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MEKKA/SYM 98' PARTY REPORT
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By Darkhawk/Iris

Ahaha! Hello dear reader, and welcome to this inpromptu, at the
partyplace, partyreport, from me, most illustrious of writers.. Ahh,
ok let's not overdo this. Now I have managed to capture a computer to
write this, so let's go!

Not having forgotten the great party we had here, at the same place
(Fallingbostel/Germany, that is), last year, we were a bus full
of anxious Danish sceners, almost only Amiga freaks or people
having been Amigafreaks once upon a time, but having lost their
innocence (they bought PC), that made the trip down to somewhere
between Hamburg and Hannover for yet another SymMekka event..

Well, we arrived around 16.00, and the place was quite stuffed by
then.  More than last year, which was to be expected ofcourse. Yeah,
it's still the same hall, located in a little German town called
Fallingbostel. The facilities around here are adequate I might add,
but nothing to really write about, in order to make this report
bigger.. So I won't, except to mention that the pizzaria/restaurant
"La Trattoria" serves a delicious Spaghetti Bolognese really.. As
for the foodsituation at the partyplace. Well, well, let's be
positive. It's more varied than last year. You can buy chips,
chocolate and sandwiches around the clock, and outside, there's a
little selection of junkfood to be had. All at outrageously high
prizes ofcourse. A sandwich for 3 DM is too much, especially when you
mathematically try to estimate and calculate its size, and realize
that it's about as big as "A unit of something I don't quite remember,
but which you eat around sunday mornings".  Hope you know what I mean,
I'm working without a dictionary here, hehe ;)

So, dropping the subject about food, we proceed to more partyrelated
topics. The toilets are not very clean now, but still, they function I
guess. The party last 4 days, and as I'm writing this (right now, live
and all that), it's early sunday morning, and we're waiting to get our
earpipes blown out by the concert which is being done by
Ronny/Teklords. Last year they had 3 concerts, but guess that was too
much for people (I liked it tho'), so this time, only Ronny gets the
time to play. Until now, we have had some suprise compo's, and
C64 music, modules, C64 graphic and normal gfx compo's.. Really not bad
things, all taken together.. But, there's one more compo', which was
held yesterday, and that was funny in its own respect, and I think it
even deserves a wellmeted out space for itself, so here we go:
WiLD compo.. Ahh yes, we've really come far since this compo was
introduced for the first time at TP3, hmm, but.. How to put words to
what we experienced yesterday? It was certainly a most traumatic
experience, and that wasn't meant in a positive way, I'm afraid
(or maybe I'm not that afraid, but that's another matter)..
Well, to sum it up, they all kinda' sucked, in a way. The best were
only bad, but the rest were.. Ehehehe.. You know, you've seen it I
guess.. Videos made with a camcorder and then delivered. Quite
interesting really, how that can be called WiLD, but hmm.
There were some pseudo-coded/raytraced things too, but really. It was
the worst WiLD compo I've ever seen, and I've seen many.. Hmm, still,
Deckard/Puzzle made the wilddemo that is probably going to win,
it was not very well-worked through, looked boring and hmm,
well.. It's the best, so the rest are not worth mentioning.  Apart
from.. How cool is a MOVIE of some people skating do you think?
Skating and doing nothing else, mind you. Hehe, actually one of the
better entries.. ARGHHH ;)

I guess that this and other reports will mention that wildcompo, and
if the wildcompo at TG sucks too, then I theorize that we will have
RULES for wildcompos at parties, I mean, preselection is a good thing
here.  Eventually one can have a little compo called "Entertainment"
for all those shitty movies, but really.. Something needs to be
done about wildcompo's in general. Since "Rofly", scarcely anybody
has made any notable wilddemo.

Leaving that, and seeing that this report is getting quite long,
I hope you're still with me. Let's see, what else. The other compo's
were not bad, but they were delayed, some more than others, hehe
(quite selfevident, eh).  The only compo that was not notably delayed
was the module compo, but that was bad in itself, because they played
that one at 8.00 Sunday morning, ARGH.. We were NOT able to miss it,
sitting infront of one pair of speakers as we are. Ahh yes, they play
loud, but that's ok. It's our fault to sit up here I guess ;)
Sleeping..  Let's digress a bit and write about sleeping. As last
year, you can pretty much sleep where you like, but they have a tent
outside too. While it isn't as WET and COLD as the one they had at
TG94' (one doesn't float away in there, or see other people floating
by either), it's cold, and hmm, yeah, that's all I know of it, I sleep
under the table, infront of the speakers.  That's more like a party
for me, heh.

