______/\__________________________ __ ________________ ___ /\_______ \____ \ ________ _ _ ______ \ / \| \ ________ | \/ ______/ / | \ _) \ \_/ \ | \ / \ \ _) \ | \______ \ / | \ \ | \ | \/ \ \ / \ \ / \ \_____ /_______/___| /_______/\____\_____/_______/_________/________/ \_____/ |____/ Subscribers : 2538 DemoNews 149 - 21 September 1997 Archive Size : 5.8Gb >------------------------------------------------------------------ Contents -- Introduction .................................... Snowman Calendar In Review /demos ........................................ Phoenix Articles Email: PalmPilot Demos ........................ Daniel Potter Public /music Ratings ......................... Snowman Caramel & Jisemdu On The Run .................. roboMOP Coding Mathematics (part 2) ................... Tiberius The Weird Act Of Optimizing For Size .......... Gyr Girls' Safety At Demo Events .................. roboMOP Advertisement: GUS ViperMAX ................... Synergy Advertisement: Digital Anvil 3D Coder ......... Andrew Sega General Information >-------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction -- Hello all, and welcome to DemoNews 149. _____Introduction This is a well-rounded issue of DemoNews. I am very pleased with the variety and quality of articles submitted this week. DemoNews's 5th anniversary is on 24 September 1997 and it makes me happy to get a solid issue out just in time for the occasion. If you want me to keep releasing DemoNews on a semi-regular basis, I need new articles. I know in my heart that at least 10 or 20 of you out there in scene land have the ability and drive to write something. Here's how it goes: "Hi Snowman, I'm thinking of writing an article for DemoNews. Is that ok?" "Sure! Just be sure to structure your article as closely to DemoNews formatting as possible (proper capitalization, sentence structure, paragraph headers, etc.)" "Here's my article." Send me articles! _____Assembly '97 Culture Howler wanted me to mention that he's got a bunch of scanned pics from Assembly '97 online: http://www.evitech.fi/~velipkk/asm97gallery/ Some of these are really cool and I suggest you check the site out. _____Changes To The Archive File Tagging: I have completed the "Tag" option for files. Tagging allows you to mark a whole bunch of files you want to download, then have them bundled up in one big .zip file. Tired of the click->save, click->save, click->save repetitive motion disorder? So am I. Soon I'll also have something up that will allow you to tag all of the files that resulted in a search (which should make things even nicer). One thing that I am really happy about is having a .txt file inside the big tag.zip file that describes all of the files you selected. Kudos to Murray Stokely (maintainer of the ACiD Artpacks Archive) who has had file tagging working since 20 January, and who gave me the inspiration to implement it on The Hornet Archive. Links Bump Bump Away: My time is very limited these days. In order to free up some of the effort it takes to maintain the archive, I have shifted the responsibility of link maintenance to others. J. Rice has been doing an excellent job with the "Zen Of Tracking" pages so now he gets all of the music links. Similarly, 3D Addict has been going a great job with the "Gfx Zone" pages so now he inherits all of our graphics links. I'm thinking of asking the guy who maintains the "FAQSYS" code pages if he wants to take over our code links. _____Conclusion I do not use ICQ. I think that killing little animals is wrong. I do not use a mouse with my email. I prefer uuencode over mime-attach. I do not drink and drive. I like big moose. I do not use hotmail. slam, Slam, SLAM! 7 I's and a triple exclamation. Online, experimental poetry. Snowman / Hornet - r3cgm@hornet.org >------------------------------------------------------------------ Calendar -- Date Event Contact Info ------------ ------------- ---------------------------------------------------- 22 Aug 1997 Crash http://www.xi-media.com/crash CANADA 22 Aug 1997 AntIQ HUNGARY aboy@d-eyes.jpte.hu 25 Aug 1997 NetZone http://www.quaternet.fr:8082/users/b/brunel/p2b5.htm FRANCE brunel@quaternet.fr 25 Aug 1997 Ritual http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Way/2660/index.html ISRAEL t3a@netvision.net.il 29 Aug 1997 Gardening http://fryni.physics.upatras.gr/~g97 GREECE g97@fryni.physics.upatras.gr 30 Aug 1997 Gravity http://www.polbox.com/g/gravity POLAND gravity@polbox.com 30 Aug 1997 Evoke http://kaoz.org/evoke GERMANY poti@bigfoot.com 06 Sep 1997 Neither Nor http://www1.ai.fh-nuernberg.de/~unix169/neithernor.1997.html GERMANY magus@innocent.com 06 Sep 1997 I. Gathering http://www.metro.it/ig97/new ITALY ig97@metro.it 13 Sep 1997 Bizarre http://bizarre.cybercomm.nl HOLLAND bizarre@cybercomm.nl * <-- YOU ARE HERE 02 Oct 1997 Distance http://distance.home.ml.org NORWAY walker@gim.net 03 Oct 1997 InterJam http://home.pages.de/~interjam GERMANY info@interjam.inka.de >----------------------------------------------------------------- In Review -- -- /demos ------------------------------------------------------------------> :: Phoenix / Hornet - phoenix@hornet.org Well, for once this is actually a WEEK in review :). I have not looked at too much new stuff this week, but how about a couple 4k intros: "Shapeshifter" by Chrome (/demos/1997/c/chr-shap.zip) How