Mekka^Symposium '97 - A revision
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By T.C.P. / Diabolic Force


First there is to say that Mekka/Symposium '97 was a great improvement
compared to Mekka'96 (I can't say anything about Symp.'96 because I wasn't
there and I haven't found any Party reports).
M96 wasn't bad, especially the organizing, but this year everything was a
little bit more, hmm, big.
This might have been mainly because of the many non-PC people from Symposium
(I won't say if this was positive or negative ;). However, the party place
was already very crowded as we arrived (about 1 o'clock pm on Friday), so we
took place in one of the last rows.
As last year, the amout of attenders had been overguessed, only 750 people
were there, while 2000 had been expected.
The party place was not very central, and the promised McDonalds was about
ten minutes away - by car. And because of Eastern, one could only buy food
during seven hours Saturday morning, so everybody who wasn't equipped with
food for 4 days and a refridgerator (somebody really was!) packed his bags
and "stiefelted" into "town" (what Fallingbostel was called) to the Aldi
supermarket.
Besides this, the party was very cool, it had that special kind of feeling,
many krewl attenders, fun compos, prizes, an alcohol-prohibition to break,
internet-access for everyone (had been even cooler if it had worked ;),
live-acts (not THAT cool, because some people wanted to sleep or concentrate,
because they had to code (hi shadow!)), and of course all things which make
a scene party a scene party.
Quite annoying were those TVs all over which were running all day long,
showing pornos and people slashing PC-Hardware.
What I also have in mind were those people shouting the word 'ficken' loudly
during some compos. Dunno why ;).
The usual party network was also full of porno, and tons of warez too, which
seemed to be ignored by the organizers, but, hmm, I didn't see anyone
complaining ;).
Until the intro/game-deadline on Sunday I was very busy coding, so I missed
some of the compos, maybe I also have confused their order, though here is
what I can remember of...

The compos
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The compos started with PC gfx-compo, which was the first time including
raytracing, but it seemed that almost nobody contributed a rendered picture
(except our contribution, which became 16th, btw). 36 pictures were presented
and the leading three were:

1. Springtime Feelings by Cyclone/Abyss
2. Denis by Norm/Essence
3. Krysia by Sketch & Unreal/Pulse


Next was Wild Compo, I think, showing some very 'abgespackt' contributions.
Mainly videos, but also an animation and a real demo (don't know on which
system, guess it was a nintendo or so)

1. Ninjaforce MegaDemo by Ninjaforce
2. Chocolate Autobahn by Adam Parry
3. Obsterscherzbrief by In-Sect


On with 4-channel and ANSI, don't know the right order anymore.
Both weren't very spectacular, some hilights, but the rest all very plain
vanilla stuff.

ANSI:
1. Day-X by Leonardo/Black Maiden
2. The Edge by Mr 4Tune/CIA
3. Freefall by The Knight/Fuel

4-channel:
1. Culture Bag by Virgill/Artwork & Essence
2. Notion disaster by Barman/Capsule
3. Get High Together by Parsec/Elven Eleven


Then, some time later, the (delayed) PC 4k intro compo followed.
And what a 4k compo that was! Fucking amazing! Pinker/Sanction really rocked
the place with 'omniscent', a 'descent'-3d-engine in 4kb! With sound!!!
You have to see it to believe it! Well, after this, the other intros looked
very pale, although they weren't bad at all.

1. Omniscent by Sanction
2. HIAS by Ethos9, FINIX
3. Meyer 2 by Funk!


Next was multichannel. For Gods sake the organizers had chosen to do a pre-
selection this time, because last year's >30 songs with up to 5 minutes each
sucked!!! Very nice tunes here, indeed, although not very much variety in
styles.

1. My Spring in December by Falcon & Medicus/Pulse & KLF
2. Chaotic Mindwork by Dac/Sac, Radical Rhythms
3. Focus by Lord & Scorpik/Pulse & Noiseless
3. Elements II - Water by The Acid God/Diabolic Force


The intro compo was also very nice, some new effects, anyone seen 2d-bump-
mapping yet? ;). No, really, Purge's intro was a fabulous designed one,
and Funk!'s had one of the best 3d-engines I've seen lately.
You should really watch them.

1. Totraum 209 by Purge
2. Spotlight by Funk!
3. Velvet 4 by Fatal Justice


As usually, there was a fast intro compo. All entries should include something
about the silly convention, a radar trap and some grafitti. Well, this was
in most cases understood as "silly convention, radar trap OR grafitti", because
most entries only contained one of those.
However, there were much more entries than last year (2), I think there were
15 or so.

1. Fast by Glue/Real
2. Convention by Soney/Smash Designs
3. Juicidely Hurry by PigPen/Poison


On with C64 demo compo, I missed that sorry, so here only the results:

1. Project Pitchfork by Smash Designs
2. No by Smash Designs
3. Kotze Inside by Metalvotze


After that was the 32k game compo, which only exists at Mekka yet, I think.
So here were 12 entries, of which most looked very unfinished, I mean, a game
must have a goal, or not? But how can a game have a goal without a score,
lifes, levels, or anything else? I think the compo rules had to be more strict
in this point, because some of the games lacked all of this, and so they were
unplayable.
A bad thing about this compo was that Amiga and PC-entries were mixed-up,
although Hardball had promised that they would not...
I you're a Microsoft-hater (I think there are 2 or 3 ;), you'll love
Wak-A-Bill. In this game the goal is just: Kill Bill! Ain't that fun? Yes!
Also very nice is TREXX, a shooter equipped with a nice 3d-engine and one of
the few games with sound fx (although they were quite poor ;( )

1. Wak-A-Bill by Diabolic Force
2. TREXX by Polka B. & Submissive
3. Rise of the Rabbits by Abyss


The last compos were PC and Amiga demos. Acorn and Atari demos were cancelled.
The Amiga demo compo was as the only compo announced with a nice 3d-animation,
some partialising here, organizers???
Despite that, the Amiga demos were very nice, some even included phong-shading
(yes, this was satiric ;).
On PCs, the trend to use SVGA was more and more recogniseable. All demos were
shown on a Pentium 166, so what?
A real killer was Claudia by Deathstar, which featured a spectacular 3D-
engine, good graphics, nice sound and an overall good design.
(yes, I know, not a very special valuation, but I'm no demo-reviewer ;)

Amiga:
1. Megademo IV by Artwork
2. Fear Factory by Arsenic
3. Thug Life by Essence

PC:
1. Claudia by Deathstar
2. Segmentation Fault by Strontium 90
3. Toon Town by Kolor


Some more compos I've missed:

C64 Music:
1. Schnmpf by KB/The Obsessed Maniacs
2. Sonic Impression by Brizz/Panic/Soulcore
3. Starlight by Fanta/Oxyron

C64 Graphic:
1. Too M.F. evil by Rayden/Alpha Flight 1970
2. Firespell by Hoogo
3. And Let Live by ALG/Alpha Flight 1970

C64 4K:
1. 4K by Smash Designs
2. Elven Magic by Hitmen
3. 4K Intro / WOW by Warriors of Wastelan

Amiga 40K:
1. Diskobox by Abyss
2. Kenguru 64K Intro by Impulse
3. Changing by Capsule

Amiga 4K:
1. Extel by Ambrosia
2. Abyss in Wonderland by Abyss
3. Newt by Focus Design



Yeah, that was all I think. Big thanks to the organizers for making this event
possible, thanks to all attenders who made it a great party, and finally:

   See you all next year!!!
