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Assembly '03 192

Posted by michael from the crazy-finns dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The world's biggest festival for computer enthusiasts, Assembly '03 starts off today. Four days of coding, compos, music, games and other geeky stuff. See press release (rtf) for more..."
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Assembly '03 More

Assembly '03

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  • Where do I sign up?!? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:22AM (#6634589) Journal
    WOW! I bet there's gonna be tons of hot chicks at the nerd fest! I better get some push-ups in, it's gonna be a hot night at the Hartwall arena!

  • asm (Score:3, Funny)

    by damballah ( 691477 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:25AM (#6634615) Homepage Journal
    When I first saw the title, I thought this was a new version of the assembly language...

  • Wavelan, laptop, ... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm now sitting in some sack chair (or whatever they're called), ircing with my laptop, checking if any people I know walk by, .. ah. the life of Assembly :)

  • alright already (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:25AM (#6634617)
    See press release (rtf) for more...
    i'll rtf press release!
  • When I saw the title, I first though that this was an article for the new Microsoft Assembly 2003 assembler. I thought 'it's about time someone made an object-oriented version of assembly for the x86 platform'. The I read the rest of the summary. Something about a gathering that starts today. The lesson I learned is: It's not enough not to read the article, you can't read the summary either.

  • Oooh the memories... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ComaVN ( 325750 )
    of seeing Second Reality for the first time, on a 486. It inspired me to... well it didn't really amount to much, but for a moment there, I wished I was that good.

    • Re:Oooh the memories... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Firehawke ( 50498 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:32AM (#6634672) Journal
      Ten years since Second Reality, and it still sets the benchmark for what could be accomplished on a 486. Ironically, the Future Crew members pretty much got what they wanted, a shot at games programming. I seem to recall Epic Pinball being one of their works, and Max Payne sports a number of ex-FC members in the credits list.

      • I've never understod this fachination for 2nd Reality. It was good, but the design wasn't that good IMHO. For me the highpoint was the Amiga Scene. With the PC everything turned into boring 3D-shows.

        Actual opinion of mine. YMMV.

        • Re:Oooh the memories... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:34AM (#6635316)

          Agreed.. still the Amiga demos with lot's of 3d is very impressive considering the relative amount of processing power. People like Offa, Rubberduck and Kalms of TBL, Juliet&Case of CNCD, Antibyte of Scoopex etc. really pushed those poor m68k's for every last cycle.

          But still, the most enjoyable demos today are those golden oldies like Enigma by Phenomena (Azatoth was my hero), Mental Hangover by Scoopex, Voyage by Razor 1911 and Hardwired by The Silents DK and Crionics.

          Oh, the memories :)

          Check out Back to the roots [back2roots.org] for some nice Amiga demoscene nostalgia. Pouet.net [pouet.net] is also a nice resource for demoscene information.

          • Re:Oooh the memories... (Score:2, Interesting)

            by eddy ( 18759 )

            It's odd how back then the demos on the C64 and Amiga pushed the hardware and often had very interesting designs (personally I was very sorry to see the scroll text all but disappear), and today when they have such incredible raw hardware that they don't need to push it (yes, I understand that that's some of the point, but go with me here), they seem to spend much less time on design! Really, newer demos should be more interesting than older, but that's not how I find it. At least not in the full demo, the

      • Ten years since Second Reality, and it still sets the benchmark for what could be accomplished on a 486.

        Actually, second reality ran on a 386SX/25. Pretty amazing stuff. It was pretty much the breaktrough into the demoscene for the PC.
        • Someone posted a link to an DivX of Second Reality, and I gotta tell you, when you factor in the state of technology at the point it was created, it's a mindblower. I mean, anyone could do something like that now with Blender running on a PIII in their sleep, but when you place it in its timeframe it's pretty awesome.

          I wonder if there were Mac people involved in the demoscene? I know Amiga people were doing it, and PC/DOS people, but did any crew use Macs? Just curious.
      • Don't forget the Remedy entertainment "benchmark software": Final Reality [remedy.fi]. (Oh yeah, they also made some driving game, and Max Payne. Whatever. :))
      • some of futurecrew members formed remedy entertainment, (and did titles such as Death Rally and Max Payne - and now working on Max Payne 2), and they are also related to 3DMark 2001 (MadOnion) and 3DMark 2003 (Now under the name of FutureMark).

        So yeah, they went right back to writing cool demos that push the limits of current hardware :)

    • Re:Oooh the memories... (Score:5, Informative)

      by BetterThanCaesar ( 625636 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:36AM (#6634728)

      The original and the soundtrack: download away [hornet.org]

      Here it is in divx, in case you've thrown away your old computer: misc_fc-2ndreality-divx.avi [edome.net]

    • we've come a long way since second reality. however, I must agree that it were the reality demos by FC, cronologia/Cascada and Panic/FC that made me join the scene as well :-)
    • Same here. I would love to see a remake of this. I remember someone made a parody of it a few years ago. I forgot the title of it. Does anyone remember?

