InfoFile v1.2 靈컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� By: ProKrastinator 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� I N F O - T E C H 픔� 聃爐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� 픔컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 聃컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� ..........presents........... .ooooo .oo$$o. .oo$$""""" o$$$$$$$. .o$$" $$$$$$$$o o$$$ "$$$$$$$$ .oo$ .o$$o. .o$$$$$o. $$$$ "$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$ "$$$$ .$$$$ $$$$" $$$$" $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$$ $$$" $$$$ $$$$ $$$$$""' $$$$$$ $$$" $$$$ o$$$" "$$$$$$$" "$$$$$$o o$$" $$$" $"" """"" "$$$$$$$$oo. .oo$$" "$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$"" """$$$$$""" o$$$$$$$$$$ooooo.....ooo$$o. .$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$""$$$$ o$""""" """$$$$$$$$$" ""' o$$" .oo$ .o$$ o$$$o o$$$o .o$$$$$o. .$$$ $$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$ "$$$$ .$$" $$$$ $$$$" $$$$$" $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ o$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$$""' .$$" $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ $$$$ "$$$$$$$" .o$$ $$$" $$$" $$"" $$" """"' .$oo..o$" " o$$$$$" "$$$"" Section # What it's About 1 ....................................................... Introduction (A few rumor corrections) 2 ................................................ System Requirements (What you need) 3 ............................................... Members of Info-Tech (That's us) 4 ........................................... A Note about the Effects (The inside stuff, almost) 5 ............................................. A Note about the Music (By Noluck) 6 ......................................................... Shout Outs (What's up?) 7 ................................................. Famous COGS Quotes (True) 8 .................................................... Don't Be Fooled (Don't Be Fooled) 9 ................. (Long and detailed) ... Our Experience at NAiD '96 (Long and detailed. Please read) 10 .............................................. That's All She Wrote (That's all I wrote) 郞袴錮袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴 � #1 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 INTRODUCTION 突袴槁 We are INFO-TECH. A Canadian demo group that emerged from out of nowhere for the release of our premier production: ONE-TIME. The submission of ONE- TIME was right as the clock struck midnight on Friday, May 31st, 1996, the deadline (for intros) at NAiD '96. A few notes to clear up rumors before anything else is said: - The intro crashed on the first run because the GUS WAS NOT INITIALIZED on boot up via ULTRINIT.EXE. The compo machine WAS NOT READY, and no one prepared us for that. Telling me that you guys screwed up afterwards doesn't fix anything. It should have been tested beforehand. - The intro DID NOT intentionally play DEMODEMO.MOD from DemoVT. This was caused by an error during resubmission due to a bad disk. (To find out the exact details of how a mistake like this could possibly happen, read the EXPERIENCE AT NAiD section. As with the rest of the things that went wrong, we had a little help.) - The intro DID NOT use an external copy of PKZIP for file extraction. (That goes to the guys who were trying to DQ us.) - The intro was within the 100K limit. This INCLUDES the software to uncompress the files. - During the rerun, the extra files which extended the intro's size to over 200K were the result of the system crash of the first run (due to the fact the GUS was not initialized), as the program didn't have a chance to delete them. If you noticed, the intro was back under 100K after the proper files were deleted. - The NAiD organizers (Mr. Khan, in particular) said it was PERFECTLY LEGAL to uncompress files to the hard drive. - The intro crashed on it's second running after the second effect (reason still unknown; suspected bug has been fixed). The flash/drop-off effect was not the intentional ending, as it appeared to be. Nobody at NAiD '96 (except us) seen the entire intro. A lot of you are posting to the newsgroups about how great NAiD was and how great a job the organizers did. Well, prepare yourself for a new perspective viewed from somebody else's eyes. I don't care what everybody thinks, I call the shots the way I see them. There are a lot of others who feel the same way we do, just read some of the demo's info files. There is NOBODY who attended NAiD '96 who can say that there were not some *major* overlooked / careless mistakes made. Our case is a bit extreme, though, as everything seemed to be against us. Maybe we're not giving everybody enough credit, but after what they did to us, that was the last thing on our mind. This text was typed up directly after our experience at NAiD. So if it sounds a bit harsh, it because we're still pissed off. I hope everybody reads the EXPERIENCE AT NAiD section to understand what we actually went through. Quite an introduction to demo parties, to say the least. 郞袴錮袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴 � #2 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS 突袴槁 To run the demo, simply run the RUNME batch file. It automatically runs the SETUP program, if the ONE-TIME.VTO sound configuration file doesn't exist. Run SETUP later at any time to reconfigure your sound card. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: - 486+ Processor (sorry for you 386 owners) - Math Co-processor (sorry for you SX owners) - Gravis UltraSound / Sound Blaster / Pro Audio Spectrum (optional) - An XMS driver (HIMEM.SYS is fine) - 3 Megabytes of XMS Memory (better if you have more, as it will use all that's available. The voxel takes up the first 2 megs that's available, leaving whatever's left for the other effects, until the voxel effect ends.) This demo runs in flat mode. That means your EMM driver should not be loaded. You'll get a "Cannot run in virtual environment" or similar error if there's an EMM driver loaded, or if you're shelled from Windows. The demo runs fine with just HIMEM.SYS loaded, on my machine, anyways. Oops, wait a second, YOU HAVE TO INITIALIZE YOUR SOUND CARD, TOO! I did not know there were people who booted up their system without initializing their sound cards, but obviously it only takes one. Bad luck for us that it happened to be the compo machine. Too bad ONE-TIME wasn't tested on the compo machine beforehand, as I was told it would be months before NAiD ever started. Guess it truly was ONE TIME. You may notice that the demo is not under 100K, which was the limit for intros at the NAiD demo party. Well, it WAS under 100K during the party. The reason it's not now is because: 1) The intro is not compressed anymore. This is because a batch file handled compression/decompression of the SELF extracting data files, which was really shitty. It couldn't handle any errors if the program crashed, as everyone at NAiD seen. Too bad I hadn't heard of EXE zippers beforehand. 2) Extra code has been added so that the intro runs properly on all machines, not just on the Pentium 100 at NAiD. And also, extra code was added to allow the user to quit or skip parts of the intro at any time. See VERSION.TXT for more info on user keys. 3) The SETUP.EXE program was added so that you didn't have to modify the sound configuration file manually. The configuration file at NAiD was pre- programmed for the GUS's configuration on the Pentium. This final post-release was released a month after NAiD '96, on July 1st, 1996, Canada Day! 郞袴錮袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴 � #3 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� MEMBERS 突袴槁 We currently consist of only two members. Although we are looking for a graphician for our upcoming megademo. Give us a shout if think you're up for it. By the way, that E-mail address is not ours, although we use it occasionally. 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴---- � Alias: ProKrastinator � Occupation: Lead Programmer / Designer / Musician � E-Mail: nstn4108@fox.nstn.ca � | 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴---- � Alias: NoLuck � Occupation: Demo Music Composition / Programmer � E-Mail: nstn4108@fox.nstn.ca � | 郞袴錮袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴 � #4 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 A NOTE ABOUT THE EFFECTS 突袴槁 To be honest, we arrived at NAiD with the full intention of coming home with first prize in the intro category. The reasoning behind this thought, were the extremely poor (and I mean EXTREMELY poor) intros entered at NAiD '95 last year. The effects in this intro surpass most of the effects in last year's demo compo (and that's no joke), and considering that the winning entry had absolutely nothing for effects whatsoever, I had figured that this would be a breeze. I knew that there were probably other people with the same thoughts, but I didn't think that the American scene had what it took. After finding out the deadline was WAY sooner than we had first realized, we got the intro finished, but not finished good enough to have our name on it. But I still thought we could come home with first or second prize. After the intro crashed the first time, I was trying to find the source of error throughout the entire intro compo. Anyway, I only seen bits and pieces of the other intros. Flower obviously kicked ass with just it's one effect (which I couldn't have missed, as everyone in the place was cheering), but I still honestly think it would have been the only intro better than ours. But now, after seeing the unofficial results, I cannot believe Flower didn't win. I'd like to know how they judge these things. I guess design and crowd response means everything. I always look at things from a coder's perspective, since I'm the programmer. I was in the judge's room after the intro compo, as I wanted to tell them that they didn't see the entire intro, and that the song they heard was not intentional. As I was sitting there talking to the other people who had come along to NAiD with us (not all Info-Tech group members), I overheard the judge's thoughts about Flower's great effect (not exact quote, by the way): "The code is no big deal. It's basically another map that says there's this much perpetration to the left here and that much perpetration to right here. I gave it full points for originality, though." EFFECT #1: 3D FRACTAL Although rotating points on the screen is definitely not anything new to the demo scene, the 3D version of Sierpinski Triangle is something I have never seen before, and probably neither have you. A 3D fractal is an entirely new concept. It's not a 3D *representation* of a 2D fractal, it is an a actual 3D fractal defined in three dimensional space, created via chaos (random numbers). If you cannot understand the difference from the above two definitions, then you probably won't find it that impressive. The delay dots were added the day before NAiD, since they were extremely easy to do. The effect supports any number of frames for the delay to last, limited only by memory and the number of available palette colors (255 for VGA, obviously). The P-100 at NAiD '96 was drawing 5,000 points with 8 faded delay frames behind. 