Assembly 2001 – Party Report
 

The report, or with whom am I debating about Assembly anyway?

CreamD: logging…
TBB: Hi Mom! :)
CreamD: Ouki douki
CreamD: Standard, first question: What was the first feeling you got when you entered the partyplace?
TBB: Mixed feelings, as always. This was, if I remember right, the third time Assembly happened at Hartwall Arena, so the place has become quite familiar already. But it's always uncertain who you will meet on the partyplace. I knew some guys were going to show up, others were really nice surprises.
CreamD: How about the amount of „oldskool“ people?
TBB: Last year the oldskool area of the party place had some Counterstrike players, but this year I didn't see any. Yet the place was full, so I guess we were doing a lot better :). It has become a standard that most of the oldskool guys can be found from outside the partyplace, having their own meeting named Boozembly there :)
CreamD: Whom did you meet? Any celebrities?
TBB: The biggest surprise to me was meeting TNT of Beyond Force after several years. I had last time met him very briefly in ‚95 if I remember right, and before that somewhere around '90, so it was really really nice to get?to talk to him after a long while. Also Grue aka Jake / Beyond Force was there. I haven‘t seen him in person since Horizon party ‚90 (or '91).
CreamD: I would‘t like to look like an ignorant, but who is TNT and Grue?? Blaming myself publicly, uh.
TBB: TNT is the coder who made Beyond Force's product named Splitter. I think Splitter was the first intro ever to?have 80 „splits“. He also wrote demos for Beyond in the late Eighties, like Demonomanie. Grue, former Jake, has been in Beyond Force also since mid-Eighties, mainly taking care of VHS swapping if I remember right. Another oldskool guy I met for the first time was Gallstone / Finnish Gold, a name I have seen in FIG demos like 15 years ago :)
CreamD: Okay this is quite educational for newcomers. How about other dudes? Was it a Danish and Scandinavian powerplay, or did some sceners from other countries showed up?
TBB: This year I didn't meet any C-64 scene guys from outside Finland, which was quite a shame.I think I met one guy from Sweden who visits #c-64 regularly and who was wearing a C-64 start screen shirt.
CreamD: In my opinion, assembly lost it?s reputation in the C-64 scene in past years. Isn't this the reason?
TBB: I think of it more as a consequence. Byterapers ruled the competitions for some time and discouraged people quite a bit :) And it's a fact that the scene is quite a bit smaller than during the days when you could see 2 or 3 good demos at every major party. Less demos, less competition, less reputation. Unfortunate but unavoidable.
CreamD: These days I'm fooling myself that it's again getting better with the quality of releases. Btw. How about this year?s demo releases?
TBB: Frankly speaking, the VIC-20 releases were better than the C-64 ones. Only two C-64 entries were participating in the C-64?competition, ours and Dekadence's. Dekadence's was good in length, several minutes, but the code or design wasn't?anything special. Ours in turn lasted about 2 minutes, one minute of it consisting of one picture and the logo in the beginning. There were two VIC-20 entries aswell, which were ranked 2nd and 4th in the results. (Check complete oldskool compos in div-x format here.) Next year things will hopefully be better. I know we're starting next weekend on our next Assembly release?already. But the fact remains: an MSX demo kicked our asses…

CreamD: MSX?

TBB: MSX is an old home computer standard from Microsoft. It was quite
a success in Japan when it was released – at about the same time with C-64 -
and several manufacturers made MSX systems.It's based on Zilog Z-80 and stuff
like that, I don't know the specifics, but basically it has more CPU power than
C-64.

CreamD: Yes.. some 3,75 Mhz… as ZX Spectrum probably.

TBB: Also the specification left the manufacturers opportunities to make
their own extensions. Yamaha for example had quite good sound capabilities in
their music-orientated MSX system. An MSX demo actually won the oldskool compo.

CreamD: How about quality of sound, music compo,
gfx compo?

TBB: I missed the gfx competition… I am not used to compos being held
on time so I only saw one picture.

CreamD: Being held on time… WHAT?

TBB: Yeah. the gfx compo started exactly when it was supposed to :).
Assembly has improved a lot in that sense, the schedule works these days. Music
compo was a bit of a disappointment. Some traditional C-64 tracks which have
been present in competitions for over 10 years, then some sound experiments
(Soundemon's 8D tune was quite interesting), but the biggest thing about the
music competition was the unbelievably fat sounding snare drum in the VIC-20
tracks. Heatbeat's player can obviously produce some kickass sounds on VIC.
(Heatbeat/CNCD, you might know him from Amiga and PC)

CreamD: I have heard that there were quite high
prizes even in oldskool compo is it true? It could be a good motivation for
sceners to come to the next Assembly and for sure it could increase the quality
of the demos.

