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Information File

Welcome to the official N.A.I.D. 96 Info-file. Please feel free to look
around. Comments can be sent to our E-Mail adress.

This is version 1.0, dated 16/03/96.

INDEX

A "*" means that there have been modifications made to this section since
the previous version of the info-file.

Introduction

* General Information.
* Party Features.

The Event

* Activity Schedule
* Competitions
o Prize packages.
o General information.
o Competing at NAID 96.
o Rules and regulations.
o The selection process.
o Distribution.
* The Sponsors
o Sponsors list and info.
o Friends of Naid list.
* The Organization
o Organizers list.
o Compo supervisors and judges list.
o How to be part of the Naid 96 crew.

Getting to NAID 96

* Directions
* Planned bus trips from various cities

Answers to frequently asked questions

* *What you wanted to know.
* Last minute news & rumors.
* *How to contact us.

INTRODUCTION

General Information

You are reading the official invitation text-file to the North
American International Demo Festival's 2nd edition, still held at
Edouard-Montpetit College in Longueuil, still 15 minutes from the well
known city of Montreal, in the province of Quebec, Canada.

Well, to summ it up, we think your gonna like what we have in store
for you this year. More activities, prizes, games, compos, the works!
And even better, you still don't have to cross one of the major oceans
to get there. Phear it, something this fun comes only once a year! =)

The event will last 3 days, from the 31rst of may to june the 2nd.

Ticket costs will be :

20$ for the 3 day pass

8$ for a 1 day visit

(Canadian funds)

Please note that the 3 day pass is needed to have access to the dorm
and to be a contestant in the competitions.

Places are limited to 1400-1800 people, so buy your tickets today! (
20 canadian bucks? Close to nothing for something this fun. Dare to
compare! =)

Party Features

There will be on-site at the festival:

* Demo competition.
* Intro competition.
* Music competition.
* Gfx competition.
* Lim-0-naid Music & GFX compo.
* 42*10^-1 kb Intro compo.
* 3 Channel chiptune compo.
* Best new effect compo.
* Disk, keyboard and font throwing compos.
* Free-for-all compo.

* HUMONGOUS Dolby Surround sound system. Nothing impresses the crowd
like a swooping baba-cool surround effect in a demo. Just tought I'd
mention it. =)
* HUMONGOUS screen, latest technology. Specs will be included in a
future info-file. Watch for them, don't get caught by a slow mode
switch that ruins your demo. We've been told big screen technology has
improved quite a big deal since last year, so prepare to be dazzled.
* HUMONGOUS professionnal-quality stage light setup.
* On-site Olympic size pool. Bring your bathing suit!
* Multiplayer network games
* Free Internet access on-site.
* 2nd edition of the dinosaur museum. Bigger and better! You can
sell/swap/show-off your PC Junior, XT, C64, Apple IIe, Sinclair,
etc... We are also looking for brave souls who'd like to demonstrate
their programming abilities with these machines, so if your'e
interested, contact us and we'll set something up.

* Space and free electricity! Bring your computers, stoves, cappucino
machine, whatever! (Reservations possible for early ticket buyers. Yet
another reason to bring your computer. But if it gets decapitated,
trampled on, or simply thrown into the olympic sized pool, well...
JUST TOO BAD ! :)) The organizers are not responsible for your
equipment)
* Easy access to water, bathrooms, showers.
* Security guards on service 24h/day
* First-Aid available on the site 24h/day
* Lots of comfortable and quiet sleeping places (Bring your own sleeping
bags). Classrooms (where people will sleep) can be locked to ensure
luggage safety. You can reserve classrooms in advance if you are a
group. Contact us! This year, a fee of around 20$ per classroom will
be charged. (Covers those pesky cleaning costs) This covers the 3 days
of the party.
* Lots of Parking space
* NAID 96 t-shirts, posters and such, the perfect show-off momentoes for
your buddies back home =)
* The Party-place is close to every luxury this civilisation can provide
(transportation, restaurants, bars, malls, etc.)

* And probably a few other suprise events as well! Look for the N.A.I.D.
96 Intro and info pack, to be released soon.