5,000 points was a bit too many. I should have only put 4,500. I factored in that the Pentium's "Svga Diamond Stealth 64 Serie 2001 1Meg RAM" (as described in the NAiD info file) video card would be a *little* bit faster than my S3. But I later learned (during the compo) that the P-100 only had an S3, as I watched the machine boot up. The effect in this post-release adjusts the number of points to the computer, so that the effect runs at approximately 70 fps. And it has 32 delay frames behind. EFFECT #2: ROAD SIMULATION This effect was added because it is an effect that I have never seen in the demo scene before. It was originally programmed in GW-BASIC v3.2 on my old Tandy 1000 SX, 8MHz 286 (and that was upgraded from the measly 4.77 MHz 8088 it had before) when I was in grade 8. The BASIC program was 12 lines long (multiple commands on each line, 255 character maximum), and generated one frame every 15 seconds. The program was converted to Turbo Pascal on my new 486-DX/50 once I found info about mode 13h, and went approximately 20-25 fps, which I couldn't believe, at the time. The version you see is a slightly modified version of the above, which is synched to the retrace of the monitor, so a fast video card is important. It draws as much of the road as possible within each single vertical retrace of the monitor (with a preset minimum, in case your video card can't handle it). Mode 13h has been replaced by Mode X, but 98% of the program is still of the original. The algorithm still contains the same floating point arithmetic from the BASIC version, without a fixed point integer in sight. Although I knew that this was going to be shown on a Pentium at NAiD '96 (which can pump out those floating points like lightning), the program draws enough of the road to fill the screen at 70 fps on my 486-66. I promise to rewrite the program from scratch for my next demo to show off it's full potential, as it's horribly coded in it's current state. This effect was not seen in the intro at NAiD '96, due to the crash. I did, however, enter it in the Best FX compo, since I wanted to see how it looked on the big screen. The P-100 was drawing hills in the background that were over 4 times as far in the distance as my 486-66 normally draws. I was impressed (by the Pentium). Too bad the guy controlling the computer hit ESC before any of the cool shit came up, like more lanes, more speed, more curves and more hills. The Pentium could have easily handled my 320x400 or 320x480 version at full frame rate (I have added a Pentium Mode for it; type ONE-TIME /?). Although these higher resolutions would have no effect on the very foggy/unclear big screen, which I didn't expect. To all you who have not been to a demo compo, forget about synching to the retrace. It looks great on your computer, but doesn't make a shit of difference when display on the big screen. 70 fps and 35 fps are the same unless your effect is REALLY changing the screen from frame to frame a lot. EFFECT #3: EXPLOSION OF DOTS Is 81,000+ pixels at 70 fps possible? It is on my 486-66. Probably twice that when run on the P-100. This effect calculates the maximum number of pixels that can be drawn within 1/70th of a second for the current machine. Every one of those pixels is actually being drawn, right from the start of the effect. Of course, it's optimized. A simple circle was the original formation, but as the circle grew, it became so large that straight lines became too evident (the circle got so huge, that all the lines appeared straight and clustered), so the sinusoidal effect was added to prevent this. This effect was chosen to be shown simply because of it's speed. It takes full advantage and shows the full potential of the computer's speed. I've always liked the facts stated on some older demos, like '5000 sinus points next'. The last I seen was HeartQuake's "24,000 dots coming up". This effect was also not seen at NAiD '96 during the intro, due to the crash. But it was also entered in the Best FX compo (NoLuck coded this one). This stand alone version did not know how many the computer could do at 70 fps, as it doesn't calculate it. My 486-66 can do 81,920 pixels, so I figure the P- 100 could do twice that (163,840 pixels). So I put in 122,880 (a compromised average) to make sure it didn't just miss the retrace (reducing speed from 70Hz to 35Hz). The effect ended saying that 122,000 pixels were shown (really 122,880, so I lied), but the guy at the computer hit ESC about 30-40% of the way through. In other words, the dots had only separated about 35% of their full length, thus only 122,880 * 35% = 43,000 dots were seen. They were EXPANDING! (NoLuck here: The effect even asked, "How many dots @ 70fps?" and then said, "Please wait for answer". Which meant *WAIT*, not press ESC. Man, the whole deal with the effect was the amount of dots, not the pretty expanding circle...) NoLuck asks: "Did you, by any chance, hit Escape?" Buddy answers: "Yeah, well, the road, ya know..." NoLuck replies: "(No, I don't know, WTF is he talking about? Road?) No, I'm talking about the dots. (Ummm... You know, the effect that JUST played?!?)" Buddy replies: "Yeah, I may have." NoLuck thinks: "(Didn't the program tell you to WAIT for an answer?!? The whole FX compo took about 3 minutes. What does 30 extra seconds matter?)" He can't remember if he hit escape ten seconds ago? Whatever. I should have made the speed of separation greater (it didn't self adjust in this version), as the Pentium was doing 50% more than what I was used too, but I forgot, since I decided to enter it at 5:00 pm. After looking at the deadline sheet, I found out that I had one hour to get this effect and the road effect done. I got it passed it in 15 minutes before the deadline at 6:00 pm. 122,880 pixels is almost twice the number of actual pixels on the screen. It would have looked awesome, too bad you didn't see it. Better find a Pentium and run this post-release version. EFFECT #4: FRACTAL TERRAIN A.k.a. voxel terrain. Something not seen in an intro before. Well, it has, but not a full blown 2-meg color/height map as in commercial products and other megademos. The terrain was supposed to be calculated during the intro, with the effect shown at the end, but due to time limits (of the deadline), it had to be created at the start. This generation took approximately 10 seconds on the Pentium (I had expected 20 or more, actually), which seems like an eternity when you're waiting the intro to start. It was better than make the viewers wait 10 seconds half-way through the intro. This was cranking out 45 fps easily on the P-100. It was actually too fast (faster than it had to be, I mean), because the big screen blurs the colors anyways. And here I had the palette set for extremely smooth transitions to avoid flickering at all costs. I could have increased the detail level without losing smoothness. The voxel movement code ran 90% the way I wanted it to on my 486, but it flunked the test on the P-100 as the viewpoint hung around the mountain peeks for all but one small pass. Nice way to show off my engine. I promise to show it again (with a precalculated map and flight path) to show off it's potential. Maybe. This post-release has the height map changed so that the viewpoint will NOT hang around in the mountain tops. I even tested it on different computer CPUs to ensure that it works on all computers. 郞袴錮袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴 � #5 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴� A NOTE ABOUT THE MUSIC (BY: NOLUCK) 突袴槁 Here I'll explain why our demo ran using DemoVT's "DEMODEMO.MOD" song. About 2 weeks before NAiD started, I started looking for a sound system because we decided to release an intro at NAiD. I wanted a system that could be used in Turbo Pascal. DemoVT was the best system I found, and it was extremely easy to use, plus I already had it on my hard disk. After composing my first .MOD ever, I noticed that DemoVT didn't play it right on my Sound Blaster Pro. It didn't bother me much as I knew that this was a problem with DemoVT, it plays some songs incorrectly on Sound Blasters. I had already ordered a GUS-ACE and knew (or at least thought I knew) that this would fix my sound problems. I went by FT2's playing of my .MOD (and not DemoVT's) as judgment on how low I could re- sample my samples (to reduce the size of my song). Using FT2's interpolation as a guide to the soon to be GUS's interpolation, I could re-sample quite low, knowing that the GUS would actually IMPROVE the sound of my shitty samples. The GUS finally came in, rather late, 2 days before NAiD. (I live in Canada, Gravis is in Canada, but I have to order from their product department in the United States? Fix this Gravis!) I also had a 16 hour (not counting breaks) drive up to NAiD to take up much of that 2 days. Anyway, I was out of time. I hooked up the ACE and tested out my .MOD with DemoVT and my new GUS. It played EXACTLY the same as my SB-PRO. OH NO! It played slow, muffled, and had no interpolation (I think...) My samples were shitty, what happen to the GUS's interpolation?!? The song before the sample chop down was way too big for the 100k limit. I had no time to compose another song, (although looking back on all of this, that would have been the smartest thing to do). I just re-composed a song already made. The final song was chopped down 85% in size from it's original size. That's why it sucks. I had no real motivation to compose a new song. READ THIS!--> To compose a song for DemoVT I had to setup up a batch file to go to the DemoVT directory after exiting FT2 so that I could work on the song, then run DemoVT's "RUNTPAS.BAT" to test my song saved as "DEMODEMO.MOD", (I overwrote my song on top of DemoVT's demo song to listen to my song using DemoVT's demos.) You see, FT2 didn't play the song the same way DemoVT did, and you can't use DemoVT alone to test a song. So using DemoVT's demos was the easiest thing to do. The song got it's final hackings at about 5 minutes to deadline, and as far as I was concerned, it was good enough. I couldn't have been bothered to make a good song for DemoVT, the process of jumping in and out of FT2 was just too laborious for me. Anyway, the intro gets passed in, the song still named "DEMODEMO.MOD". Figuring that we were done for good, I moved and renamed my song back into my directory, and renamed "DEMODEM2.MOD" back to "DEMODEMO.MOD", DemoVT's original demo song. AH HA! HERE'S THE GOOD STUFF... The next morning... the Intro Compo... 