Revision 2014 - April 18th to 21st
category: parties [glöplog]
Going on stage seems a small price to pay for free beer! But what would I know, I can only code 68000 and slowly for that matter.
Oh, what D.Fox said in reverse: People can't get drunk before the compo (if they feel it's important to win). I don't drink, but I have enough experience with sleep deprivation at demoparties that I'd have to schedule an extra nap before that compo.
I think people treat it less like a fun-compo and more like a real compo, which isn't something to enter on a whim.
I think people treat it less like a fun-compo and more like a real compo, which isn't something to enter on a whim.
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I'm seriously surprised how hard it is to get good competitors for the livecoding event. It seems that a lot of skilled coders get cold feet once we ask them to show their skill outside the safety of their own 4 walls.
Different coders are good at different things - Shadertoy-style single-pass single-quad coding is a niche, and as Seven says, some of it involves lexical knowledge that you either need to just know or memorize.
we can always replace it with a 10 ppl counterstrike deathmatch!
Some framing to help folks view it as a funcompo may help. e.g. add something silly.
If only you could fly out IQ, or convince Pasy to do it . . . Also, who was it that did that video a few ears ago where they livecoded up a realistic apple? Maybe see who has done well with fast fastmade entries in the executable graphics compo (e.g. Psycho of Loonies) . . . .
If only you could fly out IQ, or convince Pasy to do it . . . Also, who was it that did that video a few ears ago where they livecoded up a realistic apple? Maybe see who has done well with fast fastmade entries in the executable graphics compo (e.g. Psycho of Loonies) . . . .
More dueling easels perhaps than commando deathmatch feeling?
alternatively you can recruit 10 demoscene graphicians to do a Bob Ross painting in 15 minutes with a 5 euro painting kit from a nearby hobby shop! or maybe this analogy helps nervous coders to understand the essence of the fun part of this livecoding event ;)
I'd participate in that even if I'm not a graphician.
Seven, OK those are some good points! Now I can't do much about people liking to be on stage or not, but the other issues you mentioned I'll try to address and (where necessary) facilitate a solution.
- Caliber of the other coders. For sure, we'd like to have some big names in there. But don't forget that the first edition of such a competition, which was held at WeCan demoparty in Poland, was won by a very young and pretty much completely unknown coder from Russia, who beat quite a number of "known suspects" from the Polish scene on his way to victory. So reputations are nice for us to do a bit of promotion for the event with, but they are definitely not a good predictor for actual success in this compo, imho.
- Hardware, the organisation will provide 2 pc's with compo pc-level GPU's on which the participants do the livecoding. The systems will be identical so there is no advantage for any competitor in this respect.
- Knowledge, now this is a bit hard for me to comment on because I'm not a good coder myself. The basic idea is that you'll have proper reference materials so that you do not have to waste braincells on memorizing stuff to be able to compete at all. I'm going to check this with our tech expert and see if we can add the documents you mentioned.
As for how people regard this compo, I agree, people do seem to take it rather seriously, and upto a point I can understand that. But if you hear the stories from people who witnessed the event at WeCan, you get convinced rather quickly that the whole point of the compo is fun. Yeah, it's challenging, yeah it drags coders out of the safety of their confined dev setups, yeah yeah yeah. But isn't that the whole point of demoparties? :)
- Caliber of the other coders. For sure, we'd like to have some big names in there. But don't forget that the first edition of such a competition, which was held at WeCan demoparty in Poland, was won by a very young and pretty much completely unknown coder from Russia, who beat quite a number of "known suspects" from the Polish scene on his way to victory. So reputations are nice for us to do a bit of promotion for the event with, but they are definitely not a good predictor for actual success in this compo, imho.
- Hardware, the organisation will provide 2 pc's with compo pc-level GPU's on which the participants do the livecoding. The systems will be identical so there is no advantage for any competitor in this respect.
- Knowledge, now this is a bit hard for me to comment on because I'm not a good coder myself. The basic idea is that you'll have proper reference materials so that you do not have to waste braincells on memorizing stuff to be able to compete at all. I'm going to check this with our tech expert and see if we can add the documents you mentioned.
As for how people regard this compo, I agree, people do seem to take it rather seriously, and upto a point I can understand that. But if you hear the stories from people who witnessed the event at WeCan, you get convinced rather quickly that the whole point of the compo is fun. Yeah, it's challenging, yeah it drags coders out of the safety of their confined dev setups, yeah yeah yeah. But isn't that the whole point of demoparties? :)
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I can only code 68000 and slowly for that matter.
Same here, but imagine a live-coding compo with two Asm-One/Pro setups, a startupcode and an empty VBI routine where you can put your skills in :D
I can remember a fun-live-(drunk)-coding compo at either M^S 2001 or 2002 for the C=64.
It really should be considered a fun-compo, meaning entirely not serious.
