TATICLINE October, 2000
// Monthly Scene E-Zine 161 Subscribers
Table Of Contents
Opening:
Message From the Editor
Letters From Our Readers
Features:
Bizarre 2000 Party Report
Official results Bizarre 2000 demoparty
Columns:
Music:
In Tune -- Nightbeats The Approach
Retro Tunage -- Shattered Skye by Catspaw
Demo:
Screen Lit Vertigo -- Spot by Exceed party-version
Intro Watch -- Sink by Pulse
General:
Editorial -- Time to Move On?
Scene Sense -- Where the heck did our values go?
Scene Dirt -- News Rumors
Link List -- Get Somewhere in the Scene
Closing:
Credits
Message From the Editor
Well, Static Line is averaging about 8 new subscribers a month now.
Not bad, but I think we can do better. When Demo News and Trax Weekly
finally died, they each had thousands of readers -- and that was a long
time ago when the scene was much smaller. Spread the word people. If
nothing else, maybe youll help us discover the next great columnist
that will write high content magazine articles. We all want that.
Now, down to business. We got a few special things going on this
month. First things first, Seven is back with another party review of
Bizarre 2000. Seven truly does create the feeling of being there. I
have also provided the top three finishing results in each category for
Bizzare.
We have a new columnist this month. Last week, PsiTron wrote a
pretty blunt article about being a tracker. Not everyone liked it, but
the guy has a thing about saying whats on his mind -- no bull-shit. I
like that, so I adopted him as a staff member. He now writes the
editorial column titled Scene Sense.
We also got a pretty important rebut from Mysterium, the founder of
Trax-In-Space. He has some things to clear up, and some information
from the other side of the fence. He also is defending TIS from some
things related to PsiTrons last column/letter. Contrary to popular
belief, I did not recruit PsiTron because of this feedback.
Well...Ben wants to go to bed soon, and we gotta get this issue
parsed out for the web database. So, I think Ill wrap up now.
Until next month.
--Coplan
Letters From Our Readers
-- Letter from Mysterium --
Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to a letter you posted from PsiTron
concerning Trax In Space TiS. I am the founder of Trax In Space, and I
would like to clear up some misinformation given in PsiTrons letter.
Unfortunately there are several rumors spreading around the Web
regarding our mission, and most notably, our VIP memberships. PsiTron
pointed out that the commercialization of the scene is bad, and sites
like TiS seem to lead the scene toward this end. While it is true that
TiS does offer extended services for a small fee, the term
commercialization is a rather general word that does not begin to
depict the true nature of TiSs mission. In my recent post, Myths and
Truths about Trax In Space, I explain the situation and the necessity
for our actions.
http://www.traxinspace.com/ArtistsCorner/ArtistsCorner-Myths.asp
Someone once told me, Trax In Space stands for the Free Music
Revolution. Keep it free. He was absolutely right! Trax In Space does
stand for the Free Music Revolution. Though the term includes free
music, it rather stands for the freedom for the artist. The artist has
the control our site thrives from the artists and the community that
consists of these artists. We want to give artists the chance that the
commercial world masks with gimmicks and master marketing schemes. We
want artists to be able to make their music and do what they want with
it, and not have to make forced choices based on what big corporate
execs think the artists should make. Trax In Space stands for the Free
Music Revolution, as it applies to the musician, not just the listener.
We stand up for the musician and are creating a community that supports
itself and recognizes the hard work of musicians. Of course the site
still has free music downloads and free artist registration not to
mention all of the features included within our Artists Corner.
Another person had begun to tell others, out of ignorance, that the
VIP memberships create a caste system, in which artists that pay receive
unfair recognition. This bold statement is a total contradiction of our
mission and the point of the VIP Memberships. The VIP Memberships are
designed to help take the creation of music to a higher level through
tools and features that help the artist save time, receive feedback on
their music, and understand their fans better. The following are the
features that are included in VIP Memberships so far:
--Trax Traders: Trax Traders does get the artist more people to listen
to their music, but the downloads from Trax Traders do not count
toward the Top Charts, and do not affect the ratings of the artist.
Trax Traders will have its own charts, but the overall charts are not
tainted. We will not make the playing field unfair - the VIP
memberships are tools to help musicians focus on music, not to
separate artists from each other.
--VIP Reviews: Artists get reviewed by a few handpicked reviewers. Its
a great way for them to get better feedback on their music. Did you
know that *100* of the money for VIP Reviews goes to the reviewer?
--Personal Pages: If the artist puts the pages in the search engines, I
guess they will get more downloads. But many artists already have
their own personal pages, should we ask them to take their sites
down because it is unfair to others? Pretty unrealistic, wouldnt
you say so? It is another tool that allows the artist to promote
him/herself, and a place within the scene to do something that they
may have done outside of the scene at places like Geocities or Xoom.
--Samples In Space: The artist now has a gigantic sample library for
their next song. It saves time as opposed to searching around the
web, or through their own music collection for samples to use.
Considering these features, how do VIP Memberships make it unfair to
other artists? The VIP Memberships are extended, optional services for
serious musicians, who see value in our site and the centralization of
these features.
PsiTron also correctly points out that artists on TiS can sell their
music. If I understand PsiTrons position, scene artists should not sell
their music. Of course, they can use their alter egos and sell through
MP3.com or the other commercial sites. Most artists would jump at an
opportunity to sell their music if someone would buy it, and many fans
would buy their favorite artists CD were it available. So if this is
just the natural state of things, I find it ludicrous that we should not
try to facilitate this interaction through our site. Our artists wanted
this feature, and again its optional-you do not have to sell a CD if you
do not want to. But if you want to, TiS has the facilities set up to
allow artists to sell their CDs to people all around the world at no
cost to the artist. Of course we also work with tracker files, not just
MP3s. We are simply trying to keep it within the scene.
PsiTron did correctly identify another issue concerning the
maintenance of a large site such as TiS: time. In addition to fixed
costs of running the site, there is an enormous amount of time spent to
keep the site working and up to date. Anyone who has ever managed a
site with over 100,000 registered users, 60 gigs of files, and traffic
that runs in the hundreds of thousands per month will know that this is
not an easy task. Of course, most people who spread these rumors have
not had this experience.
Lastly, I would like to point out one generally false statement that
PsiTron made when he narrowed down the commercialization of the scene to
Trax In Space. The demoscene remains a large and important part of the
scene. As TiS and the demoscene both know, it requires money to make
it all happen. Demoparties accomplish this by accepting sponsorships
from companies like Cisco, AMD, and Sun Microsystems. Scene.org
recently asked its visitors to sponsor the site with monetary donations,
promising advertising space and the attention of young, talented and
motivated people in the computer and design business to corporate
sponsors. As far as TiS is concerned, we are doing this by offering
enhanced tools for artists, banner advertisements and the like, and
artist CDs. We offer great services in return for this support, all to
help keep the site running. For those readers out there who may think
that deleting files would help our situation, I must inform you that
bandwidth and file space are not a major concern for TiS, but there are
other costs associated with the maintenance and administration of a
large archive that we look to offset through these programs. It cant
be done for nothing, and why not give something back to the artists who
support us?
I am always available at saurin@traxinspace.com. For those of you
interested in learning more about Trax In Space, please visit our
website at http://www.traxinspace.com.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Saurin Shah aka Mysterium
Founder, Trax In Space
- Reply from Coplan:
I think this is an issue that is overwelming the demoscene these days.
The scene is torn between oldskool thinking and those of the next
generation sceners. Many people worry about where the scene will end up
in the next few years -- but one thing is true at this moment in time.
The scene is not nearly as cutting edge as it used to be. The awe and
pure admiration for the scene is no longer what it used to be. I think
a lot of people miss that. Others, who never knew the feeling of seeing
fancy demos and music played on an Amiga, might not understand what the
demoscene is about. It has always been an underground movement, but it
seems to be fading in strength as such anymore.
While it is good to hear both sides of the story, someone is always
going to have a biased opinion. Sometimes it may be justified, other
times, it may not. Being a person who doesnt find need to muffle such
opinions, I will most likely post such articles as PsiTrons. That
doesnt mean I agree with his views -- nor does it mean its an image
that Static Line wants to carry. However, it does mean that I respect
his views. Since I like to give everyone a chance, it is only fair that
you all now get to hear the other side of the story. Thank you,
Mysterium, for sending in your message. I am sure there are still a lot
of people out there that are still sitting on the fence about the issue,
but at least they got more information about your case.
--Coplan
-- Letter from Eino Keskitalo --
Seven does great party reviews. Of course theyre great parties, but
he simply writes about them catching the feeling, so you start to wish
you were there too.
Anyway, great latest three issues.
--Eino
Bizarre 2000 Party Report
By: Seven
-- Friday 29 October --
Another month, another party : Im gonna have serious craving
problems during the winter. OK, the Static Line deadline is actually
today. I bribed Coplan to allow me to send this article a few days later
for obvious reasons, but I wont have much time for after-party editing.
So, a significant amount of effort is put in this report *at the
partyplace itself*, unlike my last few reports. That should be an
improvement cheers!.
If youre one of the few who wondered what happened to the demo that
Green wanted to make at LTP4: it got postponed till Bizarre, and now
its postponed till 2Thousand, a new party in Belgium. One of the
reasons is that a few people couldnt visit Bizarre: Quasar is going to
some other event in the Netherlands, and Baxter is on a vacation to some
tropical destination, and his plane will land in Belgium on Sunday
night. Driving all the way to Bizarre just to see the prize ceremony
isnt worth the effort for Baxter, and though I pointed out an obvious
shortcut involving a gun, a parachute and the words This is a hijack,
he preferred not to use it. So that left A0a, Corona, DJefke, Eggbird
and myself aside from the inactive members.
I was the first to arrive, around 20:00. The doors had opened at
19:00, so the usual waiting queue had already disappeared. The Bizarre
party still takes place at the same location, the Nobelaer center, and
we have access to a large max 500 ppl and a small hall max 120 ppl,
a movie theater, a cafeteria and a sleeping room. The large hall is
always very noisy, very crowded, and suffers from LTP4-like
temperatures. The small hall was Linux-only last year, but now its
scene-only: no gamers, no big speakers. Needless to say which hall I
chose : Five minutes later Eggbird joined me, together with Bemmel.
They form a joke-group Ijskast refrigerator. The others arrived a few
hours later.
Ive seen already some nice releases: the wild demo by RBI is really
good, and Okkie/De brasserie has made a crazy Dutch cover of Eminems
The real slim shady, in which he disses the whole Dutch scene. No
doubt this will end up high in the MP3 compo :
In the meantime, there is absolutely no information about
compos/deadlines/ whatever. The website says web services currently
offline, work in progress. The opening ceremony is delayed too. Lets
hope things get fixed soon.
-- Saturday 30 October --
The crew finally got the projector working correctly, so they showed
the first movie, Romper Stomper. Never heard of it? Me neither, and when
they said it was a cult-movie and very violent, I didnt bother to watch
and got back to the small hall which is now warmer and more filled with
cigarette-smoke than the large hall :/. There, A0a was struggling with
my VC++ project settings to get the demo framework to compile. Remember,
when you code, change settings or install new programs at a demoparty,
your PC is ten times as vulnerable to problems then it is at home : But
in the end, human endurance and intelligence won over machine
incompatibility and stuff. Happy end!
Corona, A0a and I sat down together talk about the messy details of
our demo-under-construction. Due to the sensitive nature of the
information, I cant disclose the entire talk grin, but fast voronoi
! fast delaunay, how to clip a 3D fractal and and why should *that*
be a problem? were some of the subjects discussed. Typical coders
chitchat, yes.
