Do you lead a busy life? Probably, and I do as well. Nevertheless, there's one item which has been one and the same in my calendar for four years until now. About the 3rd weekend in March it always says: FOREVER! It stands for the Forever 8-bit party, probably the biggest 8-bit multiplatform party of today, which is regularly hosted by the town of Trencin in Slovakia. Simply put, this is a party report from Forever Quattro (the official name of the 4th Forever) which took place March 14 - 16, 2003.

Wotnau / DMAgic (Published on 31. march 2003)

[9] : 01. Apr 2003 21:00   

I will greetz all penny pinchers!

LHS

[10] : 02. Apr 2003 12:33   

LHS I’m afraid I don?t understand your reply wery well but does it mean you are upset that we didn?t give you the T-Shirt for 1k intro? I apologise again but I wasnt the guy responsible for prices, as every year Spectrum-orgs were. If you want I will give you mine next forever. (or when I get to Monastery party, maybe).

CreaMD

[11] : 02. Apr 2003 12:54   

Wotnau explained to me so maybe you mean those who didn’t come to the party. Yeah! Greeting to all those lazy asses which didn’t come to the party ;-)))

CreaMD

[12] : 02. Apr 2003 18:59   

Teplaky rulez!

mikey/ng

[13] : 03. Apr 2003 07:36   

it is a bit dissapointing to have so few demos competing in such a nice party. i think the demo competition is one of the most important aspects of a party. it is the demo compo that the party creates the biggest added value to the scene. can anybody think of ways to increase number of demo competitors? i don’t know, maybe a date change (somewhere away from floppy and breakpoint). or some sort of increased promotion... so the attendants would not only compose a tune or pixel a graphic but also get a coder to link’em into a demo. well i am sorry i think i am a bit depressed:) it kind of makes me angry when i see 100 reactions posted to tdj’s demo reviews but two demos in forever. when it comes to talking people are a lot more active but when it comes to creating they get silent. by the way one can contribute to both forever and breakpoint. i will release another small demo for breakpoint. you don’t have to "not release and save demo" in forever in order to compete in breakpoint. anyway...:) greetings to all organizers for the nice party i hope to visit next year. even if i can’t, you know i will be there with a demo...:)

nightlord

[14] : 03. Apr 2003 08:23   

nightlord: moving Forever away from Floppy won’t help. What’s needed is a more active scene, most importantly you need active coders. You can’t really expect much releases at Forever when you have almost no active coders in Slovakia, Czech republic, Poland or any of the other neighbouring countries.

puterman

[15] : 03. Apr 2003 14:10   

Yep, I either belive that it’s much harder to find a coder who’d put together a demo with my picture and e. g. Dafunk’s music, than to find a graphician and a musician who would participate in such a project.

I’m kinda afraid that a small "yo-here-I-am" kinda demo is less time-consuming to put together than a picture like I pixelled for Floppy, competed on Forever and will compete on Breakpoint, so it’s also the motivation and activity we’re dealin with, not just the actual fact that there are no coders around (however, I know at least about two very active coders in Hungary).
Another thing, not everyone is in the mood to do crappy "just-the-sake-of-attending" releases for every single c64 party around, most of them cares about, erm.., reputation or sumthin’... :)
If we’ll see a huge demo-competition on BP, means that the groups were holding back their releases, if not, generally the coders are to blame for no releases ;))
Ok, I’m just kidding around, but my first sentence stands.

Jailbird^BD

[16] : 03. Apr 2003 14:40   

Well... I’d agree here and there. I think you’re right about the JTSOAttending releases. On the other hand, I’ve been thinking about some demo projects and especially about a few gameprojects but what holds me back is the lack of interested graphicians ;) So it seems coder miss !fitting! graphicians, graphicians miss !active! coders, seems the scene is simply too small.

