ASSEMBLY 1995


WHERE AND WHEN

ASSEMBLY 1995 will be held in Finland's largest conference centrum, namely the Helsinki Fair Centre. The Fair Centre is located in central Helsinki, about two kilometres away, from last year's party place.

The party will start at 10:00 AM on the 10th of August (Thursday) and end at 18:00 PM on the 13th of August (Sunday).

The party place is very easy to find; if you take any train from the Central Railway station and get off on the next stop, you will be able to see the building complex.

HOW TO GET TO THE PARTY PLACE

You will either have to arrive by plane, by boat, by bus, by train or by car. If you are lucky enough to come by car, you should be able to find the party place very easily (see the maps). This year there will be enough parking space for everybody because there are no European Track & Field championships taking place, and the Helsinki Fair Centre hosts one of the biggest parking lots in whole Helsinki! If you come by plane and have lots of luggage with you, we would recommend you to take a taxi; otherwise you should come by bus, which is much cheaper. And if you come by boat to Helsinki seaport, and have lots of luggage, take a taxi, a tram or walk to the Central Railway station and take any local train from there.

Local area bus tickets in Finland vary from around USD 2 to USD 6. A taxi is of course much more expensive. For example, to take a normal taxi from the airport to the party place will cost one person around USD 30 to USD 40. But if you take the Airport Taxi, it will be a lot cheaper; about half the price.

COMPETITIONS

The organizers reserve the right to make any changes to the competition rules, and to disqualify any entry if it is not suitable to attend the competitions for some reason or another.

At least one person from the competing teams has to be present at the party place and in the case of a solo competition, the competitor himself has to be present.

All competitors have to be present at the party place in order to attend the competitions and to receive the possible prizes (or at least one of the authors of a competing piece of art).

A jury composed of known scene people (maybe even you) will select an amount of 15 entries in each competition for the finals, to be shown on the big screen, and to the audience. There will be different people in the PC and Amiga juries.

In the graphics and ray-tracing competitions, and also in the 4kb intro competition on the PC, the competition version of the entry must not display the author's name or group in any way. This is to prevent the author's name from affecting the voting. After the announcement of the results, the versions which are spread can include the author's signature. In the music competitions, we will not show the author's name while we play the song in the competition.

In the graphics, music, ray-tracing, animation and 4kb intro competitions, we will show the name of the song or picture, but only if it will not give hints on who is the author.

"Maximum running length" below, is only the amount of maximum time we will show a particular piece of art on the big screen.

The demos and intros will have to run without ANY user interaction, once started, although there can be a setup screen.

All demos, intros (4kb, 40kb and 64kb), pictures, songs and animations will be spread at the party place by the organizers.

The filenames of the productions have to comply to the ISO-9660 standard. This means roughly that the only characters allowed in filenames are A to Z and 0 to 9. The maximum length of a file name is 8 plus 3 characters; that is normal MsDos standard.

The productions MUST NOT save any files (for example configuration files) on the hard disk or the disk.

In the music, graphics, raytracing and 4kb intro competitions only one of the authors (if there are more than one) can be the official author of the competing piece of art. For example, if two coders work on the same 4kb intro, only one of them can receive the prize and have his name in the party results. After all, these three competitions are meant to be solo competitions.

The author/authors have to have all the copyrights to their production.

If you have any questions about the rules, kindly contact the ASSEMBLY organization.

THE VOTING SYSTEM

We will use a disk voting system. Once you enter the party place, you will be given the voting disk, which will include the voting program. We are going to have separate Amiga and PC compatible voting disks.

You will be able to give your opinion on the best FIVE in all competitions, both on the Amiga and PC.

Before you can give your opinions, a jury composed of known scene people (maybe even you) will select an amount of 15 entries in each competition for the finals (to be shown on the big screen to the party audience). There will be different people in the PC and Amiga juries.

AMIGA COMPETITION RULES

The competition machine is a A4000 with 2 megs of chip memory and 4 megs of fast memory. All competition entries MUST WORK on an Amiga 1200 with 2 megs of chip memory.

DEMO

Maximum size is 4 megabytes.