The only way to get info about the schedule is via IRC on the
bizarre channel, but since there are 80 people on it talking full-time
about nothing at all, we decide to ignore it to protect our mental
health. A tad later, the website got up, but it uses flash-animations so
Ill have to find the right plugins sigh
Oh boy, some sceners are setting new records in childish behavior :
Theres a lot of porn on the ftp servers, among them a particular
obscene and for some people very funny mpeg, and they are playing the
soundtrack over and over again very loud and with all kinds of filters
over it. They only ended because it was waking up certain people and
these people complained to the orgos.
The no big speakers in the small hall rule isnt followed 100, but
its still much more quiet in here. Eggbird is now asking other sceners
if they have music of Krezip or Britney Spears, he wants to make a tune
with samples from it. Someone threatens to shoot him : Someone from The
Solar Group who placed second in the democompo last year tells me
theyve a new demo ready, and another Belgian scener, Infinite
Reboot/Fuel just arrives and has a demo to submit too. Nice to hear from
Fuel again, its been two years since they released Gaz at Wired98.
Its now 8:45, and I think its time to follow A0as Coronas
example and take a nap.
Back again. The sleeping room was very crowded, and all hallways were
filled with sleeping sceners, but I managed to find some empty
floorspace. When I got back, DJefke wondered if he would watch the
compos or not, because we couldnt vote anyway. Excuse me? To my
surprise, voting would be 100 jury voting, as we could read on the
website. Hmm, I should have checked the website a bit earlier. Lets
hope it will turn out positive. The Nobelaer center also houses the
local library, which is open on Saturday, and its entrance is right at
the big party hall. The people who bring their books back look a bit
strange at us. Are they afraid of us, or do we just smell funny?
- Editors Note: A bit of Both, probably...P --Coplan
The RBI animation had some parts added, and looks even better now.
The RBI guys tried to convince someone who had just woken up that it was
Sunday now and that he had missed all the compos, but their victim
wasnt as credulous as they expected : While Infinite Reboot attempts
in vain to keep a rational discussion with DJefke about the advantages
of Win2000 vs Linux, Im browsing the net and even eating a bit.
Its 14:24 and the graphic compos have passed. There were only 4
hand-drawn graphics, one was a joke-entry, two were girl faces and one
weirdo face. The raytrace compo had nine entries, but only a few of them
were really raytraced. The others were what I call website-backgrounds,
with photoshopped pictures and faded anti-aliased lines. While it may
take talent to create such a picture, I dont think they belong to the
raytrace compo, and I wont vote for them. Oops. Forgot that we cant
vote :
The flash compo had three entries, with low to average-complexity
objects which were shown very crisp, but also very slow, say 5 to 10
fps. Flash is definitely a compo for designers, not for coders. I cant
say much about the MP3 and the house compo, although Ive done a feeble
attempt to listen to some tunes. But happy hardcore and similar Dutch
interpretations of music are not really my taste, especially when
played *way* too loud through a professional soundsystem. A good point
was that the orgos showed some kind of techno-style animation during the
compo, so the audience had something to watch when the music starts to
bore them.
Im running out of HD space, and Ive no CD burner, so I want to
transfer my wild demos to Bemmels HD who has one. But as usual, theres
something wrong with either his or my settings, cause he sucks and I
dont.
Maar je hebt ook lui die gaat zitten messen met me partyreports,
en dat willen we al helemaal niet!
Hum :-
doe coplan de groeten,
eggbird. :P
Translation: But there are also people who will mess up my
partyreports, and that is something we do no want at all! Hum :- Greet
Coplan from me, Eggbird :P
Thank you, Eggbird, for pointing out in such a friendly way that I
cant leave my report safely alone for 5 minutes when youre in the
vicinity. Next time when A0a needs me to fix a bug in my code, Ill
finish my sentence, close the file, encrypt it and carry it along with
me on a diskette.
- Editors Note: What? And me miss a greet? --Coplan
What I wanted to say: to minimize the risk of interrupted uploads, I
didnt run any other program simultaneous with FTP, so I had plenty of
time to walk through the halls and see what people were doing. The RBI
guys, having finished their productions, have started another crazy
project: a fake phone-sex advertisement, using censored jpgs from the
LAN plus some videos from their own members they made at a previous
demoparty. People ask Infinite Reboot if they can see the Fuel demo,
even though its not completely polished. Its a dark 3D demo, but not
in the blood/lightning style a la Shad. I wonder how well it will do in
the compo. Some Amiga sceners are here too, some are constantly playing
classic Amiga demos: Desert dreams, State of the art, Nine fingers...
Technically we just laugh at those today coming up next: a sphere wit
48 polys!, but they have tons of attitude, design and beautiful
pixeled fonts.
Even though the small hall is scene-only, there are also people
playing games. Still its cozier than the big hall, where I havent seen
any people coding, drawing or modeling composing is out of question due
to the noise. And I dont know whether I just overlooked them last year
or if they are new at Bizarre, but there are some 10-12 year old kids
gaming too, till early in the morning :/ I dont think this is a healthy
situation, not for the kids nor for the party.
Around 22:30, Corona and A0a decided to search a pizzeria in
Etten-Leur. Since I didnt like the French fries in the cafeteria, I
joined them and so did DJefke hint to the cafeteria people: cutting a
potato in 4 is *not* enough to call it fries Luckily the place was
still open, and we had some deep discussions while eating a big Pizza
Hawaii/Marguerita. It was already 23:45 when we came back, and it seems
we missed the music compo :/
-- Sunday 1 October --
A0a and I interrupted our debugging activities to watch the 4K and
64K intros at 1 oclock. Since the schedule has become widely available
on the bigscreen, on paper and on the website, it has been followed
without major delays. Unfortunately there were no 4Ks of acceptable
quality at all : Its a pity to see your favorite demo-category lose
its popularity to the point that there are zero productions at a major
demoparty. Flex had intended to make a windows-4K, but apparently he
didnt finish it in time.
The 64K compo contained 4 entries: 1 was a joke-entry with only one
effect a rotozoom, another intro had OK effects on the left and middle
of the screen, and oldskool game screens on the right. Since you cant
watch everything at once, you immediately feel the urge to see it again.
The last two were both made by Ile and Nosx from Aardbei and were of a
high quality, but they didnt had enough time to finish the last one
which was shown first.
Most people either went to sleep or watched the movies in the theater
after the intro compo. Corona A0a just have watched American Psycho,
not exactly a feel-good movie, and looked a bit scared when they came
back. Mental note: dont watch movies about serial killers right before
you go to sleep if you dont have your pet toy with you. The next compo
animation starts at 10:30, so we can sleep without missing too much.
Strange fact: no matter how crowded the sleeping room is, there is
always place for one more scener.
I woke up in time to see the animation compo, which was slightly
delayed. There was quite some variation in the anims: joke-entries of
high or low quality, one of those Destroy a PC videos made by Amiga
sceners of course, heavy-duty 3D rendered demos... Im almost sure that
Create and destroy/RBI will win, due to its length and high quality.
12:50 and the democompo is over. Seven demos were show, only two of
high quality: Untamed/Fuel and We aint real/The Solar Group. They are
very different: Untamed is a camera flight in a Quake-like environment,
and We aint real is a typical Danish design demo. rECTUM cAUDA made a
low-fi porn demo as usual, Kontvlokken Posse made a jokedemo Mekker
ende Blaet, which shows a picture of a goat and a sheep, plus a
sinus-scroller with a big rant in Dutch. The title is hard to
translate, but mekker is the sound a goat makes, blaat is the sound
a sheep makes, and using ae iso aa and ende iso en and is
medieval spelling. Ijskast released a half-finished flash-like demo,
LifLaf, which was entirely coded at the partyplace. Two more serious
demos were Noronium, which showed a bowling ball/face travelling through
a 3D world, and Vpitrod, about which I can only remember that it was
quite good where has my memory gone?.
At the end, the orgos showed a message that the jury should come to
the control room, and that they could still use some more jury-members.
We thought about volunteering, but in the end we decided that we were a
little bit too biased to vote objectively :
Now all we could do was waiting for the prize ceremony, and for the
entries to be put on the ftp servers. Everyone I spoke to agreed that We
aint real and Untamed are a match for each other. Since Coplan has
still the Spot review, Ill give some quick info about Untamed here:
its a camera flight through an impressive, dark 3D world, without a
really story. Technically there are some hard-to-code effects, like
volumetric shadows: theres a hole in the ground with volumetric light
shining out, and you can see that a part of the light is blocked by an
object even before you see the object itself. Some effects use textures
that change every frame, for example the fountain with waves in which
particles are reflected. Unfortunately, uploading textures is a very
slow action on some 3D cards, and of course the compo machine had such a
card. The music is a self-made rock/metal MP3 with real guitars. I dont
know if that is an advantage, as the Dutch scene seems to favor
house/hardcore tunes.
The doors to the theater room opened a bit later than announced, but
we had to wait even longer due to technical problems. In the meantime,
the orgos showed some TV-program about BMX stunt competitions, which
seems to be a dangerous sport judging the accidents that they showed. I
dont know the name of the organizer who presented the ceremony, but he
was very funny. Its one of the few times Ive seen someone thank the
sponsors in a way which was not boring, and they during the show they
showed animations by Arcturus, the same that were shown during the music
compos and just before each entry in the other compos, to announce their
name/group/category. Because another event would start at the partyplace
right after Bizarre, they had little time left and announced the winners
without much delays. RBI was the absolute winner of Bizarre: they had
one or two places in the top 3 of every compo they competed in:
animation, handdrawn and raytraced pictures, several music compos...
When the presenting orgo said that Jay/RBI must have too much time on
his hands, someone in the crowd jelled Get a job, man! Must have been
slightly jealous : In the demo compo, Vpitrod finished third, We aint
real came second and Untamed ended up first. It had been a difficult
decision, as 45 of the jury preferred The Solar Groups demo and 55
that of Fuel. I felt glad for Fuel, because Infinite Reboot said it
might very well be Fuels last demo, but its of course a bit sad for
The Solar Group who missed the first place for two years in a row.
After the prize ceremony, everyone started to pack, said goodbye to
his/her friends and traveled home. I think Bizarre was a good party, it
had a few bad points but the organizers fixed them quickly. The
scene-only room is definitely a good idea, as the atmosphere was very
friendly there. You know that when you talk to a random person there,
hell be a scener. The jury voting was accurate as far as I can judge
from the compos Ive seen, but not being able to vote takes away some of
the feeling. Maybe using 50 jury and 50 public would be the best of
both worlds ? The only bad point is the low number of entries for a
party with 500 people. If I compare it with LTP, which had less visitors
and more entries in every compo, I can only think of one reason: a low
sceners vs gamers ratio. Another point that proves this is the fact that
there were almost no foreign people. At the start of the prize ceremony,
the orgos asked if anyone preferred English over Dutch, but no one
wanted that :/ Anyway, I enjoyed Bizarre, thanks to the crew, and see
you again next year.
--Seven
Official results Bizarre 2000 demoparty
By: Coplan
Only showing first, second and third place.
http://www.bizarre.nl
-- Animation --
Create and Destroy
RBI Video
Neen, dit is niet hopjesvla 2
rECTUM cAUDA nL
Oryx sux!
Oryx AVD
-- Demo --
Untamed
Fuel
We aint real
The Solar Group
VPITROD
Paranoid Productions
-- 64 KB --
Loc
no-XS / Ile
Ivlx
Kaleido
8bit
Bliss
-- Mp3 --
See the sun
Jay / RBI
Solid
RBI
Obsession
E-sense
-- House --
Headzone
Jay / RBI
Tipsy Gipsies
De Brasserie
Bud! - Dont do that
RBI - Guest
-- Music --
Chill n green
Jay / RBI
Funtex
Total Eclipse
F*cking bird hill choir
-- Flash --
Possibilities with Flash
Active Interactive
Flash Compo ?
