Symposium + Mekka '97

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. There are no anonymous competitions. Besides those 20 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 ;-)

The Rules

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 PC with AcidView. Other Systems: Max. 640x512 24bit, IFF, GIF, PNG, JPEG. Raytracing is allowed, we need at least three significant steps of the picture.

Music

The music competition is the only competition where the 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

Three competitions: For Amiga, C64 and PC! 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: 6MB, 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.

Java

 Do whatever you want (Demo, Game, Paintprogram, ...); Maximum codesize: 32 KByte (= 32768 Bytes). Only compiled client side Java code (.class files). No JavaScript. Must be callable over the network and from the local disk. Must run on the newest Internet Explorer AND Netscape Navigator. Will run on Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.01 on the compo PC under Windows NT 4.0 and desktop size of 640x480 pixels. IE will run with maximized window size. Sound possible (MIDI, Wave, Calculated, ...). May be controlled by keyboard or by mouse. If the program needs interaction the coder will play/use it on the big screen. Up to 32 KB of extra files (HTML file with APPLET tag that calls your java code, additional gfx or sound files (GIF, JPG, WAV, MID, AVI, ...) that are included with the PARAM tag, ...).

Wild

 Use any hardware you want! You must bring your hardware with you (we need F-BAS, Composite, VGA or RGB output). Videos belong into this category, too (VHS or S-VHS).

The Competition Machines

Amiga

 The Amiga is an AGA machine running an 68030 at 50MHz (Blizzard 1230-IV). You can choose an optional 68060 (A4000 with CyberStorm MKII). 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, chipset specific code (ET4000, S3, 3D-Chips...) is not allowed. Additionally you can use VESA 2.0-videomodes, too!

The machine is a Pentium 166 with 16MB, a fast PCI 2MB-equipped video card, Gravis Ultrasound with 1 MByte RAM and Creative Labs SoundBlaster 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 ;)

The Prizes

Prizes will consist of sponsored hard- and software and money taken from the entrance fee!
Symposium + Mekka '97 WWW Info Server