10 minutes before it starts... I find out that our disk has bad sectors. BAD SECTORS? That NEVER happens to me. Should have used DOS VERIFY. Get a new disk! Pro-K and Kato (not a member, a friend) run all the way around the f***ing building to the truck to get the computer setup, and I run to find an extension cord to plug our computer in our truck into the side of the school. (Turns out we didn't need the extension cord, I'M SORRY, it didn't reach before, there WAS a car in the way.) ANYWAY--> Pro-K runs his "CREATE.BAT" file to recreate the files for the intro to put on a new disk. I was unaware of that, completely forgetting that ".../DEMOVT15/DEMODEMO.MOD" is no longer my song, but DemoVT's demo song. As of now, our intro had not been tested, we ran back in to do just that. They wouldn't test it on their computers!!! We never found out that the songs were mixed. I was going f***ing crazy at just the fact that I didn't know if the intro even ran. The first testing was during the actual compo. Ours was the FIRST one run. It crashed because of the uninitialized GUS, (people use GUS's without running "ULTRINIT.EXE"??? What is this?!? I didn't know "only HIMEM.SYS" meant "***ONLY*** HIMEM.SYS") The second testing was at the end of the intro compo, where "DEMODEMO.MOD" played loudly through the speakers. "This sounds all right", I thought at first. I instantly realized what was wrong. "WTF?!?", I thought, "Oh shit. Nooooo..." Just wondering what everyone thinks of Info-Tech now. And to top it all, only HALF of the intro played. It still exited to the DOS prompt ok though... strange. At least it didn't hang the computer up. I then heard an applause... "Wow", I thought. I couldn't believe it. They applauded. After all of this I'd like to make it clear that: I *CAN'T* believe some people ACTUALLY believed that I tried to get away with playing DemoVT's "DEMODEMO.MOD" as my song *on purpose* and pretend that I composed it "to be cool" in front of a crowd of computer freaks, and try to get away with it. I DIDN'T. IT WAS A MISTAKE. Please understand this. They told me that they'd announce that for me, (thanks!), so you may have already heard about this. Yeah... I almost got away with it though... but sure enough, some girl caught on to me, went up to the judges and said, "That's the song from DemoVT." Oh shit, they caught me... Whatever! That's NOT what happened! I am currently working on a new sound system for our final release, but I'm running to compile problems with Tiny GUS player and MIDAS 040a in Turbo Pascal... "NoLuck" lives on... NoLuck Greetings go to: Mr.Z /ETERNAL Project Thingy/iSOLATiON Sorry guys, the end credits never played at NAID, (along with the whole 2nd half of the intro due to a crash), but thanks for your help though. I met them on #coders the ONE-TIME that I went there, for EXE packer information. No EXE packer was used in this demo due to the fact that I didn't know they existed until the night before I left for NAiD, and we already had the OK on using a batch file with a self extracting .EXE. Why the DQ shit at NAiD? NoLuck's NAiD Suggestions: (and STOP reading my typing as if I'm pissed off, I mean nothing bad by any of this. I've done this to HELP.) 1) Vote for top 3, not just the winner, so that "groupers" (people who belong to groups, whatever they are called) actually vote for other groups too. Plus what if one entry kicks ass? Second and Third placers don't have a "correct" vote. The 2nd placer will be the one who has the most voters that know them personally, all the unbiased people vote for the ass-kicking entry. 2) 5 minutes late equals DQ? (BTW, this was NOT us.) Cut a little slack for someone. If it's still in your hands in plenty of time, then there should be no DQ. I do realize that there has to be some limits though. The line must be drawn somewhere. But if the entry table is still open, and there's still a line up of people entering, let them wait at the end of the line and accept the entry. 3) Cutting buddy's song half way through wasn't right. Making a "I'm a lamer joke" doesn't make the guy feel any better. How often does your song get played on speakers like that, with a crowd like that? Come on, show some respect. Why wasn't unpause pressed? Let it play until the song hits a stop command, (or wait 3 or 4 seconds to be sure, it's not THAT long of a wait to make sure the song is done). Or wait until it loops around even... Another guy got his first couple of seconds cut off, that song could have easily been stopped and started again. Also I heard that many complained about the top 20 choices. In my opinion, I've heard some songs that were better than the ones played, but that's only my opinion. Because your song sounds better on your computer than a top-20 does on the big speakers, doesn't mean that your song would sound better on the big speakers. I find that only certain songs sound good on those speakers. But who knows? Some songs sound better on the big speakers, and some worst. And the choices weren't made while listening to them on the big speakers, so maybe the songs sounded better on a `normal' system. 4) Free-For-All-Compo in main Demo-Compo time slot? It wasn't fair for the Free-For-Allers. There was sure to be some people in the crowd thinking, "What the f*** is this?", and not caring to see rapping, magic shows, or anything but demos. Before the Free-For-All-Compo started, it should have been announced that that's what it was. My guess would be that the animation/demo won (I don't actually know who won), because I'm guessing that most of the people there were expecting to see demos and the animation was probably the most impressive thing to the crowd. ANNOUNCE what we are watching BEFORE it starts when there's a change. Thanks! No disrespects intended. I give a BIG shout out to EVERYBODY who made a Demo Party possible in North America. Try again for NAiD 97 please. I have to say that I was really impressed by the top 3 demos that I seen. I wasn't expecting anything like that at all from North American groups. NAiD `97!!! NoLuck, Singing off... - NoLuck / Info-Tech 郞袴錮袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴 � #6 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 SHOUT OUTS 突袴槁 The entire SCP class of '95 (in alphabetical [scp#] order): Jane Fitzgerald, Tom Gilks, Frank Gummett, Gregory Kenny, Michael Kirby, Allan Malinen, Mike Mullen, Matt Reeves, and Raymond Towse. Well, we actually / finally made it through those two years of total and complete hell. Some of us came through a little better than others... Ha, ha! Anyways, give me a shout if you are reading this. I have no idea where any of you are, or what you're doing (except for a few). I'd like to hear from you. Got to shout out to all the others who attended that shit hole: Steve Deveau, Neil LeBlanc, Jamie Gray (designated driver), Clifton Saulnier (a.k.a. Bass C), Dare Devil Dave (stunt man), and all the surveyors who took the shit for everybody. Other shout outs to: JCAB / Iguana: Despite our problems with DemoVT, we would have had no chance of even entering without it. Thanks! Jare / Iguana: Thanks for the helpful suggestions about demos and the demo scene, and for helping us with the sound system. It is appreciated. Marauder / Synergy: Haven't heard from you in a while, what's up? I thought your group was going to be at NAiD. Maybe they were, and I just didn't notice. I was so pissed off at the whole place, I had to leave. I didn't even stay for the awards; I left right after the demo compo. Kris Arndt: I think we lost contact with each other after the change of e-mail addresses. Well, I finally made it to NAiD, and managed to squeeze in my fractal terrain engine. Although, it looks like hell with that fractally calculated map. Take a look at it. How's your project coming along, anyway? Herman Dullink: Thanks for the flat mode information. Working well. Although it crashes on my friend's system that has a network card on it. I wasn't there, so I could try to find a solution to the problem. The first ES:[EDX] addressing command halts the system. Ethan Rohrer: For the high resolution system timer information. It was never actually used at NAiD, though, as I ran out of time. This post- release version uses it to time the effects to run on any system, though. Good stuff! Michael Tischer: For the EMS information, although no longer used. :) Helped me through another annoying assignment at COGS, though. Good enough for a shout out. Mark Feldman: For The PC Games Programmers Encyclopedia. That's where WaitRefresh procedure comes from! It's too bad you didn't stay to complete the second version... Triton: For Fast Tracker 2.04 (better mixing than FT2.06 for our SB-Pro) and FT2.06 I wish you had a MOD mode in it, where it would play in stereo like a MOD. Great job. (Has any GUS owners/FT2 users noticed that FT2 doesn't play the song right, where PMP does? It seems that if I play the same sample, at the same time, but in one completely panned to the left, the other to the right, they will not play in synch all the time, just sometimes, where PMP plays them in perfect synch. Is this just my system/GUS/or what?) Denthor / Ashpxia: For the tweaked VGA information. I hated mode X, until I realized it's simplicity. Some pretty neat shit. People don't realize that mode 13h isn't faster than mode X for everything... Stone / Dust: I agree, I hate people who copy code. I've been waiting to say that for a LONG time. All the effects code is mine, mine only, and mine originally! The flat mode and timer handler are the only things that aren't originally mine. Note the greets above. Epic MegaGames: For helping us plow a certain institution's BS out of our way. We never did get our Co-op done, sadly. Man, I have *so* much to thank COGS for... Michael Livesay / Livesay Technologies Inc.: For information on the ACTUAL real world. (BTW, our COGS co- op never did get off the ground. They ruined two fantastic contacts for us.) John Paul D'India / D'India Software: Remember me? Our co-op never did get done for the third time. Oh, well. Anyways, how's the game coming along? 郞袴錮袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴 � #7 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 FAMOUS COGS QUOTES 突袴槁 Much thought was put into these comments before they were blurted out, as you can see for yourself. In fact, this is quite a regular occurrance at the College of Geographical Sciences. You can make your own conclusions about the intelligence of the persons quoted below. I'm just stating the facts. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� (When asked if it was possible to program something in the area of networks for a co-op.) "Nobody programs networks, they are unimportant" - Roger Mosher Right on the button, Roger. Networks have nothing to do with the wave of the future. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� (Just a general comment made during a class.) "Games are easy to write, anybody can do it." - Roger Mosher Well said, Roger Mosher. Anybody can do it, that's why it's a measly multi- billion dollar market. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� (Another general comment.) "Good programmers don't write games." - Roger Mosher Of course, the bad ones do. Anyone can program Doom. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� (After telling us that graphics programming is simple, and informed us that it once took him 6 days to figure out a single recursive procedure.) "Now that's REAL programming." - Bill Power *SIX* days? Get a life. (WTF is REAL programming, anyways? Why don't you just stamp LOSER on your forehead?) 