THE GATHERING 1995 INVITATION MAIN MENU GENERAL INFORMATION TRAVELLING PAY IN ADVANCE COMPETITIONS SECURITY PARTY RULES PARTY-AREA MAP CONTACT US Use cursors up/down to move menu-cursor, Space/Return to selec topic and cursors left/right to change page. Press Escape to return to this menu. General Competition Rules - Media (diskettes) that contain the product will not be returned. They become the property of the organizers. - A product that competes in any competition will be released to the public without exceptions! - The competition deadlines will be made available shortly after the party has started. - Entries can not have been previously released to the public. - A person involved in the production of the entry must be present. Registration for the Competitions A special registration form is used to keep track of the entries for the competitions. Your entry will not be allowed to compete unless you have filled out this form properly. It will also include an envelope to hold the disk, and a receipt that you will be given as proof of handling the entry over to the organizers. 01/16 Best Amiga Demo A demo is defined as a stand-alone executable program compiled or assembled by the use of anything from a hi-level compiler to pure machine code. The demo might be on more than one disk. The demos for the final will be run on a standard A4000/040, with harddisk, 2MB of Chip-RAM and 4MB of Fast-RAM. We strongly advise to make the demo HD-installable, and with a system-friendly exit to DOS anywhere in the demo. Trackmos are NOT preferred! We also advise people to make the demo compatible with at least a standard A1200 without Fast-RAM or any extra extensions. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 02/16 Best Amiga 64kb Intro A intro is defined as a stand-alone executable program compiled or assembled by the use of anything from a hi-level compiler to pure machine code. The intro must not exceed 65536 bytes in file length. The introes for the final will be run on standard A4000/040, with harddisk, 2MB of Chip-RAM and 6MB of Fast-RAM. We strongly advise to make the intro compatible with at least a standard A1200 without Fast-RAM or any extra extensions. Also a system-friendly exit to DOS anywhere in the intro is preferred. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 03/16 Best Amiga 4kb Intro A intro is defined as a stand-alone executable program compiled or assembled by the use of anything from a hi-level compiler to pure machine code. The intro must not exceed 4096 bytes in file length. The introes for the final will be run on standard A4000/040, with harddisk, 2MB of Chip-RAM and 6MB of Fast-RAM. We strongly advise to make the intro compatible with at least a standard A1200 without Fast-RAM or any extra extensions. Also a system-friendly exit to DOS anywhere in the intro is preferred. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 04/16 Best PC Demo A demo is defined as a stand-alone executable program compiled or assembled by the use of anything from a hi-level compiler to pure machine code. The demo can and should utilize the full potential of the graphics adapter it is viewed on. It can and should also utilize the full potential of either Soundblaster PRO/16/16ASP/AWE32, Gravis Ultrasound (Max 512kb), Roland SCC-1, MT-32 or the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 soundcards. The machine used during the competition will be a i486DX2 66MHz, or a Pentium, with a Cirrus Logic SVGA graphics card. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 05/16 Best PC 64kb Intro A intro is defined as a stand-alone executable program compiled or assembled by the use of anything from a hi-level compiler to pure machine code. The intro can and should utilize the full potential of the graphics adapter it is viewed on. It can and should also utilize the full potential of either Soundblaster PRO/16/16ASP/AWE32, Gravis Ultrasound (Max 512kb), Roland SCC-1, MT-32 or the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 soundcards. The machine used during the competition will be a i486DX2 66MHz, or a Pentium, with a Cirrus Logic SVGA graphic card. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 06/16 Best PC 4kb Intro A intro is defined as a stand-alone executable program compiled or assembled by the use of anything from a hi-level compiler to pure machine code. The intro can and should utilize the full potential of the graphics adapter it is viewed on. It can also utilize the full potential of either Soundblaster PRO/16/16ASP/AWE32, Gravis Ultrasound (Max 512kb), Roland SCC-1, MT-32 or the Pro Audio Spectrum 16 soundcards. The machine used during the competition will be a i486DX2 66MHz, or a Pentium, with a Cirrus Logic SVGA graphic card. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 07/16 Best module A module is defined as a file consisting of musical data. Modules of any format can compete, as long as a player is supplied with the module. The module must use no more than four channels. All modules will be played on a Amiga with NO extra sound enhancing hardware. Do not deliver the module as an executable file! The module will be played for up to 5 minutes unless the author has an utterly good reason for playing it longer. