harddisk-throwing, and placed 3rd. Of course, HE was 100% rested :) 19:58 -- Oops, problem! A0a's only diskette is corrupted! And since there's no Internet at the party, he can't download the correct version! We asked the organizers whether there was a cybercafe in the vicinity, but the answer was no :( Luckily one organizer has a net-connection in his student-home, so now he and A0a are driving to Leuven, the nearby city where that home is located. Sunday 16 July -------------- 01:27 -- Oh oh, I've totally forgotten this log. Let's catch up: A0a got back with a perfectly working intro (was checked on the compo machine). Since A0a has no computer with him, we watched some Futurama episodes on my PC, in between the compos. The graphic compos were not very spectacular, neither the pixeled nor the raytracing compo. Two 4K-intros were shown, and the second, called Sex, was really very good: funky adlib music, beautiful fractals, funny texts, morphing 3D objects. In the 64K compo, there was only one entry: Dream/Velocity, and the same happened in the demo-compo, with Life is a Bizz/Aspirine as the only entry. If you have Linux, check that one out: it's a fake powerpoint presentation in a real "corporate business style", about how you can make a living by winning democompos today. It's funny and ironic, but there are some things (like the checklist for making a Shad-like demo) that are almost true. In the wild compo, there was Aspirine's chiptune-disk for Linux, a text-demo in an IT module, a demo made entirely of basic-programs and bat-files, and some weird darts game. Then we had a long talk with Djefke who had joined us, about MP3s and VidX (that new movie compression format which is already very popular), about nostalgia and the history of the Belgian scene. It seems the Belgian groups always fall apart or become inactive before they reach their full potential :(. Meanwhile, some good intros and demos were shown on the bigscreen, such as Heaven 7/Exceed. 11:14 -- I've given up all hope to update this thing on a more regular base, and I hope the same for you :) But I'll try to recover as much of my memories as possible. A0a and I were very tired and wanted to get some sleep, but we had ordered a pizza at the last foodrun for tonight, so we had to wait until it was delivered. The Aspirine guys were watching Mr. Black/Orange, so we decided to watch some demos too. My "job" as a reviewer forces me to download a lot of demos, so I've more recent stuff than the average scener does. After devouring our pizza when it arrived, I went to the sleeping room but I returned to submit my votesheet (on paper, yes). Last year I slept right through the voting deadline, and I didn't want to do that again. A0a slept sitting at the table, cause he had no sleeping bag with him. Since my parents had taken the car on their holiday to Germany, I had no transport back home. When I had learned that Baxter wouldn't go to Inscene, I had mailed Cyberphest, one of the orgos, if he knew people from the vicinity of Gent that had space for 1 scener + PC left, but he had answered they would ask it to the audience at the partyplace. When I woke up, I asked the orgos to do that, but no one from Gent was here :/ Being the cautious type, I had arranged with Baxter that I could call him if I couldn't find transport. So I did. In the evening, back home ------------------------- Better finish this report before I forget all things that happened: for an unknown reason, my CD-rom refused to run Futurama-CDs any longer, so we were left without entertainment. Since the bigscreen hadn't been in use for some time, I asked the orgos if we could show some demos. No problem, they led us to the compo-pc behind the bigscreen, started the beamer and left. So we had complete control over the bigscreen, yoohoo! The compo machine was a P3 550, 128 MB, Voodoo 2 with 128 MB, so we could try some heavy-duty demos. For the interested: the rotozoom at the end of Contour/TBL has *still* a multi-second delay in it, and some scenes in Bleam/Statix aren't very smooth either. For older demos, the hardware overkill had some strange results: the music of Genocyd started 10 seconds later than the visuals, and suddenly was played faster to catch up with the timing of the 3D-scenes. Djefke had joined us, and so had Baxter who had arrived too. After maybe one and a half our of showing demos, Space came saying that they needed the screen for the prize ceremony. A pity, cause there were still a lot of demos I'd liked to have seen. Control/Green, for example, although Baxter and A0a had protested when I copied that demo from CD to the harddisk. They are really too modest, I think :) First the surprise music compo was held, just two tunes of which the Aspirine one was clearly better, so there was no voting for that. The prize ceremony wasn't very surprising, in most compos there was enough difference in quality to know the winner beforehand. Only the raytrace-compo ended in a par: Cyclops en D-3 had equal points, but after talking with them, the orgos decided to give D-3 the first place because he had worked much longer on his picture than Cyclops, whose picture was a one-hour party production. A0a collected the prize for Dream/Velocity. And of course, there *was* a second entry in the surprise coding compo, which beat mine by over 100 bytes. I didn't really care, although I was curious how the coder did that. When asked, he showed my his code, and he had hard-coded the number of the video mode for the compo-machine (which was allowed by the orgos). At the end, the orgos explained the troubles with the sponsors: 3COM, one of the main sponsors, has for some reason decided to stop the production of the low-end equipment like hubs and switches, so they were not interested anymore in sponsoring the party (sceners usually don't buy the more expensive stuff). There had not been any foodruns today, maybe because it's Sunday and most shops are closed, and when everyone started to pack, the orgos asked for people who had any food left, to bring it to the server-room, because the entire crew was famishing. I had some bread and orange juice left, so I did bring it to them, and so did some other visitors. The reaction from the orgos was "Huh?! This works? People actually DO bring food ?!? Thank you, thank you!" :D After buying a party T-shirt (there were still some left, which were sold at reduced prize), I put my stuff in Baxter's car. We said goodbye to our friends, and drove home. Another great party was over. I've to say that I was a bit disappointed at the start of Inscene due to the low attendance. I had