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Revision 2018 - 30. March to 2. April - Saarbrücken, Germany

category: parties [glöplog]
agreed with every point
added on the 2018-04-04 22:07:28 by _docd^hjb _docd^hjb
I join the chorus of praise! Revision manages to stay a wow-experience, even after all the years. 8 times Saarbrücken feel somewhat odd to me, because Revision still has that feeling of *that new Easter party*. Old farts we are.
But whatever, I had a great time meeting old and new faces and being blast away by all the incredible prods in the compos there. From (lower scale) personal experience, I know what it means to run a demoparty again and again and you, dear organizers, simply manage to impress me - more and more every year. Thanks for pulling this off again and again; i thank all that build up, run the party run and tear down, but also and especially those few people starting with it all months before Easter. Truly amazing :-)

Oh and yes, using the smart phone app actually solved the forget to vote problem (for me) because I simply live-voted during or right after the compo. It also solved the "be there at the right time", because of the push messages. And, DocD, a sunday school picnic indeed - thanks for your post here, I had a good laugh thinking back to Mekka&Symposium ;-)

Sorry we didn't show up on Monday again. We left right after waking up, due to *stuff* and had to listen to the prizegiving trough SceneSat (thanks, Truck & the guys). Not the worst decision for once (-> delay). Still I know how stressful the time before the prizegiving can be (rather: always is). Good to hear that it was possible to delay the airport shuttles at least a t bit. Hopefully everybody got back home safely, even if it got late.

See you next year, party people. I wouldn't know what to do during the Easter days, if there was no traditional Easter demoscene party.

(And a bit of advertising: We gonna have a look at many of the great prods from Revision 2018 at the upcoming Demonights 005 in Berne, April 27th).
added on the 2018-04-04 22:10:10 by unlock unlock
I thought the Twitch coverage was pretty good, all things considered - I was a bit unimpressed with the beatboxing antics of the hosts and much preferred hearing Truck and cohorts do their best to explain and illuminate the proceedings as the opportunity allowed.

More of that, in a slightly more structured way (maybe with some prepared examples, slides and even old classic example demos to run when the main on-stage stuff is between events) would be excellent.

I thought it was a good advert for the scene (it made me hugely want to take part in one at some level, sometime soon).
added on the 2018-04-04 22:34:56 by fliege fliege
@AceMan
Quote:
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.


Usually we receive Amiga graphics in .IFF or .PNG (or whatever) format, and that image will go straight into the video file that we prepare containing the workstages. (Obviously, if we can see that it's a 320x256x32colour image, we don't need to load it into an actual Amiga to confirm that it fits the rules...) On this occasion - and I'm pretty sure it was the same in previous years - we delivered that video to the beamteam in the original (320x256) resolution, and it would have been upscaled by the video player they were using.

I have to admit I didn't see the final results this time, as I was still frantically finishing off the oldskool 4K recordings while that compo was going on... but if it wasn't up to scratch, then that's an easy fix for next year: I'll tweak our scripts so that we apply some appropriate high-quality upscaling on the recording side, and deliver it to the beamteam in full HD.


@bsp
Quote:
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).

There's really not enough time in the recording schedule to add any extra analog processing steps, I'm afraid. But thanks for the feedback - we made quite a few quality improvements in our recording chain this year, and if it's reaching the point where it's "too good" to be authentic, that's something for us to keep in mind too :-)
added on the 2018-04-04 23:05:15 by gasman gasman
Oh yes, and for random fun stuff I was totally happy (and kinda internally laughing a bit) to find jcoco chocolate in the airport before I left that I had seen once before (and at a price that wasn't more than a store outside, I determined later) as it totally looks like it says jco jco:

BB Image (Not my photo. Credits to cocoa-heaven.com)

He totally received it, so hopefully he found it as yummy as I found the sample bits I tried.
Amstrad was again good this year with a record of 5 entries for 3 compos (2x Oldskoolgraphics, 2X OldskoolDemos and 1x OldskoolIntro) and managed to be ranked top3 in the 3 compos, with also 2 prods ranked 4th, having had one "medails" of each type.

Was quite a chokker to see how greyish and sad the C64 colours could look just after the awesome phX, and the votes were really really close.

Isometrikum was the obvious total winner in Oldskool Intro, the public reaction was really impressive.

And great to see onlya pair of Amiga graphics could defeat some well done AmstradCPC fullscreeners graphics.