What more, what more? This is filling an article you know, I write
what I think, and keep on writing senseless babbling, until I know
what to write about. And now I know. I could mention that the module
competition only had about 10-11 entries (12 I hear, heh), that's not
much. An interesting fact is your concentration at parties.
Incredible that I've listened through all the modules, and when the
last was over, I couldn't remember how many there were ;) Guess
sleep is a thing needed by human beings afterall.. Hmm, ahh yes, and
the gfx compo was btw. very good, quite many nice images, and quite a
lot of images generally. They only showed them for a short time, but
will show them again around this day.  They fucked up a bit tho',
because the picture by our raytracer Ransom was not included the first
time, tsk, tsk.  Well, we haven't killed the organizers yet, heh..

Just heard that I have until midnight Sunday for this report, so
you'll miss the prizegiving and Amiga-C64 demo's in this report.
Instead this will be the first partyreport out, and it'll be out at
this party, in the new EuroChart, if things go as they should (do they
ever?) [Always -ed]

About surprisecompetitions, which is the flavour of Symposium, and the
thing that makes it a great party, there have been 4 so far.
A normal fastintro compo, about a theme ("Wer hat Dicke Eier?"), and
easy enough to see, Efreet & Depth will win that one.  Apart from
that, there was a Frogger compo (I won Lemmings 2, moahahaahaaah!),
a "Jump Around the Building in a Sack, Looking Silly and Winning a
Great Prize" compo, and the best and most original was a compo where
you had to recognize old SID melodies. Original because the modules
were being sung by a band called ehrr.. "Maybebop" (??). It was
really cool and original tho'. Listening to them noicing out the
melody for Commando was unforgettable. The participants in the compo
weren't very observant however, ESPECIALLY one was not... But, it's
not neccessary to delve into the dark details here.

A word about equipment.. Their bigscreen and projector is VERY good,
about one of the best I've ever seen, their soundequpiment is LOUD
(up here, y'know), so that's just fine, really. Nothing to complain
about there. Showers.. Hmm, they are open now and then. In the spirit
of research, I'll enter one soon, and check how it is, I'll ho to
great lenghts to please you readers, I'll even WASH myself!!

Ahh, the concert I mentioned with Ronny/Teklordsť is coming up now..

Well, it's over, and it was mediocre, I think, but ofcourse, I guess
you can't discuss taste. He showed some psychedelic Jormas intros
while mixing, and hmm, well, it wasn't BAD!  I also took the
chance/risk/whatever, and went to the showers, and I still live,
amazingly enough.. Nah, there wasn't much room, but that was ok, since
not many sceners bathe, heh. The shovers are adequate for the purposes
I think.

And, a word (or hundred) about the compo's that have been shown since
the last time. All 4k intro's have been shown now, that is, Amiga, C64
and PC, and since they were not decidingly OUTSTANDING, I guess I can
predict winners easily enough. On the Amiga, ehhr, Viper of something
made the intro that is going to win (boy, am I good at predicting, eh?
;), on the C64, Smash Designs will win. Quite a long precalculating
intro with a nice tune they made. On the PC, somebody is going to win,
but frankly I don't care about that, hehe..

And now we're in line for the ANSI competition I think, but I can't be
sure, as the organizers are not only occasionally delayed, but also
switch around in the planned program now and then. Hmm, a note about
the organizers then. Symposium is known for its friendly atmosphere,
and friendly organizers to boot too. Well, that was true last year,
and I guess it's still true, I haven't seen any angry organizers
anyway. However, they are quite demanding this year, constantly
asking, via the speakers, about hardware they lack for various
purposes. They even lack a 060'er processor for showing the demos, so
they had to ask for that too. Quite strange that none of the 
organizers have one, that's the first time I've witnessed that
organizers have to lend such basic (ok, basic and basic) equipment.
Well, they do an ok job, however, some powerfailures have to be
mentioned too. 12 infact ;) Some of us counted and the power went at
our row of tables about 8 times, and I saw 4 other places where this
happened. That was during the first day ofcourse, and I guess it was
due to 2 things mainly; people bring their microovens, their
amplifiers, their megatowers, etc. People have more powerhungry
equipment with them these days ofcourse. Secondly, there are about
1000 people here, and that's a somewhat big number for this hall.
Still, there were no problems after the first day, batteries ARE
included ;)

Another noteworthy thing is the parallels one can infere from last
year's Symposium and this year's. While alcohol (and drugs) are
OFFICIALLY forbidden now, people still booze and smoke like hell, and
it's the same people making the biggest mess and shouting the loudest
as last year.  However, last year was really messy, this year,
everything seems to run smoothly in that regard. No real damage to the
propriety, no inside puking, no TOTALLY loud shouting, etc., so an
"official" ban on alcohol is effective here. However, seems like the
organizers don't care about enforcing this ban anyway. And a word
about theft, there doesn't seem to be much, which is to say that in
that regard, it's the same as last year.
Hmm, ANSI competition coming up now (wow, realtime writing surely is
interesting, and not in the least bit confusing, eh? ;))