Must by hard disk installable.

Maximum running length is 8 minutes.

The names of the files have to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (NO special characters are allowed).

The demo MUST NOT save anything onto disk.

INTRO

Maximum size in executable form is 40K.

Maximum running length is 5 minutes.

The names of the files have to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (NO special characters are allowed).

The intro MUST NOT save anything onto disk.

GRAPHICS

The maximum resolution allowed is 640 by 480.

The maximum amount of simultaneous on-screen colours is 256.

The palette is the standard 16,7 million colour, true colour palette.

Pictures drawn with an Amiga will be shown with Amiga Brilliance. No executables are accepted.

PC pictures will have to be in standard LBM, PCX, TGA or GIF format.

Pictures drawn with PC will be shown with CSHOW, or some other good picture viewer.

Scanned, ripped and raytraced pictures will be disqualified.

In addition, you must submit a version of the final picture which doesn't have your signature on it. This version will be the one shown on the big screen.

Only one picture per graphics artist.

The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (NO special characters are allowed).

RAYTRACING

The maximum resolution allowed is 640 by 480.

The maximum amount of simultaneous on-screen colours is 16.7 million.

Pictures will be shown on PC with true colour card. No executables are acceptable.

Pictures have to be in JPEG or TARGA format.

In addition, you must submit a version of the final picture which doesn't have your signature on it. This version will be shown on the big screen.

Only one picture per graphics artist.

The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (NO special characters are allowed).

ANIMATION

The maximum size of the animation is 2000 of 320 by 200 frames. It has to be forwarded to us on a hard drive, DAT or on any other easily transferrable media.

The maximum amount of simultaneous on-screen colours is 16.7 million.

The maximum resolution is 320 by 200.

The animation will be shown on a Pentium PC with true colour card. The player will be done by Virtual Dreams.

The frames have to be in JPEG format and delivered to us on a hard drive, DAT or in any other easily transferrable media, but NO DISKS! Other possible media restrictions will be notified later. If you don't bring your production on a hard disk, bring along a drive that can read your media!

The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (NO special characters are allowed).

THE 4 CHANNEL MUSIC COMPO

Maximum size is 880K or one Amiga disk.

Maximum amount of channels is 4.

Maximum running length is 3 minutes.

All songs will be played with Amiga ProTracker v2.x (MOD)

Entries must be in MOD format. No executables will be accepted.

Only one song per musician.

The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (NO special characters are allowed).

MULTI CHANNEL MUSIC COMPO

Maximum amount of channels is 32.

Maximum size of the song is 1024K in a playable format (including all samples, pattern data, etc...)

Maximum running length is 3 minutes.

the format has to be one of the following: S3M, MOD, XM, MTM or ULT.

If the song is a MIDI song, bring the samples and everything that is needed to play the song with you (except the sound card).

All songs will be played with PC compatible players using a 1MB Gravis UltraSound.

Only one song per musician.

The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (NO special characters are allowed).

SPECIAL COMPETITIONS

We will have all traditional ASSEMBLY special competitions and some new ones. The competitions will include soccer, disk throwing, modem throwing and laser tag war compos.

THE PRIZES

The prizes will be the best yet, both in the Amiga and PC competitions. The total value of all the prizes in US dollars will be over USD 50,000. This amount does not including software.

The actual prizes may be software, hardware or pure cash. This depends on our sponsors. The following list includes only the preliminary list of the prizes. The final lists will be published at the party place. Also keep in mind that the money exchange rates also affect this list. As at today, one US dollar is roughly 4.7 Finnish marks.

We will try to give cash prizes in the PC and Amiga demo competitions. The prizes in the other competitions may be more or less hardware and software.

All the cash prizes will be paid in Finnish currency.

COMPETITION PRIZE VALUES

         DEMO   INTRO  4KB INTRO (PC)

1       $4400   $1900       $600
2       $2900   $1400       $500
3       $2100   $1000       $350
4       $1350    $500       $250
5        $750    $250       $150
6 - 15   $100    $100       $50

Plus any hardware and software we will get from our sponsors as prizes.