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� (Near the start of the year, after it was already apparent that his entire teaching method consisted of opening the textbook, and reading it to us. Even though we had already been instructed to read that same chapter the night before.) "Actually, if you can read, you don't need me. But don't tell the front office that. (laughs)" - Roger Mosher Oh, ha, funny. You can laugh now. Don't worry, you soon won't be. 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� (When a student asked if it was possible to program a game for a co-op.) "Programming games is a waste of your talent." - Roger Mosher Your existence is a waste of oxygen. 郞袴錮袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴 � #8 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 DON'T BE FOOLED 突袴槁 When coming to COGS Open Houses, please: Do not be impressed by Gore, Psi, Trug, Wildfire, Purple Motion, Skaven, Marvel, Pixel nor Abyss. Be impressed by the CPT/SCP geniuses who downloaded the Assembly '93 International Demo Competition winner, Second Reality, and displayed it at the COGS OPEN HOUSE (whose purpose, we were told, was to show off what the students can do), thus demonstrating their wide ranged knowledge in the world of computer programming. Do not be impressed by the designers and programmers of the software. Do not be impressed by the user of the software to create several ray traced images. Be impressed by the students' teacher's ability to copy the image files, as well as the executable EXE file itself, to an International Business Machines PC clone, then instruct the disk operating system's loader to execute the program, which in turn displays the animation of the pre-stored images. And therefore be impressed by the students. And therefore waste $26,000 to go to COGS to learn this amazing crap like we did. 郞袴錮袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴� � #9 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 OUR EXPERIENCE AT NAID '96 突袴槁 By: ProKrastinator / Info-Tech (censored version) --------- DECISION TO ENTER --------- The decision to enter NAiD '96 was made on May 9th, 1996, 22 days before NAiD. I programmed the text scrolling and fade-in for the start up credits, and convinced myself that I was actually going to do this. On May 13, 1996, we decided to use the DemoVT sound system, as we did not have a sound system. Little did I know that we would run into WAY too many problems, but would end up using it anyway. On May 15, 1996, I read that ticket orders cannot be made after the first week of May (which had already passed) and that credit card orders are not accepted after the 15th. So I decided then, for sure, that I was going to NAiD, as I faxed them $40 for the two tickets. No turning back now. --------- FINDING A SOUND SYSTEM --------- After reading the information file about DemoVT 1.5, it seemed REALLY easy to use. I had never used someone else's music system before, so I had not known what to expect. Upon testing DemoVT, it seemed as though it worked perfectly. Perfectly, for every MOD we had except the one we were going to use. It played our MOD too slowly, and some instruments like hi-hats were played at the incorrect frequency. I talked to Jare and JCAB via e-mail, and they said that, yes, there were problems with DemoVT and SoundBlaster. At this point we had a SoundBlaster Pro, but a GUS was on its way here. Knowing that the GUS does all the dirty work through hardware, I assumed that we could ignore the speed errors of DemoVT on our SoundBlaster, as it would play correctly on a GUS. Well, I assumed wrong. The GUS came in two days before NAiD, and it sounded the same as the SoundBlaster Pro. It's a good thing I did not wait until the actual compo (like I would have, had the GUS not arrived) to discover this; although it could not have been much worse than what actually did happen. We did not have any time at this point to get a new sound system, so NoLuck had to start making his song sound correctly through DemoVT, regardless of what it sounded like in FastTracker. This was an EXTREME PAIN IN THE ASS as NoLuck had to compose the song in FT2, (ST3 plays the song the same as FT2, so it didn't matter which tracker he used), and then go to DOS and run DemoVT to test out what it sounds like. Instruments had to be changed to play at the incorrect frequency in FT2, so that they would play at the right frequency in DemoVT. Can you imagine quitting to DOS to check to see what you have been doing every time!?!? As he could not test how the song sounded in our intro (DemoVT was implemented, but the intro was still being coded), NoLuck decided to use DemoVT's sample test program to play the song. So the easiest way for NoLuck, was to simply modify his song under the DEMODEMO.MOD name in the DemoVT directory, so that DemoVT's demos would run NoLuck's song, instead. As we found out later, this was definitely NOT a good idea. --------- TRIP TO QUEBEC --------- I skipped off work (permission was given :) on Thursday, May 30, at noon to get a head start on my 16 hour drive to NAiD, with the intention of stopping at a friend's house for the night, and then continuing the rest of the way in the morning. Plans changed, and we decided to drive as much of the way as possible that night, and then we'd continue in the morning. Plans changed again, and we decided to drive NON-STOP ALL NIGHT until we got there! Nevertheless, we arrived at NAiD at 8:43 in the morning. Wait a second, we passed through a time zone on the way and never changed our clocks... It's 7:43 Quebec time! We have a full 12 hours before NAiD even starts! We met a NAiD organizer in the cafeteria, and we were told that we could not get a classroom until 8 pm that night. That sucked. I didn't know what the big deal was. We're here, so give us our classroom. We had to get to work to finish our totally unfinished intro... We actually contemplated about getting a hotel room for a few hours (if that's even possible) just to work on our intro. We went out to eat first, as we had not ate all night, and when we got back to NAiD, everybody was setting things up. Finally, after scurrying around and some major panicking, another NAiD organizer got us a room that we could stay in until 8 o'clock that night, when we would get ourselves a private room. Pretty nice of him, I thought. But then he also told us we could not buy a room from him anytime soon. In fact, we would have to wait in a line at 8 pm to buy one, with the chance of not being in line early enough. I was getting my first clues about how unorganized the whole thing was. --------- SETTING UP AT NAiD --------- After setting up our computer, I went back to our truck to get a sleeping bag so that I could sleep on top of a few desks right in the classroom. I was the driver who drove 80% during nighttime, regardless that I was totally awake while the others had drove. Right at the point that I was getting on my sleeping bag, the door opened. The NAiD people led two other people into the room that we had thought we had for ourselves only. They were two members from the group Xi, also known as, � (that's ALT-240, the equivalence symbol), or the group formally known as Divine, as they told us. I guess my sleep would have to wait. We started talking, and they hooked their portable hard drives to my computer to copy some shit onto their floppies, and also gave me a copy of... er... lent me a copy of... some program that will remain nameless as I can't remember it's name, and which I have since erased from my hard drive as I have never used it (and will never use it, because it's gone). We were talking about how our MOD was sounding awful on our sound system, and they said they were trying to finish up their own sound player. After a few minutes/hours/whatever of talking about how last years' demos sucked (even though I was in for a surprise this year) and how awful this place is organized, we heard a rumor that the intro compo was due that night at Midnight! I got NoLuck to check for confirmation, which he did. "Oh shit! There's no time!" It's 1 pm now, and 11 hours until dead line! The song is too big, the intro is over 100K, the effects are not finished, the effects are still stand alone modules, and we only have ONE COMPUTER!!! --------- DEADLINE IS IN ELEVEN HOURS! --------- Sleep was completely out of the question at this point in time, even though I only had one hour of sleep the night before (I drove from 10:54 pm Thursday, to 4:55 am Friday morning. I have every stop on record.) Once I started coding, I realized that there was no way in hell we were going to get this thing done. I had planned on coding the fractal terrain land generator today, to show off my voxel engine, but I realized that I had to settle for an already coded fractal/plasma generator, the type of which I'm sure you have all seen before. It makes extremely awful terrain/color maps, and eliminates my thoughts of including a preprogrammed flight path. The height would have to be stuck at the maximum terrain height, with the hope that the viewpoint doesn't stay stuck inside some mountain top (which would totally ruin the effect). --------- SCREW THIS, WE CAN'T DO IT --------- We decided at this point to not release the intro. We did not want anybody to see a production of this quality coming from our names. Then I thought about my parents, who let me take their 4Runner for the 1500 km trip, and I was also missing 2� days of work on my job that I had started that Monday! We decided to enter it under fictionous names. I had to at least try something, because I figure I could still place in the top three on the effects alone, especially by last year's standards, although I knew there must be more people with the same thoughts. --------- YEAH, WE CAN DO IT... IT'LL BE SHITTY, THOUGH. --------- I suggested the name Info-Tech, as it was our previous group name (of which only I, not NoLuck, was a previous member off, with two other unnamed people). Info-Tech has no releases, as we changed our name from Info-Tech once we found out that it was already being used by some company. I didn't like the name Info- Tech, anyways. Besides, WTF does Information Technologies have to do with demos? NoLuck suggested my name, the ProKrastinator, as it has some similarities to my real alias, and also fits my style perfectly. It took me two hours of roaming around to realize that I have to start some serious coding NOW, and not four hours from now. Yet, I kept walking around saying how this place sucks shit. It was only 3 or 4 pm at this point. NAiD sucks shit, and there was still four hours before it even starts! --------- THE CODING BEGINS --------- The four effects that were to be put in the intro were known at this time. They were the DOT EXPLOSION, ROTATING 3D FRACTAL, ROAD SIMULATION, and the finale, the VOXEL TERRAIN. At this point, all of the effects were coded, it was just that they were engines and nothing more. They didn't move on their own, and the voxel terrain required a precalculated height/color map to show off it's potential. I knew that I'd have to use the shitty fractal map generator for the voxel effect, as I knew there just wasn't any time! I hated that, as it totally ruins the best effect (by far) in the intro. This thing was going to be cranking out 45+ frames a second on the P-100. The rotating points code was started on May 14th, 1996, 