UT clan LEGO
Widescreen
RBI
-- Website --
Smooth
Coredump
Quo Usque Tandem
Third Foundation
-- Raytraced Graphics --
Sonar
MagicBoy / RBI Video
Backdroppel
RBI
Lost and Found
Kaleido
-- Handdrawn Graphics --
Angelina Croft
Mirage
Silkyway
RBI
Girlie
Fuel
-- Ansi --
Strangers in the Dark
Insane
Now show them tities
Expose
In Tune
Nightbeats The Approach
By: Coplan
-- Introduction --
Wheres Setec? Well, fear not, he is still around and still alive.
Unfortunatley, time has gotten the best of him. He has been busy with
school, of course. He has also been working on a major project with
Dilvish, and I hope to share that with you in a few months. For now,
Im solo. I dont know how much longer that will last.
This month, I am in a rather eclectic mood, so I chose a song that
has a lot of Celtic influence. Ill be honest, I know very little
about Celtic culture, but it seems to have a lot of Modern influences
as well. Whatever, it is definately a song worth a review.
The song is from an artist known as Nightbeat. I am not familiar
with the artist, and this is the first time I have ever heard anything
from him. I am told that there is an oldskool artist that used to use
the same name -- I cannot deny or confirm that this might be the same
person.
Now, a review of The Approach by Nightbeat
-- Coplan --
There are two key elements to this song that I truly love. First is
the flute, and second is the percussion. These two elements combined
form a general characteristic of Celtic music that most people would
agree upon except maybe the experts, of which I am not one.
First, the percussion. I am quite fond of properly executed
percussion. In order for percussion of any form to sound refined and
accurate, it must contain volume variation. That is the key to any
instrument that is monotone in nature. Percussion isnt just a series
of fancy riffs, its soul is rooted deeply in volume. Nightbeat has
hit this nail on the head. Not only has he made an exceptional example
of good percussion, but he has also created a mood. He has brought
back a style that is centuries old and he has done it well. I can
almost picture the guy sitting there with his primative calf skin drum,
and another guy with hand made tamborine.
Then there is the flute. I have heard this flute sample floating
around some tracked tunes before, but I never thought much of it. Then
I heard what Nightbeat can do with it. I think a lot of his tracking
style definately has an influence on the effective use of this flute
sample. Youll notice that he stacks several notes together in a
relatively fast moveing song. That gives the flute its realism, as if
you can hear the player sliding his fingers off the holes in the flute.
This flute player is very fast at what he does -- but isnt that
characteristic of the style? Needless to say, Nightbeat has also
provided this ancient orchestra with a bunch of well written music, so
the flute player has no trouble breathing life into this song.
There is a very fast part towards the end of the song when the flute
drops out. This is just a fun section of the song, and I am glad
Nightbeat put it in. I dont have much to say about this part of the
song other than the fact that it is enjoyable, and the percussion is
still very tight.
The Approach is a short song, a mere 3 minutes. But dont let that
dictate its quality. I assure you, it is a quality song, and youll
like it. Download it, then listen to it. Then go read the Retro Tunage
column where I review more middle-age music Sorry, had to get that
plug in.
--Coplan
Song Information:
Title: The Approach
Author: Nightbeat
Filename zipped/unzipped: Nbappr.zip / Nbappr.it IT 2.14
File Size zipped/unzipped: 765 kb / 851 kb
Source: http://www.traxinspace.com
Alternate:
ftp://ftp.scenespot.org/staticline/suppliment/Nbappr.zip
In Tune is a regular column dedicated to the review of original and
singular works by fellow trackers. It is to be used as a tool to expand
your listening and writing horizons, but should not be used as a general
rating system. Coplans opinions are not the opinions of the Static
Line Staff.
If you have heard a song you would like to recommend either your own,
or another persons, We can be contacted through e-mail useing the
addresses found in the closing notes. Please do not send files attached
to e-mail without first contacting us. Thank you!
Retro Tunage
Shattered Skye by Catspaw
By: Coplan
Occasionally, Tryhuk asks me for recommendations for this column.
This month, I recommended a tune that we decided I should review, as it
has such an influence on my tracking development. The song is
Shattered Skye by Catspaw at the time, a member of RAT -- and yes,
Skye is spelled that way in the song.
I will first start out by saying Shattered Skye is not considered a
great opus by most people. The samples are mediocre, the tune is good,
but nothing truly exceptional...but the song has a lot of character.
For one, it was one of the few songs tracked in the mid 1990s that
wasnt of electronic influence. Sure, there were others, but not like
this. Shattered Skye has an heir of medieval music. It is a style
that I love, favor and attempt to do almost every day. My admiration
for admiration for the style started long before I discovered the scene,
but it is carried through today with such works that I keep stored in a
special section of my hard drive. Just a warning though, the song
doesnt always play well in players other than Impulse Tracker. If you
want to catch the true feeling, you gotta use Impules Tracker.
The song starts out with a characteristic riff that youll see
throughout the song. It is most noticeable at this point in channel 5,
where you have the percussion. The kettle drum one of the best samples
in this song and the shaker play back and forth in a relatively
repetative nature. This gets carried throughout most of the instruments
in the first part of the song: The violins, the cellos and so on. The
primary acoustic work in this part of the song is left up to the lead
violins, the cymbol crashes and brass instruments. Youll also notice
that Catspaw takes advantage of the ever popular song speed rock method,
but in a unique way. He rocks from a speed of 4, to a speed of 6 to
get a very quick and realistic shaker down to an average speed of 5 to
finish out each section of a pattern Catspaw takes full advantage of
the fact that IT supports patterns longer than 64 lines.
My favorite part of the song starts at about order 7. Catspaw
returns back to the original key he changed, earlier. Did you
notice?, and introduces a larger part for the brass. The brass is
rather impressive, considering the samples he used. Brass is such a
touchy instrument in tracking, instruments difficult to replicate
realistically in tracking. But, if you got enough going on, and lots
of brass playing different notes in a song like this, it sounds good --
even though it is simple.
At this point, we take a short little slow interlude, then things
pick up again. That doesnt last too long, though, because things
start to die down at order 20. We transfer into a very low key part of
the song in what I would consider a less-than-satisfactory transition.
Again, this short little bit doesnt last long. Then we close out with
another energetic interpretation of the first section.
The song will always be one of my favorites, but even my favorite
tunes have faults. This is one tune that couldve benefited from a
little snip of the unecessary slow parts. I dont think they add
anything to the song. But, it is a great song, and definately worth a
download. Especially for those of you who are trying to get into more
orchestral work.
Song Information:
Title: Shattered Skye
Author: Catspaw
Release date: 1996?
Length: 4m
Filename zipped/unzipped: ratskye.zip / ratskye.it
File Size zipped/unzipped: 290kb / 420kb
Source: ftp://ftp.scenespot.org/staticline/suppliment/Ratskye.zip
--Coplan
Tryhuk returns next time
Screen Lit Vertigo
Spot by Exceed party-version
By: Seven
Found at www.scene.org
1st place at the Assembly 2K demo compo
System requirements:
Win98, 9,5 MB HD. I think a heavy CPU pIII and/or a lot of memory
are necessary to run the demo smoothly.
Test Machine:
Baxters machine, a PIII 500 with some fast 3D card and lots of
memory.
The credits:
code: nns, picard, robson
visuals: warpig, der piipo
music: generic
The demo:
Exceeds latest demo uses 100 software rendering in medium resolution
512*318, which unfortunately makes a fast CPU a must. Ive experienced
a lot of stutter with my PII 350 64MB, but now Im at LTP4 and I can
abuse Baxter/Greens machine for reviews :
Desktop Adventures starts with a ceiling lamp rocking back and
forth, illuminating the 3D title and casting shadows on the wall. Hmm,
they must have adapted the code from Heaven 7 hi Picard. An infinite
zoom a la Contour follows, when the camera dives into the title. A solar
system with planets appear when higher levels of detail are generated,
and we fly through the cloudy sky of the blue planet. The destination is
a rustic farm with sheep, lying between grassy hills. This landscape
looks really good, although its actually done with a clever 2D trick.
The main part of the demo is an animated sequence of several objects
on a desktop: a clock, a jar of yogurt, cubes, pencils and a big desktop
lamp. All these objects are asleep at the start, snoring and breathing
slowly, until the clock starts to ring and everyone jumps into action.
All the movements are fluently and realistic, for as far as you can say
that about normally inanimate things. IMHO the best thing is the water
floating out a flask and soaking a little cube. A small clipping bug is
visible when the lamp jumps on a ball, you can see the ball moving
through the foot of the lamp for a second. There are shadows all over
the demo, to show of that this is software rendering, although the edges
of the shadows are coarser than the edges of the normal polys.
The music isnt a single tune, but more a soundtrack for the movements
on the screen. It starts like a song to lull children asleep, there are
symphonic parts, fast-paced classical music, sudden silences with voices
singing a capella, ... Plus it has separate sound-effects like snoring,
whistling, bangs etc. The intro, outro and main tune are all MP3s,
probably to limit the filesize.
Overall:
Spot is an almost pure 3D demo, but one of the best animated Ive
seen, and the music fit like a glove. It doesnt have a real story, but
it does suffer a bit from deja vu after having it seen a few times. And
the fact that its software-only is bad news for those with a slow CPUs
: Well, if you cant watch it now, put it on your demos to check out
when Ive bought a new PC-list, cause its worth seeing at least once.
--Seven
Intro Watch
Sink by Pulse
By: Gekko
64k intro at The Party 1997
Authors: Camel, Thor, Falcon, Lazur, Unreal
Notes:
This intro requires DOS and GUS both of them are quite hard to find
today. It starts under Windows but freezes in the middle. There are
hidden options: sink.exe /save will create a big data file on the
disk, but later on the intro will load much faster if started as
sink.exe /load.
I would have liked to review a new intro, but I havent found any
that was good enough. That is why I went back in time so much.
Sink is a realtime raytracing intro. It was very famous in its day
for its fast code. Since then the speed of an average PC has increased
radically and there have been more complex intros of this kind eg.
Rubicon, Heaven 7. Despite this Sink have not lost its value.
The code has still remained impressing in 2000, even if one notices
that the objects are too blocky. Apart from a light spot effect there is
nothing else but raytracing. There are several scenes, ranging from
abstract ones flying spheres, waving walls to ones which resemble
reality underwater scene, meadow with trees. The latter type does not
mean photorealistic 3d worlds either, naturally. Instead, all the scenes
together guide the watcher to an abstract and very simplified virtual
world. The psychedelic waving of the screen also contributes towards the
abstract feeling. The mood of the music fits this most well.
The music is a demo style song. One can notice that the instruments
had to be seriously downsampled to fit in less than 64 kilobytes. This
is unfortunately quite annoying most of the time it is a pity because
the tune itself is very good.
There is a very fine pixelised Sink logo and a Pulse logo screen
but the quality of the latter is ruined by the lossy compression, again
due to the need to fit in 64k. The textures are computer generated.
They are fine, though the colors are not the best.
The graphics, effects and the music together express a strange mood.
This mood makes this intro interesting to be watched many times.
--Gekko
Editorial
Time to Move On?
By: Coplan
A lot of influential people have left the scene while I still cannot
fathom myself ever leaving. People retire from the scene every day.
Many werent very well recognized while they were here. Some didnt
contribute very much. Others are well known and their departure is
widely recognized. But it doesnt affect everyone, and it affects
everyone differently.
When Necros stopped being active in the scene, Ill be honest, I have
yet to truly miss him. He released a lot of music, and aside from his
music, I didnt have much contact with him. Besides, I still have
several songs of his that I have yet to hear especially at
alphaconspiracy.com.
