Symposium & Mekka '97

After the tremendous success of the Symposium '96, there was
no doubt that we would repeat this stunning event, which was
for sure a milestone in the history of the German demo
scene.  About 640 visitors (there has never been a gathering
of so many scene people before in Germany), few but really
good releases and a comfortable atmosphere made that party
something worth remembering.

Similar things were reported about the Mekka '96 PC event,
which took place one week before the Symposium.  300 people
attended that gathering, at that time still being an enemy
of the Symposium crew, and vice-versa.  However, spotting
the success of both events, it is not surprising that we've
decided to organize one event in 1997 with combined forces.

The Symposium & Mekka '97 is for sure an event not to miss!


The Organizers?

The groups involved in organizing the Symposium & Mekka '97
are Polka Brothers, Lego, Phantasm (for Amiga), Amable (for
PC), Avena (for Atari) and Smash Designs (for C64) with
indispensable help from the rest of Hamburg's scene like
Teklords and Artwork.

But what do names mean?  It's the experience that matters.
And that's what we can boast with:  ten Symposiums, the
Mekka '96, the 680xx Convention 1993 and an in-depth
knowledge of the scene provide us with the power necessary
for organizing such an event.


Systems

This is a multi-platform party, meaning that we will hold
competitions for many common systems, namely

- Amiga - PC - C64 - Atari Falcon - Acorn RISC PCs -

Of course you can bring your Mac, but then you would have to
participate in the Wild competition or in no competition at
all.

When will this party take place?

Join us at Easter 1997:  We will open the doors for you from
Friday 28th (12.00 CET) through Monday 31st (12.00 CET) of
March 1997. This is a preliminary time table:


Friday
12:00 - The party will start


Saturday
15:00 - Deadline for Animation, Graphics, Music, ANSI, Game
32KB, PC 4KB Intro, and all Acorn, Falcon and C64
competitions


Sunday
10:00 - Deadline for all the other compos


Monday
05:00 - Deadline Voting
09:00 - Prize giving ceremony (plus the traditional lion feed)
12:00 - We will close the doors


Location

The party place has been extended to about 2000 square
meters and is four times as big as the Burg Seevetal which
is where the last parties took place.  The "Heidmarkhalle"
is located in Fallingbostel near Soltau in Germany, which is
about 100km to the south of Hamburg.

We will finally have sleeping rooms (if you don't want to
sleep in front of your computer) and showers, plus a
colorful 6 x 4 meters screen with better audio equipment
than last year.  Cheap food can be bought on the party, but
there's also a McDonald's some minutes away.

The train station (Fallingbostel) is five minutes from the
party place, we will bring you from there to the party in a
bus (and back, of course).  Please contact Raw Style in
advance (see last section) to make sure the bus is there!
When coming by car, you arrive at Fallingbostel from the
highway A7.  There are lots of signs directing you to the
Heidmarkhalle.

The location gives you a pleasing sports-hall like
atmosphere, since it is no industry hall with long white
orthogonal walls.  Also there are many clean toilets and
showers for everyone.


Costs

The entrance fee is set to 40DM this year, and we won't
accept foreign currencies.  You can gain 5DM by paying in
advance - however, please note that this is only possible
until end of February!

If you decide to pay in advance, then please transfer the
entrance-fee (35 DM / person) to the following bank account:

Name of the Bank: Kreissparkasse Harburg
Bank-Nr (BLZ): 207 500 00
Account-Nr (Kto): 211 00 888
Name: "Malte Kanebley"

You will have to choose a password to protect your money.
Please attach this line [german:  "Verwendungszweck"] to
your money order:

"97"-HANDLE-PASSWORD-REALNAME

Additionally, you have to send an email or snail-mail to
Hardball!  This is important because we need this to verify
your money reached us properly.  You will get a confirmation
and an entrance-ticket.  Of course we will reserve a table
for you.


Bus Trips

At the present time, we know of two busses being organized
from different European countries.  This might be an easy,
cheap and comfortable way for you to come to the party.  If
you are interested, please contact the respective organizer
of the bus, not us!  We only have the bus shuttle to the
train station...  Also please drop us a note if you're going
to organize an additional bus we don't know of!


Switzerland

This bus will also collect people from South Germany.  The
organizer can be reached under "furball@space.ch".  No
further info available.


Sweden

This bus is organized by Excel/Balance and Newt/Abyss.  If
enough people come together, there might even be more than
one bus.  All this is not absolutely sure yet, but if you
are interested, you can send Excel a mail under
"excelblc@freenet.hut.fi"!