ART COMPETITION PRIZE VALUES

   MUSIC 4/32  GFX/RAYTRACE ANIMATION

1     $600         $600        $1900
2     $500         $500        $1400
3     $350         $350        $1000
4     $250         $250         $500
5     $150         $150         $250
6-15   $50          $50         $100

COMMODORE 64 COMPETITION PRIZES:

In the C64 competitions we will only give cash as follows:

     DEMO     GRAPHICS     MUSIC

1    $200       $100        $100
2    $100        $50         $50
3     $50        $25         $25

Audio and Video

The main hall is equipped with a powerful sound system. The system supports Dolby Surround Sound and will be a real kicker with 10,000 watts of pure sound power.

The big screen in the main hall is over 8 meters wide has a resolution of 640 by 480! There are also two additional video screens for displaying information and messages.

Halls

The party area is composed of two inter-connected halls. The main area is 4500 square meters. There are 1800 computer places in the main hall and about 50 ethernet sockets are available.

The sleeping hall is on the second floor and both of the halls are sound proof so your sleeping convenience is assured. The sleeping hall is as big as the main party arena so there is plenty of room for everybody.

Neither of the halls have windows so the video screens will look absolutely fabulous at all day times.

Services

The party place is the biggest fair centre in Finland. It will feature 24 hours food service, 24 hours security personnel, 24 hours professional electrician, 24 hours luggage preservation service and cleaning personnel. Also 24 hours help desk with friendly personnel will be available to help you out with any problems you might encounter.

Plenty of WCs and some showers will be available. Party T-shirts and posters (A1 size) will be sold for low prices.

Finland's largest role-playing convention will also take place at the same time in the fair centre. ASSEMBLY visitors will get 50% discount on the entrance fee.

Finland's largest home computer fair will also be taking place at the same time in the fair centre. ASSEMBLY visitors will get a FREE entrance to this fair; namely the PLAY 1995! Note that the visitors at PLAY 1995 can't come to the ASSEMBLY party area.

Two really great concerts will take place during the weekend. On Friday a spectacular ROCK CONCERT will take place in a separate hall and on Saturday a really big rave (expected amount of visitors is 2000) will take place in a separate hall.

ASSEMBLY 95 NET Access

We will be offering a limited access to the Internet at the party place. This will most likely include IRC, MUD and some other services, and may be even some direct links to the net through the party LAN.

All productions released during the party will be uploaded to the FTP server NIC.FUNET.FI, and also to FTP.MPOLI. FI (directory /starport/asm95/releases).

ASSEMBLY 95 CD ROM

All the participating pieces of art from the competitions will be assembled on a single ASSEMBLY 1995 CD ROM. This will be a unique possibility for everyone to get hundreds of megabytes of data containing ALL demos, intros, pictures and modules published at ASSEMBLY 95. THERE'S NO OTHER EASY WAY TO COLLECT THEM ALL.

We will pay royalties of the net revenue of the CD ROM disks to the winners in the competitions (except for the C64) as follows (in percentages):

CODE COMPETITIONS

    DEMO   INTRO   4KB INTRO (PC)
    ====   =====   ==============

1   2.5%    0.7%        0.4%
2   2.0%    0.5%        0.3%
3   1.5%    0.4%        0.1%


ART COMPETITIONS

   MUSIC 4/32  GFX/RAYTRACE ANIMATION
   ==========  ============ =========

1     0.4%         0.4%         0.7%
2     0.3%         0.3%         0.5%
3     0.1%         0.1%         0.4%

All productions which are shown on the big screen will receive a free ASSEMBLY 1995 CD ROM.

If you do a fix for your production after the party and you wish to include it on the CD ROM kindly send it to any places listed in the contact addresses. In case of problems, please contact the ASSEMBLY Organization.

All winning entries have to include a text file which states that the author will grant us the exclusive rights for the CD ROM distribution of the competition entry. Otherwise no royalties will be paid.

The royalties will be paid twice in the period of one year after the release of the CD ROM disk in the form of a cheque by mail. This means that the last royalties for the ASSEMBLY 1995 CD ROM disk will be paid around the ASSEMBLY 1996 time.