Hope I can come next year.
added on the 2018-04-04 23:16:57 by MacDeath MacDeath
Thank you for the great party once again! <3 It was again nice to meet all the people again even though the time always runs out and you don't have enough time to chat with everyone you'd like. Oh, well that's just how it is with lot of people.

The Logicoma set was awesome and I enjoyed it a lot! However, someone measured the noise levels and the constant value in the main hall was way over 100dB (don't know the accuracy of the measurement and don't remember the exact value 120 maybe). So based on that the volume could have indeed been bit lower and still enough to get people jumping. I wear earplugs so I didn't mind but I know people who can't take that much noise even with earplugs.

The compos were great once again so cheers for all that participated!

The vegan food stand was awesome and saved pretty much my weekend! I hope they are there again next year. :)

I was bit worried before the party how I manage in wheelchair and using crotches at the party place but everything went fine in the end. Only minus was that it was bit difficult to get outside as the ramp is not exactly aligned with the door (and it is quite steep)... Also getting coffee was hard as the trash bags came into way so I couldn't reach the coffee maker when in wheelchair. :P Just disabled problems I guess... Still, points for really good accessibility! Also thanks for the people who e.g. opened/closed doors for me or helped otherwise. :) I hope next time I will be up and walking (at least bit better) again. :)
added on the 2018-04-04 23:26:16 by rimina rimina
Quote:
"Table reservations" got really bad this year

I can understand that groups with people who are meeting from different cities and countries want to sit close to each other, be it to finish a production or just to chat more easily. But naturally some will arrive some hours or even a day later than others. I'm pretty sure that the day before Revision pretty much everyone knows whether or not he or she will attend. Just because someone might get there later, be it because of a longer drive or private issues they would have to sit separately from their group and their friends.

So, maybe being able to reserve a table for your folks is not such a bad idea. You could still have every other row "unreservable" or just have the ones with the back to the screen reservable or whatever. Or just have reservations for pre-paid tickets. You could even charge extra for reservations and put the money to good use around the party-place. Just saying I wouldn't demonize the concept of reserved seating. People will naturally wiggle their way around it otherwise, be it by putting an extra-computer or a jacket or bag there to make an empty seat look used.

What you could actually look for however is overuse of space. I can understand that some people with retro-equipment or a crazy wild-compo entry will need more space, but I saw a microwave take up a space for example. And everyone in the vicinity was *REALLY HAPPY* when someone heated up what smelled like 3 weeks old cheese out of a goat's arse with it.
added on the 2018-04-05 00:19:51 by tokra tokra
Microwave?! and they didn't trip the power for the row[s] it was plugged in at when they turned it on?
Once again it was a party of extraordinary magnitude.
You have our gratitude <3
added on the 2018-04-05 01:31:45 by Haohmaru Haohmaru
Hi, third time Revision visitor, the first time orga here.

Thank you very much for such a great party. Everything was pretty much covered in earlier posts so I just wanted to mention how impressed I was seeing the whole organisation from inside.

The amount of work that went into making this party happen is absolutely insane and while you can already appreciate it as a visitor, there is so much more going on behind the scenes. Which was a pretty cool experience for me.

Yes, there were some compos I expected a little bit more from but the overall impression is still very good. Compos + people is what made it awesome once again.

Hats off to everyone involved (either as a visitor, orga or a sofa-scener).

Now... there are about 378 days till the next Revision and we need to deal with it.
added on the 2018-04-05 03:12:38 by LiSU^TRS LiSU^TRS
That was just great again. The ignored, for easter grave diggered christmas-cookie-bowl is still filled up to the half. I was kevining the whole time. Wow!Ü I'm in an unstable healthy condition, so I had to quit the luscious ride for self-saving reasons and also I just dont like going from 0 to 600 humans. Revision filled up my akku a lot. TY! btw. Three days in a row the alarm clock (DQ-580) was not able to get me out of sleep, hearing off^^, so I missed the prize giving and showdown blabla... not that important for me, so... strike!

@vscd
Why servers die when I visit them? (asking myself) It's the same with software-bugs. They just came out when I'm around. lol Sorry for multi-tabbing it down, if so, if so not god/murph knows. ^^
I was asking some years ago already, but not sure. Are you using this WE-domain remotely from somewhere else or are you still living in WE? If so, we should meet in that "dusty 'boring linux makes them think they are pro'-room" I think, having a coffee, sixpack...what ever, installing linux. :D
Best regards! (now pouet.net is away...Whew! - reboot kurva. The world is downloading the entries?!11)
added on the 2018-04-05 06:36:19 by aqu aqu
Out of curiousity, when did "table reservations" start being a thing? They used to be explicitly banned a few years ago.
added on the 2018-04-05 09:19:02 by Gargaj Gargaj
Hello!