Competitions

The Symposium + Mekka '97 will offer you these fine
competitions.  A competition will only be held if we get at
least five entries for it - this magic number may be
decreased for the smaller scenes, e.g.  Atari and Acorn.
The usual conditions are valid:  An artist or group may only
give one entry per competition, one person must be present.
Voting is done by the audience.  Besides those 19
competitions, we will hold a funny Fast Intro Competition,
too.  Also there will be the unique competitions known from
the Symposium, like the
"jump-into-the-sea-and-get-the-coke-bottle" one and other
surprises ;-)


General competition rules

The Rules may change until the party starts.  At least one
of the competitors must be present.  We must have all
entries until deadline.  The entry must be released at the
party - not at any time before and not on other parties
taking place at the same time (we will exchange us with the
organizers of all other parties).  You must release a final
version of your productions at the party.  The entry must be
one archive with description (FILE_ID.DIZ).  The name of the
archive MUST be compatible with ISO 9660:  only the
characters "A"-"Z","0"-"9" and the underscore "_" are
allowed!


Graphics

C64:  All formats/modes allowed, executable file.  ANSI:  If
you are doing a (not moving) picture, limit yourself to 200
lines, of course you can also do animations!  The ANSI will
be shown on Amiga with term/NComm over a 14400 baud
Null-Modem connection.  You can choose between the topaz/8
and IBM/8 fonts.  Other Systems:  Max.  640x512 24bit, IFF,
GIF, PNG, JPEG.  Raytracing is allowed, we need at least
three significant steps of the picture.  This is an
anonymous competition, meaning that the entry must not
reveal who the author is.  A separate version including a
tag can be provided and will be spread instead.


Music

The music competition is the only competition in which
entries are preselected, which means only the best ones are
played.  We will show 15 pieces of every category, and if
the competition delays, this is just because we're trying to
give you the best!  ProTracker:  We will show three minutes,
must not exceed 1MB (unpacked).  MultiChannel:  1.4MB
unpacked, playable by CubicPlayer 1.7 or executable.  We
will show three minutes.  MIDI is not allowed.  C64:  All
formats allowed, executable file - the C64 screen will not
be shown during the compo!


4K Intro

For Amiga and PC only.  The name already gives the hint:
Limit yourself to 4KByte which equals to 4096 bytes!  Sound
(MIDI, AdLib, PC-Speaker or whatever you want) is possible,
please include necessary drivers.  We will show five minutes
at most.


Intro

The intros must not require installation and must quit
cleanly to the calling environment.  We will show ten
minutes at most, PC intros must be terminatable by pressing
ESC.  Amiga:  40K (40960 bytes), PC:  64K (65536 bytes),
Atari:  96K (98304 bytes).


Demo

Amiga, PC, Atari, Acorn:  4MB, must not require any
installation such as Assigns (my favourite conversation
starter..) or Libraries.  On PC it must be possible to quit
the demo by pressing ESC.  C64 demos may not exceed a
standard double-sided 5.25 inch disk.  We will show fifteen
minutes at most, in all five competitions.


Game

All systems.  Do a nice jump'n'run or shoot'em-up game, but
do it in 32K.  The coder will play it on the big screen for
the competition!  Write access to the disk is allowed
(hiscore, playerinfo etc.).  If these files are not needed
to run the game, they can increase size by 8KB (so 40KB
possible).  We will delete these files before running the
game on the compo machine.


Video

Anything on VHS or S-VHS.


Wild

Use any hardware you want!  You must bring your hardware
with you (we need F-BAS, Composite, VGA or RGB output).



The Competition Machines


Amiga

The Amiga is an AGA machine running an 68030 at 50MHz
(Blizzard 1230-IV).  You can choose an optional 68060
(Blizzard 1260 or CyberStorm MKII, we don't know yet).  RAM
is 2MB chip and 16MB fast.


PC

The production must support a GUS or SBL and your production
must support NOSOUND, too.  The program must not use the
commandline to select the soundcard.  (use a
soundcard-selection-menu or use an autodetect-function).  A
1oo% VGA-Register compatible videomode must be supported.
Additionally you can use VESA 2.0-videomodes, too!  The
machine is a Pentium 100 (maybe better) with 16MB, a fast
PCI 2MB-equipped video card, Gravis Ultrasound with 1 MByte
RAM and Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 ASP (maybe AWE32).
Operating System:  DOS 6.2, max.  Base Mem:  600 KByte
(614400 Bytes).  Memory Configs:  HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE;
no FlatRealMode!


