pouët.net

yes, but that offer is only valid if you travel to the party by fierljepping!

@styx:

Ok that explains thanks; I had missed that point and just assumed it was stopping at the major hotels.

But the route was still very confusing: near the hotel there is a landmark bridge, and as we passed it for the second time, people in the bus were like "wtf, we're going back to Revision?".

Hello I am a sofascener and I would like to say some things about my experience watching revision on twitch.


First off, it's just great that the party was being streamed on twitch, for stay-at-home lamers just like myself. It's clear that quite some effort went into this, and it's much appreciated. Please keep in mind that I'm on your side, and that I believe that honest feedback is the best option in the long run.

It would seem to me that one of the goals of even going through the trouble of streaming it in the first place, is to let 'outsiders' know what the demoscene and revision are all about. In this context, I think there is much to be won, by doing things differently.

Some observations would be:

- Quite often, the hosts were having difficulty translating their thoughts into words. Now, I know what they were trying to say, but to the uninitiated twitch audience, this must just appear as chaotic, at best. There were a LOT of 'uhmmm's and nervousness. It makes it just an effort to watch.

- I thought the casters were often not very much in synergy with eachother. Almost as if there was some strife, resulting in trying to 'win' the conversation. Hosts should really vibe well together on stream. (Previous year would be an extreme example, for those who dare remember it)

- There was a lot of missed potential in explaining 'what the hell am I watching'. During compo times, the stream was on the twitch front page, which means that a lot of people will just click on it and try to find out what it is. This is a golden opportunity to explain what the demoscene is, what parties are, what specific demo platforms are all about, why is a certain effect a technical achievement, etc. I found this lacking.

- Regarding the previous point, it appears to me there was a gap between the audience and the hosts, in that the hosts did not properly cater to their audience. Meaning mostly non-sceners. In-jokes and references are fine, but they should be explained, otherwise the audience just gets alienated. You can't just say 'you have to come to assembly this year' if people don't even know what assembly is. They just become meaningless words. Chances are the people going to assembly are at revision and not even watching the stream at all.


Ok, then what?

I think it's key to understand that if you stream a demoparty, you have to educate the audience. The demoscene has a rich history and is about cool stuff, and I'm certain that many people who stumble upon it on twitch will find it fascinating. Give them what they want!

I imagine Truck being main host, with different guests for different compo-blocks. Why not put an amiga scener and a pc scener together and have them answer eachother's questions about their respective platforms. This way the audience gets an understanding of why they should be impressed that they're currently watching 300 shadebobs on a calculator or whatnot. Just keep it clear and understandable. It would be so interesting to watch! In between demos a little explanation could be given as to why a certain group was mentioned, maybe they share members, etc etc. So much stuff to talk about!

So in short: know your audience, and give them what they need.

@styx - ok, I understand everything (especially as a fellow demoparty organiser) but communication is crucial. The thing is, when you have ~14 hours of travel (with multiple interchanges) in mind - every minute counts. If we missed our train connection in poland, that would mean additional day of travel. Luckily, we managed to catch it :)

I don't think moving the prizegiving hour is necessary. 11:00 is a good compromise between too early and too late, imo.

@gasman - yeah, MS-DOS entries were most noticeable, but they were in wild category, so understandable. But I think I've seen another emulator window in oldskool 4k intro... but maybe it was just wrong interpretation. Can't check it before all the compo recordings are online, so for now, let's assume I am overreacting ;)

Btw, how were oldschool amiga graphics handled? I think the quality of some images (on the beamer) was poor - for example Made's picture that was later shown in "The Fall" demo. It looked like badly upscaled.

@saga - having the Revision app installed really solves the problem for me. I did not miss anything, the push notifications were there for me :)

AceMan: I don't think there's a Revision app for Siemens C55. ;D

@Saga Musix
In Germany you have to follow quite some rules on loud music or festivals on eastern weekend. Most open air concerts are even forbidden for the 3-4 free christian celebrationdays... So, we should be lucky to be allowed to have revision going on with "loud" music inside. bringing that music or voice loud to the outside could give some problems.... Having a smartphone outside would be the better solution and I guess even the C55 had a timer or alarmclock to inform you in time ;)

Now fully decompressed after that epic weekend. Echoing Smash's sentiments, vibe this year was so positive, had a real blast. Lots of new talent pulling up socks and getting stuck in this year too was great to see.

Massive shout to Saga and Bitch for allowing us to use the smaller XMPlay font at the last minute, you guys rock!

HUUUUUUUUUGE shout to everyone who filled the dance floor on Sunday night, you were MASSIVE!!

Tip of that hat to the squiffy crew Teo and H7 ;) thanks again lads.

Massive set from Lesnik and Jakub on sunday too, music and visuals we're was soooo good and probably my highlight of the weekend.

Orgas as ever doing an amazing job.

so vibes, much awesome.. amaze!