expected a big increase, say a total of 150 sceners, cause Inscene'99 had been pretty good too. But thinking about it a bit more, I realized a lot of the specific things that make Inscene so fun, cannot be continued if the party grows a lot. The food support, the availability of the organizers, the possibility to show whatever you want on the bigscreen... Also, Inscene is organized during the summer holidays, and lots of other demoparties take place around the same time: VIP, Horizon, Scene Event, Euskal ... So the chance of Inscene growing too fast is small, and now I like it that way. Big thanks to Space, Appel, Cyberphest and all other organizers for Inscene 2K, and I hope to be there again next year. --Seven --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- FLaG 2000 - European Demoscene Meeting Final Results By: Gekko ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Generated with Greenroom Party Organizer Toolbox v1.0a 4 channel music --------------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. Islands in the Sky Just 119 3 2. Dentist Pigeon Nagz 66 2 3. Country Draqla DJ Vuk 25 7 4. Nelibilo Nula 24 8 5. Arachnophilia Arachno 22 1 6. Kyrandia DJ Kabal 18 4 7. Fekete 21 Vincenzo 18 6 8. Demomodul #2. Carlos / BvT 17 9 9. Wide Open Room Xhale 13 5 Multichannel music ------------------ Place Title Author Points Number 1. A jelenben Gibson 30 3 2. Piece of Mind Stanley 27 4 3. Painful Afternoon Towerx 25 6 4. Two Hands Help Ya Just 22 2 5. Flying Drums Impulse Creator 21 8 6. Months Away Netpoet 21 1 7. Picard Mistia 20 5 8. Forfota Mistia 15 11 9. Sitaotmimatryabagorl Nagz 10 7 10. Winter Dream Phuture Kemist 7 10 11. San Pedro Cactus DJ Vuk 5 9 MP3 music --------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. Fankadeli Project Towerx 78 3 2. Re Vil 53 8 3. Effects in the Rain Forest III. John Uram 45 5 4. Kapd be az életem! Húsdaráló Project 31 6 5. Cyberluv Mistia 31 9 6. ConGame Phuture Kemist 20 2 7. I Like Da Mjuzik Vincenzo 18 4 8. Ludas Matyi Gets Down DJ SAN Tsung 15 7 9. Sky Covex 10 10 10. Continuepolitics Avalanche 7 1 4K intro -------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. TheFa Lite Power Rangers 48 1 64K intro --------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. Heat Dilemma 113 4 2. 7 Minutes Aromatherapy 80 5 3. Dast Power Rangers 67 3 4. Axiom Remix Terror Opera 19 2 5. Claustrum Castrum Doloris 13 1 PC demo ------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. TheF Power Rangers 217 2 2. Haugyjobb Astral 109 5 3. Konplex:54 fresh!mindworks 95 1 4. 6th Lenin United Force 73 4 5. E2K Digital Dynamite 31 3 Amiga demo ---------- No entries, compo cancelled. Commodore 64 demo ----------------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. Animetion Tempest 139 1 Commodore 64 gfx ---------------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. Lost Name Poison 100 5 2. Fear Leon 70 2 3. Hellraiser AMN 62 3 4. Battle Graal Sebaloz 49 1 5. Leon Macskája Leon 23 4 6. Violator TGM 23 6 Commodore 64 music ------------------ Place Title Author Points Number 1. In da City Vincenzo 119 2 2. Compomusic Control 78 1 3. Scream Johnny 43 3 Pixel graphics -------------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. Windows ir 62 6 2. Lapinots Exocet 47 2 3. It Scares Me Zthee 32 5 4. Nagymamiii! Blackhand 29 4 5. Night Passion Poison 28 3 6. Jutalom Baráth Endre 5 1 Raytrace graphics ----------------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. Petra: The Forgotten City Dob 134 5 2. Ghosts Narn 77 11 3. Rocky Road to Pichways Zmilosh 44 2 4. Ibanez GWB1 bass Gargaj 16 12 5. Vízió és mágia Lewin 15 8 6. After Death Fanatic Twins 13 7 7. Tuticool Avalon 13 3 8. My Room Dunszt 11 10 9. Revolver Shanon 10 9 10. Sandbay Magic Touch 9 6 11. Icokusima Gate Dob 8 4 12. Chopper III. John Uram 7 1 True color graphics ------------------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. Plastik Butterfly Arn 73 5 2. One Night Partikle & Inferno 61 8 3. The last rose what I can give Blackhand 51 16 4. Yawn Inferno 43 9 5. Father Time Magicboy 41 11 6. Felnin Trotskij 26 7 7. Atrocity ir 20 12 8. Ants and Mushrooms WIZard Raist 16 2 9. Bird Baráth Endre 16 1 10. Remember Zork & Chain 15 4 11. Stage Nine Ezah 10 13 12. Cyber Hell Fraud 7 3 13. Looking for more Partikle 5 6 14. Red Bull Chain & Zork 4 10 15. Deadly Flowers Blackhand 2 14 (oil painting, scanned) 16. Destroyer Magic Touch 1 15 Wild demo --------- Place Title Author Points Number 1. Piknik - Trailer ir 138 2 2. Exhumers Radio Exhumers 84 1 3. Party Rendered Flashing Millerson 31 3 4. Darling TV Nick (digital video) 17 4 --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- In Tune Flashback: The Trax Weekly Days By: Coplan and Setec ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- Introduction -=- I pride myself on this column. Many of you may not know, but this column is the reason Static Line exists at all -- at least in part. In Tune was originally published in Trax Weekly for a few issues, shortly before Gene Wie disappeared from the scene. With a large void in my regular schedule, I decided to start Static Line, and I took this column with me. The magazine has grown to what it is today, and I'm rather proud of that. But most of all, I owe a lot to this column. So, as a special this month, in the 24th issue of Static Line, I am publishing the original In Tune article from Trax Weekly. Enjoy! -=- "Blue Flame" by Chris Jarvis -=- (Article originally posted in Trax Weekly Issue #110) In Trax Weekly issue #107 (maybe it was #106), Psibelius asked for suggestions to improve the quality of Trax Weekly. In issue #108, Psibelius published a letter from Lachlan Barclay in response to Psibelius' request. Lachlan's suggestion (in short) was to pick out a track every week and designate it "Mod of the Week". Out of that letter came this column which I am calling "In Tune". On a regular basis (weekly when I'm able to), I will review a fairly new song that I think is worthy of some public attention. All said and done, lets move on to our first installment of "In Tune". This week's tune is "Blue Flame" by Chris Jarvis of Analogue. Many of you may already have the song and not even know it. If you have already downloaded your own copy of Impulse Tracker 2.14, you may want to check your ZIP file a little more closely. If you haven't already, extract CHRIS31B.IT and load it up in your own copy of Impulse Tracker. Sit back, relax and enjoy. When I first played this song, the first thing that I noticed was the attention that Chris puts into his percussion. This is the one element that