(version 2.00, released at the 22nd of July, 1996) =3D=3D=3D OPENING WORDS =3D=3D=3D = You are now reading the invitation info file for ASSEMBLY'96. The information presented in this text file might not be final, so please t= ry to look for a new version(s) of this text file. You can probably find t= hem where you found this info file, but you can always find the latest ASSEMBLY '96 related files at the BBSes and FTP sites mentioned in the "contact information" chapter later in this text file. This info file is formatted for 80x50 text mode. Be sure to reserve your computer place tickets in advance because close to computer place reservation tickets have been already sold. The ticket reservation closes 10.8.1996. Check out the ASSEMBLY '96 invitation intro! Available from ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/party/1996/ASM96 (for PC compatibles) and in aminet mirrors (for the Amiga). The filename is S-ASM96.ZIP (PC). =3D=3D=3D WHERE AND WHEN =3D=3D=3D ASSEMBLY '96 will be held in Finland's largest conference centrum, called as the Helsinki Fair Centre. The Fair Centre is located in centr= al Helsinki. The street address of the fair centre is Rautatielaisenkatu 3. The party will start at 10:00 am on the 16th of August (Friday) and end 20:00 pm on the 18th of August (Sunday). The party place is very easy to find, if you take any train from the Central Railway station and get off on the next stop (Pasila) you will = be able to see the building complex. = ----------------------------------------------------------------INDEX----= ---- PAGE TITLE ---- ----- 2 How to get to the partyplace 3 Competitions 4 Voting system 4 Jury 5 PC competition rules (demos, 64k and 4k intros) 8 Amiga competition rules (demos, intros) 9 Graphics competition rules (graphics, raytrace, animation= ) 10 Music competition rules (4 and 32 channel tunes) 11 Wild Competition 12 C-64 competition rules (demos, music, gfx) 14 Prizes 16 Party features | 17 Party network | 17 Competitions shown on the Internet! | 18 Party radio 20 ASSEMBLY '96 CD-ROM 21 ASSEMBLY '95 CD-ROM available 22 ASSEMBLY '96 tickets 22 Buying tickets 22 Where can I buy tickets 22 Why should I buy a ticket in advance 23 Preliminary schedule 24 Disclaimer 25 Contact information - 1 - ------------------------------------------HOW TO GET TO THE PARTYPLACE---= ---- You will either arrive by plane, by boat, by bus, by train or by= car. If you are lucky enough to come by car, you should be able to fi= nd the party place very easily. If you come by plane and have lots of s= tuff with you, we would recommend to take a taxi, otherwise you shoul= d come by bus (cheaper). And if you come by boat (to Helsinki sea port)= and have lots of luggage, take the taxi, or take a tram or walk to t= he Central Railway station and take any local train from there. Local area bus tickets in Finland vary from around $2 to $4 US. = The taxi is of course more expensive. For example to take a normal t= axi from the airport to the party place will cost one person around $30 - $40 US. But if you take the Airport Taxi, it will be a lot cheaper (about half the price). If you take a local train from the Central railway station, get = off at the first stop (Pasila) and you can see the Helsinki Fair Cen= tre from there. - 2 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- The organizers reserve the right to make any changes to the competition rules, and to disqualify any entry if it is not suit= able to attend the competitions for some reason. Atleast one of the authors of a competiting product has to be pr= esent at the party place in order to attend the competitions and to receive possible prizes. In solo competitions (music, graphics, = 4kb) the author has to be present. A jury composed of known scene people (maybe even you!) will sel= ect an amount of 15 entries in each competition to the finals (to be= shown on the big screen to the audience). There will be different peop= le in the PC and Amiga jurys. In the graphics competition, the raytracing and also in the 4kb intro competition on PC, the competition version of the entry mu= st not display the author's name or group in any way. This is to preven= t the author's name from affecting the vote. After the announcement of= the results, the versions which are spread can include the author's signature. In the music competitions, we will not show the autho= r's name while we play the song in the competition. We will show the size of the tune, the number of channels used and the tracker us= ed on the screen. In the graphics, music, raytracing, animation and 4kb intro competitions we will show the name of the song/picture, but only= if it will not give hints on who has made it. "Maximum running length" below is only the amount of time we wil= l show a particular piece of art on the big screen. The demos/intros will have to run without ANY user interaction once started (although there can be a setup screen). The filenames of the productions have to comply with the ISO-966= 0 standard. This means that the only characters allowed in filenam= es are "A-Z" and "0-9". The maximum length of the filename is 8+3 chara= cters as in MS DOS standard. - 3 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- The productions MUST NOT save any files (for example configurati= on files) on the hard disk or the disk. In the music, graphics, raytracing and 4kb intro competitions on= ly one of the authors (if there are more than one) can be the official = author of the competing piece of art. For example, if two coders work o= n the same 4kb intro, only one of them can receive the prize and his n= ame in the party results. After all, these three competitions are meant= to be solo competitions. The authors have to have all copyrights to their production. If you have any questions about the rules, kindly contact ASSEMB= LY Organizing. 