Wotnau

[17] : 03. Apr 2003 14:49   

jailbird, maybe i need to clarify myself a bit. i am definitely not blaming graphicians and musicians. and i am definitely sure that hand pixeling those graphics take at least as much effort as a coder spends in a technically challenging demo. and i did not mean people should compete in every c64 party with crappy little demos. i certainly do not think water is a crappy little demo. it was worth two months of night work for me. i definitely won’t release something that i think is crappy for the breakpoint as well. maybe a little early to talk on that:)... anyway :) i agree jailbird about it is coders to blame for lack of demos :) (just kidding. i never can blame someone about anything:))... puterman, nevertheless changing the date might help. there were 4 fairlight demos released in two parties with one month space between (which is great!!!). maybe if forever was at some other time wouldn’t you at least consider to do something for forever as well... and all the other groups that are potentially holding releases back for BP (i hope that is true by the way. :) might contribute. after all you don’t have to be there to compete. (i wasn’t)...i don’t know... i am really a stranger to how parties work. i am just trying to ignite some ideas in people’s minds about how we can increase productivity (not at the price of quality) for forever party in particular and the scene in general...:) i thought spacing out targets might help..

nightlord

[18] : 03. Apr 2003 15:22   

I wouldn’t release anything serious at a party that I didn’t attend, and if I’d release it between those parties, I might as well just upload it somewhere.

I don’t think moving Forever would lead to any positive consequences, as there are always other parties.

puterman

[19] : 03. Apr 2003 15:35   

hmm... do you think it is wrong to release demos in parties that one doesn’t attend? is this a scene tradition of some sort?

nightlord

[20] : 03. Apr 2003 16:13   

It’s a matter of vanity ;) People want to see others cheer at their work, applaud etc. :D Concerning the dates, yes, there are always other parties (IMHO there are too many parties but that’s something I shouldn’t voice too loudly, right?), and also Forever is a 3-platform party with its date fixed since 2000 (3rd weekend in March, always) - so everyone already knows when it takes place and the other two platforms are OK with the date so I don’t think the date will ever change.

Wotnau

[21] : 03. Apr 2003 19:58   

Whether it is that way or another, I’m sure Forever didn’t say the last word as far as quality demo-competition is concerned. In my opinion (Except of the strong swedish parties) Forever is the best place to attend or release a production. And as far as releasing of production at other parties is concerned. Forever traditionally allows outside contributions while most other "major" parties traditionally don’t. Whether it is good or bad, together with objective system of voting and fair system of compo entry presentation. It makes the achievments in compos very valuable. From my point of view (I think other would agree with me too) it’s much better to get 3rd place in anonymous music competition between 19 tunes than getting 1st place in compo with 6 tunes. I could continue for ages but I would simply like to say FOREVER rules and thanx to all who visited this party and supported it during all those years. Thank you boys and girls!

CreaMD

[22] : 03. Apr 2003 20:19   

Hm.. I can’t stop so easily ;-) ...sorry maybe following rant will be even more inconsistent than previous, but also from point of view of other scenes. Forever is getting more an more respect. Although this year all demo-compos sucked. In previous year a lot of fine productions for Atari and Speccy were released. Superboy (atari) Self Demo by Raster (atari), Pondlife by Raww Arse (speccy), Baze - the guy who achieved a huge respect with his 256 byte demos at Pouet.org released his famous industrial demos "LOOP" at Forever (speccy) and he is visiting the party every year. Remember, presentation and "release" of Newcomer. Presentation of game projects and a lot of other activities and interesting things. This year the elite Atari coders and musicians from Poland who made the best 8-bit Atari demo ever released called Numen (2002) visited the party and they liked it! Yeah this year we had most visitors from speccy and atari scenes ever! Forever might be an east European party but when east-european is a synonym of something distant and not very interesting what do you say on this east-european news-site ;-)

CreaMD

[23] : 04. Apr 2003 08:50   

CreaMD: Finally! I’ve been waiting for this :)

Professor Ugha SID