is most often overlooked in the average song these days. Not only is his percussion clean, but it follows the mood of the song. As the song becomes more intense, so does it's percussion. On very few accounts in this song will you find a "pre-fabricated" snare and bass drum pattern. But look beyond the snare and base drum. Listen to the cymbols and hi-hats. They are both constantly playing through the song. This gives the song depth. Hear those rolls on the hi-hat near order 31? That's a style some of you will recognize from Dave Matthew's Band. In real time, it's a style that marks a good drummer. In the tracking world, its the mark of a person that knows his percussion. On a more technical observation, the key to this song's success is Chris' choice of samples. Many of the samples were his own, sampled from a Roland E70 synth. But what is more important is the fact that you can't tell which samples weren't made specifically for this song. All these samples collectivly form a perfect sample set where each specific sample compliments each of the other samples. Chris even went so far as to include two types of feedback. That first type (Feedback 1) can barely be heard at all in the song. But take it out, and the trained ear (not even a well trained one at that) will notice the difference. All in all, "Blue Flame" is a tightly fabricated song where detail is everything, and everything is accounted for. Those of you looking for a new tune to study, there is much to learn from Chris Jarvis' song. --Coplan "In Tune" is a regular column dedicated to the review of original and singular works by fellow trackers. It is to be used as a tool to expand your listening and writing horizons, but should not be used as a general rating system. Coplan's and Setec's opinions are not the opinions of the Static Line Staff. If you have heard a song you would like to recommend (either your own, or another person's), We can be contacted through e-mail useing the addresses found in the closing notes. Please do not send files attached to e-mail without first contacting us. Thank you! --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Guest Song Review n-voice ep by dizmal By: Eino Keskitalo ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- n-voice ep by dizmal released by plastik recordz - http://plkrekz.cjb.net/ size: 260634 bytes (zipped) intro plus three tracks, format IT -=- Editor's Note -=- The website disclosed here returns a "Forbidden" error message. I publish this with the expectation that the website will return to normal standing soon. Thanks for your patience. -- Coplan -=- These tracks represent the monotonous techno-thingie, being nothing very spectacular rhtyhmically or melodically. Trick is in the quality of sound (not meaning phwoar! it's 24-bit 44khz!): Most of the samples sound very distorted, if not plain inverted. This results as noise, edge and unforgiving roughness. It also sounds quite pleasing to me, being cold and warm at the same time. Although it's supposed to be repetetive, monotoniq as it wants to be, there's a certain lack of sublety in transitions, resulting as a few clumsy progressions in the beginning of track one, partially also on track three, but it's a powerfull effect too on that particular track (regarding the melody lines). Although it's not as developed as I'd like it to be, the atmosphere is right, and overall I like this trip a lot. Try it out, might be something new for you. --Eino Keskitalo --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- The Listener Music from Sense and Lime By: Tryhuk ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- I have to think on the depressive minimalism that appears in the scene more and more often. When we hear too sweet track, we say it's crap and this kind of stuff, but have you ever seen a person that would say that some sad/depressive track is shit? I haven't. Of course I don't talk about technique. -=- Bubble blower -=- -=- -- Sense -=- This track impressed me by nice lead idea and it's effective use in combination with evolved background ambience which sounds more complicated than the lead itself. Also percussion is here only on the place of rhythm holder and tempo manipulator, because tempo of the lead is fast, dynamic and monotonik enough to keep the song tempo itself. Genre is weird, background is influenced by mix of all the hip/trip hop styles together with movie soundtrack style, in some moments industrial. On the other hand, foreground sounds are very soft and clear and in a way they would fit to electronic minimalism. If you're into this kind of music, there's nothing more to be said than "try it". Song Information: Title: Bubble blower Author: Sense Release date: 2000 Length: 4m59s Filename: sense-bubble-blower.mp3 File Size: 4688kb Source: http://www.mono211.com -=- Bulentoi -=- -=- -- Lime -=- First comparison that popped in my mind is that this song is a "depressive electronic funk". But this description isn't exact, because later it starts to garther minimalistic and even dnb color. Melody goes on, then sudden change and nice chord progression comes in, proving that author has skill to make a good normal jazz/funk track. But song goes on in the experimental way and follows the laziness of your mind. It isn't a track that you have to hear, but it's nice thing to listen, when you lay on your sofa and do nothing. Song Information: Title: Bulentoi Author: Lime Release date: 21.6.2000 Length: 4m40s Filename (zipped/unzipped): milk0084.zip / lime-bulentoi.mp3 File Size (zipped/unzipped): 4320kb / 4380kb Source: http://milk.sgic.fi --Tryhuk --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Retro Tunage Blue pearl by Basehead By: Tryhuk ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Deep and groovy bassline, dark monotonous rhythm and hypnotizing background sounds ripped from the best CDs, that's what opens this awesome track. "Blue pearl" is 5th track on the "Heavy Shadows" album and it belongs among my favourite songs by Basehead. Basehead's music can be described as a clone of ambient and dance music with touch of jazz, deep detroit sound and other alternative styles of dance music. This mix of styles isn't so unusual, but because of some unknown reasons, basehead's approach stays original and unrepeatable. Although his tracks are quite long, it is very easy to flow away with them and one of the main reason is his awesome and unique tracking technique and original ideas - for example beginning and end of every pattern (or his smaller part) has lower volume and that improves overall dynamics of the track and it also enhances