Report and competition final results

Brief Report.

On Friday August 30, 1996, around ninety (90) people gathered at the University of Patras to witness the one and only computer demo party held in Greece, the Gardening '96. It was organized by dEUS in colaboration with Debris and it lasted up until the afternoon of Sunday, September the 1st. The partyplace was a theatre inside the university complex, and it was just huge. A video projector was placed at the end of the room, along with the sound system. The organisers' room was nearby, the info desk at the other side, while the rest of the hall was full of benches and chairs.

From Friday, people were coming in groups, bringing their computers along. They connected to the local network and started working. While others were finishing their contributions to the various compos (music, demo, raytracing), other people were playing network games. The network was working smoothly and was a big convenience to all attendants. In the meantime, foreign demos were shown on the video projector as well as science-fiction, action and thriller movies at night. Music was high at all times by the various hi-fi systems that people had brought to the party.

On Saturday afternoon, the multiplayer game separate network was set up, so that the Doom 2 competition could begin. After the various players warmed up for a period of time, the games begun with matches of four people. Since the contestants were fourty eight (48), the preliminary matches lasted for a very long time. The games were interrupted at around 21:00 so that the people could go eat. They finished quite later (after the music competition).

The music competition at the Gardening '96 was an adventure. The musical tracks were played on the main sound system, and the track names were shown on the projector. The voters did not know the track composers until the results were out. All along the competition there was lightning and a little rain outside (which is extremely rare for Greece at that season). While the sixth track was played, someone tripped over an inkjet printer cable, and the printer fell on the floor from a height of 1.5 meters making a terrible sound. The compo was then stopped for a couple of minutes. The printer had become several pieces but, surprisingly, it was re-assembled by its owner the next day and was fully functional! While the next song (the seventh) was played, the place suddenly blacked out! There was a power failure for about ten minutes and then the current was up again. Later we heard that the entire city was blacked out too. All in all, it was a pretty unpredictable competition! :-)

After the music compo and the final part of the Doom 2 compo, groups assembled at the competition machine, were they tested if their productions were running smoothly. Some corrections were made by some groups and the demo compo finally started early in the morning of Sunday. All demos were shown on the projector in random order. All ran perfectly, except for 'Beyond' by A.S.D. which was tested several times but refused to run correctly. Apart from that it was a very good demo and would surely get more votes if these problems had not occured. Despite being very late, all people were there and the atmosphere of the demo competition was really cool.

On Sunday, there were two competitions left. First, the surprise raytracing competition, which was about making an animation advertising the products of a beverage and refreshments sponsoring firm. After a pause, the wild competition begun where ten productions were shown. Most of them were funny demos, others were just small individual productions that could not take part in the demo competition for having raw animations or routines by other people.

After these, the final results were displayed on the big screen and the winners were given their prizes. People started packing their stuff and eventually left the party place later on. The Gardening '96 was over.

Competition Results

All averages imply a maximum of 10.

~Demo Competition (52 votes total)

~Music Competition (56 votes total)

~Wild Competition (36 votes total)

~Raytrace Animation (realtime) Competition (39 votes total)

~Doom2 Net-Competition (final ranking)

Closing Words

It's really hard for me to sum up all the things that happened these three days in just a lousy report. A few clicks on the keyboards cannot express the fun we all had watching demos, the adrenaline while playing games, the fatigue we all felt after staying awake for so long, the atmosphere of the partyplace at 06:00 in the morning... I don't think anyone can feel this emotion unless he has actually been there. Anyhow, some people thought about making a full party report, if you see their work you may get a better idea what the Gardening and demo partying in general is all about. As for me, all I can say now is that it was fantastic. I hope we will have the luck of experiencing something similar or even better next year and I hope that you are going to be there too.

See you at Gardening '97!

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Last updated 12/08/2001.