TBB: I don't know about the prizes. I'm not personally even interested
in what the prizes are – I'm only in it for the competition. And of course,
in it to show that we're still alive and kicking.

CreamD: How about response of the audience. Was
this years oldskool compo a fun?

TBB: I think people took the oldskool compos well this year. Of course
an average Quake player doesn't care about it – in fact, the guys interviewed
after the oldskool music compo thought of oldskool music as „annoying bleeps“.

CreamD: He probably grew up with heavy metal Quake
music.

TBB: But still, it's a bit difficult to get a newcomer to understand
the point in oldschool competitions. How could someone that has grown playing
games on his Dad's PC understand how much effort must be put into a product
like what we see in the compos? Let it also be said that the music competition
could be a lot better if people didn't just download some publicly available
editor and make some standard stuff in it. That's why Soundemon's track somehow
stood out – he had his own code playing the music.

CreamD: How about quality of sound equipment?

TBB: Assembly's PA was _excellent_. I loved hearing my own tune in the
Extend intro through the party PA. It was PERFECT for C-64 music – not too much
midrange, a lot of low bass area. The drum and bass tune I had made for the
intro utilizes rather low frequencies in the bassline.

(to be continued after a few questions to SounDemoN)
 

A few questions to SounDemoN

CreamD: Whom did you meet? Any celebrities?
SounDemoN: It was nice to meet some people, that was the main reason I went to assembly. Well, c64 people were like: Grue & TNT /Beyond Force. Agemixer/Scallop. All dekadence members, met Player One/Dekadence for the first time. TBB & AMJ, Jzu, Geel, Jammic, Codehead.
CreamD: Your compinion about assembly compos?
SounDemoN: Well the demo compo wasn't that great. Only two demos. One was ours so I won't comment it ;) Extend's demo was very short and had if I remember correctly only one effect. The music's were great. There were many entries and the overall quality was high, this was something I hadn't expected.
CreamD: Some picante situations, funny stuff, highlights ?
SounDemoN: Well I noticed the party itself has been evolving in a certain direction. Basically there were three areas.
There was the oldskool area, the main area, the game heaven area. The game haven was meant for people who only played games, I think but in the main hall everyone played games – *everyone. So those two areas were the same for me. In the oldskool area there were scene people but to me it seems totally strange to combine these things on the same party it just doesn't make sense the quake players don't care about the demoscone and vice versa.
CreamD: True. So quakers didn't actually watched the compos?
SounDemoN: They probably did – because they were not allowed to keep their monitors on. Also the quakers were very young. They are getting younger every year, or maybe I'm just getting older, hehe.
CreamD: Thanks for the answers.

Epilogue

CreamD: TBB sorry for that AMJ stuff I really don't mistake you with him just my brain is too much occupied with that demo which is downloading.. I'm curious.. ;)
TBB: No offense taken although I had a good chance to :D
CreamD: I would like to say I did it intentionally as I'm sometimes quite a practical joker in virtual world but this time it was a real bug in my brain.
TBB: Heh, I think it would add a nice humorous twist to the interview, leaving that to the end :D
CreamD: Okay TBB now really thanx for that interview.
TBB: Just imagine that. „Thanks for the interview AMJ“, „Thanks… hey! I'm TBB“
CreamD: tbb: nono.. I can't leave it there.. I would blame myself a lot..
TBB: No really, as a Monty Python fan I think it's excellent :D
CreamD: No no this is too much, but at least I will leave this joke for Dmagicians, they will like it too at least Wotnau and JTR ;-). And you can also tell it to AMJ. Uh, my self-confidence is bleeding right now. It's the most amateurish thing the interviewer can do.
TBB: I will, I will… you can count on that :)
CreamD: In fact you're musician, you and AMJ are friends. Also as far as I remember, both in Side B. You're from the same country, 3 letter names, simply unrecognisable at all.
TBB: And we're brothers.
CreamD: No? Really?
TBB: The third brother has a 4 letter nickname, but he's always been a bit different from the rest of us.
TBB: (Page / Palace or Page / Deathsector or Page / Side B)
CreamD: Really?
After a while…
CreamD: You're not fooling me! I didn't know that! I've just checked the documents in HVSID collection.
TBB: Yup, three SID music making brothers.

THE END! 

Interviewed: TBB/Extend/Side B, SounDemoN/Dekadence
Edited by: CreaMD/Dmagic
Photos (source): http://spy.hole.fi/kuvat/?…
Assembly releases: ftp://ftp.byterapers.com/…embly01/c64/
Assembly videos: ftp://ftp.scene.org/…01/oldskool/

Start buffer: Sun Aug 05 22:49:27 2001 – End of buffer? Mon Aug 06 00:43:39 2001