ParaCon7 reminder by Paradox [web] & Paranoia [web]
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The ParaCon 7 organized by Paranoia sponsored by Textildruck Fuchs
November 25th to November 27th 2005
DLRG-Heim Selters/Ts.
Germany
_____________
__|The ParaCon 7|____________________________________________________
Once again, for the fifth time in a row, Paranoia invites
you to a ParaCon-party, namely the seventh. The party is
taking place from Friday, November 25th from about 17:00,
to Sunday, November 27th, around noon, in the DLRG-Heim
in Selter/Ts. in Germany.
Once again, we like to invite all Atari 16/32-Bit and all
Commodore 8-Bit fanatics to spend a constructive and
creative weekend among friends. Once again, Paranoia will
try to top last year's breakfast service and this time,
our sponsor, Textildruck Fuchs, has something really very
special for you.
_________
__________________| Details |________________________________________
Now that date and place are set, let's come to the usual
details which are of interest for a ParaCon-party:
[ ] Preregistration
To attend you need to be registered. To do so, you
can send an email to paranoid@atari.org.
[ ] Web site
More and up-to-date information about the ParaCon 7
can be found under the URL http://paracon.atari.org
[ ] Attendance Fee
The ParaCon party costs you 12 Euros. You do not
need to pay on registration but on arrival.
[ ] Breakfast Service
Paranoia will serve breakfast on both saturday and
sunday.
[ ] Sleeping area
A warm and cosy sleeping area is provided. Earplugs
are strongly recommended though.
__________
____________________________| Features |______________________________
The all new ParaCon 7 mixes well known features with a
list of new ones added.
+ Cosy and friendly location
+ Easy to reach by car, train and even by place
+ Parking lot directly nearby
+ 2 Supermarkets directly nearby
+ Cosy and Warm Sleeping Area (Earplugs recommended!)
+ World Class Breakfast
+ Pizza and other food service
+ Special Bonus by our sponsor Textildruck Fuchs
+ Christmas Market on Sunday afternoon
Register now and you can enjoy the features of ParaCon 7
already on the last weekend in November.
_________
_______________________________________| Licence |____________________
Please read the guest user licence described below. By
attending the ParaCon 7 you affirm you have read and
accepted the issues described there.
- The location itself is a no-smoke area
- Use of toasters, microwave ovens etc. is not allowed.
- The organizers are not responsible for your equipment.
Please keep an eye on it yourself.
- Please mind that the location is not very big and
restrict the amount of equipment you bring
- The use or swapping of illegal software will be legally
prohibited
- No narcotics or illegal drugs! (Mind German laws)
- The organizers preserve the right to remove any attendant
from the party without prior notice and without any kind
of refund if they consider it necessary to maintain the
party safe and sound
_________
__________________________________________________| Options |__________
While the usage of Microwave ovens, toasters, barbequeues,
coffee makers or water boilers in the main room is not
permitted, the organizers can prepare coffee or hot water
on request. Please do not use the kitchen without explicit
permission.
The area is cosy but kind of smallish. Please bring only
the equipment you really want to use during the party and
leave optional computers, monitors, printers and other
gear at home. This will make it much easier for the
organizers and other attendants.
The sleeping room is indirectly separated from the main
area. It's easy to reach and has a warm carpet. Since
people actually sleep on this floor, please leave your
shoes outside this area. Also, earplugs are strongly
recommended.
There is the option of ordering Pizza and other food
several times during the day but usually not before
early evening. The organizers will also collect orders
from time to time.
Finally, there are a few locations within walking range.
There are 2 supermarkets nearby and a gas station is
roughly 2km away. Two pretty good restaurants are just
a few minutes away as well.
_______
____________________________________________________________| Route |__
The location is easy to reach by car and by train and
indirectly, even by plane. Please find the detailed
route plans below. The target location is the DLRG-Heim
Selters in Selters/Ts., Germany.
By plane:
You'll be landing on Frankfurt Airport. Go to the
Subway station and look for a train going to
Frankfurt main station. Follow the route "By
train" from here.
By Train:
Coming from the south (Frankfurt):
Once you arrived at Frankfurt main station, look
for a train going to Limburg a.d. Lahn. This train
should be labelled "Regionalbahn", otherwise it
might not stop in Selters/Ts. Probably you will
have to change trains in Niedernhausen. In this
case make sure the train going from Niedernhausen
to Limburg is a "Regionalbahn".