  • Unfortunately... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bloggins02 ( 468782 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:29AM (#6634651)
    We appear to have disassembled their webserver :)

  • They claim to be a gathering of geeks... (Score:5, Funny)

    by double-oh three ( 688874 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:31AM (#6634665)
    They claim to be a gathering of geeks, yet they are /.'ed before 8 comments are posted.

  • here in partyplace (Score:5, Interesting)

    by latroM ( 652152 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:31AM (#6634667) Homepage Journal
    I am currently ircing on grand stand with WLAN equipment. The view is awesome, thousands of computers filling the partyplace. Assembly is awesome party and I recommend it to everyone.

  • Back in the days of the C64/Amiga - Asm (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:32AM (#6634682)
    Assembly is a great party, there are alot of talented demo people there back in the day - m68k to the max! I just hope that it hasn't turned into "yer next lan party" with untalented fraggers filling the rooms!

  • World's largest? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:35AM (#6634710)
    Well - last time I checked, The Gathering [gathering.org] in Norway is bigger - over 5000 visitors, while the Assembly had a measly 4500 visitors. Oh well. ;) -- File not found. Fake it? (Y/N) _

  • First C64 LAN party (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GridPoint ( 588140 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:36AM (#6634726)
    Bah, Assembly'03 is nothing compared to what the real old-school people are up to: The world's first C64 LAN party [lemon64.com]! At the LCP2003 [c64.org] party arranged in Sweden this summer, Adam Dunkels showcased his Commodore 64 Contiki OS [dunkels.com] on a bunch of C64s connected in a LAN using specially built Ethernet cards. The three C64:s connected to a LAN made this event the world's first C64-only LAN party!

  • How can they call this a Party! (Score:5, Funny)

    by sbowles ( 602816 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:36AM (#6634731)
    The Party Rules [assembly.org] say:

    You are NOT allowed to bring with you

    - weapons of any kind
    - edged weapons such as knives, pocket knives Leathermans or similar tools with knives
    - explosives or fireworks
    - alcohol or any illegal drugs
    - laser pointers, laser pens etc
    - smoke machines

    It goes on to say you can't: get drunk, sleep in cars, play loud music or (and here's the kicker!) "connect any kitchen equipment to the electricity plugs " ... Oh yeah, there is no public viewing of porn allowed.

    • NO PORN?? I guess I'm not going.
    • Why was the parent modded funny? It's all true! I am sure that some /.ers will be disappointed, but it is. The parent should have been modded "Informative".
    • "connect any kitchen equipment to the electricity plugs "

      Well, it's not that strange. I remember TakeOver in 99 (or was it the 98-event). They didn't forbid that kind of equipment.
      The result was that half of Eindhoven had a power-outage due to massive usage of coffee-machines, microwaves, etc, combined with a few thousand pc's.
      The next year they forbid the use of that kind of stuff...
      Too bad this event is no more. (last event was 2k+1). The annoyance that the gamers caused became to much, or somethi

    • Re:How can they call this a Party! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Lord_Slepnir ( 585350 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:58AM (#6634961) Journal
      You're right, I'm going to start my own Geek gathering, with blackjack, and hookers! In fact, forget the geek gathering!
    • It goes on to say you can't... play loud music

      I assume that's so you can hear whatever loud music they happen to be exhibiting at that time. Remember, this is the demo/modscene, so something loud will always be playing.
    • Heh. If this were an Amiga demo scene party all the above would be compulsory. Nobody likes people turning up empty handed and trying to borrow explosives and drugs from other guests.

    • edged weapons such as knives, pocket knives Leathermans or similar tools with knives
      That is just fucked up. Pocket knives are not weapons. Yes, they can be used as a weapon, just like rocks and computers can be. That doesn't mean they really are weapons, though.

    • maybe you should know a bit more about demoparties

      the average scener (not some gamer) usually
      either doesn't sleep during the whole event, or in between compos. (and even then not a whole lot :-)) When they do sleep, it can be almost anywhere (on their keyboard, under the tables, in the isles, in the dorm, next to hifi-speaker systems, ...).

      as for the kitchen equipment. 4 days without food is not such an option (as if 4 days without sleep is ;-)), and there are those who bring their entire refrigerators

    • The real party is traditionally just outside the convention hall, and is called the Boozembly (greets to the hardcore elite, you know who you are).