But when someone close to you decides to throw in the towel, it
strikes you down...breathless. When I came to the scene, I jumped from
group to group until I finally found a group that I felt at home. I
have called myself a member of Immortal Coil for many years well, not
iC is dead, but nevermind that. At the time I joined, Shaithis and
Rhythm Greene were the guys in charge. They were good friends, they
were my inspiration, and they were a joy to hang around on immortal
with. Unfortunately, the time came when life piled it on too thick for
them, and they no longer had interest in dealing with scene polotics.
They pulled me aside one day and told me that the group was mine to
lead, because they were both retiring from the scene.
Uh...now what?
Okay, so I wasnt left out on my own. I did have friends in the
scene, and I had plenty of contact with the scene. But I was a bit
emotional for the next few days occasionally, I still am when I think
about old skool iC. It is a concept that I dont understand. What is
life without the scene? I truly dont know.
Im sure that one day Ill get to that point. After all, no one
wants to hang out with a 70 year old tracker anyhow, writing all that
antique music, and still useing my DOS version of Impulse Tracker. But
to me, the scene is not about that old tracker that Ive been useing for
X number of years. Its not about the award winning tunes that I may
have one. I have memories: of music, of people, of ideas, of
competitions.
Seriously though, when is the proper time to move on? When should
one leave the scene? The truth is, you may leave, but youll never
forget the scene. If youve lost your passion, take a break. Itll
come back one day. If not, then you should ask yourself if you had an
enjoyable time while you were here.
--Coplan
Scene Sense
Where the heck did our values go?
By: PsiTron
I have tried to figure out exactly what I was going to say for my
first official article for Static Line. I went through a lot of drafts
of ideas and such and realized I was trying to dig too deep for a topic,
when the topic had always been in front of me. So here goes.
First I must say that I am an anti-Windows person that really does
not care for mp3s in the scene, that is true. I cannot deny it, but
because of that my opinions may differ from yours, but hear me out, at
the very least. For I would like to explore the reason, at least the
original one, why Demosceners do what they do.
Well, they write demos and create modules, duh, obviously. That is
not in question here. The real question is WHY do people write demos or
mods. What the heck purpose do they have? Well, originally demos seemed
to be designed as a challenge to make the most of your hardware. At the
time that this idea originally surfaced, C64s were still popular.
Granted, if one takes a look at the old-skewl demos on the C64, they
look like complete crap, at least in comparison to todays demos. That,
however, is circumstantial - the true fantatic still watches the demos,
I am sure, just as true Zelda fanatics still play the game even though
they can beat it in under an hour, usually with their eyes closed. Just
as a chip-fan still listens to chips, at least for their nostalgic
value. One mustnt forget the original .MODs where one was forced to do
a very similar thing - make the best with what you have in that case 4
channels, 1 effects column, no NNAs, no rez and 8-bit samples. That is
still true for todays modules, though many people find seem it limiting
instead of inspiring. And, of course, whether it be for inspiration of
just from shear addiction, people still watch demos like yes, here I
have to mention it Second Reality.
What possess people to listen to the piercing sounds of chiptunes?
Because we talking as a chip-fanatic appreciate the special style
involved in producing such a piece of music. Some people cringe at the
bleeps and sinewave basses. Others delight in the artistic beauty of
them. MODs are and were the same way. It is a trade of sorts. Demos are
part of that trade.
But to re-establish my point, what do demos, and tracks alike say
today? Some of them, fortunately, are saying the same ideas that the by
now ancient demos said: Look at what we can do with our hardware! and
I bet youre wondering how I did that mad-phat effect without using a
riff and only 4 channels! It is true that I, myself, being one who
tries to stick to the original set values of the scene enjoy the
ambience and messages of the more modern demos. Of course I do - it
gives the artists behind the demos an incredible power and hightens the
emotions expressed within demos, but I think that the fundamental idea
of why demos are made, and even why chiptunes and MODs are made have
escaped some people. If one wants to present a profound message without
giving full regard to the fundamental idea of demos, why not simply make
an AVI? That way one does not have to worry about the limits of memory
or processing speed, etc. Why not make an MP3 instead of being forced to
fine-tune a module? To be more specific, why cut corners by using
pre-written libraries that one knows to be less efficient, or use
multitudes of easy-to-make riffs when one can have the enjoyment of at
least attempting it in a module?
Has the scene gotten lazy? Lost its way? Confused? Truthfully, I do
know what caused it, though there are many theories. I could care less
what caused it. My job, as a real and true scener is to find a way to
fix it. Some of you may think insane to like DOS or chiptunes yes, I
know I keep mentioning that. Well, that is your opinion, but I hope one
day you can experience the joy of finally, after countless hours, making
a little piece of near-perfection in such an imperfect world...
This has been the first time I have delved into writing articles for
an e-mag or for any thing, really, so I welcome suggestions, but take
note that I tend to be an opinionated individual, and my opinions may
not be the best out there, but the purpose of this article is to inspire
thinking, and yes, sometimes argument. Because in doing so more can be
learned about the scene, which way it is going, what should be done,
etc. Again, I welcome comments could use help with making a better
title , and thanks for reading!
--PsiTron
Scene Dirt
News Rumors
By: Coplan
-- Upcoming Alpha Conspiracy CD --
There is a tidbit of information about an upcoming alpha conspiracy
CD at the following link. This will be updated over time. For now, you
can get an MP3 preview of a song to be released on this CD. Frequent
visitors to the site will find a secret directory of his music.
http://www.alphaconspiracy.com/audiocd.html
-- Oldskool Artist Pages on mp3.com --
Fans of Siren/Sandman, Teque and Stereoman should check out pages of
interest on mp3.com They are as follows:
Alexander Brandon Siren/Sandman
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/135/ospf.html
Teque
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/83/teque.html
Stereoman
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/165/georgemarinov.html
-- DJ in a Box --
Some of you out there have been interested in broadcasting your
music. Well, DJ in a Box makes this easy over an IceCast or ShoutCast
server. For more information, check out this side project of our
technical consultant, Ranger Rick.
http://www.djiab.org
-- Scene.org moves to Netherlands --
The Scene.org servers are not dead. In fact, they are moveing the
services to the Netherlands server. The move is inconvenient, but the
servers should be faster, and have much more diskspace. The entire
process should take another week.
--Coplan
Scene Dirt is a semi-regular column offering the latest tidbits of
information to its readers. If you have any bits of information that
you think should be here, contact coplan coplan.ic@rcn.com and offer
as much information as possible.
Link List
Demo Groups:
3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net
Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com
Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain
Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl
Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl
ANDESA Soft International..................http://andesa.da.ru
Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com
Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com
AtomiK....................................http://atomik.ini.hu
Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net
BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net
Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk
Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org
Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org
Chrome..............................http://chrome.scene-hu.com
CoPro.....................................http://www.copro.org
Damage...................................http://come.to/damage
Dance...................................http://dance.flipp.net
Defacto 2..............................http://www.defacto2.net
Dolops......................... ........http://dolOps.scene.hu
Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/exceed
Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org
GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods
Green.....................................http://green.dyns.cx
Grif........................http://arrabonet.gyor.hu/rattgrif
Haujobb......................................http://haujobb.de
Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl
IJSKAST.............................http://www.ijskast.cjb.net
Immortals..............................http://imrt.home.ml.org
Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org
Just For Fun...........................http://jff.planet-d.net
Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net
Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor
Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com
Label zero.........................http://labelzero.pganet.com
Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/mandula
Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar
Nextempire..................http://members.xoom.com/NEXTEMPIRE
Ninja Gefilus.........http://www.angelfire.com/or/ninjagefilus
Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org
Orion..............................http://orion.arfstudios.org
Popsy Team............................http://popsyteam.rtel.fr
Quad........................................http://www.quad.nl
Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu
Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay
Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net
Rhyme................................http://rhyme.scene-hu.com
Sista Vip..........................http://www.sistavip.exit.de
Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org
Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl
Suspend......................http://www.optimus.wroc.pl/rappid
Tehdas...................................http://come.to/tehdas
Tesko..........................http://www.scentral.demon.co.uk
The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org
The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net
The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no
TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com
Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma
T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org
Unik.....................................http://www.unik.ca.tc
Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net
Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch
Music Groups:
Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com
Aural planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com
Azure...................................http://azure-music.com
Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp
BrothomStates.............http://www.katastro.fi/brothomstates
Chill..........................http://www.bentdesign.com/chill
Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/cnd
Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com
Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com
Fabtrax......http://www.cyberverse.com/boris/fabtrax/home.htm
Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org
Fridge...........................http://www.ssmedion.de/fridge
Fusion Music Crew................http://members.home.nl/cyrex/
Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff
Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org
Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.L7.net
Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org
Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net
Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org
LackLuster.....................http://www.m3rck.net/lackluster
Level-d.................................http://www.level-d.com
Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net
Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi
Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music
Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/mon
MAZs Sound homepage.............http://www.th-zwickau.de/maz
Moplayaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz
Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com
Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds
Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org
Noerror......................http://www.error-404.com/noerror/
One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net
Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net
Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr
RBi Music.............................htpp://www.rbi-music.com
Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruffengine
SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m
Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev
Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate
Sunlikamelo-D...........http://www.error-404.com/sunlikamelo-d
Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr
Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila
Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net
Tetris....................................http://msg.sk/tetris
Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr
Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tdr.scene.org
UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub
Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk
Wiremaniacs.........................http://www.wiremaniacs.com
Others:
Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org
Calodox demolinks exchange.....http://calodox.planet-d.net/cde
coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net
Comic Pirates.........................http://scene-central.com
Demonews Express.........http://www.teeselink.demon.nl/express
Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub
Demoscene.org news forum..............http://www.demoscene.org
Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net
Doose charts...............................http://www.doose.dk
Dreams2 CD.........................http://nl.scene.org/dreams2
Freax...................http://freax.scene-hu.com/mainmenu.htm
GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net
Hugi size-compo...............http://home.pages.de/hugi-compo
Orange Juice.........................http://ojuice.citeweb.net
PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained
Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org
Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de
Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net
Swiss List.................http://www.profzone.ch/vantage/list
Swiss Scene Server.......................http://www.chscene.ch
TakeOver................................http://www.takeover.nl
Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net
Hungarian scene page...................http://www.scene-hu.com
Trebel...................................http://www.trebel.org
Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm
DiskMags / SceneMags:
Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/dimag
Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com
Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net
Dragon......................http://www.wasp.w3.pl/pages/dragon
Fleur................................http://fleur.scene-hu.com
Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net
Hugi........................http://home.pages.de/hugidownload
Music Massage......................http://www.scene.cz/massage
Planet Chartmag...........http://www.agravedict.art.pl/planet/
Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net
Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org
Static Line......................http://www.ic.l7.net/statline
http://www.scenespot.org/staticline
Total Disaster...................http://www.totaldisaster.w.pl
TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org
WildMag...........................http://www.wildmag.notrix.de
FTPs:
Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl
Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de
Flerp.....................................ftp://flerp.scene.hu
Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org
Skynet archive.................ftp://acid2.stack.nl/pub/skynet
ACiD2 Archive.............................ftp://acid2.stack.nl
Editor: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org
Columnists: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org
Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com
Gekko / Gergely Kutenich / mont@tar.hu
Louis Gorenfeld / gorenfeld@vrone.net
Psitron / Tim Soderstrom / TigerHawk@stic.net
Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk
Seven / Stefaan / Stefaan.VanNieuwenhuyze@rug.ac.be
SiN / Ian Haskin / sin@netcom.ca
Subliminal / Matt Friedly / sub@plazma.net
Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / xtryhu00@stud.fee.vutbr.cz
Virt / virt@bellsouth.net
Technical Consult: Ranger Rick / Ben Reed / ranger@scenespot.org
Static Line on the Web: http://www.scenespot.org/staticline
Static Line Subscription Management:
http://www.scenespot.org/mailman/listinfo/staticline
If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware
that we will format your article with two spaces at the beginning and one
space at the end of each line. Please avoid foul language and high ascii
characters. Contributions should be mailed to Coplan
coplan@scenespot.org.
See you next month!