17 days before NAiD. It was the first time I had ever used fixed point code for 3D rotations, even though I had used them all along in other effects like texture-mapping, and voxels. I decided to code them at this point, because I wanted everybody to see that the 3D fractal was real. The more points I could draw, the fuller it would be. I had finished converted all of my real mode assembly code to flat mode assembly (required to directly access more than 640K of memory) the two previous days before our trip on Tuesday and Wednesday of that week. Of course, I had to waste my time coding the "delay dots" (as someone referring to them as) on Wednesday night, even though I knew everybody is tired of seeing this shit (It's the first time I've ever tried it, and I couldn't believe how easy it was to do it without losing hardly any speed). I had first planned on morphing the 2D Sierpinski Triangle into the 3D version as an indication that it is actually REAL, but there was no time for small details like that. A plain set of dots rotating on the screen would have to do. Hopefully enough dots can be shown so that people could tell it was real. One effect done. The dot explosion effect was complete, but it didn't have the code to check how many it could do at 70 fps. I would have to guess. As I stated in the NOTE ABOUT THE EFFECTS section, my 486-66 could do 20 * 4096 dots, so I set the value at 25 * 4096, assuming this would be nothing for the Pentium as it should be able to do 40 * 4096 (I later found out in the Best FX compo that the Pentium could at least handle 30 * 4096, for sure). Two effects done. The road effect was done, but it didn't move without instructions from the user. I screwed around with different road positions for the view point to take during turns, and different acceleration and deceleration rates, and it looked like complete shit. The fact that it went 70 fps didn't matter, because the viewpoint was too still. All you could see was the smooth flickering of the dotted lines. I added code to make the viewpoint approach the point of where it should be, but never actually get there (go � of the distance remaining, every step, type thing), and it worked just like I wanted it. Three effects done. The voxel code was done, but it didn't have a map. Have to use the shitty plasma fractal generator. I figured I'd set the random number seed to a certain value, so that the same map would be generated every time. Once I found a good number (one that generated terrain without a lot of mountains), I'd leave it like that. I picked 74501 as the number, as each digit of the five was the closest to correlating with the corresponding letter of my real name (what's my real name? E-mail me if you can figure it out!), and the terrain generated as perfect as I'd ever have expected it to be (even though it still looked like shit). "YES!", I was thinking, "This is gonna work." Have to make some movement code, and that's it. The movement code consists of 1) turning, 2) strafing (sideways movement) and 3) forward motion. All three changing according to unsynched sin waves. Fast, but shitty. The sin values are modified by the FRAME NUMBER, but the voxel code calculates the current frame rate, and moves proportionally to the FRAME RATE. So the same animation was NOT going to be played on my 486-66 as on the P-100. "Who cares?", I figured. It looks good on my computer, which is totally random (as I didn't plan the random flight path), so it should look good on the Pentium. Also, knowing that the Pentium would crank out a frame rate off at least twice that of my computer (18- 19 fps minimum), I cranked up the movement rate constant (But I forgot to modify how many frames it would draw before dropping off for the next effect to come on. I later remembered, but it was a FATAL mistake to change it at that point). All four effects done! --------- THE EFFECTS CODE IS FINISHED! --------- The time now was past 9:30 pm. I had little over two hours until the deadline, and the effects were still as stand alone units! I had never merged code of this size together before, and I had two hours to do it for my first time. Talk about deadlines! Knowing that I had no time, I immediately started changing each of the effects into their own unit (library) with the unit's only procedure being that of the effect. This would give each effect it's own program space and data segment, knowing that Turbo Pascal only allows 64K for one data segment. That's real mode, for ya! The effects libraries were being linked into the main running module extremely easy. I couldn't believe it was working so easy. Then hell broke loose after I added the last effect. The program absolutely refused to compile. Error 49: Data segment too large. "SHIT!" I didn't come this far to find out that Turbo Pascal compiles all of the units' data segments together in one. I had always thought that it compiled the units with their own 64K data segment, so that you could compile as many units as you wanted as long as each individual unit was within it's own 64K limit. But it wasn't working. I couldn't believe that I spent all of this time creating an intro that isn't even possible to create with the tools that I had. Then I remember that when I converted my road code to draw as much road as possible until the retrace starts, I expanding an array to handle really fast computers that may require more road data. I had the code to handle the rare case that may happen if the computer runs out of data in this extremely large array, so I could minimize the size of the array if I wanted to (as the program would not crash if it runs out of data). So I change my ridiculously large 15,000 element array to a more reasonable 1,000, and it compiled (my 486-66 uses about 300, I guessed the Pentium would take anywhere from 600 [cuz the CPU goes twice as fast] to 1,500 [cuz it calculates floating points 5 times as fast], probably around 1,000, though). And it compiled! At that moment was the first time the entire intro would compile all together, with each effect shown one after the other. "Yeah! It works!" --------- IT COMPILES! --------- But my work was not done, the voxel terrain effect generates the data before the effect starts, which takes over half a minute on my 486-66. This is WAY too long. If the audience absolutely has to wait this long, it must happen at the start of the intro, not during it. I could make the terrain be generated throughout the intro, as it does know, but I had no time. There was under an hour left. --------- YOU GUYS CAN'T STAY HERE ---------- Right when I was about to start coding this, the clock hits 11:12 and somebody comes in our classroom, telling us that we have to leave. (It was the same guy so got us into the classroom.) I couldn't believe it! Are you serious!?!? We have 45 minutes to get this thing done! The music has yet to be implemented and the god damn song is 15K too large! Are you F***KING SERIOUS? We argued with him at first, but as he didn't back down right away, I realized that we would lose more time arguing than we would moving to another classroom. The three of us (NoLuck, Kato [our friend], and I) grabbed everything we could carry, and got the computer into the new room (which was on the other side of the building, incidentally), and knowing our luck, we couldn't find a outlet! They were all being used! F*** this shit! We gotta use one of them. I almost unplugged someone's computer by accident (I don't remember if would have been by accident, or if I was meaning to make it look like an accident :), when NoLuck said to use his power bar. Good idea! We plugged our power bar into his, pulled up a few desks, and started hacking at 11:15. We were pretty nervous at this point. The terrain generation code was ripped out of the stand alone unit and put in the main program. Recompiling told me which variables that I had missed (the variables which were required to be copied from the stand alone unit to the main module). If Turbo Pascal didn't compile instantly, as it does, I'd have been screwed. I consistently type repeated periods (like `.........') when I leave my coding spot to search or change something somewheres else. Recompiling finds the syntax error caused by the periods and returns me instantly to my spot. Thank God for Turbo Pascal!! All of this code rearrangement was begin done 30 minutes before the deadline, with the NoLuck looking over my shoulder knowing that once I was done, he had under 30 minutes (minus the time that I was taking) left to shorten his MOD by 10 compressed K (about 15-20 actual K of his song) to fit within the 100K NAiD limit. Jesus Christ, this was nerve wrecking. Only ONE computer. While one of us worked, the other could only watch and wait, knowing that we had no time. I took a quick look at Kato, while I took a � second break from coding. I think he was more nervous than both of us just by watching! --------- CODE IS DONE! MUSIC COMPRESSION TIME --------- I finally finished my voxel code at 11:35 pm. NoLuck had 25 minutes to compress his song by 10K. That was 10 compressed K, too. (NoLuck here: I'd was shortening the song by 10K, and it would only be saving 1K in the compressed version!!!) We had a batch file that quickly extracted the 6 or 7 data/executable/music files from their various storage positions on our hard disk, and compressed them via PKZIP (with maximum compression on!) and then via ZIP2EXE which adds the 3K of decompression code into the .ZIP (That's for you guys who though we used an external version of PKZIP on the disk. How the hell would we have known the PKZIP would be on the compo machine? Think about it you stupid lamers!) This batch file automatically added the DEMODEMO.MOD song from the DemoVT directory, which was NoLuck's song while he made it (remember, he had to quickly quit to DOS and run DemoVT's sample programs to test to see how it really sounds, which proved fatal later). Using this batch file, we could quickly see how much space we had to get rid off. Because the actual song is reduced by 10K, it doesn't mean the zipped version will be 10K smaller. NoLuck converted a large sample down like crazy, and final size of the zip file changed from something like 109,9XX bytes to 109,5XX bytes. The song wasn't getting any smaller because it was being zipped! We have 20 minutes left! I'm sitting here watching, just then realizing that I have to add some code in to inform the NAiD people that the demo runs an initialization sequence for about a half-minute before the demo starts. I don't want people to stare at a blank screen while it initializes. What if the demo crashes? How would we know? I was pacing the floor back and forth at this time saying out loud, "This is too close. This is too close." NoLuck continued to decrease the size of the song, which already sounded shitty due to the low quality of the samples, and DemoVT made it sound even more horrible as it didn't play the song correctly. Finally on one more sample reduction size, and size of the zip changed from 103,XXX to 99,XXX bytes! "YES! We're in!" The time is 11:52 pm. We have 8 minutes to add some initialization code and run the thing to the submission booth! I quickly added two