Hehe, fun competitions are really things that can spice up a party.
It was needed this time too, because they forgot our poor Ransom in
the repeating of the GFX compo.. Again!  And the organizers had some
delays today aswell. But, let's take it in chronological order. We
went out to eat at "La Trattoria", and when we returned, the XM compo
was up and pumping, so I can't tell you much about it. THere were some
ripoffs, there were some nice tunes, one from Pink/Abyss, and another
I don't remember. Not a bad compo, although they hadn't that many
entries either.  The organizers must really have discarded many
modules, maybe too many. Playing 20 songs should be acceptable, when
each song is about 3 minutes long, but ok, maybe there weren't that
many GOOD songs?

But, back to the fun. There were, just now, 2 funcompetitions. The
first was to assemble a keyboard, and that took some time doing, but
was rewarded with C64'er things. Fun to watch, heh. The best was the
"Most freaked out Scener" compo, where some sceners were asked to get
up on stage and act freaked out for half a minute. The one who got the
biggest applause would then be rewarded. You wouldn't believe how
crazy they acted, hehe. One was VERY gross in his efforts to be the
most freaked out, but that's too ugly to be described. Suffice it to
say that Mat won, you know, the scener who travels around in his car
to all parties. The reward was that the audience could throw coins
up on the stage for the performance, and boy, they DID! I don't yet
know HOW much money he got, but it was enough for some sandwiches,
even here at Symposium ;) We have, btw. just watched the winning demo
from TG, called "Rise", by Mellow Chips. Well, that was an experience
in 3D beauty.. Not much else, but that was enough! Well, you'll all
see (or have seen) this demo, read reviews of it, see it rise to the
charts, etc., so just wait and be surprised. Even on 030'er ;)
The 32k gamecompetition was cool, Abyss released two games, a 
Giana Sisters clone and "A-Type", R-Type in 32k.. Cool.. There was one
other Amiga game, but that wasn't very fun ;) The rest were PC games,
but who gives a shit? ;) Check them out!

Hmm, sorry for having written a bit confusing in the last, I'll now
write the last bit of this quite big partyreport, hope I have other
people besides fellow editors with me, hehe.  There's been a quite
watery funcompo outside (coooold), that was fun too, but I won't go
into details with it, as it wouldn't really interest you.
However, as I have written before, this really makes Symposium
special, all those fun compo's. Another thing that makes it special,
and for which I'd like to thank the organizers very much, is that they
showed a lot of old Amiga demos, and that was, as those things always
are, quite cool.  Thumbs up for that, it makes Symposium a real
sceneparty. I could watch oldies on the bigscreen for days, but nooo,
guess SOMEBODY want more actual compo's, sigh ;) Too bad they didn't
play THE oldie, RSI megademo, but oh well, you can't get everything I
suppose.

The last compo that I will be writing about, is the 40k intro compo.
Abyss, Haujobb and Scoopex released intros, aswell as Depth, Cromatics
and ehrr, can't remember any other groups right now (Hah! If I got
paid for this, this would be way too lazy of me, but heh..). Guess the
Scoopex intro will win, as is usual for them, hoh.. The PC 64k was ok,
but only 4 intros competed there. 11 intros competed in the Amiga
intro compo!

Alrightie then, as for the much awaited event, that is, the Amiga demo
competition, I can't say much. I know for a fact that Abyss and Puzzle
will release demos here. Both demos are good, but Abyss has made the
best demo of the two I think. I haven't pre-SEEN other demos, but I
hear that Haujobb will release the demo that wasn't shown on the
bigscreen at TP, and I guess there'll be others aswell. Hope I can
manage to stay half way coherent and awake through this, and I hope to
view thew C64 demos too ofcourse, but.. We'll see :) Closing remarks
about the quality of this party are not complete ofcourse, but up
till' now, it has been what I expected it to be, that is, a cool
sceneparty, without pornowatchers and Quakers (MOSTLY!), and that it
is.  However, there HAVE been delays, powerfailures, the forgetting of
delivered compoentries and other small things on the negative side,
like the cold tent outside, that DOES make me have to say that
Symposium last year was better. However, don't misinterpret me, it's
still the BEST sceneparty you could POSSIBLY attend, and I look
forward to the traditional lionfeeding, heeeeheeeh ;)

DARKHAWK/IRIS