  • One thing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7@@@cornell...edu> on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:37AM (#6634744) Homepage
    Having recently visited Skaven of FutureCrew's site, which linked to assembly.org - Is there a place to find the results of previous years' compos? assembly.org seems to have nothing but info on this years' event. :(

  • Quakembly (Score:2, Troll)

    by Kegetys ( 659066 )
    It should be called Quakembly these days, most people are there to play quake/cs and not watch the demo compos which is what the whole thing was originally about.
    • When the compos start everyone is required to turn off their monitors and speakers. There isn't much else to do (maybe go get some food?) so vast majority of people watches the demos. Why should you care if people play CS or Quake between the compos? Alcohol isn't allowed and the place really isn't the most productive environment for coding.

  • 10 years ago.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by naelurec ( 552384 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:42AM (#6634794) Homepage
    Second Realty by Future Crew was entered at this event (Assembly'93). I always thought it would be cool to have a 10 year anniversary redo of that classic demo. Keep all the same routines, just beef them up to todays capabilities. :)
    • I think 2nd reality is the most 'remixed' demo of all times. Especially I liked 'real reality' or the great (german) 'toetet alle lamer'-version from vacuum.

      You should also check out the Pilgrimage (american demo party) invtro - nice atomic playboy rotozoomer :-)

      http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=10460
    • This isn't redundant, it's a very worthwhile date to note. 10 years ago Second Reality completely changed the PC world for the better.

  • Geekfest (Score:5, Funny)

    by A Swing Dancing Dork ( 324614 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:43AM (#6634803)
    I once went to a festival of geekdom that lasted 4 years. We sat around and did nothing but play games, code, and blow shit up.

    I miss college.

  • The World's biggest? I think not. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Norwolf ( 875 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:44AM (#6634818) Homepage

    Actually, it is far from the world's largest. It is surpassed by The Gathering [gathering.org] in Norway with 5100 people (plus guests, of course) and Dreamhack [dreamhack.org] in Sweden with about 5000 people (including guests, if I remember correctly). If I remember correctly, Assembly has about 4000 people, but it sure is amongst the world's largest :-)



    Note that all three events I listed are Computer Parties, not to mistaken as Lan (Parties). What's the difference? At computer parties, the organizers try to encourage lots of other events other than gaming like creative competitions - coding of demos, graphics, music, etc. There are often also lectures/conferences on development, linux/unix, security, etc. For more information: The Gathering Tech:Server Crew - Why TG is not a LAN page [tg.nlc.no].



    To conclude, check out this way cool panorama picture of The Gathering 99 (only with about 4200 people then, but.. yeah, cool): Panorama of TG99 [gathering.org]



    Note: I'm not neutral in my writing in this case since I'm the leader of the Tech:Server (former Tech:Linux) crew at The Gathering since 1999. And yes, it's without pay.. just loads of fun and experience :-)

    • Re:The World's biggest? I think not. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      But without any doubts, it is the largest *demoparty*

      It's just sad to see what TG and DH have become

    • Assembly isn't a lan party, it's a demo's and programming party.
      • Yeah, and that was indeed what I said. "All three..". It's not strictly a demo or programming party anymore, none of the four largest parties (The Gathering Norway, Dreamhack Sweden, Assembly Finland, The Party Denmark) are pure demo events anymore, unfortunately.

        That time has passed, they are now a mix of demos/coding/computer art, game and general geek. Some people think it's sad, other people think it's good. I think it's kinda nice though - you have everyone represented at one area.

        Typical scene from

  • Pictures and stuff (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fulkkari ( 603331 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:50AM (#6634878)

    Mikrobitti [mikrobitti.fi] (A Finnish computer magazine) has it's own Assembly 2003 site partly translated to English [mbnet.fi].

    Pictures from the party can be seen here [mbnet.fi] (Finnish only). There is not very much stuff yet, but there should be more soon. :)

  • The All Assembly Web Server! Good luck!

  • Biggest? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Awptimus Prime ( 695459 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @09:53AM (#6634913)
    I hate to be the proverbial terd in the punch bowl, but Assembly has been going on for more than 10 years. If it is the "The world's biggest festival for computer enthusiasts", then why has Slashdot neglected to post notification of it in previous years?

    Assembly used to be very cutting edge. Back when a 386 could barely run Windows 3.11, coding groups such as Future Crew were making beautiful, fullscreen graphics demos by combining 2D media playback with 3D rendering. The results were of much greater caliber than the graphics of games in that era.

    Nowadays, you have DirectX9 and multi-billion dollar companies pushing the envelope of what can be done with current hardware. So the thrill of Assembly demonstrations are not quite what they used to be. Especially since many of the demos were written for very specific hardware configurations.

    On a side note, I made the local Best Buy stop playing Future Crew demos a long time ago by informing them that the copyright restricts public display for commercial purposes (ie, product demonstration) without permission.
  • There is a street basketball competition...what geeks do have to do with bball ? Are they gonna demonstrate geeky ways to slam dunk (for example, one climbing on the shoulders of another!!!) ? or geeky shoes that give you the leap ability of Michael Jordan ?

