Nostalgia and SuccesS invite you to

4, 5 & 6 April 1997, The Auditorium, Eindhoven

"If everything fails, read the manual"

o f f i c i a l  i n f o r m a t i o n  f i l e  v e r s i o n  2 . 0
(released on 07-02-96)

1.   The X'97 Takeover Story

As a result of the disappointing Party 5, a group of Dutch demo
sceners decided to do it better themselves and started organising a
demo party, which was shortly thereafter called Takeover. Nostalgia
became the main initiator of Takeover, scouting for a location and
setting up a group of organizers.

Soon an accommodation was found: The Auditorium of the Eindhoven
University. It turned out that the only suitable free date was in
April '97, the same month the annual X party was to be held,
organised by another Dutch demo group, SuccesS. However they were
having severe difficulties with their accommodation, so we decided to
join forces to achieve the main goal: to host the biggest and most
successfull demo scene event ever held in the Netherlands.

X'97 Takeover was born.

2.   Information

X'97 Takeover will be held on 4, 5 and 6 April 1997. The party place
will open on Friday evening 19:00 and will close on Sunday afternoon.
The party will be held in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in the Auditorium
of the Technical University. Eindhoven is in the south of the
Netherlands, and can easily be reached from France, Belgium and
Germany.

3.   Party features

The X'97 Takeover has the following features:

o  Two adjacent halls: a party hall and a compo hall.
o  Room for about 800 persons in the party hall.
o  HUGE competition screen in the compo hall.
o  HUGE audio system is the compo hall.
o  A party network, connected to the Internet (more information
soon).
o  Six free Internet Terminals (Netscape only).
o  Coffee and softdrinks available 24 hours.
o  10 minutes walk to shopping center.
o  5 minutes walk to train station.
o  Big FREE parking place.
o  Seperate sleeping place (bring your own sleeping stuff).

Additional information:

o  Over 40 hours of non stop partying!
o  The entrance fee is 45,- Dutch guilders. We only accept dutch
guilders, though Deutsch Marks can be exchanged against a
1 Hfl = 1 DM rate (only paper, no small change).
o  Free voting disk!

4.   The Competitions

We will organise the following competitions:

o  Demo competition,
o  Intro competition,
o  4kb competition,
o  Music competition,
o  House competition,
o  Graphics competition,
o  Surprise coding / music / graphics competitions.

For all entries in all competitions the following rules apply:

o  A jury will make a selection of the entries which will be shown.
o  All entries must have a clear title (graphics included!) or
production name.
o  Entries must not have been released before.
o  All entries in the competitions are released on the X'97 Takeover
FTP site after the competition.
o  All selected entries are shown in the competition room.
o  The organisation reserves the right to cancel any competition
when too little interesting entries are submitted.
o  There will be both jury and public voting, except for the
surprise compos and the C64 compo (only jury).
o  No anonymous productions / competitions. Before each entry is
shown / played the title and the group, or artist / group, are
shown on the screen.
o  Deadlines will be anounced at the party. Productions submitted
after the deadline will not be accepted.
o  Each demo group can enter the competitions with more than one
production. At least one member of the demo group should be
present at the party.
o  Each artist can enter the individual competitions (music, house,
graphics, and 4kb) only once. Artists or a group member of the
artist must be present at the party.
o  Prizes can only be collected at the party.
o  Prize money will be in Dutch guilders. Hardware and software
prizes cannot be exchanged for money.
o  For the contributions we only accept entries stored on either 3.5"
diskettes, or 5.25" for C64. Diskettes cannot be returned.
o  Demos and intros must run from harddisk.
o  If a demo or intro does not run on the competition machine the
organizers will try to contact the makers to try and solve the
problem before the competition takes place.
o  The competition machine will be rebooted between demo and intro
entries.
o  When performing pre-calc, the intro or demo should clearly state
so, including some sort of progress bar, so we can be fairly
sure the entry did not hang the computer.
o  The organizers have the right to refuse prizes to / disqualify
entries from anyone who misbehaved or did otherwise break the
party rules.
o  The amount of prize money depends on the number of party
participants, the quality of the entries and the non-money
prizes (hard/software).
o  Trojan horses, rip-offs and other childish entries will be
disqualified.
o  Results will be placed on the X'97 Takeover home page after the
prize ceremony.
o  For information on the C64 compos check out the C64 note
released by TRC/Success.