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 08/16 Best Multichannel/MIDI Multichannel/MIDI is defined as a file consisting of musical data. Any format can compete, as long as a player is supplied with the file. It is possible to compete with own synths and MIDI-setup. Only the speaker-system will be provided by the arrangers together with either a Amiga or a PC machine with MIDI-extensions cards/interfaces. Multichannel modules will be played on a PC for no longer than 5 minutes unless the author has an utterly good reason for playing it longer. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 09/16 Best Picture A picture is defined by a file consisting of one frame of graphical data. Pictures from any platform can be entered, but a picture viewer must also be supplied in case of very special graphical formats. The maximum graphical resolution is 1024 horizontal and 768 vertical pixels, and a maximum of 16.8 million colors. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 10/16 Best Animation An animation is defined by a series of graphical frames viewed at a certain frame rate. Animations from any platform can be entered, and an animation viewer must be supplied. The maximum graphical resolution is 1024 horizontal and 768 vertical pixels, and a maximum of 16.8 million colors. Animations from any other platforms than Amiga and PC, will have to supply a machine to view them on. This machine must supply a composite video or format suitable for video conversion. Entries that do not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 11/16 Best Wild Demo This is a totally free competition. You may enter the competition with everything from a VIC-20 to a Silicon Graphic machine. You can use synths for a nice music-output, and any graphic-card to achieve the best graphical output for your demostration. You must bring with your own hardware, machine and equipment. We take no responsibility for any damage to your equipment during the party. Entries which does not comply with the rules for this category will be disqualified - without exceptions! 12/16 Viewing of the Competition Entries As many of the competitions will have a lot of entries and there is no time to play all the modules and show all the pictures, the primary task of the jury will be to select a percentage of the entries in each competition to view/play for the finals. These finalists will be shown to the public. If the voting system fails, the jury's votes counts as the final result. The jury will view all entries in all competitions. The jury will consist of a technical jury and 20 randomly selected people from the party attendants. As far as it is possible, the name of the author of the product will not be shown to the jury. This is to ensure that each product will be judged by its appearance, not by the name of the guy that made it. The top three entries will be shown again when the winners are announced. 13/16 Voting At Gathering 1995 we will try a completely new system based on the computerized system used at The Party. However, our system will differ some what in the sense that the votes will be counted automatically. When paying at the entrance you will be given either an Amiga or PC formatted double density disk containing a voting program. The program is self-explaining and should be very easy to use. If you do not have a computer, you can either borrow one or vote on paper. Once you have voted, the disk has to be returned to the organizers for counting of the votes. All this ensures that as many people as possible has a chance to vote. If the first system fails, the votes of the jury will count as the final result. 14/16 Product availability It is common to distribute the competition entries at the end of the party. At Gathering 1995 we will distribute all entries mainly via selected swappers which you can copy the disks from, and via the Official Party BBS, and our Internet FTP-sites. A CD-ROM compatible with PC, Amiga, CD32 and CDTV will also be released by AmiNET containing all the productions released at Gathering 1995. 15/16 Prizes: At the present time we are not able to give you the exact competition prize list. However, the included list will be an approximately correct list of the prizes for the competitions. 