-eof---------------------
// Monthly Scene E-Zine 161 Subscribers
Table Of Contents
Opening:
Message From the Editor
Letters From Our Readers
Features:
Bizarre 2000 Party Report
Official results Bizarre 2000 demoparty
Columns:
Music:
In Tune -- Nightbeats The Approach
Retro Tunage -- Shattered Skye by Catspaw
Demo:
Screen Lit Vertigo -- Spot by Exceed party-version
Intro Watch -- Sink by Pulse
General:
Editorial -- Time to Move On?
Scene Sense -- Where the heck did our values go?
Scene Dirt -- News Rumors
Link List -- Get Somewhere in the Scene
Closing:
Credits
Message From the Editor
Well, Static Line is averaging about 8 new subscribers a month now.
Not bad, but I think we can do better. When Demo News and Trax Weekly
finally died, they each had thousands of readers -- and that was a long
time ago when the scene was much smaller. Spread the word people. If
nothing else, maybe youll help us discover the next great columnist
that will write high content magazine articles. We all want that.
Now, down to business. We got a few special things going on this
month. First things first, Seven is back with another party review of
Bizarre 2000. Seven truly does create the feeling of being there. I
have also provided the top three finishing results in each category for
Bizzare.
We have a new columnist this month. Last week, PsiTron wrote a
pretty blunt article about being a tracker. Not everyone liked it, but
the guy has a thing about saying whats on his mind -- no bull-shit. I
like that, so I adopted him as a staff member. He now writes the
editorial column titled Scene Sense.
We also got a pretty important rebut from Mysterium, the founder of
Trax-In-Space. He has some things to clear up, and some information
from the other side of the fence. He also is defending TIS from some
things related to PsiTrons last column/letter. Contrary to popular
belief, I did not recruit PsiTron because of this feedback.
Well...Ben wants to go to bed soon, and we gotta get this issue
parsed out for the web database. So, I think Ill wrap up now.
Until next month.
--Coplan
Letters From Our Readers
-- Letter from Mysterium --
Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to a letter you posted from PsiTron
concerning Trax In Space TiS. I am the founder of Trax In Space, and I
would like to clear up some misinformation given in PsiTrons letter.
Unfortunately there are several rumors spreading around the Web
regarding our mission, and most notably, our VIP memberships. PsiTron
pointed out that the commercialization of the scene is bad, and sites
like TiS seem to lead the scene toward this end. While it is true that
TiS does offer extended services for a small fee, the term
commercialization is a rather general word that does not begin to
depict the true nature of TiSs mission. In my recent post, Myths and
Truths about Trax In Space, I explain the situation and the necessity
for our actions.
http://www.traxinspace.com/ArtistsCorner/ArtistsCorner-Myths.asp
Someone once told me, Trax In Space stands for the Free Music
Revolution. Keep it free. He was absolutely right! Trax In Space does
stand for the Free Music Revolution. Though the term includes free
music, it rather stands for the freedom for the artist. The artist has
the control our site thrives from the artists and the community that
consists of these artists. We want to give artists the chance that the
commercial world masks with gimmicks and master marketing schemes. We
want artists to be able to make their music and do what they want with
it, and not have to make forced choices based on what big corporate
execs think the artists should make. Trax In Space stands for the Free
Music Revolution, as it applies to the musician, not just the listener.
We stand up for the musician and are creating a community that supports
itself and recognizes the hard work of musicians. Of course the site
still has free music downloads and free artist registration not to
mention all of the features included within our Artists Corner.
Another person had begun to tell others, out of ignorance, that the
VIP memberships create a caste system, in which artists that pay receive
unfair recognition. This bold statement is a total contradiction of our
mission and the point of the VIP Memberships. The VIP Memberships are
designed to help take the creation of music to a higher level through
tools and features that help the artist save time, receive feedback on
their music, and understand their fans better. The following are the
features that are included in VIP Memberships so far:
--Trax Traders: Trax Traders does get the artist more people to listen
to their music, but the downloads from Trax Traders do not count
toward the Top Charts, and do not affect the ratings of the artist.
Trax Traders will have its own charts, but the overall charts are not
tainted. We will not make the playing field unfair - the VIP
memberships are tools to help musicians focus on music, not to
separate artists from each other.
--VIP Reviews: Artists get reviewed by a few handpicked reviewers. Its
a great way for them to get better feedback on their music. Did you
know that *100* of the money for VIP Reviews goes to the reviewer?
--Personal Pages: If the artist puts the pages in the search engines, I
guess they will get more downloads. But many artists already have
their own personal pages, should we ask them to take their sites
down because it is unfair to others? Pretty unrealistic, wouldnt
you say so? It is another tool that allows the artist to promote
him/herself, and a place within the scene to do something that they
may have done outside of the scene at places like Geocities or Xoom.
--Samples In Space: The artist now has a gigantic sample library for
their next song. It saves time as opposed to searching around the
web, or through their own music collection for samples to use.
Considering these features, how do VIP Memberships make it unfair to
other artists? The VIP Memberships are extended, optional services for
serious musicians, who see value in our site and the centralization of
these features.
PsiTron also correctly points out that artists on TiS can sell their
music. If I understand PsiTrons position, scene artists should not sell
their music. Of course, they can use their alter egos and sell through
MP3.com or the other commercial sites. Most artists would jump at an
opportunity to sell their music if someone would buy it, and many fans
would buy their favorite artists CD were it available. So if this is
just the natural state of things, I find it ludicrous that we should not
try to facilitate this interaction through our site. Our artists wanted
this feature, and again its optional-you do not have to sell a CD if you
do not want to. But if you want to, TiS has the facilities set up to
allow artists to sell their CDs to people all around the world at no
cost to the artist. Of course we also work with tracker files, not just
MP3s. We are simply trying to keep it within the scene.
PsiTron did correctly identify another issue concerning the
maintenance of a large site such as TiS: time. In addition to fixed
costs of running the site, there is an enormous amount of time spent to
keep the site working and up to date. Anyone who has ever managed a
site with over 100,000 registered users, 60 gigs of files, and traffic
that runs in the hundreds of thousands per month will know that this is
not an easy task. Of course, most people who spread these rumors have
not had this experience.
Lastly, I would like to point out one generally false statement that
PsiTron made when he narrowed down the commercialization of the scene to
Trax In Space. The demoscene remains a large and important part of the
scene. As TiS and the demoscene both know, it requires money to make
it all happen. Demoparties accomplish this by accepting sponsorships
from companies like Cisco, AMD, and Sun Microsystems. Scene.org
recently asked its visitors to sponsor the site with monetary donations,
promising advertising space and the attention of young, talented and
motivated people in the computer and design business to corporate
sponsors. As far as TiS is concerned, we are doing this by offering
enhanced tools for artists, banner advertisements and the like, and
artist CDs. We offer great services in return for this support, all to
help keep the site running. For those readers out there who may think
that deleting files would help our situation, I must inform you that
bandwidth and file space are not a major concern for TiS, but there are
other costs associated with the maintenance and administration of a
large archive that we look to offset through these programs. It cant
be done for nothing, and why not give something back to the artists who
support us?
I am always available at saurin@traxinspace.com. For those of you
interested in learning more about Trax In Space, please visit our
website at http://www.traxinspace.com.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Saurin Shah aka Mysterium
Founder, Trax In Space
- Reply from Coplan:
I think this is an issue that is overwelming the demoscene these days.
The scene is torn between oldskool thinking and those of the next
generation sceners. Many people worry about where the scene will end up
in the next few years -- but one thing is true at this moment in time.
The scene is not nearly as cutting edge as it used to be. The awe and
pure admiration for the scene is no longer what it used to be. I think
a lot of people miss that. Others, who never knew the feeling of seeing
fancy demos and music played on an Amiga, might not understand what the
demoscene is about. It has always been an underground movement, but it
seems to be fading in strength as such anymore.
While it is good to hear both sides of the story, someone is always
going to have a biased opinion. Sometimes it may be justified, other
times, it may not. Being a person who doesnt find need to muffle such
opinions, I will most likely post such articles as PsiTrons. That
doesnt mean I agree with his views -- nor does it mean its an image
that Static Line wants to carry. However, it does mean that I respect
his views. Since I like to give everyone a chance, it is only fair that
you all now get to hear the other side of the story. Thank you,
Mysterium, for sending in your message. I am sure there are still a lot
of people out there that are still sitting on the fence about the issue,
but at least they got more information about your case.
--Coplan
-- Letter from Eino Keskitalo --
Seven does great party reviews. Of course theyre great parties, but
he simply writes about them catching the feeling, so you start to wish
you were there too.
Anyway, great latest three issues.
--Eino
Bizarre 2000 Party Report
By: Seven
-- Friday 29 October --
Another month, another party : Im gonna have serious craving
problems during the winter. OK, the Static Line deadline is actually
today. I bribed Coplan to allow me to send this article a few days later
for obvious reasons, but I wont have much time for after-party editing.
So, a significant amount of effort is put in this report *at the
partyplace itself*, unlike my last few reports. That should be an
improvement cheers!.
If youre one of the few who wondered what happened to the demo that
Green wanted to make at LTP4: it got postponed till Bizarre, and now
its postponed till 2Thousand, a new party in Belgium. One of the
reasons is that a few people couldnt visit Bizarre: Quasar is going to
some other event in the Netherlands, and Baxter is on a vacation to some
tropical destination, and his plane will land in Belgium on Sunday
night. Driving all the way to Bizarre just to see the prize ceremony
isnt worth the effort for Baxter, and though I pointed out an obvious
shortcut involving a gun, a parachute and the words This is a hijack,
he preferred not to use it. So that left A0a, Corona, DJefke, Eggbird
and myself aside from the inactive members.
I was the first to arrive, around 20:00. The doors had opened at
19:00, so the usual waiting queue had already disappeared. The Bizarre
party still takes place at the same location, the Nobelaer center, and
we have access to a large max 500 ppl and a small hall max 120 ppl,
a movie theater, a cafeteria and a sleeping room. The large hall is
always very noisy, very crowded, and suffers from LTP4-like
temperatures. The small hall was Linux-only last year, but now its
scene-only: no gamers, no big speakers. Needless to say which hall I
chose : Five minutes later Eggbird joined me, together with Bemmel.
They form a joke-group Ijskast refrigerator. The others arrived a few
hours later.
Ive seen already some nice releases: the wild demo by RBI is really
good, and Okkie/De brasserie has made a crazy Dutch cover of Eminems
The real slim shady, in which he disses the whole Dutch scene. No
doubt this will end up high in the MP3 compo :
In the meantime, there is absolutely no information about
compos/deadlines/ whatever. The website says web services currently
offline, work in progress. The opening ceremony is delayed too. Lets
hope things get fixed soon.
-- Saturday 30 October --
The crew finally got the projector working correctly, so they showed
the first movie, Romper Stomper. Never heard of it? Me neither, and when
they said it was a cult-movie and very violent, I didnt bother to watch
and got back to the small hall which is now warmer and more filled with
cigarette-smoke than the large hall :/. There, A0a was struggling with
my VC++ project settings to get the demo framework to compile. Remember,
when you code, change settings or install new programs at a demoparty,
your PC is ten times as vulnerable to problems then it is at home : But
in the end, human endurance and intelligence won over machine
incompatibility and stuff. Happy end!
Corona, A0a and I sat down together talk about the messy details of
our demo-under-construction. Due to the sensitive nature of the
information, I cant disclose the entire talk grin, but fast voronoi
! fast delaunay, how to clip a 3D fractal and and why should *that*
be a problem? were some of the subjects discussed. Typical coders
chitchat, yes.