THE EVENT

Activity Schedule

Rather incomplete at the moment, look for updates of this section in
the coming weeks.
o Friday :
o 19h00 Doors open
o Sunday :
o 21h00 Doors close

Competition

Prizes packages

Prizes will be composed of cash and hardware. All numbers and
prizes are subject to change, but it is unlikely they will. All
the following are in canadian funds.

Cash prizes are as follows

Per category

Ranking   Demo Intro Music  Graphics Total

1rst Place 1500$ 900$  600$   500$

2nd Place 1000$ 600$  400$   350$

3rd Place 500$  300$  200$   150$

Total   3000$ 1800$ 1200$  1000$    7000$

Hardware prize packages info is unavailable for now.

General information

Well, the competition rules have seen some changes since the last
edition of NAID. The reason is simple. Experience. We have much
better idea of what to expect and the issues we have to adress.
(Well, atleast we like to think so :) Since we have a pretty good
idea of how it must feel to see your entry disqualified after
weeks and weeks of work, we cannot urge you strongly enough to
read them carefully and not take chances. So be forewarned, these
rules will now be strongly enforced.

Every entry must meet the requirements below or face elimination.
Reasons for not meeting these requirements are non-existant. We
don't care if disks sponstaneously combust, your brother died or
your luggage got ran over by a truck. The NAID organizers are not
inclined to give slack this year, no matter how nice you where
last year :)

Deadlines will 99.9% sure be followed this year. In case of a
major catastrophy, (Earthquake, martians, media frenzy, killer
bees nest found in the compo computer, the coming of the
antechrist, etc...), and that the deadline just HAS to move, a
public announcement will be made to that effect, and then
periodically repeated. Late entries will be disqualified. Don't
say we did'nt warn you.

Each compo will have a maximum number of competing entries. If we
get more entries than available air-time, a pre-selection process
by judges will decide wich entries qualify.

And concerning the playing platforms we use, contestants have
limited choice this year. The reason for this is simply time. We
do not have the luxury to have a good compo and change the
hardware/software for each piece. We believe the options we offer
are sufficient to do anything one might want to do. If you
disagree, or think we missed something, please tell us and if the
demand is there, we might be able to add a couple of elements you
think are missing from our list.

Competing at NAID 96

Application must be filled in at our submission booth on-site at
NAID 96. (See the distribution section of this document for more
details.)

It is also possible, yet again, to get your stuff screened at
NAID if we have time. Even if you can't be there. But,
participation in the official compos still requires, on site, a
member who contributed to the piece. (Otherwise you obviously
cannot win prizes and such.)

Rules and regulations

Demo Compo :

+ The Demo's runtime size must not exceed 3072k.
+ Maximum running time is 20 minutes.

Intro Compo :

+ The intro's runtime size must not exceed 102400 bytes.
+ Maximum running time is 10 minutes.

Music Compo :

+ You must chose 1 of the 5 players in our list. (See
available specs for more detail)
+ Maximum uncompressed size is 1024k.
+ Song length cannot exceed 4 minutes.
+ Limit one song per person. (Including co-op tunes)

Graphics Compo :

+ All graphics must be "hand drawn" (so to speak).
+ No ray-traced, ripped or scanned images.
+ Maximum resolution is 640x480x256.
+ The latest version of CSHOW will be used to display the
pics.
+ No less than 3 pictures of the work in progress are needed
to qualify.
+ The given pics must clearly show the progress of the work
from first draft to final version.
+ The burden of proof is on the author.
+ We discard every entry that does'nt respect all of these
requirements.
+ Limit one pic per person.

Music Lim0naid Compo

+ 10 minutes run length time to track the music.
+ The samples (there shall be six of them) are provided,
and may be altered within the possibilities of the
tracker used, but one competitor may not take any external
sources for samples but for the ones provided.
+ No other rule. You do the best you can, in the number of channels/patterns
you wish. You don't have to use all the samples, and you can do whatever
you want to track your tune.
+ Please note that the (six) samples provided will prolly be
the six worst samples you've heard in your entire life =).
+ Provided trackers will be Impulse Tracker, Scream Tracker 3,
and Fast Tracker 2.

Gfx Lim0naid Compo

+ 10 minutes to do the drawing.
+ 320x200 format is to be used by all participants.
+ The palette given may not be altered in any way by the
competitors, there will be 6 colors provided (6 horrible
colours of course) that the participants must use to do
their drawing.