Coming from the north (Limburg):
If you do not go through Frankfurt, your next
waypoint would be "Limburg a.d. Lahn". If you
arrive in Limburg, please look for a train going
either to Frankfurt, Wiesbaden or Niedernhausen.
Make sure this train is called "Regionalbahn".
Leaving at Niederselters:
The train station to get out of the train is
named "Niederselters". Head for the station, which
is an ugly green building and pass it towards the
street. You should see a small street to the right
side of the pub "Zum Bahnhof", leading slightly
downhill. Follow this street until you cross a
little stream over a bridge. Keep walking straight
on for a few hundred meters and you will reach the
DLRG-Heim in Selters, which is on your right.
By Car:
This way or other, you will have to get onto the A3,
the autobahn connecting Frankfurt and Cologne.
Coming from the south (Frankfurt):
Get onto the A3 heading for Cologne. Exit the
Autobahn in Bad Camberg. The exit is tricky, drive
slowly and read the signs. The exit is actually
before the gas station.
Coming from the north (Cologne):
Get onto the A3 heading for Frankfurt. Exit the
Autobahn in Bad Camberg. Mind that the exit is
under construction, so drive carefully. The exit
is actually before the gas station.
Take the next possible turn left, heading for Bad
Camberg. The road does a few turns and then goes
straigt downhill into the city of Bad Camberg,
passing a small industrial area and crossing the
railway station. Follow this road until you reach
a T-Section with traffic lights. Turn left, heading
for Limburg (B8). Keep going on this road, leaving
Bad Camberg, for about 4 to 5km.
After you have passed a Minimal market, which was
on your left, you reach a cross section with traffic
lights and a Penny market to your left. Turn left and
keep going straight on for 200m. The DLRG-Heim is on
your left.
Additional options:
Limburg a.d. Lahn is connected to the fast railway
between Frankfurt and Cologne. This station is fairly
easy to reach by train and depending on your route,
it might be sensible to go to this station which can
only be reached by a so-called Intercity Express (ICE).
One of the organizers might be able to pick you up
there. If you plan to do so, please ask the organizers
as early as possible if it is possible to pick you up
there and please, give us your cell-phone number so we
can reach you if something goes wrong.
Please mind that this is an option you will have to
arrange with the organizers in time, i.e. a few days
before the party. Just calling us saying that you just
arrived and asking whether we could pick you up then
is definetly not an option since the answer may very
well be "no".
___________
__| Remindtro |________________________________________________________
Sorry for being so late again. This time, almost every-
thing went wrong. While the basic effect ran rather soon
(mid summer), the whole rest around it took longer than
usual - And to be honest, it was completely and purely my
fault. 505 delivered his great music almost instantly and
Zweckform finished all graphics in time. But coding-wise,
everything that could go wrong went wrong. Not to mention
the fact that for rouhgly 1 1/2 weeks, it didn't run on
the STE at all because of a "+34" instead of a "+36".
Even worse, the stuff that usually creates problems, like
implementing totally new music replayers with funky effects
or new screen drivers, worked well this time. Therefore,
the credits are as follows:
- maxYMizer music: 505
- graphics: Zweckform
- additional code: RA
- font and code: The Paranoid
- music replayer: gwEm
Regards to 505 for using the "zync"-bytes of maxYMizer in
an excellent way to provide timing for the effects and for
helping with the design this way. Naturally, thanks must
go to gwEm for the YM-tracker maxYMizer. Additional thanks
to Ultra of Cream for his help with the 3D business. As
usual, the demo-engine is losely based on Evil's, so
thanks as usual to Evil of DHS.
I have to apologize for 505 for the terrible delay this
thing was released with ... And it's not even really
finished. The code is a mess (besides the main effect) and
i conquered one stupid bug after the other - I should have
probably taken a longer time out after finishing Pacemaker.
The graphics are also not finished but maybe, the effect
will be re-appear in a more complete intro soon ...
Finally, mega-greetings to RA for finishing his excellent
old-school screen in time - Sync-scrolling, overscan and
digidrums for the very first time ever on the ST - and
that on its 20th birthday.
Oh, almost forgot the requirements for the little reminder.