writeln statements to the code (actual code shown, copyright (c) 1996 Info-Tech, Ha ha!): . . writeln(`Please wait...init...'); for k := 1 to 2 do begin plasmamapptr := mapptr+(k-1); plasma(0,0,1024,1024); {creates 1 meg image map} writeln(`.......'); end . . to show that it was actually doing something as it creates the 2 megs worth of data. I recompiled the entire program which takes about 2 seconds, and ran my batch file that automatically creates the zipped data files. The files were copied to floppy and NoLuck was sent off running with the disk. The time is 11:56 pm! "YEAH! WE DID IT!" --------- INTRO COMPILES! SUBMISSION TIME! --------- Breathing a great sigh of relief, I ran the entire demo for the first time WITH sound. Kato listened through the headphones (we had no speakers), and he said something that made my heart sink. He said simply, "I hear no sound." "WHAT!?", I yelled, my mind racing to think of the reason. "There's no sound.", he said. "SHIT!" The problem then instantly popped into my head. The DemoVT system doesn't work if you run your .EXE file directly, it must be run through the DEMOVT.EXE file. Of course, Turbo Pascal runs the file directly, so I must disable DemoVT while I write the actual code. I HAVE DEMOVT COMMENTED OUT! What a f***ing nightmare! How could I forget!? Quickly recompiling the code, I copied the new files, and handed the disk to Kato, who takes off running. The time was 11:58 pm, now. NoLuck was waiting in line, so they swapped the disks and our intro is in! Kato returns to tell me the good news. Again, Kato and I start up the demo to watch and listen to it the final version for the first time. "Can you hear anything?", I said. "Yes", responds Kato. "Yeah!" We sit and watch the intro credits and demo title. The first effect that pops up is the 3D fractal, except that it's going about 150 fps when it should be going about 30! This isn't good news, it's bad news! I had previously lowered the number of points so that I could run it on my computer, but it has to be raised to run properly on the Pentium. It looked like it was going haywire on my 486-66, I can just imagine what it would look like on the P-100! I change the number quickly from 500 to 5,000 (knowing that my 486 runs 2,200 dots fine, figuring the Pentium should be able to handle 5,000). I recompile a third time, zip up the files, and send Kato out at 2 or 3 minutes past the deadline!! Kato takes off so fast that he tripped on the cord that connected the computer to the power bar. He didn't fall on his face, or anything, but it did rip the cord from BOTH the computer and the power bar completely, sending it across the floor. The computer box was jerked out from underneath our amplifier (needed to for the use of our stupid GUS) sending it to the floor, BANG!, breaking off one of the tape lids. Kato, hearing the crash and thinking he broke the computer, but knowing his priorities, looked back for only a split second, and kept running!! "This is too close", I was saying out loud. A few minutes later, Kato comes back and says that we got in!!! "YES!! BABY!! WE DID IT!" We watched the real final version of the intro at 12:10 am. The fractal part had 5,000 points (it had enough memory to run on my system, even though I thought it was going to crash), but the song was playing extremely slow. All we could do is hope that the Pentium runs fast enough to overcome this problem. I couldn't believe the player slows down even on a GUS!? It shouldn't be using the CPU for the timing! What the hell is wrong? My fractal code contains segments where interrupts are turned off temporarily, but it shouldn't be doing this to the GUS. (Or should it?) The thought that we may still actually win something crosses my mind. Our first production ever. What an experience. Now I know what it's like. One last big sigh of relief... I had other thoughts of the intro in the next few moments. I remembered that the voxel terrain ends upon a frame count, not a timer count. The effect would end WAY too early on the P-100, as the frames are cranked out at over 2 times the speed of my 486. But it was too late, now. The worrying is over, as nothing could be done now. Our work here is done. We have nothing left to do but chill out. --------- THE INTRO IS IN! STRESS IS NOW OVER! --------- Being stuck in a classroom with no windows, we decide to sleep in our 4Runner outside, where we could leave all the windows open. The weather was beautiful; you could wear shorts at night time and not be cold. There was a full moon, so there was no darkness. But I didn't want to risk leaving my computer in the building as I didn't know the people around very well. I knew that nobody would do anything, but the thought of facing my parents when I came home saying, "Uhhh... our computer sort of got lost..." was enough to pack `er up and store her in the truck. We were in the room with "The Surrounders" written on the chalkboard. There was another logo of some sort on the wall to the left of the Surrounders name, which I also seen on a person's shirt, but I didn't know what it was, and I didn't feel like associating with people at this time. One member from the Surrounders team approached us at this point, wanting to add our names in their credits, as we were in the same classroom. I didn't know whether or not to say Info-Tech, or to use our real aliases. I ended up saying nothing, thinking that credits shouldn't be given to someone that you don't even know, though I could personally care less, myself. I just needed sleep at this point. With just one hour of sleep in the past 41 hours, and I wasn't going to sleep in some stuffy classroom. NoLuck had just paid $9 for three of us to use that classroom for 45 minutes. Thanks. --------- SATURDAY MORNING --------- After finally getting some sleep, we wake up at 10:00 am in the morning and head for the showers. After a refreshing shower, as we had none the entire day before, we walked around awaiting the intro compo at 12 noon that day. As the NAiD people were playing other demos, I noticed the port and IRQ settings they used when one of the demos asked for them. They were 220 and 5. I remembered that I would have to tell the people at NAiD to modify one of the text files (1STOFF.003 to be exact) to accommodate the required GUS settings, as our intro expected 260 and 11. At 11:50 am, ten minutes remaining, waiting for the compo to begin. The PA system announces, "A note to XXXXX XXXXXXXX and XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX (our real names), your disks has bad sectors on it." "JESUS F***ING CHRIST!!!" The compo is in ten minutes and our computer is packed in our truck outside (as we packed it up last night). Not only that, the only exit to the entire building that we were allowed to use is on the opposite side of the building that our truck is parked (we were parked in the shade next to the cafeteria, where we originally parked when someone told us to go there). Quickly thinking, NoLuck races to find an extension cord so we can plug the system to the outlet on the outside of the building. We had no time to run around the entire building, get all the computer equipment, and run back around, and find an outlet not being used inside some classroom. Kato and I raced to the truck and parked it next to the nearest outlet and start hooking the computer together. We had no idea of whether or not NoLuck was even coming with an extension cord or not. There was no way we could tell. What if it took him twenty minutes to get one? Luckily NoLuck and some NAiD guy shows up, and we hook the thing together. As I was attaching the cords to the computer, I recalled that the voxel terrain effect would end too soon on the Pentium. I had it set at a frame count of 500 for 486-66. Once the computer booted up, I quickly loaded the program, changed the number 500 to 700, and recompiled (500 lasted a bit too long on my 486-66, so I didn't double the number to 1,000. 700 sounded good). I also took this moment to enter the correct GUS port and IRQ settings. I exited to DOS and ran my batch program which grabbed all of the required files and zipped them up. WRONG MOVE. I should have just copied the already made files to the new disk, instead of changing the voxel settings and rezipping the entire thing. Little did I know, the night before, NoLuck had thought that he was finally finished with his song, so he moved it from the DemoVT directory to his own directory, and moved the original DEMODEMO.MOD song back to the DemoVT directory. When I ran my batch program, it grabbed the DEMODEMO.MOD out of the DemoVT directory, which was no longer NoLuck's tune, but the repetitive example song that comes with DemoVT. The zipped files were copied and sent off, as Kato packed the computer back up. It didn't even cross NoLuck's mind that the wrong song was now there, as he had no idea that the files had even been zipped up again. The stupid thing about it, is that I noticed that the zip file was only 87K instead of 99K (or whatever the original size was), but nothing clicked. I had under 2 minutes to get that disk to the NAiD people, and that's all that mattered. I must have thought NoLuck compressed the song even more, as I couldn't remember the exact zip file size, anyways. Stupid. This was nail number one in ONE-TIME's coffin, and one nail would be all that was required. Everybody must know of DemoVT's song, and nobody likes a lamer. Our chances of winning were completely gone at this point, yet no who knew about it. We were up for a rude awakening. Yet, this COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED as the demo compo started 20 minutes late and the NAiD guys absolutely refused to test the intro! I couldn't believe it! Thanks, guys. I had no time to run the disk to the other side of the building (to get to the doors) and run around the entire building (to get to my truck) just to test it out, and then run it back in. They had a computer sitting right in front of them! Why couldn't they have tested it? But, no! I frantically looked for a computer around to test it on, but there were none. None could boot with just HIMEM.SYS to run flat mode properly, and I doubt any of them had GUSes, anyway. If I had known at the time that the compo was going to be 20 minutes late, we could have brought our computer in. It would have taken 2 seconds to fix this mistake (A simple file copy and batch file run. How long does that take?). What the hell was so important that you guys couldn't test it!? Thanks, once again. --------- THE INTRO COMPO BEGINS! --------- After all of the rushing to get a new copy of our intro, we are all sitting around waiting for it to start. Like all of the other compos/events at NAiD, it started late. About fifteen or twenty minutes late, but we didn't know that we had that much time while we waited. Finally, the compo starts, and lo and behold, they choose ours to be displayed first. I was standing behind the entire audience, when I remembered that the intro must be run with just HIMEM.SYS loaded. If an EMM driver is loaded, the intro won't work. I didn't think it would've hung, but all you'll see is a black screen, and then the DOS prompt again. The guy at the keyboard