42*10^-1 kb Intro Compo :

+ The intro's runtime size must not exceed 4301 bytes.
+ Maximum running time is 3 minutes.

3 Channel chiptune Compo :

+ You must chose 1 of the 5 players in our list. (See
available specs for more detail)
+ Maximum uncompressed size is 32(16?)k.
+ Song length cannot exceed 2 minutes.
+ Limit one song per person. (Including co-op tunes)

Best new effect Compo : Winners are determined by jury only. Can
be a variation on an older effect, but 30 to 40% of the score is
given for originality. Thanks to OS2/Man and the #coders crowd
for help and hints in creating this compo.

+ The effect's runtime size must not exceed 32k.
+ Maximum running time is 1 minute 30 seconds.
+ Must be 100% original code.

Disk, keyboard and font throwing Compos : A good old throwing
compo. Nuff said! And no, we won't tell you what the font
throwing is all about :)

+ Chunks also count in the distance evaluation :)

Free-for-all Compo : You have 5 minutes on stage, and the basic
compo equipement plus anything that you brought along is allowed.
Winners are determined by vote, thus the contestant with the most
impressive display of -whatever you want- wins.

+ Must be legal in Canada.
+ Maximum time allowed is 5 minutes.
+ Must be 100% safe if you use any of our equipment. (Consult
us early if you think you'll need our stuff.)
+ Must not require anything above 2 minutes setup time on our
part.

Deadlines : All deadlines are during the actual party. Exact time
will be found in the next version of this info-file.

Equipment available

The computer used for the compos will be :
+ Pentium 100 with 8 Megs of RAM
+ With the appropriate SVGA card
+ And a Gravis Ultrasound, 1 meg

Software supported:
+ ST3 v.???
+ FT2 v.???
+ Impulse tracker v.???
+ Capamod v.???
+ Cubic player v.???
+ CShow v.???

Basic available configurations :
+ We use a standard DOS 6.2 environment with additionnal
system files relevant to the hardware present in the
machine. We will only be using standard DOS 6.2
configuration options, with the relevent soundcard drivers.
(I.e. No QEMM memory managers.) The contestants will have
3-4 basic configurations to choose from, ranging from plain
vanilla HIMEM only to the whole EMM386/SMARTDRV (yuck :)
package usually only needed when running windows.
+ Now, being aware that this might cause problems in some
cases, it might be a good idea for contestants in the demo
and intro competitions to take some precautions to make sure
their demo :
a. Does'nt exclusively work on their own home computer. :)
b. Is a tidbit flexible when it comes to running with your
standard/typical memory configuration.
+ A copy of the competition computer's CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT will be available on the party site, so our
competitors will also have the chance to make possible last
minutes adjustements to their entries, just in case. We will
also be open to suggestions as to add some choices we might
have overlooked, within the boundaries of the available
options. (I.e. Again, no QEMM memory managers. Only
"standard" DOS memory config options.)
+ Don't worry, our goal isn't to force anyone into using
memory managers or any fixed configuration, but needless to
say we encourage our contestants to have productions wich
are as flexible as possible. The demo scene in general can
only profit if coders take some care to make their
productions a little more versatile, not forcing the "users"
to rewrite their whole configuration files from scratch
every time they want to run the piece in question.

The judging process.

Entries will be judged following a point system. Public votes
will be given a certain importance (30-40%) to attribute a final
'grade'. Details concerning other criterias judged will be
released as soon as they are available. In case of a tie, the
public vote percentage will determine our winner. (In the
unlikely case of a tie at that level, the judges will take a
tiebreaking vote themselves.)

Distribution.

The distribution system this year is different. First off, every
entry at NAID must be shareware. (I.e. Distribution of the entry
for non-profit purposes must be authorized by the author(s).)
Furthermore, a NAID 96 CD-ROM is now in the works. Thus, while
keeping the entries shareware, the author(s) will also have to
give the right to Walnut Creek to use their entries on the CD.

Basically, what this means is that for all intents and purposes,
you still own the rights to your entries. If anyone wishes to put
your entries on any CD besides the NAID 96 CD Walnut Creek will
be publishing, they still have to come to you and make a deal to
get further distribution rights.