listeners orientation in the track. Or lead instruments with no sustain, they are often echoed many times with no volume change (but pitch can be different) and that makes the sound more rich and it also kicks you to write a lead with more harmonic progression, because new notes will meet echoes of the previous with full strength. There's a lot of other tricks and interesting ideas that can be found in this blue piece of sea and I'm not able to notice them all nor describe. But that doesn't matter, because as you sit to a tracker, you discover, that you are doing same things, without thinking on it, without any analysis, your brain just takes these little tricks that basehead has searched for so long. It's not only excellent music for listening (but it is great to make a 2 hour playlist of ambient music by basehead, close yourself in a living room and watch the rain that hits windows), but it it also a music that you can study and I think that it will take you a lot of time to discover all tricks that bh used. Song Information: Title: Blue pearl (Heavy Shadows album) Author: Basehead / FM Release date: April 9, 1997 Length: 8m16s Filename (zipped/unzipped): fm-hshad.zip / blupearl.it File Size (zipped/unzipped): 1.5mb / 959kb Source: ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/fm/fm-hshad.zip --Tryhuk --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Screen Lit Vertigo Horizon'00 double review and "This Is" by Orion By: Seven ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- "Time Machine" by Lettique & Friends: 1st place with 172 points -=- -=- "Tesla" by Sunflower: 2nd place with 167 points -=- Found at www.scene.org System requirements: Time Machine: 10 MB HD, a not further specified 3D card, Windows 9x. Tesla: 8MB HD, Win32 (Win9x has this, dunno about winNT), OpenGL-compatible 3D card (3dfx/voodoo cards do not work because some textures are larger than 256*256) Test Machine: PII 350 64MB, SB16, TNT2 M64 32MB, Win98 -=- "Time Machine" by Lettique & Friends -=- Code: Lettique Graphics: Malfunction, Kazic Music: Archon, TowerX 3D: Lettique, Neuroup (I hope I got the credits right, they are shown extremely short) This demo starts with a short opening sequence of a complex leafless tree, whose branches are lit by multicolored butterflies. A symphonic intro tune sets the mood. A "Loading" message is shown and everything halts for almost two minutes, during which there is little disk activity. That probably means the demo is decompressing stuff, so the delay can vary greatly depending on your CPU power. The main part starts with a small earth that is surrounded by transparent circles. The soundtrack is an energetic house/dnb/demo-style tune dominated by the powerful percussion, with camera switches on each beat. While the small earth rises above the circles, the credits are shown very shortly. Then a complex machine is shown, consisting of tubes, pillars and a large clock. Suddenly it comes alive, with the hands of the clock turning backwards, lightning beams moving around and the earth flying through the tubes. The rest of the demo is basically the voyage of the globe through the time machine, being catapulted through cylinders and carried by an Atlas-like statue. At the end all the sub-pieces of the timemachine come together and the earth is send to its final place in the universe. This theme with it's carefully designed "grand finale" makes it much more enjoyable to watch than a dumb 3D-object show. Although it's mainly a 3D-demo, there are a few effects like motion blur or an extreme zoom/perspective distort that bring some variation. Also fuzzy photoshopped 2D images (for example the silhouette of a baby) are used here and there. But the emphasis is on the 3D models and movements. They are no stationary rooms and objects a la Shad, but neither realistic moving persons as in The Fulchrum. It's somewhere in-between, with lifeless objects moving together as in, hmm, a machine indeed. The music keeps the same rhythm all over the demo, and the syncing is done solely by changing camera positions on the beats. Together with the very dark textures, these quick changes can make it hard to see what's going on. -=- "Tesla" by Sunflower -=- Code: Yoghurt Graphics: Saffron Music: Radix and Lluvia Compared to Wonder, Sunflowers previous accelerated demo, Tesla has very little "real" 3D objects. Most of the visuals are made by what I call texture-effects, with a lot of transparent textured surfaces that do not form a distinct entity. For example, after a strange vertical zoom/fold open effect with (rather ugly) horizontal lines through it, the title is shown on a background of merged textures, each one showing the same texture but a bit darker and at a different position, resulting in a kind of motion-blurred look. The same effect is used later with textures that have the same luminance but different sizes. Moving in a spiral, these give a fractal-like image. Other texture effects are a very good-looking tunnel made of glass fragments, and the spirals of white boxes. "Normal" 3D objects include a tangle of almost invisible tubes, and a large pillar out of which a face emerges. That last part has an ugly and highly visible bug: the camera moves *inside* the face, so you see only the pillar and a large hole. Although there is no theme, the whole demo has a very ambient feeling, mainly created by the transparent fuzzy look, and of course the music with its bird samples and very slow melody lines. After the first half, the tune changes suddenly by cutting the drumline and using an echoing bell-like lead, which fits the streaming columns of flares on the screen perfectly. I really like the relaxing mood of it. Besides the flare/text/color-mix textures, there are also pictures with recognizable objects, three of which are shown full-screen at the end for the credits. They all have the quite recognizable Saffron-style, blurry with sharp details here and there, which reminds me of old paintings. After installing new 3D drivers (again), that bug with the camera moving inside the head is gone. So the bug was probably caused by the old drivers, not by the coding/modeling of the Sunflower guys. -=- Comparison -=- As you can see from the results, there was a very close competition between these two demos, which Time Machine won with only 5 points. I think this is due the same principles that made Moai/Nomad win from State Of Mind/Bomb at The Party 8: Time Machine is a real party-demo, with impressive visuals, a fast, stirring soundtrack, and it follows a theme with a well-defined ending. Such demos are always very impressive the first time you see them, which is all that counts at a party. Tesla, on the other hand, is a more relaxed demo, without a theme, and whose mood isn't as easily appreciated after two days in a noisy hall and not enough sleep. But they've of course the advantage of the big Sunflower name, which always causes some amount of name-voting. All in all, the two demos are very different, and which one you like best will depend on your personal taste. But both of them are of a very high quality, and surely worth checking out. -=- "This Is" by Orion (party-version) -=- Found at ftp.scene.org 3rd place at TakeOver 2000 democompo System requirements: Win9x, DirectX 7, a Direct3D compatible 3Dcard (older cards like Voodoo 1 & 2 or ATI Rage do NOT work). 