TRSAC 2013 (TRSACREBLEU!)
Party Report
Submitted by Ghostrider (Ghostrider) on October 25 2013
Written by Ghostrider/No Name
TRSAC 2013 IN AARHUS/DENMARK
So, after the lameness of other life-demands keeping us away from parties for a
while (ahem), Cyberbrain and I decided to give the TRSAC 2013 pardey a chance.
Boy, were we glad we did!!!
This was our first TRSAC, and from the website we could see that this year it
had a French theme. From the list of pre-signed up "visiteurs" on the website,
I recognized group names (C64 and other) like Smash Designs, The Dreams, Melon
Dezign, Crystal, TRSi, Titan, SceneSat, Loonies, Depth, Hoaxers, Darklite,
Dekadence, Spaceballs, Hitmen, Farbrausch, Focus Design, TBL, and others...
This could be interesting...
I met with Cyberbrain at the central bus station of Aarhus, great to see each
other again, and went straight to the party site talking. There were signs with
arrows pointing to TRSAC at various places - we didn't need them. As we got
closer to the party place, my phone playing scene SID tunes at max volume, we
met SunSpire/SceneSat and Sentcool who were arriving at the same time - cool
guys!
We got inside and were greeted with a pardey atmosphere building up, sweeet :)
The organizers were easy to spot as, in accordance with the French theme, they
were all wearing striped shirts, French barets, and a fake mustache, haha.
We had our handles and group name registered at the info desk, and received our
wristbands and a goodie bag with party-info pamphlet, earplugs, free beer/soda
ticket, vote key, and a fake mustache! :D
The hall was already 90% full, but we found a table with some empty space for
us. As we got our gear set up, and had our first chat with our nearest table-
neighbour, it became increasingly obvious to us that this guy knew quite a bit
about C64 coding... It was gregg/gnumpf-posse! Cool guy! On the opposite side
of the table we had Sentcool and SunSpire who immediately provided our ears
with awesome music from his nicely loud speakers. Behind us friendly Amiga-
sceners, among others composer wasp/powerline who did some great trax!
There were around 130 visitors, some pre-paid and some not, from countries like
Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, and
possibly more. Organizers told us the number of pre-paid visitors was higher
than ever.
The opening ceremony was originally scheduled for 20:00, but was postponed till
21:45. At 22:00 started the Demoscene Quiz, somewhat like Jeopardy, with many
interesting categories of questions. Three teams competed: a French team, a
Norwegian team, and a German team. It was really funny, and during the quiz
sound-effects were played: A German Schlager, traditional French accordion
music, and a too funny sound sample of "...you incompetent Danish fucktards!"
which just cracked me up every time :D (yeah, I'm Danish) Later I was told
the sample was from Solskogen.
Now, I had been so "clever" as to prepare myself for a real party mood by
getting too little sleep in advance, so pretty early I had a short nap with my
head on the keyboard - true demoparty style :) Afterward, I quickly found out
I was too sleepy to code, so I resorted to doing some graphics for a far future
No Name release instead ;) Not particularly more effective tho :)
In general, the facilities of the pardey were awesome. Nicely clean toilets and
showers, and the pleasantly quiet "sleeping hall" was split into three, one of
them having carpeted floor and dartboards on the walls.. (wut?!) Imagine being
woken up by the gentle sounds of "tok.. tok... tok.." from darts - didn't
happen tho. :D
The cafeteria was great, 15-20 kinds of burgers and hotdogs, drinks, candy,
chocolate, u name it. One time we brought a laptop to the cafeteria to watch
old demos while eating - someone behind me started whistling to the tune of one
of the demos, and soon after a number of cool guys gathered at our table to
watch and talk. One of the organizers, who worked at an internet provider, had
set up the internet connection for the pardey, and he told us how:
They had connected the whole party hall to the net connection at a nearby
old people's home. As they entered, the old women had asked if the sceners had
come to fix their TV set, bcoz the quality was sooo bad! After a bit of an
adventure around the home, including a woman who insisted her door was locked
the second no one was standing in the doorway, they found and fixed up the
internet connection, pulling cables through the rooms to no suspicion at all.
As the organizers left, tho they hadn't touched the TV setup, the old people
were like: "Ooooh, thank you so much! The TV signal is so much better now!!"
Saturday brought the first competition deadlines at 14:00, for various gfx and
music compos, in which among others Henne of The Dreams and Response of
Darklite took part with some great tunes!
15:30 saw the beginning of the first music compo, at the beginning of which the
sound was really loud, and the organizers continuously pumped up the volume...
until a speaker blew and went silent - quickly followed by a humorous
announcement in the microphone: "OK, maybe it was a bit too loud afterall :)"
This was quickly fixed tho, and the pardey continued.
Voting was done using an internal online voting system at "www.party", which
also showed updated info on compo schedule and deadlines 'n' stuff. Right after
the ASCII/ANSI gfx compo gregg let us know one of the entries had already been
released a short while b4 the party. No votes from us then.
Deadline for the rest of the compos was at 18:00, so soon the big show was
on... First was an unusual compo, "Le fun", for which the participants had
received a piece of.. erhm.. annoying "music" in advance, in a file called
22.swf, which they had to combine with their own visuals. It. Was. Hilarious!!!
I especially recommend the entry "Faar K 22swf" coded by Loonies - with a sheep
on "fire". From that point on, the whole pardey hall broke into that same sick,
shrill whining at regular intervals. Oh the lulz :)
Next up were Wild Compo, 4K Intro, 64K Intro, and finally a Combined Demo
Compo. Nice entries with lots of chippy music and cool effects. There's
something to be said for being way up front at the big screen, so that a tunnel
effect takes up your entire field of vision - it's like being inside it! Also,
during compos different happy people were dancing in front of the big screen.
Someone had brought a kind of bullhorn to the party, which made a football
"Oleee Ole Ole Oleee" sound. On the pardeys IRC-channel the topic quickly
became a comment on "that fucking annoying bullhorn thing". Just before one of
the compos, it became too much for a scener (was it Okkie?). He jumped up,
snatched the bullhorn out of the hand of the guy playing it, threw it on the
floor, and started jumping on it and stomping until the pieces were flying
everywhere. Afterwards several sceners came to him to heartily shake his hand
and thank him from the bottom of their hearts.
Deadline for demo compo votes was at 2 in the night before Sunday, quickly
followed by the prizegiving ceremony where the prestigious bronze, silver, and
golden ducks were handed over. One girl who won a gfx compo, I think it was
offwhite, enthusiastically proclaimed: "I've been wishing for this my whole
life!" After the prizegiving the party just wouldn't die, and people kept
partying to lug00ber's spinning records until late. I crashed at 5 or 6.
Sunday, from some point, the big screen showed "Next: GTFO" - and with typical
Cyberbrain humour, he was really looking forward to seeing what this GTFO thing
was gonna be :D As the party was coming to an end, and people were leaving,
Cyberbrain and I had a cozy talk in the cafeteria with Blueberry/Loonies and
other sceners. Here we heard the story that recently somebody had been selling
tickets online for a new "The Party" (like in the 90's and early 2000's) and
not only that, but they had also booked a hall. A scener had checked who did
the hall-booking and could confirm that the name was the same as the people
who sold the tickets online. Mysterious!
Cyb and I went to downtown Aarhus with some other sceners, talking some more b4
parting at the bus station. Some serious sleep was coming up.
It was so fukkin' awesome to be at a party again! Maybe we should start
planning for the next one...
|
