Forever 5
Party Report
Submitted by djgruby (DJ Gruby) on September 9 2004
Written by Cactus/Oxyron/Padua
Forever Five Report
The party is over and I'm sitting now in front of my computer, typing these words for the upcoming issue of "Domination" magazine. From 19th to 21st March 2004 Trencin was again the hometown of 8bit scene. Atari, Commodore and Spectrum people gathered together to have fun, to exchange opinions and at last to participate in the competitions.
Trencin is a beautiful town, placed about in the middle of the way from Zilina to Bratislava, in Slovakia of course. Getting to Trencin is not a problem, because the train connection to this town is really good. Travelling to the south for hundreds of kilometers from my city to Trencin did take me around 7.5 hours, with the longest waiting of 1/2 hour for another transport in Cesky Tesin (I was travelling through Czech Republic). Good connection to Trencin from every side of the world is important thing of locating the party in this town.
Forever Five took the same place as the last year's edition, so no one had problems with finding it. When I reached the party place in the Friday afternoon (around 1 p.m.), not too many sceners were already there. I met my Polish comrades Cobra and MacArthur, who came there in the very early morning. Also the main organizer for the C64 scene this year, Wotnau, was preparing some equipment on the platform. I was very positively surprised by the fact that the organizers prepared many more mattresses for sleeping than last year, so I suppose no one had to sleep on the floor this time. Small advances like this one weren't probably even noticed by most visitors, but they made this party a very professional on the organisation side. It seemed to me like the organizers didn't forget about any single feature, which could make visitors' life easier. It needs my huge words of appreciation.
Then I convinced Cobra and MacArthur to leave the party place to go sightseeing, especially to visit the impressive Trencin's castle. If you haven't seen it yet, visiting Trencin is a must. After having a dinner in a local restaurant, we came back to the party place, where some new visitors appeared. We said "hello" to all people there, including all Atari and Speccy users. Receiving a paper votesheet from Cobra to fill in reminded me of the old good times, when people used to fill in votesheets at such meetings. That afternoon came to talking with diffrent C64 sceners on many different topics. CreamD showed up for a while, unfortunately he couldn't stay because of some wedding in his family on Saturday. In the evening I went to a local pub with Lord Hypnos, PCH, Sad, Sigi, Visac, Drake and his Dutch friend (can't remember his name though), where we stayed till closing. PCH and Sigi wanted to go to the centre of town yet, but me and Dutchmen came back to the party place. I was drunk enough to go to sleep. I woke up the next day at 7 a.m.
Saturday is always the most important day of each demo party, all the compos are being held on that day. Around 9 a.m. the realtime compo was introduced, and me together with my Padua companions (Lord Hypnos and Sad) agreed to participate in the compo. Idea of making the funny Forever Five intro came from Sad, who was influenced by Leon's oftenly spoken "Szenzacios" (try to guess its meaning in English). We spent almost the whole day making this production and we delivered it to Wotnau's hands just a few minutes before the deadline (which was fortunately moved a little bit further, for what I would like to thank very much now). For the first time I had the chance to have this feeling of unswervingly coming deadline, because it was my first ever realtime production. Painting four screens was not an easy job in such a big hurry.
In the meantime there was some crazy compos held, including discus throw (I don't know the winner, because I was busy painting graphics at that time) and "Microprose Soccer" compo (starring Cargo and Lord Hypnos). Around four o'clock the real football compo was held. Only two teams participated, because Spectrum sceners didn't manage to organize their team. For the first time in the history Commodore scene had to cover in shame, because of its loss to Atari. We lost 1:5 (0:5) with PCH starring (as usual). This time PCH shot three goals, unfortunately only one of his goals was shot for our team, another one (at the stage of 0:0) for our rivals, and another one (at the stage of 1:5) was uncounted. The first half belonged to Atari scene, we have choosed wrong tactics with Sigi as a goalkeeper and Cargo as a midfielder. In the second half when they both exchanged their positions, I went to defence and PCH to attack, the picture of the match changed dramatically. We were the equal team for Atari and so we had won the second half 1:0, in total loosing the whole match 1:5. Thanks to Cargo we didn't loose any goal in the second half. What's important, we already promised the revenge on the next year's Forever.
After coming back to the party place from the local stadium, we had the chance to watch the presentation of "Grubz preview", a game by Soci. A great one, I must admit. It surely deserved the five-minutes ovation. I'm really looking forward to seeing the complete version of this game. The first was "Lemmings" conversion for the C64, now we're having "Worms". Isn't it great? Also "Hockey Mania" from Protovision was presented, a nice game for four players. Thanks to JTR I got 4-player-adapter for C64, what encourages me to start coding games for this platform. Who knows, maybe the next year at Forever I'll have my own presentation of a game for four players...?
Saturday's evening means that the computer competitions starts. It was 8 p.m. when all the people sat down in front of the bigscreen and started to watch and listen to the entries. I don't want to comment on all the releases, because everybody could see/hear them. The amazing thing at the Forever party is the applause after almost every single release, no matter how good it is. I was a little bit disappointed by the fact that the graphic entries were shown only once (I remember that at Forever Quattro each picture had been shown two times, what gave us the chance to award the more objective amount of points). I think that there was two reasons for that. The first was the amount of releases to be presented in the compos (it all ended very late, around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday). And the second was the fact that compos were a little bit delayed (they were supposed to be started at 7 p.m.). I liked the picture from Leon very much (he surely deserved to win the compo), I also liked the demo from Civitas (unfortunately, it had a terrible soundtrack, which perhaps caused it didn't win the compo), the vector part from Oswald was impressive, it would have surely won the realtime compo if it had been allowed to be in it. To sum it up, the level of presented compo entries was really okay. I would love and I do really hope to see more next year.
After the competitions I copied party stuff to my 5,25" disks and soon after this I went to sleep... Together with Cobra, MacArthur and Lewis (a guy from Atari scene) we left the party place at 7 a.m. on Sunday, saying bye to Leon and Soci (because the rest of people was asleep). I was at my home in the afternoon.
One of the biggest disappointments was a very few sceners from Poland attending this year's Forever. I don't know what could be the reason for that, because it's one of the best 8bit parties in the world these days, the date was well known for a long time and prices in Slovakia are acceptable for my "poor" nationals. I would understand not visiting a demo party in Germany, where usually the entrance fee is sufficient obstacle for visiting it. But it does not happen in Slovakia!
To all of you, who didn't come to Forever Five: be ashamed and regret. I feel like it was the best demo party I have ever visited. I was having lots of fun and I can tell everyone that I'm the 100% sure visitor of the Forever Party for next year, which is said to be the most impressive Forever party ever, or it is at least what organizers say. I would like to thank you all people, whom I met at the party and talked to, to organizers for all the great stuff. Special thanks must go to Wotnau for devoting his heart and soul to this party: man, you did a great job!
See you in 2005 in Trencin,
Cactus/Oxyron/Padua.
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