It's a Paradox-production so it runs on an
[X] Atari STE with 1MB or more RAM
[X] Atari MegaSTE with 1MB or more RAM
[X] Atari Falcon030 with 4MB or more RAM with VGA or RGB
It doesn't run at all or at least not very well one
[ ] Atari ST
[ ] Atari STE with 512KB RAM
[ ] Atari TT
[ ] Atari Falcon030 with a CT60 or CT63 upgrade
As usual, it has been tested on the following systems:
[X] Atari Falcon030 VGA, 14MB, FPU, Nemesis, NVDI 4.11
[X] Atari MegaSTE, RGB, 4MB, NVDI 4.11
______
_______________| Help |________________________________________________
Again, this text should feature some technical stuff as
well, so here goes.
The Atari STE was the first 16/32-Bit computer of the
series to feature horizontal and vertical fine-scrolling.
While vertical fine scrolling merely requires the ability
to set the low-byte of the screen address accordingly, the
horizontal fine-scrolling requires the ability to have
lines larger than the current resolution and to make the
graphics chip to skip a certain amount of pixels at the
beginning of each line.
While the Atari STE offered all of that, the latter came
with a problem, as it is officially affirmed by Atari:
"Setting the Video Base Address Pixel Offset during
the VBL from unequal to zero to zero might result
in corrupted display."
As a result - and so it is explained in the STE-FAQ as
well - this register should be treated in a HBL-Interrupt
rather than the VBL to avoid resetting it during the VBL.
However, for many programs, this means the introduction
of the HBL-interrupt as an additional interrupt source
and might mix up timing with music/digi-sounds etc.
Therefore, the HBL-Interrupt is not desired.
Often enough in magazines and on webpages a solution
without requiring the HBL-Interrupt is debated, but so
far, only fragments of a working routine have been
presented and the results were not very satisfactory.
Nevertheless, a simple solution is available even
during the VBL and even better, it works on the STE,
the Falcon VGA and RGB and even on the TT.
The procedure is quite simple. During the VBL, you
first write the screen base address (mind the order):
move.b adr_high,$FFFF8201.w ;High Byte
move.b adr_mid,$FFFF8203.w ;Mid Byte
move.b adr_low,$FFFF820D.W ;Low Byte
Now write the new pixel skip and line offset in no
special order
move.b line_ofs,$FFFF820F.w ;Offset between lines
move.b pxl_skip,$FFFF8265.w ;Pixel Skip (0-15)
This might actually lead to the Shifter interpreting
the following lines in the wrong way and therefore
doing corrupted screen display. Funny enough, the
Shifter will always perform correct display when
writing the address counters by hand:
move.b adr_high,$FFFF8205.w ;High Byte
move.b adr_mid,$FFFF8207.w ;Mid Byte
move.b adr_low,$FFFF8209.w ;Low Byte
Once these values have been loaded directly into the
screen address counters, the Shifter seems to correct
its faulty line interpretation and will correctly
display the next frame.
So much for the technical stuff this time. Personally,
i kind of wondered that this easy solution works, but
it does very well.
______
______________________| Misc |_________________________________________
Why is the ParaCon 7 nicknamed "Family Reunion" ?
Actually, with the disappearance of Paranoia as a demo-
group, the meetings have gone rare and less productive
and Paranoia has reached the state of perpetual sleep.
Not dead, but not really moving either. Yet again, in
autumn, Paranoia-members suddenly awaken, start to buy
enormous amounts of food, rent a video beamer from the
city of Offenbach and write odd text files.
All of a sudden, Paranoia meets more often to plan and
coordinate the upcoming party, making it again a very
cooperative and family-like group.
This is why the ParaCon 7 is nicknamed "Family Reunion".
Again, we'd like to apologize for inviting you to this
party this late and also for the very very late release
of this text.
Again, we'd like to thank our sponsor, Textildruck Fuchs,
for supporting us in a very special way this time.
Also, greetings are sent to the DLRG in Selters, which
have once again provided us the location without any
hestitation or restriction.
Additional thanks must go to 505, Zweckform and RA of
Paradox for supporting the invitro so well and on short
notice. Greetings to gwEm for his great and flexible
MaxYMizer tracker and his help on how to implement the
replay routine.
Special greetings to Der Komtur who prevented the ParaCon
from being cancelled. In fact, the weekend for the ParaCon
was registered beginning of summer this time, just to find
out in autumn that the location was already booked for a
first-aid-examn, but nobody remembered this double-booking.
Der Komtur immediatelly organized a location for the first-
aid-examn so that we can have the DLRG-Heim instead.
As usual, nothing of this would have been possible without
our favourite, Afri-Cola.
Well then, see you on the ParaCon 7.
The Paranoid/Paradox
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