3,8 MB HD. CPU or RAM not mentioned :( Test Machine: PII 350 64MB, SB16, TNT2 M64 32MB, Win98 The demo: This is one very fresh and original demo! Really a pleasure to watch after all those heavy 3D/pure design demos. To start, except a logo at the start and the end, it's almost completely black & white. That's not just to be original or due laziness :), it really adds something to the style. After a drawing of a cute teddy-bear fading up on your desktop, and the usual setup box, we see some fake operating system box on which the question "What is a demo?" is entered, while keystrokes and a voice asking the same can be heard. The rest of the demo consists of short parts all highlighting a specific part of a demo, always introduced by the voice saying "This is ... code/ graphics/design/greetings/..." These quickly changing parts do not all have the same style. There are wireframed blobby objects and little pictograms following the Danish design trend, but there are also hand-pixeled pictures, or a 3D-scene of a crazy man driving through a hospital on a stretcher, with badly connected polys (in the "this is oldskool"-part :)). Despite these different styles, the demos has a consistent feeling due to the (lack of) colors, the speed of the effects and the subtle use of weird humor. For example, some of the French sentences in the demo mean "Bad luck! The valiant Father Bear has forgotten to put on his left slipper!" or "Talk about it with your dentist". The music has also a lot of variation (and is thus hard to describe for me), the main theme reminds me of a idm/rock crossover with short melodic patterns in it, but there are a lot of soundeffects and sudden changes of style at the different parts. Unlike many other demos, where voice-samples are used very sparingly, here the "This is"-voice is heard frequently enough to give it a more realistic (non-tracked) feeling. Overall: If anyone ever asks you "what is a demo?", show them This Is. It's original, funny, stylish, and it actually tells something about demos/the scene. Really great production, which has only two minor bad points: the French text, which is not understandable for large parts of the scene, and the very small amount of 3D scenes, taken in account that this is a 3D-only demo. --Seven --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Guest Demo Review Flag 2000 Demo Reviews By: Gekko ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- "Haugyjobb" by Astral -=- #2 in the demo compo at Flag 2000, Hungary credits: Arpi (code), Strepto (code, 3d), Wad (3d), Towerx (music), others download: ? requirements: Linux/Windows, OpenGL, good 3d card (eg. TNT2) A Linux only entry was shown at the party, the Windows version will be out about two weeks later only. It can even happen that this article will be published earlier than the demo itself. The title of the demo is a play on words, 'Ha ugy jobb' means something like 'If it's better that way'. Haugyjobb is in fact a parody of the demos by Haujobb. I think that I am not too far from the truth if I say that the Mekka 2000 demo competition is the reason why this demo was created. There Haujobb took both the 2nd and 4th places, while Astral's demo ranked only the 12th. Of course, one has to know at least these two Haujobb demos ('Mikro Strange' and 'Strange Feelings') to understand the jokes in Haugyjobb. Inferno/Haujobb said that it is the best Astral demo so far. My opinion is the same: the music and the video is synchronized together perfectly, there are good effects and 3d scenes, even the colors are fine. Naturally the jokes are there, too. The music of 'Mikro Strange' was was a dub remake of an opera aria. Therefore the music by Towerx is basically a woman shouting. One can't help laughing when listening to it. The effects and 3d scenes are all miming the ones in the two Haujobb demos. The demo begins the same way as 'Mikro Strange' does. We are in a cave in which there are colorful fireworks. It ends with a picture of a skull. Then there is a blob effect: a picture of a woman is stretched on the blobs and we are flying in and out of them. There is a similar effect in 'Strange Feelings', this one is a bit better. The next scene is a screwed tube. We can see a text proudly showing off with the extra complex technique which is used to draw it, while the tube's surface is completely jaggy. Then the tube is shown from outside and it is jerking to the beat of the music. Then a man is flying in a tunnel and he is taking up weird poses. In another scene a fish is swimming in a river, and just passes by a huge fish-hook. This scene is beautiful: there are plants, the water is waving and there is a spectacular reflection mapping effect; although the colors could have been better. Of course it is very similar to a part in 'Mikro Strange'. There is a scene where many frogs are spinning over each other. Here the woman who is singing starts hopelessly shouting and crying her aria. Things then become mixed up and abstract, there are flashes, noises and complete chaos - exaggerating the deranged part in 'Strange Feelings'. The final scene is a tribute to the brain operation of the robot in 'Strange Feelings'. A man is floating inside a big tube-shaped hall, and then there is a huge explosion, he gets an electric shock and he takes up the shape of the Haujobb logo figure. The end of the demo is the same as that of 'Mikro Strange': there is a blue bitmap effect in the background while a yellow Haujobb figure is spinning in the front. The difference is that here his leg is in plaster... I have seen the final version only once so far, at the party in the competition itself. That is why it is possible that some parts may be different or missing. To put it bluntly, I think that every scener should watch this demo. -=- "TheFa" by Power Rangers -=- demo, presented at Overdoze 5, Hungary credits: bali (code) download: ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/parties/2000/overdoze5/ requirements: Windows, OpenGL Overdoze 5 was held in the spring of 2000 in Hungary. It was not a party, just a small event of about 40-50 in attendance where sceners were watching demos together on a bigscreen. Still it had two new presentations. The first was Volvox by Picard/Exceed, a kind of a preview of Heaven 7. This remained unreleased, it was just shown to the audience. The other was TheFa. TheFa has become a famous demo in the Hungarian scene by now, but it is probably completely unknown anywhere else. It is a simple yet very good 3d story about a tree. Note that 'fa' means 'tree' in Hungarian. It was released under the fake label 'Power Rangers' where the members use fake nicknames (usually the nicks of their real christian names), so you will never know who the author really is.. or? -=- TheFu by Power Rangers -=- winner of the demo compo at Flag 2000, Hungary credits: bali (code) download: ? requirements: Windows, OpenGL This demo is a sequel to TheFa (a demo at Overdoze 5). It surprisingly won the Flag 2000 party by a very large advantage: it got about two times as many votes as the second place. What I don't like in it are its colors, and that every effect lasts a bit longer than it should. What I like in it is that it is simple, strange and original. It is quite surprising to watch it for the first time. I decided not to describe the story in details, so as not to spoil the fun of this. The only thing I tell is that 'fu' is the Hungarian word for 'grass'. --Gekko --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Intro Watch Flag 2000 and Inscene 2000 Intros By: Gekko ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- TheFa lite by Power Rangers -=- winner of the 4kb intro compo at Flag 2000, Hungary credits: bali (code) download: ? requirements: Windows, OpenGL 'TheFa Lite' is the 4kb version of 'TheFa', a demo at Overdoze 5. It is an endlessly looping 3d effect of a fractal tree with spinning branches. -=- Dast by Power Rangers -=- #3 in the 64kb intro compo at Flag 2000, Hungary credits: locutus (code, 3d), gabi (gfx), zoli (music), pisti (code) download: ? requirements: Windows, DirectX, Pentium2/400+ 'Dast' is the yellow version of 'Heaven 7,' as Tomcat/Greenroom, the main organizer of Flag 2000 said at the prize giving ceremony. It has been put together at the party by... uhm... Locutus. It starts with a very good pixelized 'Dast' logo, and there is a spectacular effect similar to radial blur on it. The intro is made up of very good raytracing scenes and effects: spheres in water, a column with holes in it, a spherical mirror flying in a tunnel, a sphere with light beams coming out of it and others. The music is fast and energic, the effects are synchronised perfectly to it. The greetings part contains other Hungarian fake demogroups only (Power Rangers is also a fake group, but I hope you have already figured it out). -=- 7 Minutes - Aromatherapy by Inquisition -=- #2 in the 64kb intro compo at Flag 2000, Hungary credits: Vic (code), Nagz (music), IR (gfx) download: ? requirements: DOS, GUS, VESA, 320x200 32/24/16 bpp, Pentium2/400+ '7 Minutes' is an intro with several bitmap and raytracing effects. Some parts are very spectacular, especially on a huge movie screen. One of these is a black and white raytracing part with reflections and a 'dirty objective' effect. Another is a sphere, from which light is coming out. On the other hand, one must also note that there is hardly any design: the fonts are ugly and the colors are bad in several places. Some of the raytracing effects are quite slow. In spite of these it is a fine intro. -=- Heat by Dilemma -=- #1 in the 64kb intro compo at Flag 2000, Hungary credits: Nap (code), Brix (code), Sed (music), Ezah (gfx), Arn (gfx) download: ? requirements: Windows, OpenGL This is a very colorful one. It is in a way similar to 'Pole' by Aardbei. The graphics are almost limited to the textures which are good; and there is a Dilemma logo at the end which is not bad either. The music is quite good and it gives an abstract mood to the intro. There are 3d effects, including terrains, tunnels and morphing objects. These are not original, still they are very spectacular. Probably the best is the last one, a terrain with a fog which looks like a smoke. The music and the effects are kept together, eg. the material of the landscape flows according to the beat of the tune. -=- Dream by Velocity -=- winner 64k intro at Inscene 2000, Belgium credits: hebx2 (code), chavez (music) download: www.inscene.org, velocity.rulez.it requirements: Windows 95, DirectX 5, 32mb ram [review is based on the 80kb semi-final version] Dream by Velocity was the only participant of the Inscene 2000 intro competition. The tune by Chavez creates a gloomy mood, the visuals (colors and effects) support this. There is no storyline. The intro is a sequence of 3d effects, which are loosely synchronised to the music. Most of them look fine, but neither is really original. There is, among others, a waving wall, a morphing cube and a kind of a column or tentacle. The intro uses software rendering, which here means that it is very slow and the textures appear to be quite blocky. There are little bugs and quirks everywhere (eg. we sometimes fly through the wall, etc). These spoil the intro, unfortunately. I like this intro, although some more time could have been spent on putting it together. --Gekko --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Scene Dirt News & Rumors By: Coplan ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- KOZMIK/NEXTEMPIRE Releases Source Code -=- KOZMIK/NEXTEMPIRE has released the assembler source code to an intro reelased at Assembly 2k. The intro is PACMAN4K, and it took 8th at Assembly 2k on August 3, 2000. http://www.multimania.com/pacman4k/pac4ksrc.txt -=- Sista Vip Looking for Wired ASM Coders -=- Last month, they were looking for pixelers, now they're looking for ASM coders. Will it ever end? If you can handle 32bit ASM code (No C++), contact Looping: Sista_Vip@Yahoo.com http://www.sistavip.exit.de -=- Chaos Constructions 000 Party Place Changed -=- Apparently, the CC000 has more people registered than expected. They are expecting over 400 sceners. The party place has been moved to a new location: Kinoteatr voshod ulitza Pogranichnika Garkavogo, dom 22, korpus 1. According to Random, the best way to get there is to catch a taxi (184-T) from Prospect Veteranov subway station. http://www.chaosite.com/constructions/ -=- Assembly 2k graphics on GFXzone -=- For