about some realtime sound synthesis.. in 4k? Be sure you have a GUS (1MB?), it's worth getting just to believe it. "Typhoid" by Gyroscope (/demos/1997/g/grc-typh.zip) Many 64k intros don't have effects like these. Take, for example, a stereogram vector part. Pretty neat. Correction: I mentioned this already on CSIPD, but in DemoNews 148 I mentioned that Sunflower by Pulse was the winner demo of Gravity '97, when in reality it placed 2nd. >------------------------------------------------------------------ Articles -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Email: PalmPilot Demos" :: Daniel Potter - bard@mail.utexas.edu [Editors note: This was actually a personal email sent to me in response to the editorial I did in last issue. It so aptly demonstrates the "demo scene" way of thinking that I felt it should be printed.] It seems that our demoscene has come a long way from the cool place of innovation that it used to be. It seems that the proper demoscene way to do things today would be to dig in and take over Windows so it could use their drivers to write lowlevel to the card, but ignore the rest of it. Just like we used to do in DOS. But no one thinks about that anymore because it's too hard. Just like they used to use the CTVOICE.DRV instead of writing a Soundblaster driver. Can't figure out the API? Pull out the debugger and dig into the ASM code. Phaw. Or, they could be disassembling someone's 3D driver, and writing drivers for their own DOS programs that use those 3D cards, like we used to do when we couldn't get Creative Labs to release a free SDK and we're all too poor or cheap to buy one. Anyway... I just got one of these cool PalmPilot things. Have you seen them? They have a relatively fast Motorola processor, and a 4-color grayscale LCD display, pen input, 512k-1M of ram, yadda yadda. =) Basically, they're an early Macintosh that fits into your hand. But they're highly extensible, and easy to program for. They're also amazingly simple to take over for your own purposes once your program is running. I think I see the potential for a demo scene popping up there, as strange as that sounds. Hehe.. demos you could take on the road with you anywhere. I started toying around with a demo for it the other day. Alas, it seems I've lost my touch, as my cube sort of shifted into randomness instead of rotating properly after the first few degrees, but I guess I'll refigure that out. Anyway, it ran reasonably fast, even using the built-in OS drawing primitives. There don't seem to be any demos out there yet. There do seem to be the beginnings for some from what I've seen -- people starting to make use of the hardware in the thing, especially the 4-gray mode. The big limitation I guess is that the OS is built for using the speaker as a PC-speaker. They claim it can't do more than one tone at once because it's a piezo speaker. We saw what happened to that kind of limitation. ;) I think one of my earlier goals will be to find the actual ports where the speaker resides, some PC speaker mod player code, and some Amiga mod player code... =) Anyway, just thought you might find that idea fascinating, and I wondered how things are going. I started to save DemoNews into the DemoNews folder and read it when I got home, but then shock took hold of me and I said "Whoa! There hasn't actually BEEN one of these in ages!" so I went ahead and read it. Anti email spam warnings, "competing with the screen saver scene". Hehe... the scene really has gone down hill... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Public /music Ratings" :: Snowman / Hornet - r3cgm@hornet.org _____Introduction While Music Contest 5 was in progress, I developed a system for public rating of new songs uploaded to the archive. It was beta-tested extensively by a crack crew of sceners and most of the bugs were worked out. However, I wanted to wait until after MC5 was over before I put the system online. Well, the time has come... _____Our Current Situation In the next couple of weeks, public music rating will be up and running. All of you will be given the opportunity rate the music on the archive. This will be an awesome opportunity for you to delete most of the songs that SHOULDN'T BE THERE. So much new music is uploaded to our archive that it is no longer necessary to consider every song a precious gift to the scene. Rather, only 20% or so of all songs uploaded exemplify the virtues of quality tracking and I aim to see the other 80% thrown to the four winds (deleted). Date Size of /music Size of archive % of /music in archive ----------- ---------------- ----------------- ------------------------ 14 Jan 1995 107M 429M 24.9 15 Jul 1995 404M 871M 46.4 18 Jan 1996 841M 1718M 49.0 16 Jun 1996 1496M 2542M 58.9 16 Jun 1997 3350M 5026M 66.7 21 Sep 1997 3908M 5837M 67.0 The important figure here is the last column (percentage of /music as a whole of the entire archive). Today, /music accounts for over 2/3rds the size of the archive! This doesn't make a lot of sense. The Hornet Archive is for the PC demo scene. Although we do keep music online, the original goal has always been to provide a home for demos. And true to that original mission we shall remain. _____What Will Be My goal is to decrease the size of The Hornet Archive to 4.0 gigs by the end of 1998. The only directory targeted for down sizing is also the only