Great party, thoroughly enjoyed. No hard feelings about the delayed prizegiving; I think it's hard to appreciate just how stressful that situation is for the organizers if you haven't been there yourself.

Things I learned this year:

  1. The vegan food truck serves the best food by far
  2. Noise cancelling headphones will block out everything but the main stage concerts
  3. Fernet Branca can actually be a bad idea
  4. The regular rooms at Mercure can be gone more than a month in advance
  5. The weather just keeps being slightly less shitty than the forecasts predict
  6. The name of "that tune" is Cocio & Finsprit
  7. Rendering text on the compo slides is hard

Will try my sincerest to be back next year.
added on the 2018-04-05 09:19:40 by Radiant Radiant
Quote:
Hello I am a sofascener and I would like to say some things about my experience watching revision on twitch.


I sofascene'd too, but I can't relate to the criticism that has been brought up. In fact, the hosts explained quite a lot of things in a very pleasant manner. Sure, they had to say "gosh, there's no way we can explain this right now" during the compos a few times, but that's expected -- the compo organizers aren't waiting for Truck finishing his explanation of "Rob is Jarig" before going on with the compo, after all.

I can understand that it might be useful to give more generic explanations for newbies sometimes, like a TV show host doing his/her "if you just tuned in, here's what happens ..." thing, but it's really hard to find a balance between educating new viewers and not making it too boring for experienced demosceners. To me, the balance seemed spot-on -- commentary of e-sports Twitch streams also doesn't explain all the mechanics of the game that's being played ever hour anew.
added on the 2018-04-05 10:35:30 by KeyJ KeyJ
The Twitch stream is an important (future) feature. Future because it does outreach to the already computer-aligned internet-youth, and with "e-sports" being mentioned by KeyJ, this broadcasting of the Shader Showdown Competition does bring proper e-sports to the Twitch audience. Twitch-streaming a major demoparty is basically presenting to this "nerd-o-sphere" crowd The-Real-Thing™ and maybe -- just maybe -- draw in some youngsters and motivate them to not write corny fanfiction but become originally creative.

Truck, Franky and Subi did a good job.
added on the 2018-04-05 11:37:46 by d0DgE d0DgE
@aqu
I'm living in WE, so, yeah, just drop me an Email for coffee...

...by the way, the SERVER is back ONLINE, so the downtime was only 2-3 hours, but it still runs on the old harddrives. ZFS managed to repair it overnight but they still scream for new ones... so we'll replace the old server with new fresh SSD and some Xeon soon. Why? Because we have computers which can beat your computers ;) I just want to wait a few more weeks.

so...for all:

######################## Pictures online again @ ORIGINAL-Location + Mirror
added on the 2018-04-05 11:49:04 by vscd vscd
For certain reasons this Revision was a bit different for me, but it was one of the most amazing weekends of my life, even when I didn't feel that great! <3

I love all of you so much, and I can't express the love I fell during the weekend for everyone that was THERE! Oldskoolers I offended by calling newbie (sorry Bob :D), oldskoolers I hung out with and laughed so much with (Hi Britelite, RM, Dodke, Subi's wife, and others at that table, Hi Pantoloon, Spotter, Ayatollah, xxx, Facet, Magic and so many others) new people that got me so excited (hey Ninjadev, hi xy, hi turboanalisis, hi and all others, you guys are AWESOME!), people I felt i didn't get enough time with, cause it's revision (hi Smash, Kusma, TfT, Response, Inque, Reality404, Bruno, so many others) people I drunkenly shared great moments with (hi Tronimal :D), people I bumped into all the way at the end but luckily had a chat with (hi Optimus! great to chat!) and all others that made me realize why I still do this after nearly 25 years.

Thanks to Lesnik & Jacku for doing their AMAZING set right when I needed it most and thanks to Logicoma for destroying the hall afterwards (and the group where now my go-to response for is 'fuck you! <3' :D)

Huge thanks to all our amazing shader coders, you guys really put up a fight and I apologise that some rounds maybe were judged 'wrongly' cause we just COULDN'T hear the difference on stage, I promise we'll improve this next year!