2.1. THE VOTING SYSTEM: We will use a disk voting system. Once you enter the party place= , you will be given the voting disk, which will include the voting pro= gram. We are going to have PC formatted DD disk with both Amiga and PC including both Amiga and PC voting program. You will be able to give your opinion on The Five Best in all co= mpe- titions, both on the Amiga and PC. 2.2 JURY Before you can give your opinion, a jury composed of known scene people will qualify the products to the finals. The member= s of the jury give points from 1 to 10 for each product and the avera= ge of the points will be its final score. 15 best scoring products wil= l qualify to finals. If there is more than one product that qualif= ied as 15th the jury will commonly decide which one of them will qua= lify. - 4 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- 2.3. PC COMPETITION RULES: The competition machine we will use: - Pentium 100 Mhz with 8 MB of RAM - MS-DOS 7.0 - 2MB PCI SVGA-board with S3 - 1 MB Gravis UltraSound sound card or original Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 - 550 kb free base memory Software configuration in the computer will include MS-DOS 7.0, with HIMEM and EMM386. The configuration will not be changed dur= ing the competition. One must be able to exit from PC-demos and intros at any time by pressing . PC-demos and intros must check if there are enviromental variabl= es for either GUS or Soundblaster. If the check finds both it choos= es GUS. The formats of the enviromental variables are: | GUS: ULTRASND=3D220,1,1,11,7 (address,dma,dma,gus irq,sb = irq) SB: BLASTER=3DA220 I7 D1 T1 (a=3Daddress,i=3Dirq,d=3Ddma) If the environmental variables are found the entry will proceed immediately to start of the production without any setup screen. This will eliminate the hassle with setup screens on the big screen. In PC 64kb intro competition two versions of the intro can be submitted. The competing version which is under 65536 bytes long= and supports either GUS or SB and the release version which supports both. Release version can be over 65536 bytes long. Competing 64= kb intro cannot be in any case longer than 65536 bytes. Both releas= e and competition version has to be submitted to the organizers be= fore the deadline. | The DOS4GW.EXE is located in the path, so you don't have to incl= ude | it. - 5 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- The main reason why SVGA modes with higher resolution than 640x4= 80 aren't allowed is because the maximum resolution supported by th= e video/data projectors we have is 640x480. And even if the projec= tors could show higher resolutions, the picture quality of different high resolution graphics modes would not look that much differen= t from one another (a video projector is NOT the same as a monitor= ). You should note that the picture produced by a video projector i= s not as good as a monitor picture. The video projector does not s= how pale colors well and in some cases can even lose them completely. Also the contrast can be different. These are common problems wi= th all video projectors and simply can't be corrected. Please try t= o understand these restrictions. | The following SVGA modes are guaranteed to work: 640x480x256c, | 640x480x64k and 640x480x16.7m. The video card will be VESA 2.0 | compliant. Your production MUST NOT assume that video card | supports linear frame buffer nor can it assume that other SVGA | video modes than listed above work. Note that you can now enter more than one demo or 64kb intro to = the competitions, if you so desire. DEMO - Maximum size in executable form is 4096 kb - Maximum showing time is 8 minutes, the demo itself can be longer - Maximum base memory requirement is 550 kb | - 100% VGA register level compatible graphics | modes and SVGA modes 640x480 with 256, 64k | and 16.7m colors are accepted - Pure animation files are not accepted - Also executables only including an animation and an animation player will not be accepted, this is not an animation competition - Gravis Ultrasound (1024kb) and SB PRO/SB 16 sup= port required. Also the demo has to have a no sound option - The name of the files have to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The demo MUST NOT save anything on the hard dis= k - 6 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- INTRO - Maximum size in executable form is 64 kb (65536 bytes) - Maximum showing time is 5 minutes - Maximum base memory requirement is 550 kb | - 100% VGA register level compatible graphics | modes and SVGA modes 640x480 with 256. 64k and | 16.7m color are accepted - Pure animation files are not accepted - on the release version Gravis Ultrasound (1024k= b) and SB PRO/SB 16 support required. This version can= be over 65536 bytes long. Also a no sound option i= s required. - on the competition version either Gravis Ultrasound or SB PRO/SB 16 support required - The names of the files have to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The intro MUST NOT save anything on the hard di= sk 4KB-INTRO - Maximum size in executable form is 4096 bytes - Maximum running length is 3 minutes - Maximum base memory requirement is 550 kb - NO MUSIC or other sound is allowed (this is because this a coders' competition, not musicians') - Only 100% VGA register level compatible graphics modes are accepted (no SVGA/VESA) - Only one io by one coder - The namof the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The intro MUST NOT save anything on the hard di= sk - 7 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- 2.4. AMIGA COMPETITION RULES: The competition machine is a A1200 with 2 megs chip + 4 megs fast with 68030 50 MHz processor. One must be able to exit from Amiga demos and intros at any time= by pressing left mousebutton. DEMO - Maximum size is 4 megabytes - Must by harddisk installable - Maximum running length is 8 minutes - The names of the files have to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The maximum length of the file name is 8+3 characters - The demo MUST NOT save anything on the disk INTRO - Maximum size in executable form is 64 kb - Maximum running length is 5 minutes - The names of the files have to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The maximum length of the file name