ASSEMBLY 1995 TICKETS

There are two kind of tickets for ASSEMBLY 1995. Normal 200,- tickets and 240,- ticket which includes a computer place reservation. You can buy the 200,- ticket either at the door, at the happening, or you can buy it in advance. Reservation tickets are only sold in advance.

Where can I buy my tickets

In Finland you can buy a ticket and reserve your computer place from your local LIPPUPALVELU or by calling: 9700-4700 (4,95 mk/min+ppm).

Groups that want to get the group discount and foreigners, must buy their tickets and computer place reservations directly from the ASSEMBLY Organization. Foreigners can pay directly to the account of the ASSEMBLY Organization. Make sure, when you pay directly to the account, that the ASSEMBLY Organization doesn't get any additional costs and that the amount of money covers the costs of the ordered ticket. Also make sure that we clearly get the information of who has sent the money and where we can send the tickets. To groups in Finland we will send the tickets as COD (cash on delivery).

Why should I buy a ticket in advance?

If you buy your ticket in advance you have the possibility to use a group discount of 10%. You have the possibility for a group discount if you buy more than 10 tickets at a time. Also the table reservation is possible only by buying reservation tickets. You don't have to reserve a table for yourself, but the best places near the video projector screen go to the reservers. The earlier you reserve your place the better place you get. We will also organize a special door on the first day of ASSEMBLY 1995 where you can get your computer in the most convenient manner.

PRELIMINARY SCHEDULE

This schedule is only preliminary and the times listed will most likely be changed and a lot more events will be added, but you can get a general feeling of the party days. The party place is open 24 hours a day. RopeCon is also open 24 hours a day.

10th of August 1995 (THURSDAY)

1000 ASSEMBLY doors open
1000 PLAY 1995 opens
2000 PLAY 1995 closes for the day
     special competitions
     raytrace movies on big screen

11th of August 1995 (FRIDAY)

1000 PLAY 1995 opens
1000 RopeCon starts
1400 C64 competition deadline
2000 C64 competitions
2000 PLAY 1995 closes for the day
2200 Possible rock concert
     (in a separate hall)
2300 Deadline for all competitions

12th of August 1995 (SATURDAY)

1000 PLAY 1995 opens
1200 4 channel competition
1400 Graphics competition
1600 32 channel competition
1800 Raytrace competition
2000 PLAY 1995 closes for the day
2000 4kb intro competition
2200 Animation competition
2200 PLA-NET RAVE open
     (in a separate hall)

13th of August 1995 (SUNDAY)

0200 Re run of Saturdays competitions
0400 PLA-NET RAVE closes
0500 Re run ends
1000 PLAY 1995 opens
1000 Amiga intro competition
1200 PC intro competition
1400 Amiga demo competition
1600 PC demo competition
1800 Prize giving ceremony
2000 Doors close
     ASSEMBLY 1995 is over

DISCLAIMER

We won't take any responsibility on the equipment people bring to the party place. We suggest you make an insurance on your equipment from some insurance company. And remember, you can store your equipment by using the luggage preservation service which will be available at the party place.

NO ALCOHOL DRINKING OR SOFTWARE PIRACY IS ALLOWED AT THE PARTY PLACE!


CONTACT INFORMATION

Voice: ASSEMBLY Org   +358-0-777 3721
  FAX:                +358-0-757 3115

  BBS: StarPort (FC) +358-0-615 00028
                     +358-0-615 00020
                       conference #58
From Internet:
      "telnet -8 mpoli.fi -l pcboard"
         ftp.mpoli.fi /starport/asm95

WWW: http://www.icon.fi/assembly95/
     (available before 10/Apr/1995)

E-mail: assembly@icon.fi

Normal mail:

ASSEMBLY 1995
Lakkisepantie 13
00620 Helsinki
FINLAND

Bank account for international money transfers:

ASSEMBLY Organisation
106330-204756
Kansallis Osake Pankki, Kerava
FINLAND

Please include your address with the payment, where you want the tickets to be sent. Also make sure that there are no additional expenses for the receiver of the payment.