10/10

I'm still absolutely on a high from this weekend. Compos, livesets (our own included ofc, but certainly not exclusively!), meteoriks (including a very surprising 64k win, still in shock about that), livecoding compos, and overall positive attitude/vibe throughout. Last year was amazing, but this year tops it in _almost_ all accounts (let's be honest, last year's 64k compo will be a hard one to beat for awhile). Absolutely satisfying and overwhelming weekend. Huge thanks to everyone involved <3

Massive thanks fly to the Revision organizers, it has been very enjoyable once again!!

@vscd and @René Madenmann: thanks!

Regarding the video capturing of demos on old school platforms (C64, Amiga, ..):

The way it's done now looks too crisp to me, i.e. seeing dithering pixels in pixel art is not what it's supposed to look like.

I was wondering if the Revision organizers / the video capture team could apply this 70ies / 80ies analog video processing/recording technique instead:
Introduction to Scanimate (it's right in the beginning, ~30s in).

What these guys basically did was film the processed video with a camera in some kind of dark room.

It could be done with some Molton cloth and a Commodore 1084.

Just a suggestion, of course. Thanks for your (already) awesome services !

I think the best advice to be given in such a situation is: just don't! :D

Please help!
I'm trying to view "Smile" entry (oldskool graphics) on Amstrad CPC emulator (Arnold 1.7.9 for MacOS). After loading "-FINAL" or any "STAGEx.BIN" I see "Memory full".
How can I watch the pic?

The problem with this is that our server which saves the votes is only available from the Revision network. Maybe next year we can set up a synced server on the internet and try to sync the votes back. But no promises just yet :)

Solved. RUN instead LOAD.

Now I have a trouble trying to run "phX" and "Onescreen colonies" demos in emulator. Any idea?

I never follow advice. For the record, the voting system was not the problem of the prizegiving delay :) I might write about that at a later time.

##################### IMPORTANT NEWS ##################

Hi Folks,

the webserver for hosting the pictures broke down last night, that was to be expected (a decade uptime) and was scheduled for may/june to be replaced, anyway. I wanted to wait for a few weeks after the revision because the highest demand is directly after the party, but hey, you know murphys law. It happened last night. But that's not a huge problem because we have mirrors. You will find all the nice Footage at: NPL HQ - REVISION 2018 Pictures

Anyway, the old URL will be up as soon as possible, too. Promised.

################### IMPORTANT NEWS ####################

I'll start by saying I loved going again. It was great, and I met some new people this year too that I'd known online only before. Also welcome everyone who joined the Starchaser Swag Collectors Fanclub. ;)

As much as it was great, I have two minor things I think could be worked on:

- The pre-paid line on Friday was 1/3rd as fast as the line for people who paid at the door.

- "Table reservations" got really bad this year. It was announced the party hall was "full" a few hours after opening, but that most of it was taken up by bits of paper saving a seat for an unknown person who wasn't even there yet. Collection of the papers happened shortly after, but some groups put them back out again afterwards. As far as I've been aware, there is no official way to get table or seat reservations, with the exception being the "newcomers area" (which not the problem here).

I know some organizers have spoken out against this practice, but this is the first year I've seen anything done about it. The lax enforcement in previous years has made a situation where people now feel they "own" part of the hall by virtue of having sat in the same place for umpteen years.

The group I was with wasn't able to get our usual spot, because some other group had their usual spot taken and moved up. OK, fine, so since it's in theory open seating we took a spot just behind the horizontal aisle on the left of the hall... just to be annoyed by the sceners who bring their own beer and dispensers. We weren't being harassed, but they felt like our concerns over sharing the space weren't a problem they were going to address because they'd had it for years.

We moved again to the back right corner of the hall when the bright-as-**** blinking LEDs went up (that they didn't even turn off during the compos) and found it to be quite nice back there.

--

In short, while I'd prefer to be able to sit with a bunch of people I know and also would prefer not to have to move once settled, I don't mind moving around the hall. What I really wish though was that people didn't have such an entitlement over seating and that the website would mention somewhere that reservations are not allowed and can be ignored.

Not even the first time page in the subsection "WILL THERE BE ENOUGH SEATS?" mentions this. People might get the idea (or have gotten over the years) these meaningless bits of paper must be obeyed.

I would like to see a vote option for sofasceners.

Of course this would have to be only unofficial and strictly separate from the party voting (so without any effect on the rankings). But nevertheless I would show a wider range of options and make people like me, who (for various reasons) cannot be there, feel a bit more included into the scene.

I'm trying my best to delay the moment when I need to thank everyone that made this possible, so that the party still feels up and running :) But the time always ends up coming...

Another great gold standard Revision, another year of good ambiance, impressive prods, amazing ppl and massive concerts! And lots of hugs!