The only way to get info about the schedule is via IRC on the
bizarre channel, but since there are 80 people on it talking full-time
about nothing at all, we decide to ignore it to protect our mental
health. A tad later, the website got up, but it uses flash-animations so
Ill have to find the right plugins sigh
Oh boy, some sceners are setting new records in childish behavior :
Theres a lot of porn on the ftp servers, among them a particular
obscene and for some people very funny mpeg, and they are playing the
soundtrack over and over again very loud and with all kinds of filters
over it. They only ended because it was waking up certain people and
these people complained to the orgos.
The no big speakers in the small hall rule isnt followed 100, but
its still much more quiet in here. Eggbird is now asking other sceners
if they have music of Krezip or Britney Spears, he wants to make a tune
with samples from it. Someone threatens to shoot him : Someone from The
Solar Group who placed second in the democompo last year tells me
theyve a new demo ready, and another Belgian scener, Infinite
Reboot/Fuel just arrives and has a demo to submit too. Nice to hear from
Fuel again, its been two years since they released Gaz at Wired98.
Its now 8:45, and I think its time to follow A0as Coronas
example and take a nap.
Back again. The sleeping room was very crowded, and all hallways were
filled with sleeping sceners, but I managed to find some empty
floorspace. When I got back, DJefke wondered if he would watch the
compos or not, because we couldnt vote anyway. Excuse me? To my
surprise, voting would be 100 jury voting, as we could read on the
website. Hmm, I should have checked the website a bit earlier. Lets
hope it will turn out positive. The Nobelaer center also houses the
local library, which is open on Saturday, and its entrance is right at
the big party hall. The people who bring their books back look a bit
strange at us. Are they afraid of us, or do we just smell funny?
- Editors Note: A bit of Both, probably...P --Coplan
The RBI animation had some parts added, and looks even better now.
The RBI guys tried to convince someone who had just woken up that it was
Sunday now and that he had missed all the compos, but their victim
wasnt as credulous as they expected : While Infinite Reboot attempts
in vain to keep a rational discussion with DJefke about the advantages
of Win2000 vs Linux, Im browsing the net and even eating a bit.
Its 14:24 and the graphic compos have passed. There were only 4
hand-drawn graphics, one was a joke-entry, two were girl faces and one
weirdo face. The raytrace compo had nine entries, but only a few of them
were really raytraced. The others were what I call website-backgrounds,
with photoshopped pictures and faded anti-aliased lines. While it may
take talent to create such a picture, I dont think they belong to the
raytrace compo, and I wont vote for them. Oops. Forgot that we cant
vote :
The flash compo had three entries, with low to average-complexity
objects which were shown very crisp, but also very slow, say 5 to 10
fps. Flash is definitely a compo for designers, not for coders. I cant
say much about the MP3 and the house compo, although Ive done a feeble
attempt to listen to some tunes. But happy hardcore and similar Dutch
interpretations of music are not really my taste, especially when
played *way* too loud through a professional soundsystem. A good point
was that the orgos showed some kind of techno-style animation during the
compo, so the audience had something to watch when the music starts to
bore them.
Im running out of HD space, and Ive no CD burner, so I want to
transfer my wild demos to Bemmels HD who has one. But as usual, theres
something wrong with either his or my settings, cause he sucks and I
dont.
Maar je hebt ook lui die gaat zitten messen met me partyreports,
en dat willen we al helemaal niet!
Hum :-
doe coplan de groeten,
eggbird. :P
Translation: But there are also people who will mess up my
partyreports, and that is something we do no want at all! Hum :- Greet
Coplan from me, Eggbird :P
Thank you, Eggbird, for pointing out in such a friendly way that I
cant leave my report safely alone for 5 minutes when youre in the
vicinity. Next time when A0a needs me to fix a bug in my code, Ill
finish my sentence, close the file, encrypt it and carry it along with
me on a diskette.
- Editors Note: What? And me miss a greet? --Coplan
What I wanted to say: to minimize the risk of interrupted uploads, I
didnt run any other program simultaneous with FTP, so I had plenty of
time to walk through the halls and see what people were doing. The RBI
guys, having finished their productions, have started another crazy
project: a fake phone-sex advertisement, using censored jpgs from the
LAN plus some videos from their own members they made at a previous
demoparty. People ask Infinite Reboot if they can see the Fuel demo,
even though its not completely polished. Its a dark 3D demo, but not
in the blood/lightning style a la Shad. I wonder how well it will do in
the compo. Some Amiga sceners are here too, some are constantly playing
classic Amiga demos: Desert dreams, State of the art, Nine fingers...
Technically we just laugh at those today coming up next: a sphere wit
48 polys!, but they have tons of attitude, design and beautiful
pixeled fonts.
Even though the small hall is scene-only, there are also people
playing games. Still its cozier than the big hall, where I havent seen
any people coding, drawing or modeling composing is out of question due
to the noise. And I dont know whether I just overlooked them last year
or if they are new at Bizarre, but there are some 10-12 year old kids
gaming too, till early in the morning :/ I dont think this is a healthy
situation, not for the kids nor for the party.
Around 22:30, Corona and A0a decided to search a pizzeria in
Etten-Leur. Since I didnt like the French fries in the cafeteria, I
joined them and so did DJefke hint to the cafeteria people: cutting a
potato in 4 is *not* enough to call it fries Luckily the place was
still open, and we had some deep discussions while eating a big Pizza
Hawaii/Marguerita. It was already 23:45 when we came back, and it seems
we missed the music compo :/
-- Sunday 1 October --
A0a and I interrupted our debugging activities to watch the 4K and
64K intros at 1 oclock. Since the schedule has become widely available
on the bigscreen, on paper and on the website, it has been followed
without major delays. Unfortunately there were no 4Ks of acceptable
quality at all : Its a pity to see your favorite demo-category lose
its popularity to the point that there are zero productions at a major
demoparty. Flex had intended to make a windows-4K, but apparently he
didnt finish it in time.
The 64K compo contained 4 entries: 1 was a joke-entry with only one
effect a rotozoom, another intro had OK effects on the left and middle
of the screen, and oldskool game screens on the right. Since you cant
watch everything at once, you immediately feel the urge to see it again.
The last two were both made by Ile and Nosx from Aardbei and were of a
high quality, but they didnt had enough time to finish the last one
which was shown first.
Most people either went to sleep or watched the movies in the theater
after the intro compo. Corona A0a just have watched American Psycho,
not exactly a feel-good movie, and looked a bit scared when they came
back. Mental note: dont watch movies about serial killers right before
you go to sleep if you dont have your pet toy with you. The next compo
animation starts at 10:30, so we can sleep without missing too much.
Strange fact: no matter how crowded the sleeping room is, there is
always place for one more scener.
I woke up in time to see the animation compo, which was slightly
delayed. There was quite some variation in the anims: joke-entries of
high or low quality, one of those Destroy a PC videos made by Amiga
sceners of course, heavy-duty 3D rendered demos... Im almost sure that
Create and destroy/RBI will win, due to its length and high quality.
12:50 and the democompo is over. Seven demos were show, only two of
high quality: Untamed/Fuel and We aint real/The Solar Group. They are
very different: Untamed is a camera flight in a Quake-like environment,
and We aint real is a typical Danish design demo. rECTUM cAUDA made a
low-fi porn demo as usual, Kontvlokken Posse made a jokedemo Mekker
ende Blaet, which shows a picture of a goat and a sheep, plus a
sinus-scroller with a big rant in Dutch. The title is hard to
translate, but mekker is the sound a goat makes, blaat is the sound
a sheep makes, and using ae iso aa and ende iso en and is
medieval spelling. Ijskast released a half-finished flash-like demo,
LifLaf, which was entirely coded at the partyplace. Two more serious
demos were Noronium, which showed a bowling ball/face travelling through
a 3D world, and Vpitrod, about which I can only remember that it was
quite good where has my memory gone?.
At the end, the orgos showed a message that the jury should come to
the control room, and that they could still use some more jury-members.
We thought about volunteering, but in the end we decided that we were a
little bit too biased to vote objectively :
Now all we could do was waiting for the prize ceremony, and for the
entries to be put on the ftp servers. Everyone I spoke to agreed that We
aint real and Untamed are a match for each other. Since Coplan has
still the Spot review, Ill give some quick info about Untamed here:
its a camera flight through an impressive, dark 3D world, without a
really story. Technically there are some hard-to-code effects, like
volumetric shadows: theres a hole in the ground with volumetric light
shining out, and you can see that a part of the light is blocked by an
object even before you see the object itself. Some effects use textures
that change every frame, for example the fountain with waves in which
particles are reflected. Unfortunately, uploading textures is a very
slow action on some 3D cards, and of course the compo machine had such a
card. The music is a self-made rock/metal MP3 with real guitars. I dont
know if that is an advantage, as the Dutch scene seems to favor
house/hardcore tunes.
The doors to the theater room opened a bit later than announced, but
we had to wait even longer due to technical problems. In the meantime,
the orgos showed some TV-program about BMX stunt competitions, which
seems to be a dangerous sport judging the accidents that they showed. I
dont know the name of the organizer who presented the ceremony, but he
was very funny. Its one of the few times Ive seen someone thank the
sponsors in a way which was not boring, and they during the show they
showed animations by Arcturus, the same that were shown during the music
compos and just before each entry in the other compos, to announce their
name/group/category. Because another event would start at the partyplace
right after Bizarre, they had little time left and announced the winners
without much delays. RBI was the absolute winner of Bizarre: they had
one or two places in the top 3 of every compo they competed in:
animation, handdrawn and raytraced pictures, several music compos...
When the presenting orgo said that Jay/RBI must have too much time on
his hands, someone in the crowd jelled Get a job, man! Must have been
slightly jealous : In the demo compo, Vpitrod finished third, We aint
real came second and Untamed ended up first. It had been a difficult
decision, as 45 of the jury preferred The Solar Groups demo and 55
that of Fuel. I felt glad for Fuel, because Infinite Reboot said it
might very well be Fuels last demo, but its of course a bit sad for
The Solar Group who missed the first place for two years in a row.
After the prize ceremony, everyone started to pack, said goodbye to
his/her friends and traveled home. I think Bizarre was a good party, it
had a few bad points but the organizers fixed them quickly. The
scene-only room is definitely a good idea, as the atmosphere was very
friendly there. You know that when you talk to a random person there,
hell be a scener. The jury voting was accurate as far as I can judge
from the compos Ive seen, but not being able to vote takes away some of
the feeling. Maybe using 50 jury and 50 public would be the best of
both worlds ? The only bad point is the low number of entries for a
party with 500 people. If I compare it with LTP, which had less visitors
and more entries in every compo, I can only think of one reason: a low
sceners vs gamers ratio. Another point that proves this is the fact that
there were almost no foreign people. At the start of the prize ceremony,
the orgos asked if anyone preferred English over Dutch, but no one
wanted that :/ Anyway, I enjoyed Bizarre, thanks to the crew, and see
you again next year.
--Seven
Official results Bizarre 2000 demoparty
By: Coplan
Only showing first, second and third place.
http://www.bizarre.nl
-- Animation --
Create and Destroy
RBI Video
Neen, dit is niet hopjesvla 2
rECTUM cAUDA nL
Oryx sux!
Oryx AVD
-- Demo --
Untamed
Fuel
We aint real
The Solar Group
VPITROD
Paranoid Productions
-- 64 KB --
Loc
no-XS / Ile
Ivlx
Kaleido
8bit
Bliss
-- Mp3 --
See the sun
Jay / RBI
Solid
RBI
Obsession
E-sense
-- House --
Headzone
Jay / RBI
Tipsy Gipsies
De Brasserie
Bud! - Dont do that
RBI - Guest
-- Music --
Chill n green
Jay / RBI
Funtex
Total Eclipse
F*cking bird hill choir
-- Flash --
Possibilities with Flash
Active Interactive
Flash Compo ?