directory that has grown drastically out of control: /music. Once the public rating goes online, I will keep tweaking the system until we are deleting more songs than are being uploaded. It won't be enough to simply rate all new songs that are uploaded because we have at least a gig of unreviewed tunes from earlier this year. When I say "tweak the system", I mean a couple of things: 1. There will be public and trusted voters (like in MC5) with public voters having a strength of 1, and trusted voters having a strength of 3. From the outset, it will probably take 10 vote strengths to "lock" a song's rating. If it looks like songs aren't being voted on enough, I'll drop that number lower and lower. It may end up that it only takes 1 trusted vote or 3 public votes to lock a song... too early to say. 2. I'll probably start out by keeping songs online that have gotten a locked rating of *** or higher. If that doesn't delete enough songs, I'll increase the cutoff point to ***+ or **** if need be. _____Conclusion I said that my goal is to have the entire archive down to 4.0 gigs by the end of 1998. I do not take goals lightly. You may see me do some rather extreme things in order to get the size of /music down. I intend to return the "fun" factor into random /music/song directory browsing. Keep reading DemoNews for updates on the public rating system. "You have _four_ songs on The Hornet Archive? Whoa. You must be a really kick-ass musician!" - Anonymous, 1999 The day of reckoning is here. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Caramel & Jisemdu On The Run" :: roboMOP / Imphobia - mop@thepentagon.com _____Introduction For the first time in a scene event, the music competition at The Gathering 1997 has been awarded with an additional and special prize - the possibility to record the winning module in a professional sound studio and release a CD single! _____The Duo Between May 13th and 14th, the winning duo, musicians Caramel and Jisemdu, both of Norwegian origin, found their way to the busy studios of NRK Radio P3 in Oslo, one of the most heard Norwegian national radios. "We have recorded our original module from the competition, plus a remix", says Jisemdu, who explains that this specific occasion was a very good opportunity for the two. "I think that record companies will have to start to open their eyes when it comes to computer music", he adds. BMG Entertainment, one of the sponsors of this project, say that they are happy to have discovered new Norwegian talent and of the opportunities that the computer offers when it comes to both making and hearing music. Apart from their CD-making contract, the two received 5000 NKR each. "I don't know where the money really went, but I spent it all", says Jisemdu, whilst Caramel comments that he spent his share on clothes and CDs. Gathering organizer Shady says that the main idea for putting forward such an ambitious price started, thanks to his good contacts in varied artistic areas. "Giving more recognition to the sceners that win competitions, in more mainstream ways, and showing how great the scene really is to others, is no easy feat. Music is quite easy to sell, and so this year round we settled on such an idea." _____Who Are They? Caramel (20) is a much known name in the scene. He has been fiddling with trackers since 1992. Even though he is more known to work under the Fascination label, he is also active for Sound Entity and SOTU, two music based scene teams. Caramel likes to spend his free time playing the sax and bass. The 19 year old Jisemdu is a musical feat on his own. He has been playing the drums since he was 3 years of age. Today he is more intent to act in an acid-jazz band called "State of Mind". Guitar and piano are his favorite instruments. The musician from Stavanger is a member of Dance, Proxima, Tpolm and Sotu, but just like many old musicians of today, his first tracking experience occurred in 1991, on Amiga. During late 1995 he released his first modules to the general public. _____Plastic What? "I'm the guilty one here", smiles Caramel when DemoNews asks for the reason for selecting such an un-linear name for their module. "Plastic Nudity is just a name that popped out of my head some day. It doesn't mean anything. I like making titles with no bearing." Caramel says that the drums are partially taken from a sample CD called "Gota Yashiki Groove Activator". Other parts were made by Jisemdu himself. The slap and funk bass was played by Caramel, whilst Jisemdu did all the guitar sounds, and additional moog-sampling! "We made it in three weeks. As we live in completely different parts of Norway we had to e-mail it back and forth more than 1000 times. We corrected and added things as time went by", say the two. Perhaps their song is partly inspired by Jamiroquai and the Cardigans, as Caramel likes to think. _____Mega Multi Channels The two musicians managed to win a mixed competition where multi channel modules were unfairly put against 4 channel ones! Needless to say that Plastic Nudity was a 14 channel song. "When we started to make this tune, we didn't know that there was only going to be ONE music competition. By using more than 4 channels one can afford to add more ambience by means of echoing and similar effects. Still, I don't think that the more channels can make a better musician. Some works from