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Text Mode Demo Competition 2 invitation/infofile v1.0.0 by Sol/Trauma
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T e x t   M o d e   D e m o   C o m p e t i t i o n    p a r t    I I
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                  (c) 1997 Jari Komppa aka Sol/Trauma

_____What?

  Demos in textmode? Hold on - this is not a joke.

  The PC demoscene is different from any other in couple ways. First,
there is no hardware to aid you; if some new trick works on your
machine, you can be pretty sure it doesn't work on the majority of
PCs. Second, nobody cares if you can get 2700 plot record with hand-
optimized assembler on 386sx PC - you can always jam in a double-
processor pentium-pro 266 MMX motherboard and break that record with,
say, qbasic.
  Today, the demos are more like music videos and less like the good
old demos that only tried to show the world that one can do more with
that machine than the 'professionals' claim to be possible. This is
the old magic that PC demoscene has lost.
  Last year I organized TMDC to show people that it's possible to
make decent demos in textmode as well. Before the competition the
people who were against the idea said that textmode is too crappy or
something, and after the compo they said why bother, it's just
another graphics mode after all.
  That's right; textmode is just another graphics mode, and it gives
you some things 13h or higher resolutions don't.
  First, with simple table lookup you get real RGB mode with about
300 colors using just the four 'grayscale' characters (25%, 50%, 75%,
100%). With interlace, 4571 colors. Mind me, nobody says you should
use just those 176,177,178 and 219 chars, though!
  Second, you get *lots* of processing power per pixel. How about
*real* antialiased trilerp vectors running in every frame? or some
realtime raytracing?

  Many people have complained about the palette and tweaking limits
I'm setting. Main reason for those limits is that it makes it
possible to see that it's really text mode all the time and not some
gfx mode (such as 12h). The other reason is that I *really* don't
think that palette changes etc fit into textmode demos.
  Some people claim that some demo last year broke some of the rules.
That's allright with me; one of the main ideas in democoding is to
cheat as much as you can as long as you can get away with it.
  Oh - you don't have to support ONLY one graphics mode in your demo!

  Last year I received 9 demos, which was a disapointment. (We said
we'd give a prize for the 10 best demos we receive, so everyone
received something). Of these, two were pretty good demos, two
were plain jokes and the rest were.. well, everything from very
poor to quite enjoyable.

  The Gathering'97 -party also had a textmode compo. Not
surprisingly, the same names appeared in the top ranks there as
in the TMDC.

  I really believe there are more people capable of making textmode
demos - that's why I try again. This year, sending contributions
is even easier than last year. Read on!

_____When?

  Deadline is 11.11.97. Submit your entries as soon as possible.
Deadline is counted from the timezone CET+12 so as long as there is
one country on Earth living in 11.11.97, there's time to contribute.

  Results should be out before mid-december.

_____Where?

  Any questions can be sent to:
  IRC: Channels: #CODERS, #TMDC
       shine_  (Official TMDC IRC Help Person)
       Sol_HSA (Organizer, rarely on IRC)
  Email: solar@spider.compart.fi

  The competition is held in the Internet, but you don't have to have
internet access to contribute a demo. You may send your contributions
to:
  FTP: ftp.fishpool.com /pub/tmdc <- write only directory!
       (This directory should exist from 10.10.97 on)
  Email: UUEncoded to solar@spider.compart.fi
  BBS: TRK +358-9-876-4017 28.8k (Trauma HQ)
           +358-9-876-4018 14.4k (node 2)
       (For anonymous upload, log on as TMDC, passw TMDC)
  Snailmail:
          Sol/Trauma
          Jari Komppa
          Kylakaskentie 1A2
          Vantaa  01200
          Finland,Europe
  (Please include Self Addressed Envelope and International
  Reply Coupons if you want to have your disk(s) back).

  Especially if you use email: make sure we have received your demo!
(Do NOT resend it before we ask!!)