UT clan LEGO
Widescreen
RBI
-- Website --
Smooth
Coredump
Quo Usque Tandem
Third Foundation
-- Raytraced Graphics --
Sonar
MagicBoy / RBI Video
Backdroppel
RBI
Lost and Found
Kaleido
-- Handdrawn Graphics --
Angelina Croft
Mirage
Silkyway
RBI
Girlie
Fuel
-- Ansi --
Strangers in the Dark
Insane
Now show them tities
Expose
In Tune
Nightbeats The Approach
By: Coplan
-- Introduction --
Wheres Setec? Well, fear not, he is still around and still alive.
Unfortunatley, time has gotten the best of him. He has been busy with
school, of course. He has also been working on a major project with
Dilvish, and I hope to share that with you in a few months. For now,
Im solo. I dont know how much longer that will last.
This month, I am in a rather eclectic mood, so I chose a song that
has a lot of Celtic influence. Ill be honest, I know very little
about Celtic culture, but it seems to have a lot of Modern influences
as well. Whatever, it is definately a song worth a review.
The song is from an artist known as Nightbeat. I am not familiar
with the artist, and this is the first time I have ever heard anything
from him. I am told that there is an oldskool artist that used to use
the same name -- I cannot deny or confirm that this might be the same
person.
Now, a review of The Approach by Nightbeat
-- Coplan --
There are two key elements to this song that I truly love. First is
the flute, and second is the percussion. These two elements combined
form a general characteristic of Celtic music that most people would
agree upon except maybe the experts, of which I am not one.
First, the percussion. I am quite fond of properly executed
percussion. In order for percussion of any form to sound refined and
accurate, it must contain volume variation. That is the key to any
instrument that is monotone in nature. Percussion isnt just a series
of fancy riffs, its soul is rooted deeply in volume. Nightbeat has
hit this nail on the head. Not only has he made an exceptional example
of good percussion, but he has also created a mood. He has brought
back a style that is centuries old and he has done it well. I can
almost picture the guy sitting there with his primative calf skin drum,
and another guy with hand made tamborine.
Then there is the flute. I have heard this flute sample floating
around some tracked tunes before, but I never thought much of it. Then
I heard what Nightbeat can do with it. I think a lot of his tracking
style definately has an influence on the effective use of this flute
sample. Youll notice that he stacks several notes together in a
relatively fast moveing song. That gives the flute its realism, as if
you can hear the player sliding his fingers off the holes in the flute.
This flute player is very fast at what he does -- but isnt that
characteristic of the style? Needless to say, Nightbeat has also
provided this ancient orchestra with a bunch of well written music, so
the flute player has no trouble breathing life into this song.
There is a very fast part towards the end of the song when the flute
drops out. This is just a fun section of the song, and I am glad
Nightbeat put it in. I dont have much to say about this part of the
song other than the fact that it is enjoyable, and the percussion is
still very tight.
The Approach is a short song, a mere 3 minutes. But dont let that
dictate its quality. I assure you, it is a quality song, and youll
like it. Download it, then listen to it. Then go read the Retro Tunage
column where I review more middle-age music Sorry, had to get that
plug in.
--Coplan
Song Information:
Title: The Approach
Author: Nightbeat
Filename zipped/unzipped: Nbappr.zip / Nbappr.it IT 2.14
File Size zipped/unzipped: 765 kb / 851 kb
Source: http://www.traxinspace.com
Alternate:
ftp://ftp.scenespot.org/staticline/suppliment/Nbappr.zip
In Tune is a regular column dedicated to the review of original and
singular works by fellow trackers. It is to be used as a tool to expand
your listening and writing horizons, but should not be used as a general
rating system. Coplans opinions are not the opinions of the Static
Line Staff.
If you have heard a song you would like to recommend either your own,
or another persons, We can be contacted through e-mail useing the
addresses found in the closing notes. Please do not send files attached
to e-mail without first contacting us. Thank you!
Retro Tunage
Shattered Skye by Catspaw
By: Coplan
Occasionally, Tryhuk asks me for recommendations for this column.
This month, I recommended a tune that we decided I should review, as it
has such an influence on my tracking development. The song is
Shattered Skye by Catspaw at the time, a member of RAT -- and yes,
Skye is spelled that way in the song.
I will first start out by saying Shattered Skye is not considered a
great opus by most people. The samples are mediocre, the tune is good,
but nothing truly exceptional...but the song has a lot of character.
For one, it was one of the few songs tracked in the mid 1990s that
wasnt of electronic influence. Sure, there were others, but not like
this. Shattered Skye has an heir of medieval music. It is a style
that I love, favor and attempt to do almost every day. My admiration
for admiration for the style started long before I discovered the scene,
but it is carried through today with such works that I keep stored in a
special section of my hard drive. Just a warning though, the song
doesnt always play well in players other than Impulse Tracker. If you
want to catch the true feeling, you gotta use Impules Tracker.
The song starts out with a characteristic riff that youll see
throughout the song. It is most noticeable at this point in channel 5,
where you have the percussion. The kettle drum one of the best samples
in this song and the shaker play back and forth in a relatively
repetative nature. This gets carried throughout most of the instruments
in the first part of the song: The violins, the cellos and so on. The
primary acoustic work in this part of the song is left up to the lead
violins, the cymbol crashes and brass instruments. Youll also notice
that Catspaw takes advantage of the ever popular song speed rock method,
but in a unique way. He rocks from a speed of 4, to a speed of 6 to
get a very quick and realistic shaker down to an average speed of 5 to
finish out each section of a pattern Catspaw takes full advantage of
the fact that IT supports patterns longer than 64 lines.
My favorite part of the song starts at about order 7. Catspaw
returns back to the original key he changed, earlier. Did you
notice?, and introduces a larger part for the brass. The brass is
rather impressive, considering the samples he used. Brass is such a
touchy instrument in tracking, instruments difficult to replicate
realistically in tracking. But, if you got enough going on, and lots
of brass playing different notes in a song like this, it sounds good --
even though it is simple.
At this point, we take a short little slow interlude, then things
pick up again. That doesnt last too long, though, because things
start to die down at order 20. We transfer into a very low key part of
the song in what I would consider a less-than-satisfactory transition.
Again, this short little bit doesnt last long. Then we close out with
another energetic interpretation of the first section.
The song will always be one of my favorites, but even my favorite
tunes have faults. This is one tune that couldve benefited from a
little snip of the unecessary slow parts. I dont think they add
anything to the song. But, it is a great song, and definately worth a
download. Especially for those of you who are trying to get into more
orchestral work.
Song Information:
Title: Shattered Skye
Author: Catspaw
Release date: 1996?
Length: 4m
Filename zipped/unzipped: ratskye.zip / ratskye.it
File Size zipped/unzipped: 290kb / 420kb
Source: ftp://ftp.scenespot.org/staticline/suppliment/Ratskye.zip
--Coplan
Tryhuk returns next time
Screen Lit Vertigo
Spot by Exceed party-version
By: Seven
Found at www.scene.org
1st place at the Assembly 2K demo compo
System requirements:
Win98, 9,5 MB HD. I think a heavy CPU pIII and/or a lot of memory
are necessary to run the demo smoothly.
Test Machine:
Baxters machine, a PIII 500 with some fast 3D card and lots of
memory.
The credits:
code: nns, picard, robson
visuals: warpig, der piipo
music: generic
The demo:
Exceeds latest demo uses 100 software rendering in medium resolution
512*318, which unfortunately makes a fast CPU a must. Ive experienced
a lot of stutter with my PII 350 64MB, but now Im at LTP4 and I can
abuse Baxter/Greens machine for reviews :
Desktop Adventures starts with a ceiling lamp rocking back and
forth, illuminating the 3D title and casting shadows on the wall. Hmm,
they must have adapted the code from Heaven 7 hi Picard. An infinite
zoom a la Contour follows, when the camera dives into the title. A solar
system with planets appear when higher levels of detail are generated,
and we fly through the cloudy sky of the blue planet. The destination is
a rustic farm with sheep, lying between grassy hills. This landscape
looks really good, although its actually done with a clever 2D trick.
The main part of the demo is an animated sequence of several objects
on a desktop: a clock, a jar of yogurt, cubes, pencils and a big desktop
lamp. All these objects are asleep at the start, snoring and breathing
slowly, until the clock starts to ring and everyone jumps into action.
All the movements are fluently and realistic, for as far as you can say
that about normally inanimate things. IMHO the best thing is the water
floating out a flask and soaking a little cube. A small clipping bug is
visible when the lamp jumps on a ball, you can see the ball moving
through the foot of the lamp for a second. There are shadows all over
the demo, to show of that this is software rendering, although the edges
of the shadows are coarser than the edges of the normal polys.
The music isnt a single tune, but more a soundtrack for the movements
on the screen. It starts like a song to lull children asleep, there are
symphonic parts, fast-paced classical music, sudden silences with voices
singing a capella, ... Plus it has separate sound-effects like snoring,
whistling, bangs etc. The intro, outro and main tune are all MP3s,
probably to limit the filesize.
Overall:
Spot is an almost pure 3D demo, but one of the best animated Ive
seen, and the music fit like a glove. It doesnt have a real story, but
it does suffer a bit from deja vu after having it seen a few times. And
the fact that its software-only is bad news for those with a slow CPUs
: Well, if you cant watch it now, put it on your demos to check out
when Ive bought a new PC-list, cause its worth seeing at least once.
--Seven
Intro Watch
Sink by Pulse
By: Gekko
64k intro at The Party 1997
Authors: Camel, Thor, Falcon, Lazur, Unreal
Notes:
This intro requires DOS and GUS both of them are quite hard to find
today. It starts under Windows but freezes in the middle. There are
hidden options: sink.exe /save will create a big data file on the
disk, but later on the intro will load much faster if started as
sink.exe /load.
I would have liked to review a new intro, but I havent found any
that was good enough. That is why I went back in time so much.
Sink is a realtime raytracing intro. It was very famous in its day
for its fast code. Since then the speed of an average PC has increased
radically and there have been more complex intros of this kind eg.
Rubicon, Heaven 7. Despite this Sink have not lost its value.
The code has still remained impressing in 2000, even if one notices
that the objects are too blocky. Apart from a light spot effect there is
nothing else but raytracing. There are several scenes, ranging from
abstract ones flying spheres, waving walls to ones which resemble
reality underwater scene, meadow with trees. The latter type does not
mean photorealistic 3d worlds either, naturally. Instead, all the scenes
together guide the watcher to an abstract and very simplified virtual
world. The psychedelic waving of the screen also contributes towards the
abstract feeling. The mood of the music fits this most well.
The music is a demo style song. One can notice that the instruments
had to be seriously downsampled to fit in less than 64 kilobytes. This
is unfortunately quite annoying most of the time it is a pity because
the tune itself is very good.
There is a very fine pixelised Sink logo and a Pulse logo screen
but the quality of the latter is ruined by the lossy compression, again
due to the need to fit in 64k. The textures are computer generated.
They are fine, though the colors are not the best.
The graphics, effects and the music together express a strange mood.
This mood makes this intro interesting to be watched many times.
--Gekko
Editorial
Time to Move On?
By: Coplan
A lot of influential people have left the scene while I still cannot
fathom myself ever leaving. People retire from the scene every day.
Many werent very well recognized while they were here. Some didnt
contribute very much. Others are well known and their departure is
widely recognized. But it doesnt affect everyone, and it affects
everyone differently.
When Necros stopped being active in the scene, Ill be honest, I have
yet to truly miss him. He released a lot of music, and aside from his
music, I didnt have much contact with him. Besides, I still have
several songs of his that I have yet to hear especially at
alphaconspiracy.com.