was already in the right directory with the name typed at the prompt, ready to hit Enter. I ran around the crowd and told him it must be run under HIMEM.SYS only! I also asked him how much memory the computer has, since the intro requires more than 4 megs of XMS memory. The guy runs a MEM command and asks if that's enough. Totally ignoring his response, I asked "How many Megs?! Does it have 16?!" He said, "yeah, I think so" Boy, was I nervous at this time. --------- THE ENTER KEY IS PRESSED! --------- So I step out of the way, and the Enter key is pressed. The first thing you see on the screen is: Please wait...init... ....... and I'm thinking, "Oh, great. The exact thing the audience feels like seeing after they waited 20 minutes for the stupid thing to begin." But the Pentium cranked out the first meg of memory in about 5-8 seconds, and the second line of dots appeared: ....... "Yeah", I'm thinking, "At least it's going fast". I probably should have said that it was calculating 2 megs of memory to at least indicate how much junk it was calculating. I continued to wait. The screen wasn't clearing, though. The two lines of dots should have appeared within the same amount of time from each other (in rythm), but the screen wasn't clearing. It was obvious to me that it had hung, but I didn't want to admit it. It took me a few seconds to convince myself that it didn't work, and I ran over and told the guys at the computer that it had hung. He rebooted the computer, and the audience started clapping, as expected. He told me that he'd try again at the end of the compo. All I could hear was people clapping. I knew it was expected, as they clapped or cheered at every little thing that happened on the big screen, but I was pissed at this time. I felt like grabbing one of those stupid geeks and slamming their head through a computer screen. "What could have possibly gone wrong?", I asked myself. My computer was back in the truck, and I know that I definitely didn't have any time to go get it. I doubt that they'd accept another copy, anyways. "What could have gone wrong?" Once I calmed down a bit, and starting thinking, I realized that the demo hung before graphics mode was initialized, and after the voxel terrain was complete. The only thing the demo does at this point is initialize DemoVT and start playing the tune. It was DemoVT that hung up. Either that or the GUS was not working properly. There was nothing I could do. The demo simply doesn't work on the Pentium. Thanks a lot guys, you told me that you checked all contributions prior to their viewing on the big screen, but obviously not in my case, as you told me 10 minutes before the thing started that the disk was bad... I tried to find a computer that I could use, but there were none around. None of those stupid french school machines were in DOS mode! I finally found one, and looked at the text file with the information for the DemoVT sound system. I knew I had nothing wrong, but yet I kept looking to see what was wrong. While I tried to find a problem, all I could tell NoLuck and Kato was that there is nothing I can do. Not a god damn thing. I continued to search for a problem, anyways, though, catching glimpses of the other intros. As one of the intros was about to start, they asked the audience about the ULTRINIT.EXE file (18K in size) in the directory of the demo, which put it over the limit. The audience agreed that it wasn't a problem. I had just gotten my GUS (and had never ever seen or heard one before this point) two days before the NAiD, and NoLuck was the only one who looked at it. I didn't have a clue how it worked, but something popped into my head. I had noticed earlier at how fast the machine booted up in "HIMEM.SYS ONLY" configuration. I took a hunch that perhaps the GUS was not initialized on boot up and that maybe the ULTRINIT.EXE file initializes it. I run over to the table during the break between two intros and ask the guy if the GUS is initialized on boot up. Of course, they didn't have a clue. I couldn't believe it! I was 90% sure that this was the problem. I told them that the GUS has to be INITIALIZED TO RUN THE INTRO PROPERLY! When it was finally time to try my demo again, they asked me if I wanted to run the ULTRINIT.EXE file from the demo that was just run, and I said, "Yeah, I guess. RUN WHATEVER IS NEEDED TO INITIALIZE THE GUS!". So buddy runs the other guy's ULTRINIT.EXE to try my intro one more time. I don't think they even had the sound card software on the machine. What if buddy didn't have ULTRINIT.EXE in his intro? Upon entry into the directory, and intro's data files are clustered in with the uncompressed data files that had been written on the previous run. The guy quickly types 1STOFF, ready to press Enter. Knowing that this will crash the intro again (actually, the unzipping asks for confirmation to overwrite the already present files, but you can't see it because I took the precaution(?) to blank the screen so that nobody can see the extraction), I yell, "WAIT! DELETE THE FILES FIRST!" Immediately after I hear some guy from the crowd yelling, "It's 200K!". I quickly tell the guy to delete all files that didn't start with 1STOFF (1STOFF is the abbreviation of our original intro name). But he hesitates to get confirmation from the other NAiD guys, as well as from the audience. He loads up the batch file that runs the intro (unzipping/deleting as well) to show the audience so that they can decide. Because the batch file was littered with crap, it looked extremely complicated, when in actuality, it wasn't. Everybody starts yelling, "Ooooooh!" (sort of like a boo). I told the guy that those files are not needed, so delete them. Finally the guy does, and the files are back to normal. The intro is ready to be run. At this point, I was still not 100% sure that it was the uninitialized GUS that caused the problem. --------- THE ENTER KEY IS PRESSED... AGAIN --------- Buddy hits Enter, and the initialization dots come up. Again, my heart sinks, because I know that this is the last thing that the audience wants to see. But it goes quickly. Before I could even realize that the initialization was about to end, the screen clears and the drums start! "YES! BABY! IT'S WORKING!" My first thought was that the beat was sounding awesome through the big speakers. It was the first time I had ever seen/heard anything of ours on the big screen or even on a really good stereo system. It was an awesome feeling. As we watched the introduction credits, I was thinking about how fast the beat had come in. I thought NoLuck had made the song start out slowly for the credits. I had still never heard the song in it's entirety at this point. Then I noticed an awful repetition, which was weird because I wasn't even really listening to the music. I'm the coder, and I wanted to see what my shit looks like the 100 megahertz beast. But, nevertheless, I noticed it. I don't know if I figured it out first, or if NoLuck did (I think it was NoLuck), but we realized the intro was playing DEMODEMO.MOD sample MOD from DemoVT. It's an all right sounding tune, but it only has two patterns! One is a � second intro, and the second pattern repeats itself after that! It sucked! "Jesus Christ!! How the hell did that happen". Then it dawned on NoLuck that he had moved his song. He didn't even know that I rezipped the files. And I didn't know that I had rezipped the wrong files. "JESUS F***ING CHRIST! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING!" The only thing we could do it this point was hope the effects would run good enough to impress the audience/judges. The 3D fractal that was made up of 5,000 delayed dots didn't look as impressive on the screen as I thought it would be. A simple zoom to look closely at the fractal looked cooler than this! You couldn't even tell that their were so many points, the fractal was almost solid. It must have been because of the "delay dots" or whatever the hell they're called. No one probably noticed that it was even a real 3D fractal. The effect was hanging too long on the screen. I had it set up to drop off after a certain frame count. "Drop! Man, Drop!", I was saying out load, "It's staying up too long!" Finally it dropped off, and the voxel terrain faded in immediately. The voxel started moving around, but it was sticking in the mountain peaks. The exact thing that I had dreaded. There was only one little pass where you could actually see a large portion of the map. The colors had been set to blend smoothly together to prevent flicker, so that you couldn't detect a slow frame rate. But that didn't matter, as the big screen fades everything together anyways, and the Pentium was running the effect at 50-60 fps (I know this, as my 486-66 goes 25-30 fps when the mountain tops go off of the top of the screen...an very effective optimized portion of the drawing algorithm [that I'm not going to explain] causes this increase in speed). I could have had it zooming by mountains and valleys at nearly the refresh rate, but NO! This wasn't gonna happen. The voxel flashes, and then drops and fade out simultaneously off the bottom of the screen. At this point, the road simulation was supposed to fade in immediately, and the viewpoint slides sideways to the center of the road. But it DIDN'T. After the voxel dropped off, the DOS prompt quickly appeared with an abrupt ending of the music. Thanks. I still have no idea what went wrong. I know what it is. It just wasn't my fucking day. The audience clapped at this point, which surprised me more than anything. Everybody thought that that was the way intro was supposed to end. I was so mad, I felt like going on a total demolition of the entire place. That sure would have relieved some stress. I can't remember the last time that I was this mad. --------- IT'S ALL OVER --------- Everybody left the big screen to fill out their votes for the best intro, and I was so pissed of at the entire place, I didn't even vote. Actually, I didn't bother to vote for any of the different compos. As if I cared at this point, anyway. We talked to judges afterwards, to tell them that they hadn't seen the entire intro, and if it would be possible to play it again, even if it was just to them on a regular computer. But they said that they had been "pretty lenient" on letting us show it twice. "Most compos, if you crash once, that's it". Oh, excuse me. Considering that it was YOUR FAULT that it crashed, I would hope that you'd let me run it again. If you also testing the thing beforehand, like you said you would, it wouldn't have crashed in the first place. --------- PROBLEMS AT NAiD THAT SHOULD BE FIXED --------- There are many. TOO many... WAY TOO MANY. Just read. If you're planning on having a party next year, you may want to note a few of these: 1) I was told that the computers and expensive equipment were tagged, so that no one could leave the building without being the owner of the computer. Well, this wasn't true, as I found out a few hours after arrival. Thanks. Do you really think I was going to leave my shit in some room with a bunch of people I don't know? I doubt a bunch of computer geeks would have done anything, but one lesson I've learned in my life is that you cannot trust anybody. The group Xi trusted us to watch their stuff while they left to grab a bite to eat, but I would have been reluctant to let them watch our stuff. The opportunity never arose, so I don't know if I would have done it or not. I probably would have, considering it would have been extremely difficult for them to do something or steal something without us finding them. All I know, is that I was so pissed off the entire time I was there, I could have very easily damaged something. And there was not a sole in the place who even knew my name. I know a lot of friends who, if put in my position, would have demolished something without consideration. That would kind of put a dampering on things. Think about it. 2) The place was SO disorganized. Is every demo party this disorganized? I certainly hope not. NAiD was terribly disorganized. Yet, they were not going to accept one of the intro compo entries (not mine, incidentally) that was being passed in five minutes late. Come on, guys. Why not accept the stupid entry? Who cares if it's five minutes late. I could see if it had a direct effect on something, like if the people were already leaving the submission place and they had to be somewhere soon or else something would blow up or something, but that wasn't the case. I can't even believe that they even CONSIDERED not to accept it. You guys only check the disks ten minutes before the thing starts anyways! You had 12 hours from submission `till the show started. 