Assembly Summer 2017
category: parties [glöplog]
This year's demo compo was to die for. Definitely watch all of the entries if you haven't! Never thought I'd see competition this tight; unbelievable.
Also a shoutout to photo, 1k, oldskool, and real wild categories which all had fun and genuinely surprising entries.
Now about that "Pasin kokakola" ... why did I drink it!?!?
Releases on its way down here
High-quality recordings of the entries: http://media.assembly.org/vod/2017/Compos/
Demos added to AssemblyTV youtube channel could have been +12dB louder.
Now they were mainly unwatchable with mobile devices and annoyance with proper setup.
Maybe next time..
Now they were mainly unwatchable with mobile devices and annoyance with proper setup.
Maybe next time..
YouTube has volume normalization, no?
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YouTube has volume normalization, no?
Apparently it doesn't work always. Better to do it by hand to be sure the end result is optimal...
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering-forum/1097438-youtube-loudness-normalization-hearing-believing.html
I guess it only turns down, not up…
Assembly stream loudness has always been a bit wonky, but seemed good this year (I didn't actually check levels this time, though). The simplest thing seems to be to master the stream to EBU R128 (-23 LUFS), which gives plenty of headroom without being too low.
Assembly stream loudness has always been a bit wonky, but seemed good this year (I didn't actually check levels this time, though). The simplest thing seems to be to master the stream to EBU R128 (-23 LUFS), which gives plenty of headroom without being too low.
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Dear Assembly organizers,
You forgot to write timezone on your schedule again :-) It's so easy to miss a compo by forgetting it's one hour earlier than you think.
Your feedback has been forwarded to the people how fiddle with the web pages. I hope we get it right next year. :)
I would like to thank you all for participating and I hope to see even more of you at Assembly next year! :) Just a side note: 64k compo really is back! I know we announced it bit late for this year, but hey it will be held next year as well. So make 64k intros and participate!
Definitely, the announcement for the comeback of 64k intro came way too late. It takes years for the existence of a category and platform to settle in and get accepted as reality, so maybe next year there will be more compofillers, and 2019 some actual entries. Maybe I should promise to make a crappy compofiller for next year, so people can rest assured that their entries won't be faced with nothing but impossibly tough competition. Ok, I promise.
What comes to the oldskool demo compo, it was tremendously excellent that the compo PC was the same as last year. I hope that other parties take note and standardize on a 1997 class PC as _the_ oldskool PC. The scene standard 060 Amiga spec hasn't changed during the past 20 years.
What comes to the oldskool demo compo, it was tremendously excellent that the compo PC was the same as last year. I hope that other parties take note and standardize on a 1997 class PC as _the_ oldskool PC. The scene standard 060 Amiga spec hasn't changed during the past 20 years.
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What comes to the oldskool demo compo, it was tremendously excellent that the compo PC was the same as last year. I hope that other parties take note and standardize on a 1997 class PC as _the_ oldskool PC. The scene standard 060 Amiga spec hasn't changed during the past 20 years.
Yeah, I'd love for this setup to be the "de facto" oldskool PC, to get some DOS action going at other parties too.
I am going to swap the AWE out for an SB16 for next year, but otherwise this particular machine will be "it" for the forseeable future at any parties I'll be doing the oldskool compos at. So at least Asm summer and Simulaatio as of writing, I usually say yes when asked to be a compo organizer. :-)
Oldskool organizers at other parties, please weigh in with your opinions? The parts are currently rather easy to find for a non-mmx 133 + et6000 + gus + sb16. My machine has a motherboard with the HX chipset and I installed the larger tag SRAM to make all of the installed RAM cacheable. Also opinions on keeping the AWE vs. downgrading it to an SB16?
That RAM difference could explain why the compo machine ran our prod faster than my P166 with a TNT2...
in our area it is easier to find something like p166m/200mmx or shitloads of mendocinerons rather that non-mmx pentiums (but yes, the only issue making coding mmx stuff hard is that mmx is not well emulated in DOSBox :D)
so i will vote for p200mmx/430tx/32(or 64)mb/virgedx(or et6k but Tseng sucks imho :)/((gus && sb16) || awe32) which will, as I think, suffice almost everybody :) pretty overkill for '97 but imho well suited for hiend dos stuff.
so i will vote for p200mmx/430tx/32(or 64)mb/virgedx(or et6k but Tseng sucks imho :)/((gus && sb16) || awe32) which will, as I think, suffice almost everybody :) pretty overkill for '97 but imho well suited for hiend dos stuff.
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in our area it is easier to find something like p166m/200mmx or shitloads of mendocinerons rather that non-mmx pentiums (but yes, the only issue making coding mmx stuff hard is that mmx is not well emulated in DOSBox :D)
so i will vote for p200mmx/430tx/32(or 64)mb/virgedx(or et6k but Tseng sucks imho :)/((gus && sb16) || awe32) which will, as I think, suffice almost everybody :) pretty overkill for '97 but imho well suited for hiend dos stuff.