Now, maybe some of you are thinking 'Okay, that's all fine and
dandy, but what do *I* get out of this?'. Well, that's a
perfectly justifiable question, and here's the explanation.
Walnut Creek would earn the distribution rights as they will be
shelling out 100% of the prize money. Yup, you heard right.
Furthermore, every contestant would also get a copy of the NAID
96 CD. (At the very least those who qualify for the compos, which
means something between 20-30 per compo, and 1 for every entry if
we don't get something like 100+ entries in every compo category.
In any case, it will be specified in the application
form/contract you will have to sign at the party.)

Now, I am told that the 'target audience' for that CD, besides
your usual demo-freaks, would be software compagnies interested
in recruiting talented young artists/programmers. Thus, you might
agree when we consider this whole thing to be a win-win
situation. Maybe some of you still aren't convinced, but think of
it this way. In the music business, you usually have to pay for
that sort of publicity, and not the reverse. (The music business
comparison isn't so far fetched if you think about it. I know a
lot of similar contests taking place in the music industry around
montreal work this way.)

I'm sure some of you will have some questions about this whole
question of distribution rights and so on, so feel free to
contact us at naid@autoroute.net and we'll do our best to answer
them.

The Sponsors

Current Official Sponsors :

* Collège Édouard-Montpetit
* A.G.E.C.E.M. <Édouard's student council>
* COOP Montpetit
* Fond de developpement Édouard-Montpetit
* Internet provider Autoroute.net
* Mediatrix
* Walnut Creek
* Gandalf
* M-Link

Collège Édouard-Montpetit and NAID.

Collège Édouard-Montpetit is the biggest CEGEP (roughly a US College
equivalent) in the province of Quebec. CEM's involvement with NAID
gives a chance to it's computer science students to come show what
they are made of, and in the process, opening it's doors to artists,
musicians and computer enthousiasts from all around the world.

NAID owes it's existance in good part to this fine establishment. The
organizers would like to send thanks to everybody in the school
administrative and student staff involved with the event.

The Organization

MAIN ORGANIZERS

Mr. Khan           Étienne Caron
Midnight "Med" Sun Éric Lagacé      Site Coordinator
Struk              Laurent Gauthier Business Coordinator

THE TEAMS

Main Organizers    [Demo Compo]
Main Organizers    [Intro Compo]
Shawnm & Ara       [Music Compo]
???                [Gfx Compo]
Depth              [Lim0naid Compo(s)]
France Viau        [Site Decoration]
Christian Mailloux [Security Officer]
Equipe Sante       [First Aid]

Full credits will be given to team members in our post-NAID 96 report that
is planned to be released x month/week (pref. 1 week :) after the event,
somewhere towards the 1rst week of july.

Getting to NAID 96

Directions.

Under construction.

Planned bus trips from various cities.

Will resume a list of available bus trips being organized everywhere.

Answers to frequently asked questions

What you want to know.

This section tries to answer the most common questions we get about
NAID 96.

Q: I'd like to reserve a ticket. How does it work?

A: Well, it's simple really. Buy early. :) This entitles you to a
table for you and your group , plus a place in the classrooms wich
serve as dorms for the party. We'd like to offer reservations like
last year, but frankly we found it was a rather inefficient way to
work. So to keep it fair for everyone if we ever run out of space, we
have to work like this. Don't worry, a counter with the number of
available tickets left will be put up if we ever hit 1000 in pre-party
sales. The addresses and relevent info (adresses and such) can be
found at the bottom of this nfo-file.

Last minute news and rumors.

The place were you might find interesting tidbits in the future.

How to contact us

Internet:

E-Mail adress is naid@autoroute.net

World Wide Web:

Official NAID 96 Web Page http://www.autoroute.net/~naid

Snail-Mail:
NAID / APRAXIA, Local A-19

College Edouard-Montpetit
945, chemin de Chambly
Longueuil (Quebec), CANADA
J4H 3M6

Telephone:

(514) 672-2630, extension 363 during normal office hours.

We share this line with another school organization. Ask to speak
to a NAID organizer, if we aren't there, please leave a message,
and we'll get back to you.

Don't hesitate to call / write for info!

To order tickets please check out our ticket ordering forms, wich can
be found either on our web page, or as a file named order.nfo in our
NAID 96 invtro package.