1.Price 2.Price 3. Price --------------------------- Amiga-Demo : 20.000,- 7.500,- 2.500,- PC-Demo : 20.000,- 7.500,- 2.500,- Amiga-64kb : 2.500,- 1.000,- 500,- PC-64kb : 2.500,- 1.000,- 500,- Amiga-4kb : 1.000,- 500,- 250,- PC-4kb : 1.000,- 500,- 250,- Module : 2.500,- 1.000,- 500,- Midi/Multi : 2.500,- 1.000,- 500,- Graphics : 2.500,- 1.000,- 500,- Animation : 2.500,- 1.000,- 500,- Wild Demo : 7.500,- 3.500,- 1.500,- Page 16/16 How to get more info If you have any questions that this Invitation Demo does not answer, feel free to contact the Gathering Crew on any of the following addresses. We will gladly help you with travel arrangements and answer any questions you might have. How to contact the Gathering Crew: Internet mail : magnar@hsr.no magnus-w@hsr.no Snail-mail : Kurt Hansen Langoyveien 13 4026 Stavanger Norway (Mark the envelope ¹Gathering 95¹) Phone : +47-51-417240 (Magnar) +47-51-520420 (Kurt) Modem : 51-748535 (Scoop #1) 51-748572 (Scoop #2) HOME PAGE: http://www.hsr.no/~aness/TG95/ 01/01 Entrance fees Full entrance fee...: 250 NOK - 5 days. Payed in advance....: 200 NOK - 5 days. Visitors............: 75 NOK - 1 day. Girls...............: FREE! Stavanger Idrettshall Gathering 1995 will NOT be held at Rykkinhallen. Instead we have chosen Stavanger Idrettshall which is a well known sports hall located just a few kilometers east of Stavanger, Norway. One of the reasons this hall was chosen is that it has for several years been used for the big Offshore Northern Seas conference here in Stavanger, Norway. It is located in a large complex of halls, and is placed right behind the famous ¹Siddis-hallen¹. The total available space inside this main hall is about 6000 m2. Reservations Since we expect the available space to be limited, you will unfortunately not be able to reserve space for you or your group at Gathering 1995. Instead we will give away seats on a ¹first-come-first¹ served basis. 01/06 Rooms for rent We have made a arrangement with Mosvangen Camping, which gives us about 10 huts to rent out. Each hut has from 2 to 6 beds, a toilet and some furniture These huts can be rented at the nice price of 50,- NOK. per bed. If you are interested in renting a bed in one of the huts, take contact with Kurt Hansen in advance, or at the information-desk under the conference. Sleeping Area This year we have a huge Tennishall with approx. 2000m2 floor-area to sleep on. The hall is located about 50 meters away from the main-hall, so the noise from the main hall should not disturb you. Electricity Anyone who visited The Gathering 1994 knows that the electrical system of Rykkinhallen did not manage all those devices. This is also one of the reasons we have chosen another hall this year. This year we will have PLENTY of electricity for everyone. Over 6 full-time electricians monitoring the power supply to ensure perfect conditions for everyone in the hall. Since 1400 Amperes was inadequate at The Gathering 1994, we now have a total of 2000 Amperes. 02/06 No kitchen appliances, please! For obvious reasons you will not be allowed to plug any electrical kitchen appliances you might bring, to the ordinary electrical system. A freezer pull enough power to feed around 5 computers, and a microwave pulls more than 10. Also, a freezer and a microwave both generate nasty electrical surges on the net which might blow your computer hardware. A small number of people will however be allowed to use their freezers, microwaves and ovens on a special circuit set aside for this - and only for this - again on a first- come-first-served basis. Audio/Visual Equipment The audio and visual equipment is one of the most important parts of an arrangement like this. Delivering a perfect picture to over 2000 persons is very difficult, and we have because of this rented professional persons to ensure that the availability is more than adequate. The sound system will be supplied by a local disco, giving us 25.000 Watts, and the installations and mixing will be done by professional sound-technicians. These speakers will be placed around the whole hall, giving you excellent sound no matter where you are sitting. There is also a internal speaker system mounted in the celing of the hall which will be used for messages and information. 03/06 Cinema Room One of the most popular leisure activities at The Gathering is of course the film watching. This year we have made a arrangement with the Norwegian HIFI-klubben A/S to set up the whole surround sound system. Destiny will supply the latest releases on Laser-Disc, and we will use a really big screen to show the movies on. This will probably be one of the best surround room in Europe under the conference. Arcades The Gathering 1994 featured some of the most excellent arcades, like fabulous Airhockey. Gathering 1995 will of course be no exception. The same amount of pinball machines and video games will be placed around in the hall. 04/06 Official Party BBS Most people feel that no party is complete without a party BBS system. At Gathering 1995 we will let the people from the Big Blue BBS in Oslo to run the show. Giving you direct connection with InterNet through the BBS, and about 20 nodes with 28.8k connect through dial-up modem. Unfortunately we were not able to include the number for these nodes when this Invitation text was being written. Big Blue BBS will also put out direct null-modem connection boxes around in the hall. Giving us a total of 512 nodes on one Pentium machine linked together with over 25 other Pentiums machines in a network. TeleNor will support us with all the incoming lines and the 24h 128kb ISDN connection with EUnet to provide us 24 hours InterNet. Party Network In addition to the party BBS, we will also install a party network. The net- work is run by one large Novell NetWare 4 server. If you bring your NetWare or Ethernet compatible server system, we will hook it up to the party network. If you have a computer with an Ethernet compatible adapter with either coax or twisted pair connector, you should be able to connect to the network easily. 