ASSEMBLY '99 PARTY REPORT                          
                                                                             
                               -=( sind / p )=-                              
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
Getting to the party place.                                                  
                                                                             
                                                                             
It  was  advertised that Assembly '99 would open its doors at 10:00 on Friday,
August  6th.  By knowing the crowd during the first hours after the opening in
previous  years  we  decided  to arrive a few hours after the opening.  But of
course,  the  "doors open" event had been delayed by a couple of hours.  So we
still  had  to  wait some time.  The crowd was still incredibly dense, and the
main  reason to anger was that just one door was open.  And those with prepaid
tickets  couldn't  get in any faster than the ones that hadn't bought a ticket
beforehand.                                                                  
Later  on  it  was  said  that another door was open, but I didn't see it open
until some hours later.                                                      
                                                                             
But anyway, this was just the beginning.  (And almost the most enjoyable event
during the whole so-called party.)                                           
                                                                             
And  I  don't  complain  about  this by any means.  It just happens every time
everywhere.   No  party  without  an  infernal crowd during the first hours of
event.                                                                       
                                                                             
                                                                             
General feeling of the party.                                                
                                                                             
Ever  since  Assembly '94, which was the first Assembly I ever attended, there
has  been a lot of noise at the partyplace.  And I really mean noise.  I can't
really  say  it  was  music  or  even sound.  Noise.  Several hundreds or even
thousands  of loudspeakers producing weird sounds, and everyone's trying to be
the  loudest in the party hall.  This year the organizing had wisely thrown in
a  rule  of  maximum  loudspeaker  and  amplifier  size,  and it was a relief.
Although  there  were  some  pretty clear exceptions of this rule, the general
aural scape of the party was much more silent than before.  You could actually
talk  (without shouting) to the person next to you.  And there was no need for
earplugs (not that much as before at least).                                 
                                                                             
When  talking  about the event itself, it has every year turned out to be more
and  more  commercial.   This  year  there  were  a  lot of sponsors (which is
understandable  for  an  event  of  this  size  anyway).   All  the  corridors
surrounding  the  party  hall  itself  were  occupied  by  different  kinds of
commercial organizations.  Anyway in my opinion this didn't affect much to the
party  itself,  so  you could attend the party without even knowning about the
commercial  activity  around.   With  the  only exception of (lame) commercial
advertisements  before  and after some compos (e.g.  Sonera Java compo; Sonera
is  a  Finnish  phone  company  just in case you didn't know).  Sponsors bring
capital  to  the  event  and  take  away  some  (if  not  all)  of the initial
underground feeling of the demo scene.                                       
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
The compos.                                                                  
                                                                             
This  year  there  were a few more compos:  Amiga 4k intro compo, Tiny and MP3
music compos.  Beforehand they felt to be very interesting.  At least to me as
a  coder  4k  compos are interesting, and as I don't know anything about Amiga
coding, it could have been nice to see what can be done with Amiga in 4k.    
                                                                             
First came the c64 compos, as usual.  The c64 compos were quite about the same
as  we've  seen before in assembly.  So no Second Realities for c64 here.  The
c64  compos are still quite impressive when thinking about the capacity of the
old  war  horse.   And the age of the c64 scene.  The c64 graphics competition
had  only four entries, and three of them got prizes.  "Someone could get rich
by buying a c64 and learning to make graphics with it."                      
                                                                             
The  tiny  music  competition  started  the  compo block of Saturday.  No real
surprises  here  either.  It was followed by the traditional compos, graphics,
raytrace,  multichannel,  mp3  music,  the 4k and 64k intros for PC and Amiga.
The  mp3 music compo was a surprise to me.  The quality of some of the entries
was  amazing.   A  couple of the songs in this compo were even better than the
ones in the real world music compo (i.e.  the Finnish single chart).         
The  4k  intro  compos were a bit disappointing, the quality was lower than in
the  previous years.  And the Amiga 4k didn't surprise either.  The 64k compos
weren't  any  better.  Anyway at Assembly the 64k intro compos have never been
"the main compo" as they have been in some other large parties.              
                                                                             
Java compo, wild compo, and PC nonaccelerated demo compo were also held during
the  Saturday-Sunday  night,  but  I  wasn't  able  to watch them (for obvious
reasons).                                                                    
                                                                             
The  Amiga demo compo, animation compo and PC accelerated demo compo were left
on  Sunday.   The Amiga demo compo didn't give anything new, and it just seems
that  the  Amiga  scene is dying, at least at Assemblies.  The animation compo
had a few nice entries, very close to commercial quality.                    
                                                                             
The  PC accelerated demo compo was a disappointment in some  aspects (and this
really  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  fact that they didn't show our entry,
really).   I  was  expecting to see a lot of entries, with something different
than  traditional  3d  scenes  and  flying with spacecrafts or so.  In the end
there  was  only  one  entry that didn't have its idea based on 3d scenes, and
that  entry  was  really  ..   er  ..   lousy.   Well, Futuremark (oops, i was
supposed  to  say Maturefurk) won the compo.  Pretty lame, I don't really like
this...  companies shouldn't win demoparty compos.  It's really frustrating to
work  on  an  engine  (or  a production in general) when there are some people
who'll  get  paid for the job anyway.  OK, they don't necessarily get paid for
doing  the production, but they sure used a lot of routines for which they got
paid.  I should create some kind of public chatter about this aspect anyway. 
                                                                             
In  general,  the  compos  didn't  give anything new, and didn't even show any
exceptional quality of technology or artistic impression.                    
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
                                                                             
The culture.                                                                 
                                                                             
Assembly  has  come  a  long  way  from a demoscene event.  And the result is:
"There  were  -  during  every  compo - at least ten people playing Quake 3 or
such."  In  general  I  did see just three or four people tracking (or using a
tracker), some more people doing graphics and no one coding.  Most people were
just quake'ing (or playing) or leeching data (warez, possibly).  Sad.        
                                                                             
Some  words  to  be said about the security team of the party.  Their attitude
really sucked.                                                               
                                                                             
 "no questions may be asked, no apologies are accepted"                      
                                                                             
Of  course  someone  must  protect those cute 10 year old 5c3n3-313375 inside.
Maybe  it's  the  law.  But, as I guess, due to the security team at Assembly,
the  Boozembly,  held  near  the partly place, was a bit different than at TP7
(there,  it  took place, about ten meters away from the main entrance, and the
security  "disturbed"  people  with  booze  within  200 meters and more of the
partyplace itself).                                                          
                                                                             
It  was  raining  during  Friday  night,  and  that  affected the feeling (and
possibly  the amount of people) at Boozembly.  During Saturday night Boozembly
was (or got) disbanded.  Possibly by the law enforcement and the security team
of the event.  That's what they told me when I got back from the city around 4
am.                                                                          
                                                                             
                                                                             
Summary.                                                                     
                                                                             
The  trend  with  Assemblies  seems  to  be that the party is getting more and
more COMMERCIAL.  This  trend has dual effect:  it scares away the underground
feeling of the demoscene, but on the other hand it brings in more people, thus
increasing the prizes, which then might encourage competition and increase the
quality of entries.  Anyhow, in my opinion, it just doesn't seem to happen.  
                                                                             
                                                                             
For any comments, flames etc.  feel free to contact me.                      
                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                          
sind/p - sind@vip.fi