S3 sucks so bad for the setup you described.. :-)
The problem with going that high + mmx is, that there's an a1200 060 + falcon 060 in the same compo. The PC already ends up wiping the floor in terms of horsepower, with a 200mmx it goes way overkill. :-)
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S3 sucks so bad for the setup you described.. :-)
...only if with noname 70ns-or-ever-worse memory and crappy VBE 1.2 video BIOS, while you can get 35ns parts and VBE2.0-capable BIOS (with almost every mode needed, while ET6000 can't into 32bpp even with UniVBE :) is avail by S3, so it is not sucks _that_ bad :)
At Abduction 1996, the compo 060 Amiga had 16 megs fast
but on the PC side they hadn't made up their mind between 486 or Pentium (and arranged a voting), however they said there would only be 8 megs of RAM:
If I recall correctly, the actual compo machine ended up being something like 486/100 MHz. At least it was not a Pentium.
But the following year, Abduction 1997 compo machine specs were
To me 1997 felt somehow like the highest point of the golden DOS years, before Windows and 3D acceleration took over. It seems that Amiga and PC were roughly equally powerful. (feel free to speculate on 486 or Pentium vs 060) The problem with Amiga demos being slower was of course the obsession with PC style effects and having to do c2p. But now in hindsight we can be wiser. During the past 20 years, everyone has accumulated some taste and understanding for visuals and computer systems, and doing texture mapped vectors with chunky env bitmaps is no longer the holy grail of demo effects... (just kidding)
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A1200 is equipped with AmigaOS 3.1, 68060/50 MHz, 2 Megs chip +
16 Megs fast.
but on the PC side they hadn't made up their mind between 486 or Pentium (and arranged a voting), however they said there would only be 8 megs of RAM:
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PC will be equipped with DOS 6.2, 8 Megabytes of RAM, fast videocard (PCI
or VLB, at least 1 MB) and Gravis Ultrasound (1 MB) / Sound Blaster Pro
2.0.
If I recall correctly, the actual compo machine ended up being something like 486/100 MHz. At least it was not a Pentium.
But the following year, Abduction 1997 compo machine specs were
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The competition machines are:
Intel Pentium 150MHz
- MS-DOS 7.0
- 16MB RAM
- GUS Max 1MB (SB Pro will be installed when (/if) needed)
- 2MB VRAM PCI (S3) video card
The competition machine has 580000 bytes of free conventional me-
mory and it has many configurations (you choose one when submit-
ting your entry).
A1200/060
- Blizzard 1260 - 68060/50MHz
- AmigaOS 3.1
- 2MB chip RAM + 16 MB fast RAM
To me 1997 felt somehow like the highest point of the golden DOS years, before Windows and 3D acceleration took over. It seems that Amiga and PC were roughly equally powerful. (feel free to speculate on 486 or Pentium vs 060) The problem with Amiga demos being slower was of course the obsession with PC style effects and having to do c2p. But now in hindsight we can be wiser. During the past 20 years, everyone has accumulated some taste and understanding for visuals and computer systems, and doing texture mapped vectors with chunky env bitmaps is no longer the holy grail of demo effects... (just kidding)
The amount of RAM is an interesting topic. It is quite a lot more than a standard system of that era.
I checked the Assembly '97 invitation text file for the specs:
I have no clue what the actual compo machines were though. Also, "modern" AGA demos seem to require at least 32MB RAM.
I checked the Assembly '97 invitation text file for the specs:
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- Pentium 133 mhz with 16 MB of RAM
- MS-DOS 7.0
- The competition machine will be booted up with HIMEM and
EMM386, so make sure your productions runs with them.
- 2 MB PCI SVGA graphics card (a S3 964 accelerated card)
- Gravis UltraSound with 1 MB of on board memory and / or
Sound Blaster AWE 32 with 1 MB of on board memory
- 550 kb of free base memory
- highest allowed screen resolution is 640 x 480
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As the [Amiga] competition machine we will use:
A1200
2 mb chip memory
8 mb fast memory
68030 at 50 mhz
We are still considering a Blizzard 68060 turbocard for the
machine and a possibility to use some 24 bit graphics card. If you
have opinions about this, please send us comments.
I have no clue what the actual compo machines were though. Also, "modern" AGA demos seem to require at least 32MB RAM.
I think those memory sizes are normal. An office PC in 1997 had 16-32 megs of RAM, as far as I remember. Windows NT4 installer would not start with less than 12 megs, IIRC.
I meant having 128MB in the current compo machines.
Well yeah 128 megs is high, but do you expect someone to scavenge for obscure small SIMMs and rip out the nice big ones? ;) 32 or 64 megs could be more reasonable. I think I had 32 megs in my Pentium 100 in 1996-1997.
Any Assembly organizers around ?
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Any Assembly organizers around ?
o/
o/\o Yeahh!
Any chance you could help me with something: mathieu@p01.org
1024 THANKS!!
Any chance you could help me with something: mathieu@p01.org
1024 THANKS!!