those of you looking to get some of the GFX from Assembly 2k, you need only to go to GFXzone. Fortunately so, because the entire compressed package is around 100MBs. http://gfxzone.planet-d.net/ -=- Groovy Compo returns -=- Groovy Compo, the bi-weekly competition, is back in action. Grab some sample packs and join in this fun competition. http://www.ukscene.org/groovycompo/ --Coplan Scene Dirt is a semi-regular column offering the latest tidbits of information to its readers. If you have any bits of information that you think should be here, contact coplan (coplan.ic@rcn.com) and offer as much information as possible. --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Editorial Are MP3s destroying the Music Scene? By: Coplan ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- I was debating the other day with an unmentionable friend of mine over ICQ (to protect his privacy, I won't disclose his name). He truly believes that MP3s are destroying the Computer Based Music scene. Actually, let me clarify, he specifically thinks that MP3s are destroying the art of Tracking. The MP3 debate is not a new one, and I have written about it many times. The fact that it keeps surfacing tells me that it'll be in our blood for a very long time before it either gets accepted, or replaced with a different format. Truth be told, MP3 is not going to vanish from the Computer Based Music Scene. But let us consider some valid points offered by my friend: "...the atmosphere in which you could give a song/recieve a song and help someone with it is gone. No messages/greets either. And you can't single out channels." I believe the point here is that in MP3 format, one can't learn like they do in the modular formats, such as IT, XM, S3M, MOD. This, I admit, is true. You listen to an MP3 like you do a CD. You can't single out one instrument, or one channel. You have to take the whole thing for what its worth -- face value, not channel value. Messages and Greets? With the wonderful tool of ID3, you do have some ability to write something in your songs. No, not a 10 line greet message -- but is it necessary? I think not. The learning aspects aside, the MP3 format is still a very portable and convenient method of release. I personally don't release in MP3, because my songs are very small to begin with. If I were to release in MP3, it would almost quadruple the size of the file. But, if I were to have a large song, it might be to my benefit to convert the finished product to MP3. But my friend dislikes MP3 format as a means of modular release, because often times effects are added to the MP3 to make the song sound much better. These are effects that can be done (with skill) in most modular formats. True, it is much easier to add a reverb to a jumbo sized wave file than it is to each instrument channel in Impulse Tracker. I guess the concept is that the skill behind the song isn't so difficult anymore, and the skill is the root of the music. Is not a musical ear considered skill? Adding effects and such are minor, in my book. The finished product, effects or none, must be pleasurable and enjoyable (if intended). It's all about the finished product, and the finished product still remains as a computer based music format. I hold no secret, my platform remains as such: The Computer Based Music Scene is what I support. Within that, I mostly support the Tracking Scene. However, MP3 or not, if the song was created on a computer, and it falls under my interests. Is MP3 destroying the tracking scene? My personal belief is that it is not, rather it makes the tracking scene that much more prestigious. If someone were to show me studio quality music in an IT format, I'd be very impressed. I'd disect the song, and I'd study the technique. In MP3 format, it'd just be another song to me. But, if trackers were to release in only MP3 format, then they are not truly trackers, just that they track as a means to develop their music so that they can add their effects and such in their final product: an MP3 file. So, as more people release in MP3 format, there are less true trackers out there, and it starts to become more of a respected artform. But I will never review an MP3 song or judge a competition that allows MP3s. As a critic and a judge, I'm interested in the underlying skill. And you just can't see that with MP3. But as a music format, it is widely accepted on my computer. --Coplan --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Link List ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Featured Site: Tetris http://msg.sk/tetris Writeup By: Coplan Browsing through Orange Juice, I discovered this site. I was a bit confused at first! The techno trax group refers to their members as "players" and they score the players based on how many songs they release (I believe -- though I could be wrong). They even list high scores! Kinda a fun site to play around on. It's well done, and you can get some pretty good music from here though. Just be warned -- you shouldn't visit this site when tired. Demo Groups: 3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl ANDESA Soft International..................http://andesa.da.ru Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com AtomiK....................................http://atomik.ini.hu Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org Chrome..............................http://chrome.scene-hu.com CoPro.....................................http://www.copro.org Damage...................................http://come.to/damage Dance...................................http://dance.flipp.net Defacto 2..............................http://www.defacto2.net Dolops......................... ........http://dolOps.scene.hu Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~exceed Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods Green.....................................http://green.dyns.cx Grif........................http://arrabonet.gyor.hu/~rattgrif Haujobb......................................http://haujobb.de Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl IJSKAST.............................http://www.ijskast.cjb.net Immortals..............................http://imrt.home.ml.org Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org Just For Fun...........................http://jff.planet-d.net Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com Label zero.........................http://labelzero.pganet.com Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar Nextempire..................http://members.xoom.com/NEXTEMPIRE Ninja Gefilus.........http://www.angelfire.com/or/ninjagefilus Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org