12 hours to check 6 or 7 disks?! Give me a break! "5 minutes late....sorry, buddy....that would just totally screw up our entire procedure that we've had planned out 5 months ago. Every second is crucial." (that was sarcastic, in case you didn't realize) There actually was a demo that they showed, but didn't allow a vote on it, because it was late. Who cares? You have it on the compo machine before the compo. It didn't slow ANYTHING down. No one had to wait. Just accept it! Why be so strict? One thing I've noticed is people who have been inferior (a.k.a. losers) all their life always go on a power trip once they have been given just a little bit of authority. Try to make sure you're not one of them. 3) Almost none of the programs (like the image viewers and trackers) worked the first time. Cubic Player didn't have DOS4GW.EXE, and they couldn't even get a copy of it themselves. They had do get someone from the audience to go get one (by giving away one of their Mountain Dew because nobody ran right away, and everybody in the place was waiting). Scream Tracker was always loaded up without an EMM driver (it requires EMS memory, even when loading samples into a GUS). FastTracker couldn't be run because they didn't have a mouse driver. Luckily for them, the authors agreed to let them run their songs in Cubic Player. Other problems included not having the proper initialization programs on boot up, such as ULTRINIT.EXE, which was the cause of our intro crash. They actually agreed with me later that that should have been standard. I'm glad someone can realize a problems that has occurred, anyways. That's a plus (for the first time, I might add). 4) I was told that the demos at NAiD were all tested out on the compo machine before the actual show. Well, that wasn't the case this year. And then, someone told me it wasn't the case last year, either. Why did you guys make that up then? Well, in any case, the demos should be tested. I don't know about the deadline of the demo compo, as I wasn't around most of the time, but they had a full twelve hours to test all 6 or 7 of the intros that were submitted. Twelve hours is plenty of time to find out if a disk is screwed up. One of the NAiD guys told me that they had been calling us all morning. BULLSHIT. I was in the building for a full two hours before the intro compo, not even leaving anywhere to even take a piss. The only announcement I heard was precisely at 11:50, ten minutes before the compo began. Thanks, guys. Another time, where some guy submitted a disk that was empty, he was only notified about a half hour before the compo. Why don't you guys test the entries as soon as you get them? Is it really that hard? Or does that make too much sense? 5) They asked the audience for confirmation for a lot of things. Things that they shouldn't have to ask. Like asking if it's ok for the 103K intro to be accepted, because it's "ONLY" 3K. (NoLuck here: That 3K took A LOT of my song away. But I still had to do it, because of the 100K limit.) If you have rules, and the entry complies to the rules, then it has to be accepted. Otherwise, whatever says that it can't be accepted, should have been told beforehand. Or if you're a bit unorganized, then cut a little slack. It's really that simple. They asked the audience if our intro should be played again. First of all, of course it should. It was your fault. But even if it wasn't (which is what the audience thought), you shouldn't be wasting time asking the audience. Some guy in the audience got fed up after a few minutes, and yelled, "Just play it!" And he's right. (NoLuck here: Really, who cares? Just play it.) You spent twice as long arguing or contemplating or whatever you were doing, than it would have taken to play it. 6) You should have smarter people controlling the computers. Have you guys ever used DOS before? I can't believe you thought I was using an external copy of PKZIP to extract the files. The basis of this thought was that one of the files reacted to PKUNZIP. Have you ever heard of ZIP2EXE? Obviously not. Another case, which I just remembered, was when the guy stopped on of the songs when it was only 50% through. FIFTY percent!!! Jesus Christ! The song had a silent section for half a second, and the guy hits stop. LOOK AT THE SCREEN! At least he admitted it, "yeah, I'm a lamer". You're f***ing right you are. Why didn't you just continue the song from where it left off? No, that would make sense. Another time, the guy had the volume turned off at the start of the song, but didn't restart it anyways. Maybe there was a cool intro sound to the song. But, hey, it saved 5 seconds. And every second is crucial to the NAiD organizers. 5 seconds. Demo compo was 1:10 minutes late = 70 minutes = 4200 seconds late. What the hell is FIVE SECONDS!? They also had to ask the audience how to enable surround sound. Why don't you figure it out beforehand? 7) The compos should have been organized better. They should be ready 15-30 minutes BEFORE the thing is scheduled to start. But NO... that would make sense. They'd rather do more intelligent stuff, like playing really LOUD music (real music, not tracked) directly before the music compo starts. Do you have any sense, or what? Can't you think? I'm surprised they didn't play Second Reality or some raytraced animation before the demo compo. (NoLuck here: I completely agree. Playing very loud real music before the music compo makes no sense. The songs won't sound better than they did because they are louder in big speakers, because the audience won't be use to the way the song sounds normally, they'll all be use to the loudness of the music beforehand. The songs didn't sound loud, they sounded distorted more than anything from being so loud. I'm sure every composer would agree that their song sounded better, crisper, or whatever by listening to it with the equipment that they used to compose the song on compared to the loud speakers. Well, unless they had a real shitty stereo. It would be the same as playing Second Reality right before a demo that wasn't up to par with it. The demo would look shittier than if played alone. Stuff like this matters. Ask any designer of a good demo and he/she'll tell you that some effects can't be placed in front of others, because they'll make a good effect look worse than it is.) NAiD `96 Late Times (approximate): Intro Compo was 20 minutes late. Music Compo was 10-20 minutes late. Best FX Compo was 45 minutes late. Demo Compo was 1 hour 10 minutes late. (Don't know of any of the others, as I wasn't around.) 8) During the Best FX compo (which we entered the two effects that were not seen in our intro), they stopped every effect after about 5 to 10 seconds. Of course this was because of the millions upon millions of entries had to be crammed into one hour. Let me spell it out for you: THERE WERE 6 EFFECTS. 60 MINUTES divided by 6 EFFECTS = 10 MINUTES to prepare and show each effect. It said right in the info file that each effect could have a running time of 90 seconds. Could you have possibly waited 10 more seconds on each effect? Read more about this in the A NOTE ABOUT THE EFFECTS section. After the Best FX compo: NoLuck: "Did you, by any chance, hit Escape?" NAiDer: "Yeah, well, the road, ya know..." NoLuck: "I'm taking about the dots." NAiDer: "Yeah, I might have." Oh. You MIGHT have. But you don't actually know. Regardless of the fact that it was the last effect played, which was no more than 10 seconds ago. NAiDer: "Sorry." NoLuck: "(The effect SAID TO WAIT!!! IT SAID, "PLEASE **WAIT** FOR AN ANSWER!!!)" 9) You should try not to be biased towards certain people, just because of their handle or name of their group. I know for a fact that a certain song, that was not supposed to be played, was played after inquiry by a certain person. Not surprisingly, this guy was well known for his songs. And I can truly say that all but 5 (maximum) of the songs really sucked, which included buddy's song, incidentally. We entered two songs that would have only been beaten by (maybe) those 5 songs. The rest of them sucked. HTF did you guys pick the songs? Did you even listen to them? Or did you pick the ones passed in on the nicest disks? I realize it's hard to pick the songs as you probably don't have the time to listen to the full song for each one, but you guys did not do a very good job at all. 10) What was up with the showers, anyways? Why so strict on the times? Most of the people there need more showers than they probably take. Don't restrict them even further. It's bad enough to have to see their faces, let alone smell them. --------- ALL IN ALL --------- Overall, the main thing about NAiD, was that the organization was horrible. Anybody could done whatever the hell the NAiD organizers were doing (from our point of view, anyways). They could at least have tested all the programs that were to be run BEFORE they have the thing hooked up to the big screen. Or if you don't, you can at least try to resist telling people that you will. But you should test them, anyways. That's really what the whole party is about. It's a DEMO PARTY. Think about it. That was terrible. You're lucky that the demo compo went as smoothly as it did. It surprised me how well it went, actually. Every compo/event was on average 30 to 35 minutes late. Sometimes up to an hour and 10 minutes late. I hope you do better next year. I certainly know what I have to do differently next time. I hope you guys know, too. 郞袴袴佶袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴袴� � #10 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴� THAT'S ALL SHE WROTE 突袴袴� Until next time, IF there's a next time.... signing off, ProKrastinator / Info-Tech Oh, yeah... excuse our French.