is 8+3 characters - The intro MUST NOT save anything on the disk - 8 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- 2.5. THE GRAPHICS COMPETITIONS: GRAPHICS - The maximum resolution allowed is 640x480 - The maximum amount of simultaneous onscreen colors is 256 - The palette is the standard 16,7 million color true color palette - Pictures drawn with Amiga will be shown with Amiga Brilliance (no executables!) - PC pictures will have to be in standard LBM, PCX, TGA or GIF format - Pictures drawn with PC will be shown with CSHOW (or some other good picture viewer) - Scanned, ripped and raytraced pictures will be disqualified - In addition, you must submit a version of the final picture which doesn't have your signatu= re on it (which will be shown on the big screen) - Only one picture by one graphics artist - The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The maximum length of the file name is 8+3 characters RAYTRACING - The maximum resolution allowed is 640x480 - The maximum amount of simultaneous onscreen colors is 16.7 million - Pictures will be shown on PC with true color card (no executables!) - Pictures have to be in JPG or TARGA format - In addition, you must submit a version of the final picture which doesn't have your signatu= re on it (which will be shown on the big screen) - Only one picture by one graphics artist - The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The maximum length of the file name is 8+3 characters - 9 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- ANIMATION - The maximum running length is 3 minutes - The frame rate of the animation has to be 12.5 pics/sec - The animation itself must be in MPEG-1 format without any sound - The maximum amount of simultaneous onscreen colors is 16.7 million - The maximum resolution is 320x200 - Please use CMPEG 1.0 for creating MPEG-file f= or maximum compatibility. Use parameters: -v1 -d0 -m0 ipb.ctl [list] [mpeg.mpg] (you can download the file from our WWW-site = or from any major FTP-site) - The animation will be played with ASSEMBLY Organizing MPEG player (you can download it f= rom our WWW-site) - You can also supply an audio track for the animation. The audio track must have followin= g characteristics: RAW (unsigned 8 bit, mono) f= ormat, playback rate 12288 - The animation must be delivered to us in hard= drive or in CD-ROM - The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The maximum length of the file name is 8+3 characters 2.6. THE MUSIC COMPETITIONS: We will not show the name of author on the screen, but we will s= how the size of the tune, the number of channels used and the tracke= r used on the screen while playing the tune. 4CHANNEL - Maximum size is 880kb (=3D one Amiga disk) - Maximum amount of channels is 4 - Maximum running length is 3 minutes - 10 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- - All songs will be played with the Amiga ProTracker v2.x (MOD) - Entries must be in MOD-format (no executables= , no renamed, no powerpacked) - Only one song by one musician - The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The maximum length of the file name is 8+3 characters MULTICHANNEL - Maximum amount of channels is 32 - Maximum size of the song is 1024 kb in a playable format (including all samples, pattern data, etc.) - Maximum running length is 3 minutes - the format has to be some of the following: S3M, MOD, XM, MTM and ULT - All songs will be played with a PC compatible player using a 1MB Gravis UltraSound - Only one song by one musician - The name of the file has to comply to the ISO-9660 standard (i.e. NO special characters are allowed). - The maximum length of the file name is 8+3 characters 2.7. WILD COMPETITION - The productions can be anything from computer generated animat= ions, demos on ancient or exotic computers to plain video art. The o= nly requirement is that the productions are cool. - Maximum showing time is 15 minutes, the production itself can = be longer - The production has to be delivered on a VHS cassette (european= PAL format). The cassette will not be returned. - No copyrighted material or material that violates Finnish or international laws is allowed in the production. - Maximum 30 productions will be shown on the big screen during = the night between Saturday and Sunday. - 11 - -------------------------------------------------------COMPETITIONS------= ---- 2.8. COMMODORE 64 COMPETITIONS: GENERAL RULES: - Only one contribution from each group/artist is accepted for each competition serie. - Contributions must be 100% finished before the deadline, because we will copy and spread all of them at the party. This is just to avoid final versions being released months or possibly even years after the party. - The deadlines aren't too flexible so please deliver your contributions in time (in other words: Early enough) to av= oid hassle. - Your contribution disks won't be returned (Doing so would = cause an enormous hassle, just use your imagination and guess wh= y!). RULES FOR C64 DEMO COMPETITION: - The demo will be run on a standard C64 with original 1541 drive and an Action Replay MK6 cartridge. - Each demo will be shown for a maximum of 15 minutes. - Coding your demos in such a manner that pressing space isn= 't necessary to proceed is highly recommended. If, however, y= our demo should require any user interaction, we want a person= from the contributing group to run the demo. After all, there's= no way we could possibly know which effects the coder would l= ike to be shown a bit longer than the others... - At least one person must be present from the contributing group (If it's not a group-release (Which is extremely unlikely), then the coder must be present him/herself). RULES FOR C64 GRAPHICS COMPETITION: - The picture must be an executable file. - ALL graphic formats are accepted. - Only the picture must be seen on the screen; no scrollers = or other moving things are allowed. Background music's accept= able (Not recommendable, though), but during the competition no= -one will hear it (Audio equipment will be turned off). - 12 -