I hope we keep doing this for so long, cause we got something so special here! <3
added on the 2018-04-05 11:57:34 by okkie okkie
This was my first Revision, and it was amazing!

Huge ENORMOUS thanks to orgas who were able to respond to a very late and sudden consulate request for additional visa documents. Without their prompt help I wouldn't be there (got my visa just one day before the party)!

The sad part is that I had very little time and strength to socialize and make friends (sleep-deprived from 20 hours of transportation from Siberia to Germany and 5 hours time difference, and also looming 4/8k deadlines). I just hope that next time I will be less tired and awkward and will talk to you more.

On the bright side, whatever little conversations I had were totally great and I'm very happy that I was able to talk to you!

Winning the live coding compo was also overwhelming. Did not expect that at all and honestly thought that I would be eliminated at the very first stage by whatever opponent assigned. Thank you, the audience, for liking whatever sleep-deprived crap I was hastily hacking together on stage :D.

P.S. If anyone interested, I will be streaming my Revision 2018 summary later today at ~13..14 UTC and will comment on the live coding compo and also 4k and 8k entries that I made visuals for.
added on the 2018-04-05 13:06:31 by provod provod
Regarding the shader compo voting, i thought some results were weird, and it also became obvious in the final that people with more vocal group of supporters (like the french we're pulling for flopine) had a clear advantage in the voting stage which might not be very sportsmanlike :) So there should definitely be some improvement there, i would suggest live voting bars showing up on the screen and people being able to vote in their computers / mobile phones and the MC yell asking for participation and noise. It's relatively easy to implement, still engage the audience in making some noise, and everyone can see the results and adjust accordingly realtime.

The shader showdown overall seems to be gaining some interest, and it's nice way to also engage with people outside the demoscene, would be cool to have some sort of qualifier rounds during the year at multiple demoparties leading up to a grand final at revision.

we were also talking at the partyplace that it might be interesting to have some online showdowns livestreamed. Although the toolchain would probably need to be reworked for that. And a few other technical and crowd engament issues arise. But it's an idea worth considering i think.
added on the 2018-04-05 15:09:05 by psenough psenough
Quote:
Regarding the shader compo voting, i thought some results were weird, and it also became obvious in the final that people with more vocal group of supporters (like the french we're pulling for flopine) had a clear advantage in the voting stage which might not be very sportsmanlike :) So there should definitely be some improvement there, i would suggest live voting bars showing up on the screen and people being able to vote in their computers / mobile phones and the MC yell asking for participation and noise. It's relatively easy to implement, still engage the audience in making some noise, and everyone can see the results and adjust accordingly realtime.

Considering flopine didn't win the final, it would seem that the part of the audience who preferred provod's shader was more vocal.

I think the format is great as it is, voting included. It's a live compo, with focus on live. Live coding, live music, live audience.

Quote:
everyone can see the results and adjust accordingly realtime

You say this as it was a good thing.
added on the 2018-04-05 15:41:09 by lug00ber lug00ber
The nature of Live includes the inability to plan for everything. Last not least I think the result reflected the quality very well in the end.

Hugs to flopine, winner of my heart.
added on the 2018-04-05 15:53:21 by rp rp
-->me not french. (;
concerning the shader showdown:
1. the only rule change i'm willing to consider is bringing back stand-in-the-box-voting, which means we tape down a square for each competitor and you can then cast your vote by standing in either box. anything involving phones, computers, etc, is just not an option because as lug00ber correctly says, the focus for this event is and always will be on the live element and the crowd itself is supposed to become a part of the show, and not hunched over their smartphones trying to figure out some voting website, that is actually the diametric opposite of what we're trying to achieve ;)
2. when the hosts could not hear the difference between the shouting for flopine and provod (which was later on confirmed by someone in the hall who brought a dB meter, used it during livecoding and found that the levels were indeed the same), i stepped on stage and mcmahoned it. i'm sure that some people won't appreciate my decision, so be it, they already had their chance to make the call and didn't ;)
3. qualification via other parties is in the works, revision and outline are willing to sponsor the necessary equipment (pc's, videomixer, etc) and personnel (aka: me), several other parties have expressed interest in hosting matches and tournaments. so i think there is a decent chance that we will launch the first edition of these tournaments in about 36 days :)
added on the 2018-04-05 16:40:24 by havoc havoc
Thanks to all who tried to teach me German :) It was funny (probably more for you than for me but still..) Daine oberschenkel sind schone!
added on the 2018-04-05 19:55:30 by lesnik lesnik

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