Ergo ... TRSAC-it-up ;D
the compo at M^S was done in LOGO - and rocked indeed. count me in :)
preacher: we can always do that unofficially outside if the weather's good enough! ;)
Semi-serious suggestions to keep the compo good-natured:
1) Use a Bob Ross-like thing as a warmup ( ;
2) Require that everyone competing be somehow impaired. This being:
a) sleep dep
b) spinning around for a minute
c) some degree of chemical intoxication
3) Play ridiculous music during
4) Have silly prizes
5) Have the announcer encourage an atmosphere of positivity. A drunken and affable Okkie with a gigantic toy microphone would be favorite for this. ( ;
1) Use a Bob Ross-like thing as a warmup ( ;
2) Require that everyone competing be somehow impaired. This being:
a) sleep dep
b) spinning around for a minute
c) some degree of chemical intoxication
3) Play ridiculous music during
4) Have silly prizes
5) Have the announcer encourage an atmosphere of positivity. A drunken and affable Okkie with a gigantic toy microphone would be favorite for this. ( ;
More inspiration could perhaps be taken from http://www.scul.org/skynet2.0/public/mission/view/entity_id/46895
"SCULIMPICS is SCUL's Tournament of Glory, with the motto 'Anyone caught taking things seriously will disqualified immediately' "
EXAMPLE form the Tour de Pants
This just needs a Tour de Pants spirit. Perhaps a warmup game of a graphically-inspired Exquisite Corpse.
"SCULIMPICS is SCUL's Tournament of Glory, with the motto 'Anyone caught taking things seriously will disqualified immediately' "
EXAMPLE form the Tour de Pants
This just needs a Tour de Pants spirit. Perhaps a warmup game of a graphically-inspired Exquisite Corpse.
Still time to get your tickets in advance!
- for a quicker get in
- for having a nice print@home ticket
- for the fame
http://2014.revision-party.net/tickets/pre_sale
- for a quicker get in
- for having a nice print@home ticket
- for the fame
http://2014.revision-party.net/tickets/pre_sale
hups...
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It really should be considered a fun-compo, meaning entirely not serious.
Ergo ... TRSAC-it-up ;D
So you need someone from DUB standing by with refreshing schnapps or "fartjuice" .. wait .. fartjuice is really a bad word in english .. translated to english "acceleration-juice" .. we can also supply that :P
If you have any questions regarding how things went back at WeCan's Coding Compo, feel free to shoot them here and I'll try to clear any doubts there might be. :)
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someone from DUB standing by with refreshing schnapps
Prefereably Mr. Horse wearing an awkward T-shirt featuring an upside down image of Hosen Runterseher. That'd be a hoot
Runterseer, that is
...and competitors have to put on "war makeup"
...and competitors have to put on "war makeup"
As someone who probably "should" participate in the live shader compo I can try to share a few thoughts on it.
Last week Maq also told about the WeCan compo, and it sounded interesting indeed. I was also at the shadertoy hackaton 2 weeks ago, and ONE hour from scratch (including figuring out what to do from the given keyword) is a VERY short time. Even though I was satisfied with my modelling speed, I overshot by 20-30 minutes, and therefore couldn't deliver a result.. And sorry, but most of those who did finish wasn't particulary pleasant to look at either ;)
Both analogues (by maali and metoikos) fails a bit, as they are immediately entertaining even without being "skilled", while it's not particular entertaining to watch a black screen for 5 minutes while the coder tries to figure out if the problem is the object, the lightning or the camera pointing the wrong way ;)
Point is, you need to prepare for this - it's not just the half hour of play time. Not by memorizing 500 lines of cool glsl, but by finding some simple, general, interesting effects/concepts you can start up quickly and then evolve on. And do a rehearsal or two, to get a feeling for what can be done during the time. Otherwise we will be looking at black screens and then people trying to build some raymarched scene..
With some preparation (also to present a decent set) I probably wouldn't mind, but there is some deadline sunday morning, and I'm late already ;) (there was another party last week yadayada)
But I guess you can find your participants on the day, when ppl give up on their deadlines ;)
Last week Maq also told about the WeCan compo, and it sounded interesting indeed. I was also at the shadertoy hackaton 2 weeks ago, and ONE hour from scratch (including figuring out what to do from the given keyword) is a VERY short time. Even though I was satisfied with my modelling speed, I overshot by 20-30 minutes, and therefore couldn't deliver a result.. And sorry, but most of those who did finish wasn't particulary pleasant to look at either ;)
Both analogues (by maali and metoikos) fails a bit, as they are immediately entertaining even without being "skilled", while it's not particular entertaining to watch a black screen for 5 minutes while the coder tries to figure out if the problem is the object, the lightning or the camera pointing the wrong way ;)
Point is, you need to prepare for this - it's not just the half hour of play time. Not by memorizing 500 lines of cool glsl, but by finding some simple, general, interesting effects/concepts you can start up quickly and then evolve on. And do a rehearsal or two, to get a feeling for what can be done during the time. Otherwise we will be looking at black screens and then people trying to build some raymarched scene..
With some preparation (also to present a decent set) I probably wouldn't mind, but there is some deadline sunday morning, and I'm late already ;) (there was another party last week yadayada)
But I guess you can find your participants on the day, when ppl give up on their deadlines ;)
so a coder hackathon should be more like two hours?
that makes sense - in that time span, I could probably make something :)
that makes sense - in that time span, I could probably make something :)
Problem with longer time is - we don't have it. And it's not entertaining to the audience. In that case we could just to a "Fast Demo Compo" but those things have been done lots of times before. A live-aspect to the whole coding thing is an exciting new format to do.