Jogeir or Tip & Mantronix are far better than most of the multi channel music I hear these days", says Caramel. Jisemdu agrees that it was maybe foolish to combine both contests since multi channel ones surely have an extra advantage. "Yet a good musician knows how to handle the limits that there are in a 4 channel module, so this is no excuse after all", he continues. When DemoNews demanded the reason for a merged competition, the organizers pointed out that handling both contests brings a load of hassle. "The necessity for two compos is dwindling away. The 4 channel one will die sooner or later or become a step child concerning prizes. We would have turned the music contest into a single / dual compo with equal prizes in case the ratio had been too great to be usefully incorporated. But this did not happen", replies Shady of Crusaders. _____It's Out Now! Plastic Nudity was released in mid June with a cover picture done by Louie of TBL. "I wouldn't give our song much chance, because it's made to sound real with live drums and guitars. I think that if a scene musician wants to make it in the real world he must orientate himself more towards the techno or ambience branch. Plastic Nudity isn't very sellable after all, because it falls between two shelves - it isn't synthetic enough to be called techno, and it isn't real enough to be called rock", says Caramel, who is quite happy that there could exist a future in tracking. "Although I personally am not very keep in grasping such possibility", he concludes. _____Conclusion DemoNews will report about the end success of this project when the first sales figures will become available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Coding Mathematics (part 2)" :: Tiberius / Inspire Media - tiberius@mailhost.net _____Introduction In this second part of coding mathematics we'll look at the vector. The things we will look at are fairly basic but important in coding. _____What Is A Vector? A vector is a journey from one point to another in 2 or 3 dimensions. The opposite to a vector is a scalar which is a one dimensional journey. For example, if I went on a vector journey I might go 2 steps forward then two steps left. If I went on a scalar journey I'd walk in whatever direction I happen to be facing. That is the discerning difference in simple terms. Vectors have _distance_ and vectors have _direction_. I'll start by defining a system for two dimensional vectors. If there are two dimensions we need two ways of referencing these dimensions. Usually we use 'x' for horizontal and 'y' for vertical. Some math texts use 'i' and 'j' respectively (with a squiggly line under them which tells us they are vectors). I will use 'x' and 'y' to reference _points_ and 'i' and 'j' to define a vector. This is the common way of doing things. _____Vectors In Two Dimensions That probably confused you if you haven't done this before, so I think it's best to dive in with some practical application. We use coordinate axes (singular: axis) to represent plotted points/vectors. y+, j+ ^ | | x-,i- <------O------> x+, i+ | | v y-, j- 'i' and 'j' are unit vectors. They represent a journey of 1 unit in a given direction. The 'O' is called the origin and is the point (0,0). All points are relative to the origin. We represent all points in the form (x,y) where x and y are the positions in units up the respective axes. Let 'v' equal a vector. v = 5i + 2j : This vector represents a journey 5 units to the right and 2 units upward. (5,2) : Is the point we would end up at if we took the journey along vector 'v' from the origin. _____Vectors In Three Dimensions This is a fairly simple extension of what you just learnt. Basically we define another direction in which a vector can point, perpendicular to the other two axes. If you image a desk with a piece of paper on it, the x and y axes extend along the sides of the piece of paper, the new axis would stick through the piece of paper from the floor, toward the ceiling. We will define this axis as 'z' with the unit vector 'k'. (Therefore we have 'x,y,z' and 'i,j,k' respectively). k+ | | / | / ------O------i+ /| / | j+ | We might write a vector 'v' as v = 3i - 2j + 6k. This vector from the origin would end at the point (3, -2, 6). _____Operations With Vectors Okay now we know what a vector is, how it looks and how to define one. Great... now what can we _do_ with it??? Addition: Vector addition is fairly simple. You add the unit vectors of each vector together separately. The resulting vector is the addition of the first two. eg. let u = i + 2j - 7k and v = 3i -j + 4k u + v = (1+3)i + (2-1)j + (4-7)k = 4i + j - 3k Why does it work? Take a simple case. I want to add a vector '5i' to a vector '8i'. If I were to walk each journey I would end up '13i' from my starting position. Since each unit vector is perpendicular to any other the addition of each component has no effect on any other component. Subtraction: Vector subtraction is the same as addition except you subtract the vector components from one another. Take care to SUBTRACT the SECOND vector FROM the FIRST. eg. u - v = (1-3)i + (2 - -1)j + (-7 - 4)k = -2i + 3j - 11k _____What About Multiplication?? We can multiply a vector by a scalar by multiplying each component of the vector by the scalar. By the doing this you are scaling the vector. eg. If we multiplied a vector by the