Such an unexpected shader showdown run \o/

And Logicoma wrecked the stage and floor to pieces sooooooo bad :)

My voice is slowly returning, thanks to the orgas for finding it and sending it back, I feared it would've been permanent.

I am a sofascener myself, though not a complete noob (anymore). I understand and see your points, but I judge them very differently.

E.g. to me the imperfectness in communication has its own charm. You feel that those people are no professional talking puppets, but sceners themselves. They are enjoying what they are doing and transport some of the party feeling to us viewers.

Also I did not notice a missing synergy. Actually I expect that multiple people have multiple and often contradicting opinions.

As for the missed opportunity, I don't think so. The target audience are not only noobs (I suppose they are only a minority, but maybe it is worth to find out), who have no clue what they are watching. And if you repeatedly explain basics to those how just came in accidentally, your are boring and annoying those who already know. Also, as a sofascener you always have the option to easily do some research in parallel if you are really interested. And via chat you can ask any open questions. Explaining technical details requires much more than just a few moments, and there are a lot of resources in the web. If anything is missing, than maybe some links for starters and a brief explanation of each compos on the Revision website.

The research option is at least partially even true for inside jokes. Else, just ask in the chat or accept that the background story might be pretty long and convoluted and that you cannot know each and everything.

having the ability to log into ones pre-activated party account and vote and upload entries when outside the party (e.g. dying hung over in the hotel room) would be really handy, and probably reduce the number of instances of forgetting to vote after the pc democompo

That. And i personally wasn''t able to get my Android App registered for voting and had to revert to vote with the browser.

@starchaser


The prepaid line was slower because there have been more prepaid tickets at the rush point, than cash payers. we´ll fix that next year by having a prepaid only and a mixed cash/prepaid line.
Nevertheless the whole "doors open" situation took only 25 minutes, which is ok´ish.
you might not know it, but we have historical get-in times fom more than an hour back in the days. some might remember breakpoint ^^


Absolutely. I went from row to row to confiscate more than 80 reservations.
The only official reserved spots where for IGAD and the NEWBIE table.
We have a more specific eye on it next year, because this situation is kinda out of control.;-)


Awww...c´mon. Sceneparties are a crazy place, instead of feeling harrased you shoud walk over to the Haujobb guys and get a beer. At demoparties it is 24hours loud, noisy and annoying in a fucking good way. Actually revision is way less noisy since ATTENTIONWHORE are too lazy to bring their own soundequipment-of-doom.


Demoparty minimum requirement. But you are right, during the compos there could be a "kill all audio and light" rule. maybe we think about it...


Beamslide do that job. All else is done by me, so i have at least something to do.
Since the fins, poles and Madwizards are all old, noone got thrown into the bonfire, noone pukes on the infodesk, noone breaks his legs in a shower, no porn on screen, no realporn at the infodesk, no fights with handcuffaction included...what is left?

--> confiscating seat reservations at least. :-)

Starchaser seriously...you have seen nothing yet.
revision is a sunday school picnic compared to previous years. ;-)

Let's be honest - the haujobb guys can really be annoying :D

Still recovering. With respect to the compo delays: Contrary to common belief, none of the main compo blocks were delayed due to any issues with PC releases. We were ready.

I really enjoyed the party and it was great to meet all the usual suspects and some new ones. :)

Great. :) Yeah it wasn't super long, but people I was in line with seemed a little unhappy about it. It also kinda related to the below because I think some had hoped to "capture" (with bags if nothing else) their seating area but got stuck in line.


Ah, so I did run into you as you ran around! Just not under the best of circumstances. Glad this is more on the radar.


We were there. We moved. Yes, it was Haujobb. They didn't harass us, as I said above, and offered us the beer just like anyone else. I think I even gave (at least) one of them some leather patches later. The point was more in general how this faux-ownership is handled as a whole and that existing groups might not be super welcoming to people just looking for a space to sit.


Oh sure; I had a LED dev board last year that I set to do an FFT thingy during DJ jams. Bring on the blinkies! but I think as said, people should have enough sense that if there's a compo block going on with emphasis on visuals (4k, 8k, 64k, Oldschool, etc.) you'd turn them off or way down, if possible.

Also we moved because we didn't want to sit with them a meter or less from our faces. They're easier to ignore when they're halfway across the hall. I didn't want spots in my eyes for days.


Well yes, I know from stories and stuff that Revision is fairly tame, but just because it's tame doesn't mean there's nothing to improve. As to beam slides, I imagine it's quite possible that people don't really pay attention to them until after they're situated (having found a seat) and that the slide indicating this doesn't come up very often as there's usually 5-8ish slides in the rotation at the start of the party.

Even a US person I met before the party at the hotel, first time coming to Revision, was worried about finding a seat and where to fit in. I told him he's had a spot at the newcomer area and he's not "stuck" there (as everyone is free to wander around the party place and chat it up with people or do stuff).