05/06 Registration We will use about the same system as used on The Final Party 4 in Denmark. First you will be asked to fill out a short registration form when arriving. This form will then be punched immediately into our database network by our crew. After paying the entrance fee, you will be given a badge which is a proof of payment. You will also get a votedisk, containing information, map over the hall, and a votesheet to be filled out after each competition. If the badge should get destroyed, you will be given a new one at the information desk, only if the badge number is clearly visible. The database network will be available to the attendants through a couple of terminals where you can search for names and groups. Also a map over the hall giving the approx. position of where the person/group is located. 06/06 How to get to Stavanger You can easily reach Stavanger by either the use of boat, plane, train, bus or car. Stavanger Airport, Sola, is one of the most modern airport in Europe, and has connection with all the major airports around in Europe and even further away. There is also boat connection directly with England, Netherland and most of the norwegian coastline. There is also bus and train connections from Oslo, Bergen, Kristiansand, and Eigersund. From Denmark, Germany or Holland, you can easily take the ferry to Eigersund, and then the train to Stavanger City. (approx. 1-2 Hours) A party train will hopefully go from Oslo to Stavanger on the 11th. of April, and a Party Bus will pick up passangers from the Airport and from the train, bus and boat-terminal in Stavanger City. It is also possible to drive with your own car to the party-place. Just follow the european highway E1 or E18 to Stavanger. When you arrive Stavanger you can easily follow the roadsigns to Madla, or take a good look at the map in the paper leaflet which should be out on the 1th. of March. 02/02 Traveller's info The official opening is set to 00:00 AM 11th. April 1995. If your only option is to arrive before the 11. April, you have to call either Magnar Harestad or Kurt Hansen well in advance. We also expect you to pay in advance. If you arrive before the 11th. April and have not called in advance, you will not be let inside until we officially open. We will try to help you out to get the best travelling offer from all over the world. We have contacts with persons established in the travelling business, and we might get some special price-offers for big group of persons travelling together. If you as soon as possible take contact with us, tell us how many you are, we you are travelling from etc... There will hopefully be setted up Party trains from Oslo directly to Stavanger, and there will also be party buses available. If you want to be picked up by one of the party buses, then notify Kurt Hansen when and where you'll arrive Stavanger. 01/02 Paying in advance Scandinavians who normally would pay the 250,- NOK entrance fee, can pay in advance by sending 200,- NOK per person to us on our postal giro account. You will save 50,- NOK and be registered a lot faster. Postal giros are available at every post office, and every post office employee will gladly help you fill one out. It is very important that you specify the names of everyone you are paying for on the giro. A giro should also be included in the paper leaflet, but if it is missing, or you are paying from abroad, make a plain giro out to: Postal giro account : 0826 0912829 GATHERING-95 v/Kurt Hansen Langoyvn. 13 4026 Stavanger Norway 01/01 Rules 1. Alcohol, illegal drugs and/or intoxicated people will not be permitted anywhere near or in th hall-complex. 2. Smoking is NOT allowed anywhere inside the building. You can smoke in front of the entrance, where large ashtrays will be set up. 3. All kinds of weapons and fireworks are of course not allowed. 4. Whatever you are responsible for breaking, you are responsible for paying, or replacing. 5. Software piracy will not be allowed. According to the European laws, it is illegal to be in possession of pirated software. 6. The organizers will not take responsibility for any illegal swapping or software-piracy during the party, nor for any stolen properties. 7. The arrangers reserves the right to change the rules at any moment. 01/01 Security The security scheme at The Gathering 1994 proved to work excellent, so the same system will be used this year. All guards will be radio linked to the arrangers office. Should any unwanted people try to enter, they will be removed immediately by the arrangers or by the local police. If you have valuable you are unable to guard yourself, you may hand it over to the arrangers office, where they will be stored in a deposit box. 01/01