    What next ? a geek rap context ?

    ( :-) I hope the above is taken as a joke, of course)
  • Lately, the demos weren't very good like the classic Future Crew's Second Reality demo. Maybe this year will have something good.

  • Asm03 (Score:2, Informative)

    by MakaveliFIN ( 626988 )
    AssemblyTV: http://www.assemblytv.net/ [assemblytv.net]

    Some pics: Mbnet.fi [mbnet.fi]

  • the far-reaching culture of demos (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rexguo ( 555504 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:23AM (#6635202) Homepage
    For those of you who thought that the demo scene is only in the EU and US, this is to let you know that it spread as far as to Singapore (far-eastern island) way back in 1995, where we held our own demo parties in 1995 and 1996. My group, WaterLogic, has the winning entry for 1996 online at www.waterlogic.com.sg/demoscene/.

    Getting into the demo scene has had profound effects on my online life and it is always a fond memory thinking back how I discovered the demo scene through a Waite Group Press's book+CD where they had Future Crew's Unreal and 2nd Reality in it back in 1994. I simply fell off my chair after the unreal experience.

  • Pictures (Score:3, Informative)

    by termos ( 634980 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:24AM (#6635210) Homepage
    For those interested, slengpung [slengpung.com] will be updated with pictures later.
  • you might be interested in this retrospective double sided DVD

    mindcandy [mindcandydvd.com]

    which has demo's from both oldschool (early 90's) and newschool 2001/2002 demo scenes. Well worth it.
  • Did y'all know that an event called "assembly" has been organised yearly since 1992? And that it started out as a traditional copy party at a school building, the likes of which were quite common back then? It subsequently transformed itself into a demoscene event in the years 1992-1995, after which it has started sucking with a vengeance.

    This is to say, these days it's all pimply-faced thirteen-year-old windowshead would-be-newmediawanker quake-playing consumers sitting in front of their daddy-funded PeeC

  • Assembly (Score:4, Informative)

    by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 ) on Thursday August 07, 2003 @10:57AM (#6635542)

    The Assembly convo may not be the biggest LAN party, or the best, but it's certainly one of the most historically significant. The IBM demoscene didn't really reach maturity until Future Crew released "Unreal" at ASM'92.

    Has it really been ten years since Second Reality? Oy, I got old somehow.

    And then there's this C64 port of Second Reality [emucamp.com]. Wow.
  • See press release (rtf) for more...
    I'd have had more luck reading the bloody thing if it was written in assembly itself (or even Perl!) :)
    • It's Assembly, people. Instead of a 1-meg RTF document, they could've instead made a 60k program that blasts the press release text to your screen using 3D rendering, Gouraud shading, plasma balls, etc... and 50k of it would've been the Skaven music.

  • Future Crew members (Score:2, Interesting)

    by genner ( 694963 )
    Anyone know what happend to the future crew team? I've seen Skavens work sitting on mp3.com but I haven't heard from Purple Motion since I quit voyagernet (where we both worked tech support)
    • During early 90's Purple Motion played keyboards in a band called 'Decoryah', who managed to release two full length albums. Some information can be found here : Unofficial Decoryah page [multimania.com]. There seems to be his more recent work at mp3.com too : Jonne Valtonen [mp3s.com]

      Some other FC members are/were working at Remedy Entertainment [remedy.fi], creating Max Payne among other things. Some others were involved with Bitboys [bitboys.fi], a small company designing 3d-hardware, and topic of a couple of articles here in Slashdot too over the past f
  • I remember doing 100% assembly like 10-15 years ago. Since then I've faced reality and admitted it's simply inefficient. Now I feel rapidly becoming obsolete sticking to C++ and STL or sticking to career programming as a whole.

    I'm amazed that people still try to write real software apps using assembly.

    I just ran across someone who sent me a networking app written in x86. It was actually very will organized and commented. But why?!??!

    • I'm amazed that people still try to write real software apps using assembly.

      The name of the gathering constains the word "assembly" because it was started in the assembly-only democoder days of yore. Many--if not most--entries are no longer written in assembly language. They're written in C, Object Pascal, C++, etc. And they use OpenGL, DirectX, etc.
  • A story gets posted that claims something is the world's biggest or smallest and within 3 minutes tehre are 15 posts claiming the submitter is wrong and that $some_better_thing is actually bigger or smaller.
  • If you're looking for something similar a little closer to home, make sure to check out the Pilgrimage demo party this weekend in Salt Lake City Utah. It'll be more or less the same, more scene spirit, less (no) gamers, more conferences and all kinds of demos and compos. Info @ http://pilgrimage.scene.org

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