Some of you may be familiar with me being part of the so called Demoscene. The Demoscene has nothing to do with people demonstrating for things, but is a subculture of computer artists trying to create technically impressive or beautiful pieces of computer software that will create effects and graphics in realtime (compared to being just a recorded video). I’ve been writing demos for the 35 years old Amiga computers back in my youth and returned to this a couple of years ago (with Ham Eager, there’s a video capture link there, too). Many people returned to the retro scene, this might be some kind of handling their mid-life-crisis 🙂
Anyway, one more benefit of moving to Sweden: There is a large demoscene culture in Scandinavia. So when I gathered one of the 100 tickets for the demoparty GERP in Skövde north east of Götenborg, I took the chance to go there to meet fellow sceners (who go by fantasy names called handles), who have a similar quirky and nerdy life-style and appreciation for the kind of art that I produce by coding. Usually, people gather in so called groups with strange names because you usually need different people for coding, painting graphics (pixelling) and composing music. At these demoparties, the groups show off their productions in all sorts of competitions, also to win prizes 🙂
I joined the group Desire last year and we (Hammerfist, mA2E and I) wanted to have an intro (that’s a small version of a demo) ready for the GERP party. Unfortunately, the project got delayed (as usually, also with me moving locations), so Optic, mA2E and I made a “filler” intro for the 40k competition (this means the program, that creates the audio-visual demonstration may not be bigger than 40960 bytes!). Usually, those “compofillers” are nothing too serious, but I got dragged in with the great graphics Optic provided and the wonderful music by mA2E and spent a lot of time coding on the intro.
Bifat of the demo group The Electronic Knights (bifat/TEK), Nero/TEK and Krill/Plush from Berlin wanted to give me a lift to Skövde, but unfortunately, a train derailed on the ferry they planned taking and thus they were late by about 24h. So I took my car with my fresh new number plates and drove up myself (4h drive). It was actually quite nice to drive and see the more of the lovely landscape in Sweden.
I stayed at an AirBnB as all the hotels were booked out and I didn’t want to sleep under the table as I had done when I last visited a demoparty 20 years ago (yeah, that’s a bit lame). After unpacking my stuff, I went back to the hotel where Optic and mA2E stayed and we had a couple of beers and other beverages before going to the party place for the music competitions that were held at Friday evening.
I knew almost nobody there, being away from the scene for such a long time and never being in a demogroup before. Luckily, I was introduced to people I knew from their nicks, including Photon, Blueberry, Prowler (who helped me with some gfx for Ham Eager), Wasp, Magnar, Magic, Bonefish, Frost and a few other people I can’t remember their handles anymore.
The music competitions had so many wonderful entries, it was really hard to decide which one was best. Check out the Amiga four channel, the chip music, the Amiga 500 EXE music compo (32 KB!). Both mA2E and Optic had various entries there.
The next day we explored a bit of Skövde, had some food and a couple of beers in a pub before the final compos. In the meanwhile, Bifat, Krill and Nero had arrived and it was nice talking to them and exchanging some tech tech.
The 40k intro competition came up and they showed our intro called Ramontic Getaway which was well received by the audience. Unfortunately, it was the only entry to this competition, which is a shame, because it really could have had some competition. It was an easy win, still I am rather proud of it. The other highlights in the demo competition were Kick the Sofa by Focus Design (with lots of great graphics by Optic) and Transhuman / Pachinkoland by TEK. The latter won the competition easily, running on a 7 MHz Amiga 500 from 1987 with 1 MB of memory.
It was my first real life demo party for over 20 years and it’s been fun, especially hanging around with mA2E and Optic!
On the way back, Bifat, Krill and Nero came by for a fika at our place in Lund and it was really nice having them over. So Katharina also got to know some of these demoscener-nerds in real-life 🙂