scalar 0.5 the resulting vector would be half the length of the first. Conversely if we multiplied by the scalar '2' the resulting vector would be twice the length of the first. let v = i + 2j - k To find a vector one quarter the length of the original: resultant = (1*0.25)i + (2*0.25)j - (1*0.25)k Multiplication of a vector with a vector falls into scalar or vector results. These are also referred to as the 'dot product' (scalar) and the 'cross product' (vector). With the current level of knowledge you have there is not much use in me going into these. We will prove the equations for these in a later issue of DemoNews. _____Homework The homework section will appear in every part of the series. You'll never learn this stuff properly if you don't practice so here is your chance to do so. I'll give answers in the following issue. Q1. Write the definition of the vectors from the origin to the following point in 3 dimensions. (a) ( 1, 1, 1) (b) ( 2, 6, 1) (c) (-1, 2, 0) Q2. Assume all of the following are vectors. Complete the operation given. a = i + j + k b = 2i - k c = 3i + 3j - 6k (a) a+c (b) a-b (c) b-a (d) (a+b)-c (e) c-(a+b) (f) (c+a)-(c+b) Q3. Find a half and 4 times the following vectors: (a) 3i - 2j - 4k (c) 3j + 2k _____Conclusion Next issue we'll derive a formula to rotate a vector in 2 dimensions relative to the origin. I know... you can't wait! =) If you have any comments/suggestions/fixes/gifts then send them to Tiberius at: tiberius@mailhost.net Until the next part! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "The Weird Act Of Optimizing For Size" :: Gyr - laurie@dcc.net.au _____Introduction Anyways, I was taking a look around Hornet yesterday, checking if anything was new. I see this message about Snowman needing articles for DemoNews. "Why not", I thought. So I digitally put my hand up, and Snowman said go for it. Woohoo. That's where I ran into a problem. What the hell was I going to write about? Damn my brain. Hmm... hang on... I've got an idea. "The Weird Act Of Optimizing For Size" (by gyr) _____Warped Obsessions "What's this about", I hear you say. Well, let me elaborate. There are some people out there that have a rather warped obsession. An obsession that things must be as small as they can be. The origin of such a little scene probably originated from 4k's. People cranking stuff into 4096 bytes that most people would have trouble putting in under 400k. But then 4k's started getting smaller... 2k intros... 1k intros... 512 byte intros. Eek, now we're getting small. But then a funny thing happened. A person called Gaffer (howdy :) decided to find out how small he could get a fire effect. All in 128 bytes. Gaffer's fire epitomizes everything these people do perfectly. Not only is it damn small, but it looks SO nice. It's freaky. It's insane... it's double the size of zoon's fire? Wahuh? What's happened here? This sort of thing happens all the time. No matter what you do, there are always people who can do something smaller (but not necessarily better). For example, checking for the escape key... Normally it would be... MainLoop: . . . in al, 60h cmp al, 1 jne MainLoop ; or at least for me it would be. But one bright person (Os2man :) decided that in al, 60h das jz MainLoop could save a byte (although this is highly crappy, a down right bugger to get the program to run properly first time ;) Damn, where was I? Oh yes... fires aren't the only thing that have been "smallerized". There is a 3D star field (123 bytes) but my all time favorite is Descent in 4k... Sanction by Omniscent is perhaps the best example of the kind of things people like us do. We see something large, and can't help but make it small. It's fun. I've spent a weekend hacking away for ages, and all I've achieved is one byte smaller. But happy I was. Maybe it's just that we're all insane. ;) Then just when you thought you'd seen it all, seen the smallest of the small from the insanist of the sane, you find something like Os2man's 23 byte horizontal starfield. Eek! How can things get that small? It's not right. It can't be. ;) _____Retrospective Time So what has this article achieved? Mainly that anyone who can do this sort of stuff should be physically restrained from coming within three meters of your code :) But most of all, that more people should get a look at, appreciate, and maybe even better the code that these people produce. Well that concludes a somewhat biased opinion (see the optimizers hall of fame ;) on this sort of thing. But as I feel rather democratic at the moment, I'll head off to irc to see what people think of it... I asked something like this: "I am writing a DemoNews article thing. Anyone want to comment on the people who optimize their code for size?" I have something to say in that article on size optimization: "don't do it" :D Yeah that they shouldn't bother ;) Optimization for speed is a Good Thing, but optimization for size is a thankless task for all but coders. I think its pointless nowadays except as an exercise. Size optimizing is fine as long the execution time is ok too. Size optimizing is less relevant these days :) Unless you're writing BIOS or things like that. I have no opinion. I like it. Optimizing for size is an art form. Optimizing for speed is a greater art form... hehe Well it seems not everyone is as impressed with this sort of thing as I