Rules for the X'97 Takeover Demo competition:

o  Maximum show time 15 minutes (boring scrolls or repeats will be
terminated sooner).
o  Maximum total size of runable demo is 4 Mb (4194304 bytes)
uncompressed.
o  Demos are not allowed to unpack to harddisk or write to harddisk
(other than configuration info).
o  The demo must have sound.
o  No pure animations allowed.
o  Supply exact boot configuration.

Rules for the X'97 Takeover 64 Kb Intro competition:

o  Maximum show time 10 minutes (boring scrolls or repeats will be
terminated sooner).
o  Maximum total size of runable intro is 64 Kb (65536 bytes)
uncompressed.
o  Intros are not allowed to unpack to harddisk or write to
harddisk (other than configuration info).
o  The intro must have sound.
o  Supply exact boot configuration.

Rules for the X'97 Takeover 4 Kb Intro competition:

o  Maximum show time 5 minutes (boring scrolls or repeats will be
terminated sooner).
o  Maximum total size of runable intro is 4 Kb (4096 bytes)
uncompressed.
o  The intro may have sound.
o  Supply exact boot configuration.

Rules for the X'97 Takeover Music competition:

o  Maximum play time is 3 minutes (will be faded out after 3
minutes).
o  Maximum file size 1 Mb (1048576 bytes) uncompressed.
o  We play XMs with FastTracker, S3Ms with Scream Tracker 3 and ITs
with Impulse Tracker. Other formats will be played with the
latest Cubic Player, unless you supply us with your own player.
o  MIDI is not allowed.
o  Maximum number of channels is 32.
o  House entries are disqualified.

Rules for the X'97 Takeover House competition:

o  Maximum play time is 3 minutes (will be faded out after 3
minutes).
o  Maximum file size 1 Mb (1048576 bytes) uncompressed.
o  We play XMs with FastTracker, S3Ms with Scream Tracker 3 and ITs
with Impulse Tracker. Other formats will be played with the
latest Cubic Player, unless you supply us with your own player.
o  No MIDI is allowed.
o  Maximum number of channels is 32.
o  Non-house entries are disqualified.

Rules for the X'97 Takeover Graphics competition:

o  Each picture will be shown for 20 seconds.
o  Only handdrawn pictures allowed; rendered, raytraced or scanned
pictures will be disqualified.
o  Latest version of SEA will be used to show, unless own viewer
supplied.
o  Maximum resolution 640x480x16M.

Rules for the X'97 Takeover Surprise competitions:

o  There will be only jury voting for these competitions.
o  These competitions will be awarded with a small prize.
o  Rules will be announced at the party.

5.   The Competition Machine

The specifications of the competition machine:

Hardware:

o  Pentium 166
o  16 Mb of RAM
o  Diamond Stealth 3D with 2Mb VRAM
o  GUS PnP with 2 Mb RAM
o  Original Adlib sound card
o  3.5" 1.44 Mb FDD
o  1 Gb HDD

Software:

o  MS-DOS 6.2x
o  HIMEM.SYS

Optional:

o  EMM386.EXE
o  UniVBE

Please tell us what boot configuration your entry needs. Also, tell
us anything about your demo you think we need to know in order to run
it correctly.

It is not possible to test your entries on the compo machine, but if
your entry does not run or does not seem to run correctly we will try
to contact you to solve the problem.

If your entry hangs during the competition we will try to contact
you to solve the problem. Your entry will get a second chance after
the last entry has been played.

6.   Making Reservations

When you plan to bring your own computer equipment to the party
place, we highly recommend you to make a reservation for X'97
Takeover, to reserve a table.

