»PIC:barclip.ilbm» »CL8: Breakpoint 2003 Party Report »PIC:barclip.ilbm» »CL8: Written by Darkhawk of IRIS »CL1:It's FREEZING! And some people are really sad in their childish attempts to gain some attention.. But ohh well, here we are.. Another party report, another day without sleep, another loud party. And yet, somehow has changed, and something has gone in order for this one to have come into being around Easter 2003. The Breakpoint 2003 party is held in the Easter days, from friday to monday, at the same time as the quite famous, and quite dead Mekka/Symposium party was held. The reasons for the death of MS are (other than the tidbits offered by Steeler in an interview elsewhere in this mag) largely kept private, but Breakpoint was the party to take over from the MS series. 4 of the 6 mainorganizers of the MS have arranged this, along with most of the old staff. Only the location has changed, some would say. However, I have a feeling, which might be preliminary, seeing that this is the first day, that more than that might have changed. In any case, let's start with the boring beginning, and go from there. This time around, after our obligatory internal slave meeting, we were only 3 IRIS'ers taking the trip southwards to Germany. Adonis, Ransom and I, Darkhawk. With us we had one Curt Cool of Depth, and a lot of equipment. It was a tight fit in Adonis' Suzuki Alto, as usual. And as usual, we survived the trip, though it had suddenly become much longer, as Bundeswehr Depot Bingen, the location of the party, is around 600 km farther to the south than Fallingbostel was. No matter, we drove through the night, and arrived, through a lot of twists, turns and small rural cities, to the partyplace, situated atop an idyllic cliff, with a view towards even more rural cities, aswell as to a lot of vineyards. The sun was shining, people were arriving, we had a few beers, everything was well.. The party place is kinda' run down we noticed, infact the party hall is one big, old hall probably used for vehivle storage once. No isolation here, but it was a warm sunny day, so that was not on our minds. We set up our computers, noticed the small bigscreen, noticed the massive audio equipment, and went around, meeting people, boozing and doing the EC. The latter took most of our time, I assure you.. Food was quite diverse, the prices ok, but it didn't satisfy a hungry stomach all that well, and we quickly tired of German wurst in xx variants. The organizers sold beers and colas at affordable prices, so all in all, you needn't take a trip into town to get supplies, which was good, since 'town', as in 'Bingen' was 15 km or so away, and not a very big town either. We're really out in farm country here.. So much so infact, that the only outbound internet line here is ONE (!) ISDN line, which the organizers use. Well, this created a lot of problems for us, but more about that later. When I said that you could get anything you wanted here, I sorta' lied, because in order to have a shower, one has to go with the partybus at predetermined hours, not including the first day (today), to some sports centre around Bingen, and bathe there. Well ok, the partybus is free and a nice idea, it drives each hour, and goes between hotels, the maintrainstation, the showers and the partyplace. This first day, the 3 things on the timeschedule, official opening, live jam session and demoshow have been delayed some hours, and the organizers are busy fixing.. THINGS.. Let's talk about that now. The partyplace got incredibly cold after the sun had gone, and the heating provided doesn't do much to help. I've never been to a party with that low a temperature actually. It's not a fun thing, nothing you can just shrug off; as I am typing this, I can feel my fingers beginning to grow too cold and sluggish, and Ransom sitting beside med, must curl up in his sleepingbag while coding, else it gets too cold for him to move his fingers properly. I mean.. It's really bad, and lays a damper on the scene spirit here, since we all concentrate upon staying warm and ignoring the pain of the cold. And it IS that bad, really. The organizers try to cover the holes here and there, but it must be an impossible task, and I don't want to think about the sleepinghall at all, which is just as big as the partyhall, lying next to it. But, actually I think I will go to bed and test it out soon.. Impressions from the first day: Nice view, nice landscape. Too far away from better food/etc. facilities. Around 700 sceners the first day. Massive sound, that's nice, a good, sharp projector, but sadly a small (relatively speaking) bigscreen. Toilet facilities consist of 2 mobile WC-wagons, that quickly became.. Not so hygiejnic, but which will be cleaned each day or so. Some pathetic poles (not everyone, I'm sure), going around shouting into megaphones to be heard, shouting rubbish to eachother and being drunk. This irritates me now, it seems like some in the polish scene have developed this braindead party 'culture', where they must go around, making a mess of things, shouting to make sure people notice them, etc. Heh, how simple to analyze psychologically. But this infantile display of 'please, notice me, I'm somewhat cool?' is actually not only pathetic, but also a bit sad for those involved, their lifes can't be too happy, if they need to resort to such things. It might also end with violence later on, if people are irritated enough by them. In any case, it's a poor way to profilate both your country and your groups. And yes, I think it's been worse than it usually is on the MekkaSymposium, although the urge to do things like that isn't new to that clique of sceners. Anyway, now I can't really type anymore, my fingers are numb, so I will check out the sleepinghall.. Shudder.. Back from the para-elemental plane of ice... Ok, I haven't been in that cold a sleepingspace at any party since The Gathering 94', where there was water, snow and ice flowing in rivers inside the tent. Oh well, it wasn't quite on that level, but it wasn't pleasant. Coming back to the partyhall, it is still bitterly cold, and people have started making jokes about this, and calling this Freezing Point, hehe. The things you do to survive.. Anyway, today we hitched a ride with the party bus to the town, looking for surplies. This bus is a rather nice, and free thing, at