am... well, we're all not insane are we? :) I'll leave you all with the definitive word from the original lunatic. ;) I think size optimization is an interesting challenge. Even more so when you refuse to compromise on quality as you shrink your code. _____References Optimizers hall of fame: http://www.dcc.net.au/laurie/optimize.htm Fluff's programming home page, has some nice small stuff on it, plus some examples of #asm compos: http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/3642 and of course, http://www.hornet.org ;) _____Further Example Of Stupidity Here's the source to the 77 byte 320x200x256 PCX viewer: code segment para public 'CODE' assume cs:code, ds:code .486 org 100h start: mov bl, ds:[80h] mov [81h+bx], ch mov ah, 3dh mov dx, 82h int 21h jc fuckhead xchg ax, bx mov al, 13h int 10h push 0a000h pop es mov ah, 3fh mov ch, (64768)/256 mov dx, 3c8h ; pure evil int 21h xor di, di lea si, ScrPal decode: lodsb cmp al, 192 jb single and ax, 63 xchg cx, ax lodsb rep single: stosb cmp di, 64000 jbe decode mov ah, 3 xchg ax, cx out dx, al inc dx SetPal: shr byte ptr [si], 2 outsb loop SetPal int 16h mov ax, 3 int 10h fuckhead: ret org 3c8h ; evil zoon trick ;) db 128 dup (?) ScrPal db 64000 dup (?) ends code end start _____Conclusion Warped people aren't we? ;) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Girls' Safety At Demo Events" :: roboMOP / Imphobia - mop@thepentagon.com _____Introduction A particular DemoNews issue from the first season of 1997 featured the experiences of a girl who found various difficulties when attending a demo event (she remained unnamed). Many thought that the fact on its own was normal daily routine; boys like to whistle to girls. Boys like to touch the bottoms of girls. Boys like... Yet this story gave birth to much discomfort and scene chit chat in various discussions on IRC and miscellaneous scene media. The name of the girl still remains anonymous, but DemoNews dares to sort out the offending and careless events from the professionally-organized ones. _____Gathering Perspective (1992 - 1993) Since the early scene years of 1992, The Gathering has always been considered a positive party attraction by the female part of the demo scene. Even way back in 1992, five scenesses (female sceners) made their way to Norway - which on it's own, can be considered as very peculiar in scene terms. "Even though they were on the minority, we did whatever it was possible for us, to prepare a more comfortable environment for the girls, by having separate changing and sleeping rooms and showers", says Shady of Crusaders, main organizer of the event. "We were probably the ones who started out with special settings for girls, and I believe that we have done a lot in this field", continues the Norwegian Crusader. Excluding female organizers, the following 1993 edition, was attended by 1 coderess and a few sceners' girlfriends with few or no interest at all in scene nature. "However, there were much female visitors that came directly from the outside neighborhood, because they took some interest in the general partying and the males in there! I am also told that some sceners even met future girl friends here", smiles Shady, who continues to say that the reason for the presence of all these girls does not come out of the blues. In fact, the organizers had put out an active marketing plan in the local area, weeks prior to the party. Teenage 18 year old girls were also invited from school to take a look at the happening. "Since girls could come in for free, many felt like losing nothing to come, and take a stroll in this wondrous world of electronics." _____Gathering Perspective (1994 - 1996) In 1994, the organizers could spot 30 girls inside the party halls. "12 females were part of the arrangement committee, 2 were main organizers but 9 were there to enjoy the party. In 1996, however, with a change of pace, direction and defined goals, girls were amongst our primary priorities. Around August 1995, we sat down to discuss the things we had in mind with the girls in our vicinity. Six of them formed Crusaders Girls. It was their own initiative, and not something that was forced upon them from our side. We have certain provisions about the use of the Crusaders name, but the girls are an independent group, making own decisions and having personal goals." Shady says that the girls were given the task of 50% of the media handling (talking to the press, presenting the party), and were also responsible for handling the information and the internal supplies; but the most important task was that of providing the party with a certain atmosphere and angle that would attract other girls. Here DemoNews wonders, if these particular settings were the main ace of the organizers, for having managed to achieve one of the finest (biggest) scene events in 1996. "The scene itself will evolve and change over the years as it always has, but the inclusion of girls will change it even more. Girls have to approach the scene in their respective way, and the change will come slowly as more girls enter into the scene. The scene can't change itself to politically correct itself to female needs, just like that, overnight. Girls must adapt first, which is not necessarily any bad thing, because it's just the way the scene has always worked in other areas (trackmos, design, fast processors). The