But when someone close to you decides to throw in the towel, it
strikes you down...breathless. When I came to the scene, I jumped from
group to group until I finally found a group that I felt at home. I
have called myself a member of Immortal Coil for many years well, not
iC is dead, but nevermind that. At the time I joined, Shaithis and
Rhythm Greene were the guys in charge. They were good friends, they
were my inspiration, and they were a joy to hang around on immortal
with. Unfortunately, the time came when life piled it on too thick for
them, and they no longer had interest in dealing with scene polotics.
They pulled me aside one day and told me that the group was mine to
lead, because they were both retiring from the scene.
Uh...now what?
Okay, so I wasnt left out on my own. I did have friends in the
scene, and I had plenty of contact with the scene. But I was a bit
emotional for the next few days occasionally, I still am when I think
about old skool iC. It is a concept that I dont understand. What is
life without the scene? I truly dont know.
Im sure that one day Ill get to that point. After all, no one
wants to hang out with a 70 year old tracker anyhow, writing all that
antique music, and still useing my DOS version of Impulse Tracker. But
to me, the scene is not about that old tracker that Ive been useing for
X number of years. Its not about the award winning tunes that I may
have one. I have memories: of music, of people, of ideas, of
competitions.
Seriously though, when is the proper time to move on? When should
one leave the scene? The truth is, you may leave, but youll never
forget the scene. If youve lost your passion, take a break. Itll
come back one day. If not, then you should ask yourself if you had an
enjoyable time while you were here.
--Coplan
Scene Sense
Where the heck did our values go?
By: PsiTron
I have tried to figure out exactly what I was going to say for my
first official article for Static Line. I went through a lot of drafts
of ideas and such and realized I was trying to dig too deep for a topic,
when the topic had always been in front of me. So here goes.
First I must say that I am an anti-Windows person that really does
not care for mp3s in the scene, that is true. I cannot deny it, but
because of that my opinions may differ from yours, but hear me out, at
the very least. For I would like to explore the reason, at least the
original one, why Demosceners do what they do.
Well, they write demos and create modules, duh, obviously. That is
not in question here. The real question is WHY do people write demos or
mods. What the heck purpose do they have? Well, originally demos seemed
to be designed as a challenge to make the most of your hardware. At the
time that this idea originally surfaced, C64s were still popular.
Granted, if one takes a look at the old-skewl demos on the C64, they
look like complete crap, at least in comparison to todays demos. That,
however, is circumstantial - the true fantatic still watches the demos,
I am sure, just as true Zelda fanatics still play the game even though
they can beat it in under an hour, usually with their eyes closed. Just
as a chip-fan still listens to chips, at least for their nostalgic
value. One mustnt forget the original .MODs where one was forced to do
a very similar thing - make the best with what you have in that case 4
channels, 1 effects column, no NNAs, no rez and 8-bit samples. That is
still true for todays modules, though many people find seem it limiting
instead of inspiring. And, of course, whether it be for inspiration of
just from shear addiction, people still watch demos like yes, here I
have to mention it Second Reality.
What possess people to listen to the piercing sounds of chiptunes?
Because we talking as a chip-fanatic appreciate the special style
involved in producing such a piece of music. Some people cringe at the
bleeps and sinewave basses. Others delight in the artistic beauty of
them. MODs are and were the same way. It is a trade of sorts. Demos are
part of that trade.
But to re-establish my point, what do demos, and tracks alike say
today? Some of them, fortunately, are saying the same ideas that the by
now ancient demos said: Look at what we can do with our hardware! and
I bet youre wondering how I did that mad-phat effect without using a
riff and only 4 channels! It is true that I, myself, being one who
tries to stick to the original set values of the scene enjoy the
ambience and messages of the more modern demos. Of course I do - it
gives the artists behind the demos an incredible power and hightens the
emotions expressed within demos, but I think that the fundamental idea
of why demos are made, and even why chiptunes and MODs are made have
escaped some people. If one wants to present a profound message without
giving full regard to the fundamental idea of demos, why not simply make
an AVI? That way one does not have to worry about the limits of memory
or processing speed, etc. Why not make an MP3 instead of being forced to
fine-tune a module? To be more specific, why cut corners by using
pre-written libraries that one knows to be less efficient, or use
multitudes of easy-to-make riffs when one can have the enjoyment of at
least attempting it in a module?
Has the scene gotten lazy? Lost its way? Confused? Truthfully, I do
know what caused it, though there are many theories. I could care less
what caused it. My job, as a real and true scener is to find a way to
fix it. Some of you may think insane to like DOS or chiptunes yes, I
know I keep mentioning that. Well, that is your opinion, but I hope one
day you can experience the joy of finally, after countless hours, making
a little piece of near-perfection in such an imperfect world...
This has been the first time I have delved into writing articles for
an e-mag or for any thing, really, so I welcome suggestions, but take
note that I tend to be an opinionated individual, and my opinions may
not be the best out there, but the purpose of this article is to inspire
thinking, and yes, sometimes argument. Because in doing so more can be
learned about the scene, which way it is going, what should be done,
etc. Again, I welcome comments could use help with making a better
title , and thanks for reading!
--PsiTron
Scene Dirt
News Rumors
By: Coplan
-- Upcoming Alpha Conspiracy CD --
There is a tidbit of information about an upcoming alpha conspiracy
CD at the following link. This will be updated over time. For now, you
can get an MP3 preview of a song to be released on this CD. Frequent
visitors to the site will find a secret directory of his music.
http://www.alphaconspiracy.com/audiocd.html
-- Oldskool Artist Pages on mp3.com --
Fans of Siren/Sandman, Teque and Stereoman should check out pages of
interest on mp3.com They are as follows:
Alexander Brandon Siren/Sandman
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/135/ospf.html
Teque
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/83/teque.html
Stereoman
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/165/georgemarinov.html
-- DJ in a Box --
Some of you out there have been interested in broadcasting your
music. Well, DJ in a Box makes this easy over an IceCast or ShoutCast
server. For more information, check out this side project of our
technical consultant, Ranger Rick.
http://www.djiab.org
-- Scene.org moves to Netherlands --
The Scene.org servers are not dead. In fact, they are moveing the
services to the Netherlands server. The move is inconvenient, but the
servers should be faster, and have much more diskspace. The entire
process should take another week.
--Coplan
Scene Dirt is a semi-regular column offering the latest tidbits of
information to its readers. If you have any bits of information that
you think should be here, contact coplan coplan.ic@rcn.com and offer
as much information as possible.
Link List
Demo Groups:
3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net
Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com
Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain
Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl
Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl
ANDESA Soft International..................http://andesa.da.ru
Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com
Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com
AtomiK....................................http://atomik.ini.hu
Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net
BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net
Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk
Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org
Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org
Chrome..............................http://chrome.scene-hu.com
CoPro.....................................http://www.copro.org
Damage...................................http://come.to/damage
Dance...................................http://dance.flipp.net
Defacto 2..............................http://www.defacto2.net
Dolops......................... ........http://dolOps.scene.hu
Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/exceed
Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org
GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods
Green.....................................http://green.dyns.cx
Grif........................http://arrabonet.gyor.hu/rattgrif
Haujobb......................................http://haujobb.de
Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl
IJSKAST.............................http://www.ijskast.cjb.net
Immortals..............................http://imrt.home.ml.org
Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org
Just For Fun...........................http://jff.planet-d.net
Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net
Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor
Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com
Label zero.........................http://labelzero.pganet.com
Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/mandula
Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar
Nextempire..................http://members.xoom.com/NEXTEMPIRE
Ninja Gefilus.........http://www.angelfire.com/or/ninjagefilus
Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org
Orion..............................http://orion.arfstudios.org
Popsy Team............................http://popsyteam.rtel.fr
Quad........................................http://www.quad.nl
Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu
Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay
Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net
Rhyme................................http://rhyme.scene-hu.com
Sista Vip..........................http://www.sistavip.exit.de
Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org
Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl
Suspend......................http://www.optimus.wroc.pl/rappid
Tehdas...................................http://come.to/tehdas
Tesko..........................http://www.scentral.demon.co.uk
The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org
The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net
The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no
TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com
Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma
T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org
Unik.....................................http://www.unik.ca.tc
Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net
Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch
Music Groups:
Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com
Aural planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com
Azure...................................http://azure-music.com
Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp
BrothomStates.............http://www.katastro.fi/brothomstates
Chill..........................http://www.bentdesign.com/chill
Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/cnd
Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com
Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com
Fabtrax......http://www.cyberverse.com/boris/fabtrax/home.htm
Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org
Fridge...........................http://www.ssmedion.de/fridge
Fusion Music Crew................http://members.home.nl/cyrex/
Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff
Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org
Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.L7.net
Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org
Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net
Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org
LackLuster.....................http://www.m3rck.net/lackluster
Level-d.................................http://www.level-d.com
Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net
Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi
Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music
Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/mon
MAZs Sound homepage.............http://www.th-zwickau.de/maz
Moplayaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz
Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com
Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds
Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org
Noerror......................http://www.error-404.com/noerror/
One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net
Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net
Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr
RBi Music.............................htpp://www.rbi-music.com
Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruffengine
SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m
Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev
Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate
Sunlikamelo-D...........http://www.error-404.com/sunlikamelo-d
Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr
Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila
Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net
Tetris....................................http://msg.sk/tetris
Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr
Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tdr.scene.org
UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub
Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk
Wiremaniacs.........................http://www.wiremaniacs.com
Others:
Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org
Calodox demolinks exchange.....http://calodox.planet-d.net/cde
coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net
Comic Pirates.........................http://scene-central.com
Demonews Express.........http://www.teeselink.demon.nl/express
Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub
Demoscene.org news forum..............http://www.demoscene.org
Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net
Doose charts...............................http://www.doose.dk
Dreams2 CD.........................http://nl.scene.org/dreams2
Freax...................http://freax.scene-hu.com/mainmenu.htm
GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net
Hugi size-compo...............http://home.pages.de/hugi-compo
Orange Juice.........................http://ojuice.citeweb.net
PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained
Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org
Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de
Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net
Swiss List.................http://www.profzone.ch/vantage/list
Swiss Scene Server.......................http://www.chscene.ch
TakeOver................................http://www.takeover.nl
Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net
Hungarian scene page...................http://www.scene-hu.com
Trebel...................................http://www.trebel.org
Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm
DiskMags / SceneMags:
Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/dimag
Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com
Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net
Dragon......................http://www.wasp.w3.pl/pages/dragon
Fleur................................http://fleur.scene-hu.com
Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net
Hugi........................http://home.pages.de/hugidownload
Music Massage......................http://www.scene.cz/massage
Planet Chartmag...........http://www.agravedict.art.pl/planet/
Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net
Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org
Static Line......................http://www.ic.l7.net/statline
http://www.scenespot.org/staticline
Total Disaster...................http://www.totaldisaster.w.pl
TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org
WildMag...........................http://www.wildmag.notrix.de
FTPs:
Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl
Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de
Flerp.....................................ftp://flerp.scene.hu
Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org
Skynet archive.................ftp://acid2.stack.nl/pub/skynet
ACiD2 Archive.............................ftp://acid2.stack.nl
Editor: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org
Columnists: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan@scenespot.org
Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com
Gekko / Gergely Kutenich / mont@tar.hu
Louis Gorenfeld / gorenfeld@vrone.net
Psitron / Tim Soderstrom / TigerHawk@stic.net
Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk
Seven / Stefaan / Stefaan.VanNieuwenhuyze@rug.ac.be
SiN / Ian Haskin / sin@netcom.ca
Subliminal / Matt Friedly / sub@plazma.net
Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / xtryhu00@stud.fee.vutbr.cz
Virt / virt@bellsouth.net
Technical Consult: Ranger Rick / Ben Reed / ranger@scenespot.org
Static Line on the Web: http://www.scenespot.org/staticline
Static Line Subscription Management:
http://www.scenespot.org/mailman/listinfo/staticline
If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware
that we will format your article with two spaces at the beginning and one
space at the end of each line. Please avoid foul language and high ascii
characters. Contributions should be mailed to Coplan
coplan@scenespot.org.
See you next month!
-eof---------------------
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