least. I think the plan is to do a little work on the EC, but focus on boozing (yesterday it was the other way around.. really). Our 96k game couldn't get finished in time, and now we put our hopes on our rather nice demo, that has at least been 50% finished by now.. I see a trend here. Oh well. Now the 4k competitions have ended, and the theme graphics compo is coming up. There were 4k's for C64, Amiga and PC, Tulou, Scarab and Spaceballs+Ephidrena released intros. The latter one will win, I'm sure, but the Scarab one was great too. Anyway, most impressive of all was the last PC 4k being shown. It was quite fantastic, and I have very seldomly, or never, used that word about anything PC scenish, so.. It'll win for sure, so check it out if you can, it's sure to become a classic (and then it's allowed to see it, as an Amiga owner, hehe). Actually, while we wanted to booze today, we're still sitting here, working on the EC, but it looks like we can wrap things up somewhat quickly today. Also, while the first day was a cold and somewhat boring affair, I can feel the scene-spirit begin to sneak in now, after the first compo's. It also looks like the C64 scene will deliver a lot of productions. Sadly things are more dire in regards to our own scene. 3 4k's, but rumours say not very many 64k's or demos. We shall see.. And now the heating in the partyplace is getting better, they stopped some holes and turned the heat up or something. So if this continues like this, it's actually fine, hope they have done the same thing in the sleepinghall, because it was terrible in there. Well, no, there is still a portal to the para-elemental plane of ice inside the sleepinghall. But I took some precautions, and brought extra socks. For feet and hands. Yes, it actually is that bad. Oh well, nothing to whimper about, heh.. As the party progresses, and we now are some hours before the Amiga democompetition, it seems like the fine intentions of having a relaxed party and take it easy with the EC have been put to shame. Actually I've been working with the EC and the problem of getting and testing our demo via the one outgoing ISDN line they have here for quite some time. But it has to be said, the organizers are really friendly and forthcoming people, especially so Scamp, the network manager. So, we managed to deliver our demo via the net. It disappeared mysteriously however, but resubmitted via disk, they finally got hold of it. Sadly, I also got to know how many demos there will be released for the Amiga. Only TBL, MAWI and we will release a demo. Top groups to be sure, but there's a long way to the 20 or so demos of MS2k1, or the around 11 (? embarrassing..) at last year. I hope this is no trend, but I think I know better. At least 2 demos were released at TG I know (Ephidrena came 2nd in the multi platform compo, Spaceballs third), but even then, we have a total of 5 (probably 6, if Contraz also released a demo at TG, but I do not know this) demos. This is indeed poor, since this time of the year traditionally is where the whole Amiga scene tries to band together and release something. But well, at least the 3 demos will be pretty good, I hope (and hey, we will at least get 3rd place, hehe). During this sunday, the sun entered Bingen and surroundings, so a lot of sceners were outside partying. The organizers supplied a place to have a fire going, and I think they are also maintaining it. There is also a DJ, who is playing for people outside (aswell as inside usually, since there is a separate boozing/chill out tent. The compos today were, as usual, of a good overall quality, but sadly, there was no Amiga 64k compo; it was cancelled because only one entry had been delivered, an intro by Veezya. I tried to magically produce an OCS intro too, but the organizers told me 2 weren't enough either.. Heh, so no egoistical looting of prizemoney there. Still, a shame on many levels, that there were no intros. The PC 64k intros I didn't see, with the exception of the one Chaos coded, but well, nothing as amazing as in the 4k compo, so I needn't write anything about that. However, the party really started flowing better yesterday, and today the temperature is fine, and the compos run without problems, although they are all a bit delayed. Nothing irritating though. This is really a huge gathering of creative and hardworking sceners, coupled with the lazy, alcohol imbibing kind of sceners too, naturally, hehe.. I wish I.. Ahh well, later maybe.. Moan, moan.. Ok, beer in hand now, and the PC demo compo is running, which enables me to do some work again, after the Amiga and Console demo compos. As I knew (mwaha?), there were only 3 Amiga demos. Light 2 by IRIS, Fate fits Karma by MAWI, and Magia by TBL. Actually it was a very nice democompo, for as long as it did last. People were very much in the mood, and it was very uplifting watching the crowd. Of course it was nice watching the demos too, hehe. People were sad that there weren't more demos, but still very impressed with those that were there. I plan on doing my usual MS Production Review, this time slightly changed to the BP Production Review, hehe. But I won't have time for that in this EC, I think. Personally, I think IRIS should win it all.. But apart from that, objectively looking, it will end up with TBL winning easily, and probably MAWI will win less easily over us.. Hrmm, one can hope for another outcome, but let's see.. In any case, if we want to wrap this mag up and be done with the rest of the work, I will have to end my party report here. This party started out rather flat I think, but it became much better, luckily. A comparison with MS might be unfair, but I still feel the MS parties have been better than this one in most aspects. However, this doesn't at all mean that Breakpoint is not a good party, I think it is. However, poor facilities, not too many happenings arranged by the organizers (as opposed to MS), and organizers, that are a bit too lenient with irritating people, are somewhat negative points. But on the other hand, this is a real scene party, with lots of sceners, very friendly and helpful organizers, and the right atmosphere (now, at least), so still, thumbs up, and I hope you manage to finetune the party for next year. I'll be there in any case (if we win the democompo, I might rewrite the last part a bit, hehe).