scene will evolve by itself, without anyone making any pushing." The Crusaders Girls provided sleeping areas, parted showering facilities and arranged meetings with all girls at the party (scenesses and non), to speak amongst themselves. "This time we had 12 girls participating in our internal group. Other 8 girls attended the party to stay hooked on IRC for free, compete in the competitions or participate in other ways. I can also assure you that a few of the 15 or so girls that initially had no interest at all in the scene, and came here just because of their their boyfriends, changed into interested living scene-creatures in a matter of days", says Shady. During live interviews that appeared on the national Norwegian TV, girls made their way to the front rows, to give out their opinion about scene and similar; "I came here to watch, learn some things from the boys present, and now I'm whizzing around on IRC and learning to code in C++" This particular sceness is not one of a breed; in fact DemoNews knows that our demo world enjoys the presence of more than 300 females. _____Gathering Perspective (1997) In 1997, female attendance was even estimated beyond the 350 mark. During this edition the female part of the organization proved to be of special importance. After a troublesome accident with an anonymous individual that set up a porno ftp site on The Gathering server, the female responsible for taking care of the present medias was attacked fiercely. The National Norwegian Radio broadcast a live interview about the matter. This specific interviewer tried to allude that TG was just a meeting for 3000 sex-crazed lunatics, locked for 5 days in a row, watching 24 hours kid-porno and maybe even worse... "Seen from our point of view, it was one singular incident which could have ACTUALLY destroyed the chance of arranging another TG", says Shady, who continues to add how his colleague did a formidable job, by explaining and giving facts that this was surely not the case. _____Roles And Security Still, the idea of half a dozen or so lonely females amongst a mass of 2000 boys, can sometimes give birth to feelings of inadequacies, as is the case of "Ms. X" and her fastidious experiences. "I don't think that a female who attends such parties has to really look out for herself. If she's really alone (in the truest sense), that might be the case though. However, I really doubt that any party of our size these days only has one single girl attending. Organizers have the duty to provide ample opportunity for girls, and guards just have to watch out the rules about the girls' rest rooms. Comments and other harassing attitudes are anyway, a big problem. We have never experienced it too badly at TG, but the girls in the front lines HAVE to be mentally strong and able to deal with this kind of humor, by themselves. Unfortunately it's the way the world works, and scene party or not, delinquency exists everywhere." Shady points out that The Gathering crew has always taken great care of female attenders, and therefore never experienced deep problems of any kind. "We always have had girls working together with other arrangers, thereby making it really easy to cope with most uncertainties. Still our point of view is that security is what the girls make for themselves. They have to carve out a place in their own terms. Girls are probably the single most influential group to come into the scene, therefore we prefer to let them do everything by themselves, together with the rest of us. In this way both sides can prosper." Shady says that his impression is that girls seem to be the most wanted thing in the scene. "They get more press coverage than other known groups, and therefore they bring their own advantages to the scene. Sceners just have to behave themselves like they normally would do at school. In a group of 2000 males, one expects a few without decisively good manners. But this must not influence the decision of a girl to join the scene or not. From the feedback we personally got after our last party, the scene wants girls, to make this demo culture a breathing, living, prosperous and more interesting scene." _____Conclusion DemoNews leaves Shady and the Crusaders to their busy days, preparing for another Easter party in the land of Norway. Judging from the particular success of the past edition, the 1998 attendance is expected to burst beyond known limits. The organizers will continue to put up more scene propaganda amongst females - on their own, the typical intelligent girls of today seem to already find a keen interest in computers and associated cultures. As many would surely agree, there are better chances that a girl turns sceness, than to convince an ardent games player to find interest in demos. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Advertisement: GUS ViperMAX" :: James Hsu / Synergy - synergyh@ms4.hinet.net _____Introduction $79 New GUS in USA! Synergy now has an American branch. The end-cost to order a new ViperMAX is $89 ($79 plus tax and shipping). Dealer prices are as low as $69 (shipping fee excluded, minimum order 10 soundcards). ViperMAX = GUS MAX (GF1) + SB Pro (ESS1688) in H/W. Win95 (GUS+SB), Win 3.1(GUS+SB), DOS drivers (GUS+SB), and DirectX (ESS1688) supported. Not Plug & Play, but driver is auto-installed. 