Atari

Standard Falcon configuration.


C64

Standard C64 with new SID, Action Replay MK6 and 1541-II
disk drive.


Acorn

Bring your own ;)



Prizes

The prizes will mostly consist of sponsored hard- and
software, but if enough people show up, they will be
increased by the money which is left over from the entrance
fees.  You will find a list of sponsors on our WWW page!


Features

While a repetition of the laser show is not absolutely sure,
we can announce that Noisedrift will do a live act again
(this time with a preparation time of more than just 5
hours...), other musical attractions will take place, too,
like Ronny/Teklords and the FX Performer who will do a live
ambient turntable mix and Noodles/Phantasm playing guitar.

Everyone talks about Internet.  So do we:  We are about to
improve last year's surfing corner by providing more IRC
terminals and the possibility to suck the Web.

A party network with global IRC access is also planned, we
have someone selling NE2000 network cards for PCs and lots
of cables as well.  Nevertheless, try to bring cables and
connectors like hell!

There will be a quiet place for you to sleep if you decide
not to do this in front of your computer or under the table ;)

Hot showers and clean toilets!

We will present all compos on a big screen sized 6*4m and a
powerful Dolby Surround music system.

100% public voting on all compos for everybody at the
partyplace.

Food:  It is not sure if we can have our own shop, so it
would be a good idea to bring your own food with you.  You
can also drive to the McDonald's which is five minutes from
the party place.

Now that we're organizing this party, you might think that
all you can do is visiting it.  This is wrong:  We give you
the one and only chance to produce yourself.  If you want to
give a lecture on something or if you have another idea of
enriching the event, you're very welcome to do so.  We would
like you to contact us as soon as possible, though.

By the way:  anyone who took last year's announcement of
nude girls for serious should think about his sense of humor ;)...
You can be sure that the party will be really entertaining.
Note:  It will be even more entertaining if the doom-playing
kiddies would consider to stay at home with their parents,
please.


Table Reservation

In the last week we got a great response on our
invitationtext we released only a few days ago.  We decided
to offer you to reserve your table even if you do not want
to pay in advance.  Please send your reservation to
Hardball, and please include the following information for
each person:

Real name
Handle/Group
Computer system

You will receive a confirmation as soon as possible.


Party CD-ROM

We are trying to produce a CD-ROM containing all productions
released on the party.  Therefore it is necessary that you
authorize us to put your release on the CD-ROM; you do so by
signing the contribution sheet.  You will not lose your
Copyright! We don't know how long it will take to produce the
CD but we will try to do this as fast as possible.

The CD-ROM will contain all productions of

Mekka '96,
Symposium '96 and
Symposium & Mekka '97.

We try to include the wild and animation compo, too.  The
CD-ROM will then be sold for a very low price (about or less
than 20 DM).

More information

On our extensive World Wide Web page:

http://134.28.37.10/~frank/Sym97/
http://www.szczecin.pl/~rawstyle/Sym97/
http://www.tu-harburg.de/~sijt2008/ms97/

On the Black Box BBS:

+49-4105-84619  (v34)
+49-4105-669011 (ISDN)

Directly from the organizers:
(Amiga)

Frank Schliefer - Am Musterplatz 27 - 21220 Seevetal, GERMANY
gandalf@blackbox.dame.de (Gandalf/Phantasm)

Michael Krause - Mannesallee 24 - 21107 Hamburg, GERMANY
rawstyle@blackbox.dame.de, ii7349@fh-wedel.de (Raw Style/Lego)

(PC)

Malte Kanebley - Im Dorfe 3 - 21629 Neu Wulmstorf, GERMANY
amable@aol.com (Hardball/amable), voice: +49-4168-8611

Jan Tegtmeier - Reinckeweg 9 - 22399 Hamburg, GERMANY
tegtmeier@tu-harburg.de (Starcode/amable)

(C64)

chaotic@blackbox.dame.de (Chaotic/Smash Designs)

(Atari)

michael_wiegers@hh3.maus.de (Jet/Avena)


The usual legal mush

We are not responsible for your equipment you bring to the
party:  keep an eye on it.  We are not responsible for
possible accidents during the party.  We are not interested
in troublemaking people and will throw them out.  Drugs are
forbidden at the party-place.  You have to pay for
everything you damage.  You have to bring your own wires
with you.  There is only one power- connection for each
table/computer.  Of course hacked, cracked or illegal
programs are not allowed.  Racism is not allowed.  You are
under German law and everthing that's forbidden outside the
party-place will be forbidden inside, too!