_____Rules?

  - The organizers reserve the right to disqualify any demo,
    and the right to change the rules at any time.
  - The organizers will spread the last version they've
    received from you.
  - The demos must be previosly unpublished.
  - Direct textmode conversions of existing demos are not
    allowed. (I don't want to see Textdemo Ankka! :)
  - The authors will retain copyright to their productions.
  - You must include .nfo and file_id.diz file in the
    package. In addition, you may add 'readthis.org' with
    info for the organizers only (we will delete this file
    before releasing the package).
  - Remember to include (snail)mail address info in either
    .nfo or the readthis.org file!
  - Maximum file size is 1447424 bytes in a ZIP file, and
    10 megs uncompressed. If you use DOS4GW, you don't need
    to include it in the ZIP. (Everyone has it already).
  - Maximum demo length (in time) is not limited, but you
    should remember that too long demos are boring.
  - The complete demo must run in some textmode (including
    setup screen if applicable). Valid textmode screen
    modes are:
    40x12, 40x14, 40x21, 40x25, 40x27, 40x43, 40x50,
    80x12, 80x14, 80x21, 80x25, 80x27, 80x43, 80x50.
    You *MAY* support other modes, but we will judge the
    demos in one of those modes.
    (All of these modes can be set through use of interrupt
    calls, so no outs are required).
  - Font and palette changes are not allowed; neither are
    other hardware tricks like splitscreen or startaddress.
    (Changing font means you want higher resolution, and
    that's not the point of this competition. Changing the
    palette is also out of the question; you can change
    colors on screen in other ways).
    EXCEPTION: Light backgrounds may be enabled (ie. the
    blink attribute may be disabled). Other 'tweaks' (except
    refresh rate tweaks) are NOT allowed (partially since it
    would make the mode control impossible, and partially
    since it simply is not the point of this competition.
    Take it as a chiptune compo for coders).
  - User must be able to quit the demo at any moment by
    pressing ESC.
  - Sound support: At least 1024k GUS (either native, MEGAEM
    (midi) or (IW/MAX)SBOS (SB/adlib)). (We use GUS Classic,
    GUS MAX and GUS PNP cards).
  - The demo must run on Pentium 120 with 8 megs of RAM
    under either QEMM, EMM386, HIMEM or plain boot.
    (Judging will be done on P120+ class machines with
    16+ megs of RAM, tho).
  - The demo must not write anything on harddrive (neither
    in current dir nor on C root or anywhere else).
  - Complete animation demos are not denied, but remember
    the size limits..
  - All file names must be compatible with MS-DOS 6.00.

  Also suggested, but not madatory:
  - Autodetects and command-line options are a good idea.
  - Demos should run through once and quit - or loop if
    a certain command-line parameter is given.
  - Nosound and SB support would be nice.
  - If you use nonstandard text modes with the valid
    resolutions (for instace Liket's 60hz or 50hz modes)
    please make them optional. If you don't, you'll risk
    incompatibility with the compo machines.

_____Prizes?

        1st place - A.C.E CD #4
                  - A ticket to The Gathering '98
                  - Visual Basic Enterprise 4.x
        2nd place - A.C.E CD #4
                  - A ticket to The Gathering '98
                  - Visual Test 4.x
        3rd place - A.C.E CD #4
                  - A ticket to The Gathering '98
                  - Corel Print House
        4rd place - A.C.E CD #4
                  - Visual Test 4.x
        5th place - A.C.E CD #4

  The Gathering is one of the biggest annual demoparties in the
  world, held in Norway.
  A.C.E CD #4 includes just about all demos released June 1996 to
  March 1997, including TMDC1 demos, and additionally huge
  collection of graphics, source code and music.
  Visual Test is a windows compatibility check environment, very
  useful for programmers.

  Thanks to our sponsors:
    The Gathering organizing - www.gathering.org
    A.C.E BBS - christophe.yvon@cnet.francetelecom.fr (Gandalf)
    Fishpool Creations - fishpool.com

_____Jury?

        Trauma, ie. Sol, Nitro, Teque, Tonic, Excel, void,
        Assassin, !Cube and Tremor. For voting system we'll
        use Silly Little Votesystem v1.1 (with free point
        scale but equal voters - results are displayed in
        'acceptance factor' percentage). Sol holds on to his
        veto-rights.

_____Resources?

        Sol/DEE has released a textmode FLI/FLC player (will full
        Watcom C32 source). It can currently be found (at least)
        from:
        www.hornet.org .. txtfli.zip
        It should be enough to show that you can do anything in
        textmode.
          The Joker(TJ)/Crusaders has released full code to his
        textmode demo that won the Distortion'96, and the demo
        consist of 3d-vectors, texture-mapping, goraud shading,
        zoom/rotate, good music and plasma-routines.
        It's coded in pascal/asm. Get if from :
        www.hornet.org .. ringnes.arj
          Another completely different approach can be seen
        in 'BB' by AA-project. Check www.ta.jcu.cz/aa
          Some rather good textmode demos can be leeched from
        TJ/Crusaders' page - www.crusaders.no/members/thejoker

          The invitation demo is out! Get TMDC2INV.ZIP. It
        also has some sources and stuff in it.

_____Other?

        Please note that this is NOT a joke competition! You
        CAN do all plasmas, whirls, vectors, and stuffs in text
        mode. And due to the reduced resolution and virtually
        truecolor palette, you can do much more than what you
        could imagine doing in 320x200 or even higher graphics
        modes.

        If you have any questions, send them to either
        solar@spider.compart.fi, or use
        the other contribution addresses mentioned above.

        Signed,
                Sol/Trauma
                28 September, 1997

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