1Mbyte RAM on board. It is geared for gamers, MIDI, MOD music players and demo groups. Our Win 95 driver came out a year and a half ago, has been updated twice, and is very stable. Features include... _____Native Game Support ViperMAX wavetable mode - UltraSound, it has most USA PC games natively supported. Select UltraSound to have the best sound or select SB Pro to have the fair sound. There is no more software emulation program SBOS needed. _____Better MIDI 5.6Mbyte General MIDI patches stored in hard disk, plus 3.4Mbyte others, total is 9Mbyte. ViperMAX has 1Mbyte RAM on-board. When playing a MIDI song, patches being played will be downloaded from HD to on-board RAM thru Windows Patch Cache API. Patch Maker allows user to make or edit patches, and allows the user to switch patch bank. _____Superior MOD Performance A MOD is a kind of true digital music and the UltraSound is the best sound card for playing them. Most Sound Blaster cards only support 2 digital channels. When playing MODs, they need a lot more CPU time to software-mix several channels into 2 channels (and often sacrifice sound quality). The UltraSound supports 32 digital channels with hardware-mixing! Music Contest 5 just finished, and Synergy has donated 20 ViperMAX's to the winners as prizes: http://www.hornet.org/music/contests/mc5 ViperMAX is bundling the best MOD files (over 105Mbyte) in its Install CD. All these songs were rated ****+ or ***** on hornet.org. Also, many trackers (Fast Tracker 2, Impulse Tracker, Scream Tracker, etc.) and players (Inertia Player, Cubic Player, MOD4WIN, etc.) are also included. _____Best Demo Support There are many "computer graphics + sound" demo shows held in Europe every year, such as Assembly in Finland, Party in Denmark, X'95 and X'96 in Netherlands, and The Scene in Singapore. The UltraSound has top notch support from these shows and is a sound card standard in PC demo groups. _____Price/Performance Only money order accepted. E-mail USA address for detailed information. USA Branch : Ms. Susan Lai Corp : President 6611 Walton Drive, Huntington Beach, CA 92647 USA Tel : (714) 848-4692 (* Use E-Mail preferred *) Fax : (714) 847-8828 E-Mail : SLai954028@aol.com _____Conclusion The GUS isn't a PC demo scene standard by accident. Help support the soundcard that supports the scene. Buy a ViperMAX today! Best Regards, James Hsu http://www.computex.com.tw/synergy ----------------------------------------------------------------------------> :: "Advertisement: Digital Anvil 3D Coder" :: Digital Anvil - careers@digitalanvil.com _____Introduction Company: Digital Anvil, Inc. Job Title: 3D Graphics Developer Location: Austin, Texas (USA) Status: Full time Salary: Commensurate with experience _____Job Description Talented developer with strong 3D graphics background needed to work with product teams at leading-edge computer entertainment company. This position is responsible for helping to design and maintain Digital Anvil's code base for 3D graphics rendering. Some specific areas of responsibility include: 1. Help maintain and develop rendering pipeline optimized for hardware-accelerated 3D rendering 2. Perform ongoing R&D in several key areas of graphics technology, with a focus on delivery of practical implementations: - Optical effects (explosions, weapons effects, lens flare, particle effects, etc.) - Shading and illumination models - Offline mesh processing / optimization tools - New rendering techniques, including volume and surface rendering _____Requirements BSCS or equivalent experience. Must be proficient in C++ development under Win32. Familiarity with DirectDraw, Direct3D immediate mode, and/or OpenGL required. Candidates should be prepared to demonstrate and discuss previous work, including code samples. Good documentation skills are a must. _____Benefits Major company benefits with complete relocation package paid. Stock options awarded based on experience and qualifications. _____Conclusion We're always looking for adventurous, creative men and women who share our vision of the potential of interactive entertainment. Resumes may be sent in confidence to careers@digitalanvil.com, or faxed to the attention of our Personnel Director at 512-457-0404. >------------------------------------------------------- General Information -- _____The Hornet Archive (mirror sites) Current mirror information: http://www.hornet.org/ha/pages/mirrors.html USA (master site) http://www.hornet.org ftp://ftp.hornet.org/pub/demos Australia http://www.livewire.com.au/pub/demos ftp://www.livewire.com.au/pub/demos Germany ftp://ftp.uni-paderborn.de/pc-demos Poland http://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/demos ftp://ftp.icm.edu.pl/pub/demos Portugal http://mirrors.telepac.pt/pub/demos ftp://mirrors.telepac.pt/pub/demos Portugal http://hornet.esoterica.pt ftp://hornet.esoterica.pt Sweden ftp://ftp.luth.se/pub/msdos/demos USA (/code only) http://www.co.iup.edu/code ftp://ftp.co.iup.edu/code _____Where To Get DemoNews New issues - http://www.hornet.org/incoming/info Old issues - http://www.hornet.org/info -> "DemoNews" _____How To Subscribe To DemoNews Mail: listserver@unseen.aztec.co.za subscribe demuan-list YOUR_NAME _____How To Unsubscribe From DemoNews Mail: listserver@unseen.aztec.co.za unsubscribe demuan-list _____Where To Send Questions/Comments questions@hornet.org >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EODN