Orion..............................http://orion.arfstudios.org Popsy Team............................http://popsyteam.rtel.fr Quad........................................http://www.quad.nl Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net Rhyme................................http://rhyme.scene-hu.com <*> Sista Vip..........................http://www.sistavip.exit.de Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl Suspend......................http://www.optimus.wroc.pl/rappid Tehdas...................................http://come.to/tehdas Tesko..........................http://www.scentral.demon.co.uk The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org Unik.....................................http://www.unik.ca.tc Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch Music Groups: Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com Aural planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com Azure...................................http://azure-music.com Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp Chill..........................http://www.bentdesign.com/chill Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/~cnd Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com Fabtrax......http://www.cyberverse.com/~boris/fabtrax/home.htm Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org Fridge...........................http://www.ssmedion.de/fridge Fusion Music Crew................http://members.home.nl/cyrex/ Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.L7.net Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org Level-d.................................http://www.level-d.com Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/~mon MAZ's Sound homepage.............http://www.th-zwickau.de/~maz Mo'playaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org Noerror......................http://www.error-404.com/noerror/ One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr RBi Music.............................htpp://www.rbi-music.com Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruff_engine SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate Sunlikamelo-D...........http://www.error-404.com/sunlikamelo-d Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net <*> Tetris....................................http://msg.sk/tetris Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tdr.scene.org UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk Wiremaniacs.........................http://www.wiremaniacs.com Others: Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org Calodox demolinks exchange.....http://calodox.planet-d.net/cde #coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net Comic Pirates.........................http://scene-central.com Demonews Express.........http://www.teeselink.demon.nl/express Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub Demoscene.org news forum..............http://www.demoscene.org Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net Doose charts...............................http://www.doose.dk Dreams2 CD.........................http://nl.scene.org/dreams2 Freax...................http://freax.scene-hu.com/mainmenu.htm GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net Hugi size-compo...............http://home.pages.de/~hugi-compo Orange Juice.........................http://ojuice.citeweb.net PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net Swiss List.................http://www.profzone.ch/vantage/list Swiss Scene Server.......................http://www.chscene.ch TakeOver................................http://www.takeover.nl Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net Hungarian scene page...................http://www.scene-hu.com Trebel...................................http://www.trebel.org Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm DiskMags / SceneMags: Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/di_mag Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net Dragon......................http://www.wasp.w3.pl/pages/dragon Fleur................................http://fleur.scene-hu.com Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net Hugi........................http://home.pages.de/~hugidownload Music Massage......................http://www.scene.cz/massage Planet Chartmag...........http://www.agravedict.art.pl/planet/ Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org Static Line......................http://www.ic.l7.net/statline Total Disaster...................http://www.totaldisaster.w.pl TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org WildMag...........................http://www.wildmag.notrix.de FTPs: Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de Flerp.....................................ftp://flerp.scene.hu Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org Skynet archive.................ftp://acid2.stack.nl/pub/skynet ACiD2 Archive.............................ftp://acid2.stack.nl --=--=-- ----=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------ Editor: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com Assistant Editor: Gekko / Gergely Kutenich / gk@scene.hu Columnists: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com Gekko / Gergely Kutenich / gk@scene.hu Louis Gorenfeld / gorenfeld@vrone.net Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk Seven / Stefaan / Stefaan.VanNieuwenhuyze@rug.ac.be SiN / Ian Haskin / sin@netcom.ca Subliminal / Matt Friedly / sub@plazma.net Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / xtryhu00@stud.fee.vutbr.cz Virt / virt@bellsouth.net Technical Consult: Draggy / Nicolas St. Pierre / draggy@kosmic.org Jim / Jim Nicholson / jim@kosmic.org Static Line on the Web: http://www.ic.l7.net/statline ftp://flerp.scene.hu/scene/DiskMag/StaticLine To subscribe to the Static Line mailing list, send an e-mail message to "majordomo@kosmic.org" with "subscribe static_line " in the message text. You will then be asked to confirm your addition to the mailing list. Expect a new issue during the first weekend of each month. To unsubscribe from the mailing list, send an e-mail message to "majordomo@kosmic.org" with "unsubscribe static_line " in the message text. Your subscription will then be removed. If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware that we will format your article with two spaces at the beginning and one space at the end of each line. Please avoid foul language and high ascii characters. Contributions should be mailed to Coplan (coplan.ic@rcn.com). See you next month! -eof---=------=--=------=--=--