Volcanic Report	Remdy	       Volcanic 3 party report
               by Remdy


For   the   fourth  consecutive  year,
Mentasm  organised a coding party near
Clermont  Ferrant (in the middle South
of  France).   It was the fourth time,
since  the  first party they organised
was   called  Titanic  instead.   Year
after  year  this  party improved, and
around 250 persons came this year.  It
was  at  the  same place than the last
year,  a  Gymmnasium,  but  the  party
lasted longer:
From  the friday 23th of February (97)
to the next Monday morning, that means
4 days.

The party entrance price was 100FF (17
US$)  and  there was some free mineral
water bottles.
There  was  PC,  Amiga  and quite many
Falcon Sceners.

Mentasm  made  a  great  animation and
they  showed it quite often during the
whole   party.   It  was  about  funny
aliens  walking  around and then going
to an alien disco with an alien DJ and
it  also  cool  because  of  the great
music   played   during  it  (Kind  of
cybernethic  dance  by  Mindfuck)  All
fast   compos  were  based  on  theses
aliens:   People  were  asked  to draw
them,  and  made  a  23kb  intro about
them,  but  we didn't got results from
theses   compos   and  it  seems  they
weren't spreaded so nobody have them !
There  also was a surprise music compo
about tv cartoons.

There  was  a  small  room  where  the
organisers  could  film  and  directly
show  it  on  the big screen, and they
used  it  for  a  music  band (as wild
compo!)   and  to  give  the  results:
winners  were  filmed  and  could  say
their usual thanks to voters this way.

As always compo were A LOT delayed...

There wasn't the usual XXX rated movie
projected, also because they were late
with  the  compo schedule but they got
time  to  show  DUNE  and  the  stupid
'Mortal    Kombat'    movie   instead.
Luckily  nice classic Amiga demos were
also shown.

There   was   quite   many   PC  demos
presented:

'Shian  Lee'  by Bomb is certainly the
best  demo  from the compo, and it won
the  compo.   It  starts  and end with
some  video,  the  demo inside is just
great,  perfect  synchro,  design; the
music was made by Rez.

'Down scared' by Arkham arrived 3nd in
the  demo compo, I think it could have
even  more  succesful  if it wasn't so
fucking boring most of the time...  In
this  demo  pyro show his 3d engine (a
bit  like  tombraider)  in  a  haunted
house.   I  love  the part when you're
running  in  the house and when a hand
going  out of the walls.  Unfortunatly
you  have  to  wait  (with  the  music
playing   again  and  again  the  same
pattern) till it get cool.
The  objects  are  trumbling  in  some
camera position, and they haven't done
anything  to  show right positions, in
the  opposite:   it  seems they really
WANT  to  show  you  the  objects when
they're trumbling!  Too bad...

'State  of  the Art ANSI Remix' by the
french  section  of Pulpe arrived 5th,
I've  talked  to  some Amiga dudes who
thought    it   was   made   to   mock
spaceballs!   But  it  was  a  kind of
tribute  in  fact.  Imagine a State of
Art  that  needs  12mb  of  memory and
takes  three  disks  zipped, (original
took  one DD disk and 512kb of memory)
I  don't  know why they called it Ansi
since  it's  pure asci, (expect a blue
line  of text in the bottom).  In ansi
it  would have been better (would have
needed  24mb  of  memory?),  a VGA FLI
would have been better.)

There  are some parts of the demo when
you  don't  see  anything.   The other
major  problem is the lack of synchro,
the  music starts before it should (it
starts when the beginning blue girl is
moving !!) and the demo stops suddenly
before the end to display (again) some
ugly  credits.   (that are also in the
file_id.diz,nfo,demo  itself  and used
to be the .EXE name).

When  I  knew  that  Z  was  preparing
something  like  State  of the Art for
months, I really thought it would be a
great prod, and I must say i've been a
lot disapointed by this.

There  also  was  some  others nice PC
demos from JFF,N-Zone and Scarface.

Amiga  and  PC  intros  competed  each
others  but  their  quality  was poor,
except one by Ribbon.  (There also was
a ugly Falcon intro presented).

About the Amiga demo compo:
Half  of  the  Amiga demo were in fact
advertising  GAY  PRIDE  (!),  and you
could  see  some naked men in them and
so  on.  Whether that was prepared and
they  were  all  joking,  whether  the
showers  were  not  such a safe place.
The others demo were a bit like normal
PC boring demos.
The  winning  Amiga  demo  was a funny
cartoon.

The  GFX  compo  were  good  with many
great  pictures  presented, and it was
(again) won by Made.
The music compo were average, although
the    sono   system   was   amazingly
powerful.

Something REALLY boring and irritating
thing  was  the  totally  stupid voice
from an organiser that suddenly YELLED
to  anounce something in the speakers,
speakers  that  were  put so load that
you  could get deaf just by walking at
less than one meter from them...

It's  two  weeks  since  the  party is
over,  and  no .txt files with results
have  been released yet !!  only top 3
(without  points)  were (lately) given
at the party.

I  don't  know why it was so difficult
for them to give the results since the
voting system were made by 4 computers
that   anyone   could  access  with  a
password  given at the entrance...Live
results would have been cool.

Anyway  this party was really nice and
of  course  there's  a Volcanic 4 next
year...