** 1 page Maggie / 741 words **

** Intro **
** MAGBOYS.GIF here **
As promised last issue here's the Error in Line Easter Coding Convention report. We bring you the lowdown on all the releases, big demos, little demos, great demos, strange demos, and more!

Chris Holland for the Maggie Team

---
Error in Line Report

** ERROR.GIF here **

This special report is devoted to the releases from that party. There were a good many of them, with some of the greatest demos ever produced on any Atari computer! This is no exaggeration, but a view consistent with over ten years of critical demo appreciation, from seeing the likes of the Union demo back in '89, to the present time.

Error in Line (EIL) was dominated by not so humble ST. The deserved first prize winner was Checkpoints effort Suretrip, which took the ST to new heights of technical excellence, a tour-de-force of brainblasting effects which would not look out of place among the High Spec Power PC based Amiga demos showing on the big screen before the competition! Many effects genuinely breached the boundaries of the previously possible, and it is great to see that even after a decade or more, the ST can still surprise!

A little way behind, were two rather smooth and good looking ST entries from the Dead Hackers Society and the Polish group Mystic Bytes. Both of these featured modern demo design and flawless effects by both the crews. In places they looked indistinguishable from many Falcon productions. Swirly tunnel effects and bump-mapping predominated with both of these demos.

** LIGHTUNN.GIF here **

There was another high quality entry titled Rumpelkammer, by the temporarily resurrected group The Naughty Bytes (TNB). This was a more determinedly old school effort in its presentation, but with some nice up to date effects mixed in there too, and in common with all the other entries, a totally polished look to it. A stunning fractal mountain scape, Wolfenstein style textured dungeon, and a Mario Kart sequence spring to mind as the highlights here.

The Falcon demos shown in the competitions were good, but this time they were overshadowed by the ST releases. These suffered more noticeably from technical glitches and tended to look unfinished in the competitions, when shown on the big screen.

The winners were, perhaps inevitably, the Dead Hackers Society, but they were followed very closely by a great entry from FUN. A recount of the votes was demanded! FUN's demo was not shown up at its best on the big screen, and if it had been a little more been a little polished up, could well have won with its high quality screens, and manic effects switching.

A beautiful but slow entry from a relatively new Polish group Cobra came next, this one very much in the style of higher end Amiga or PC demos with lots of complex 3-D objects, but needing a substantial speed injection, such as the Centurbo 2 board on offer as the first prize.

There was an entry from the self-styled laziest crew NoCrew, the Ego demo a slice of 1993 multimedia style as envisaged by Atari Corp back then. It was left lurking uneasily in the awkward dead ground between the normal and fake demo categories.

And of the fake demos? These cling on to any self-respecting demo competition like fleas to an alley cat, but even these were of a higher standard than normal. The mysterious Poets of Bombay group looked at the whole Ibiza club scene through curry-stained lenses in their Ibiza demo. Dutch group Nun were showing Vatican approved demo effects in time for the Easter weekend, and there was another entry from TNB gently taking the wee-wee from certain Nintendo Gameboy emulators.

The Reservoir Gods dominated the 128 byte-tro, with three entries to this tiny but nice category.

There were also very good showings on both the pictures and music, with highlights by Agent T of Cream winning the TrueColor picture category, Havoc of FUN winning the ST 16 colour picture prize, and MSG of the Reservoir Gods winning the Protracker music competition with a last minute entry rescued from his dead folder and spruced up a bit for the competition!

With some interesting Wild competition entries bringing up the rear, Error in Line was probably the best Atari coding party ever, in terms of release activity. Not that anyone forgot to have a great time there though!

** Images vaguely in order of preference **
** JAPAN.GIF
** SWEETY.GIF
** ENDBIT.GIF