There are three ways of making your reservation.

o  send e-mail to Tim / SuccesS at tim_@dds.nl,
o  fill out the Making Reservations Form at the official X'97
Takeover WWW Site at http://www.tue.nl/X97-Takeover,
o  Send snail mail to

X'97 Takeover
Peperstraat 54
1502 AJ Zaandam
The Netherlands

If you plan to make a reservation, make sure you supply us with the
following information:

o  Your (real) name.
o  Your handle.
o  Your groupname.
o  Your address.
o  How much people you're making a reservation for.
o  How many equipment you're planning to take to the party.

We prefer you to use the Internet to make your reservation. If you
use the fill out form, your reservation will automagically be added
to the list of people who made their reservation through the
Internet. We will contact you through e-mail to confirmation your
reservation.

If you make a reservation through snail mail, you wont get a confirm
through snail mail, but you can check the WWW site.

If you make a reservation, please beware that it will only be
valid until saturday April 5th (2nd day of the party), 13:00. After
that we can not garantee you a free table.

7.   The Road to the Auditorium

Well, don't expect fancy road maps here! :) But don't worry, it is
very easy to find. :)

If you're coming by car:

o  Drive to Eindhoven (Centrum).
o  After leaving the highway, follow the signs 'UNIVERSITEIT'.
o  BE CAREFUL! The road is packed with speeding camera's!!
o  When you've reached the university campus, follow the signs
'AUDITORIUM'.
o  You CAN'T miss it!
o  There's LOADS of FREE parking space.

If you're coming by train:

o  Take a train to Eindhoven Central Station (Eindhoven Centraal).
o  Leave the train station and walk in the direction of the city
buses (you can see the Rabobank in front of you),
o  If you're standing with your back to the train station, you can
see the university campus in north east direction. You can
recognise the campus by the building with 'Technische
Universiteit' on it. (Mind that this is NOT the Auditorium)
o  It's a 5 minutes walk.
o  When you have reached the university campus, the Auditorium is
on your left.

8.   The Voting System

All competitions (except the surprise and C64 compos) will be judged
by both the public and a jury (50%-50%). The surprise and C64 compos
will be judged by a jury only.

At the entrance everybody will receive a voting disk. On this disk
there's a voting program which can be used to vote. To submit your
votes, take the disk to the organisers, who will read your votings
from the disk and add it to the total votings. You can keep your
disk as a souvenir.

Some rules that apply to the voting system:
o  You can only vote once.
o  You cannot vote for yourself or your groupmembers.
o  You can only vote for entries that were played during the
competitions. In other words: you cannot vote for disqualified
entries.
o  You can only vote on PC compos. For the C64 compos there's only
jury voting (like last year).

9.   General Party Rules

When attending the X'97 Takeover, we trust you obey the following
rules.

o  Misconduct will not be tolerated; this includes fighting, racism,
facism, etc. and ignoring the other party rules.
o  The organisation cannot be held responsible for loss of personal
belongings (including computer and other equipment), damage to
personal belongings etc.
o  The Technical University of Eindhoven cannot be held responsible
for loss of personal belongings (including computer and other
equipment), damage to personal belongings etc.
o  No smoking inside the competition room. Smoking *IS* allowed in
the main hall, but please use the ashtrays!!!
o  No soft or hard drugs allowed at the party place.
o  People using hard drugs will be handed over to the police.
o  If you are too drunk you will be removed from the party place.
o  The organisers have the right to refuse admittance to anyone,
remove anyone from the party place and to turn over anyone to the
police in case of serious misconduct.
o  When you do not reserve table space you cannot claim the right for
such space.
o  No sleeping in the main hall, sleeping is allowed only in the
designated places.
o  Don't forget to bring your own electricity cables! Make sure
they're grounded!
o  The X'97 Takeover Organisation and the Technical University cannot be
held responsible for ANYTHING!

10.  Contact information

For more information on X'97 Takeover send an e-mail to:

x97take@dds.nl

The Sound Distribution Channel is supplying
the Official X'97 Takeover FTP Server at:

sdc.wtm.tudelft.nl/pub/music/x97take

The official X'97 Takeover World Wide Web Site:

http://www.tue.nl/X97-Takeover

Nostalgia & SuccesS