Revision 2013..

Post party introductory note:- I'm writing this one from the point of view of someone who had attended just two prior big multi-format Easter parties some time ago. Namely the 1996 Symposium Party and the 2002 Mekka Symposium. Both of these left me with a whole host of vivid impressions, the latter party especially so (*). With the box marked 'avoid' duly ticked, I've stayed away for some considerable time now, so coming back after this long was going to be interesting, to say the least.

(*) To be completely fair, some of the 'issues' I had arose outside of the party from personal carelessness, but the general run of bad luck was astoundingly complete for that Easter!

CiH is generally a shy woodland creature who prefers more intimate and smaller scale events. He can generally be found in a quiet corner of nearly all the Outline parties typing furiously into something or other. He goes insanely happy if anything interesting runs on a box with a fuji logo on it.

Anyway, no more further ado from me, it's time to get into the report.

16. 47hrs - Friday 29th March 2013

So I've now found out how long "Never again!" lasts for. Around eleven years, give or take a couple of days.

So how did you persuade your better judgement to take a hike, CiH? You've surely not forgotten the shite-tastic time that you had at the 2002 Mekka Symposium? There was the crazed hot and noisy ambience, the sleep deprivation and nocturnal hypothermia, not to mention the journey fuck ups going there and back, happy days!

Well there's a number of factors which shifted me back in favour of a return to a big Easter party. Firstly, we're all a bit older. Even the people who made Mekka Symposium so, memorable, the last time. Secondly, we've found out that contrary to previous experience, there is an actual 'UK Demo Scene' and we've got to know a lot of these people better, generally through the medium of more genteel smaller events such as the enjoyably chilled Sundown and Outline Parties.

Thirdly, we've got the funds to approach this one in rather more comfort than usual. A sensibly planned arrival the night before and decent night's rest in a central hotel means that I'm hopefully not going to be completely brainfucked by Monday. I've had a little prior exploration of the party place and located the 'sleeping area' which is just behind the big screen! Good luck with trying out that one, even with the ear plugs considerately provided by the info desk!

Finally there is the potential cherry on top of the exploding novelty cake. Providing his fingers or brain don't melt, there could be a new demo for the STE from Cyg and the rest of the team behind BlaBla! I'm not going to give away too many spoilers for now, but it is definitely going to be the next step up from the brain-blasting in 2011 'STreetArt'. I've got a rough technical preview, and 'rough' is the right word for it. Cyg is working on a wrapper for the effects shown there, and he should send this to me tomorrow morning, which gives me a few short hours to beat the oldschool deadline.

If he finishes it in time of course!

There was going to be another Atari demo from Checkpoint, which gave me the final push to come here in the first place, but this is not going to turn up here. They described it as 95% complete for effects and graphics, but there is a hole where the missing soundtrack was supposed to go.

This one will turn up at a future party, hopefully Outline in May.

I've spoken to Matt 'Gasman' Westcott, who tells me of an interesting oldschool competition, with entries for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad, as well as the old standbys of Commodore 64 and the inevitable Amiga 500.

One last thing, I've decisively safeguarded myself against important documentation losing mishaps, as the passports are being kept in the hotel strongbox!

17.20hrs

Gosh, this is going really slowly, isn't it?

Well yet again, we're stumbling around in semi-darkness, this time on my STE keyboard. Woo oldschool! I hear you all cry. Well I was just going to turn up with the laptop, but the competition rules expect any demo to be pre-shown to the organisers on real hardware. So here it is. Meanwhile. the laptop is back at base and sulking in the hotel room, waiting for the fateful email from Cyg with the final party version of his demo.

Having a live Atari STE in the building means that people come up and talk to you. The guy sitting in front of us with his C64 was genuinely amazed at the neatness of the Dead Hackers 'Drone' demo. ("Does it just display in greyscale?"- No, there was some colour in there too!)

So how about some 'story so far' - There is usually some small entertainment from the journey up. This time was no exception, although with things going smoothly in travelling, the major feature was the length of it.

The day before today:-

So Blunderman, our eponymous super-zero was all packed and ready for Revision. He had spare clothing, and plenty of socks and pants, not *those* pants! Accidents happen in Germany all the time. More absorbent ones might be an idea. Remember the currywurst can catch you out at the least socially convenient moments. Sleeping bag? Ahh no, the super-zero posse have got hotel space this year, so we've got a a warm bed and a lighter load. But it all packs too easily, surely something mission critical hasn't gone in there yet?

Blunderman deploys his misgiving destroying rays of power and rushes off to the Blundermobile, which is shaped a bit like a Fiat Punto. Setting off to the Batcave residence of his trusty sidekick, Captain Felicing! Might as well warn him about packing the right sort of pants too? And definitely not the ones that are worn on the outside.

Sleep the sleep of super-zero's overnight at the house of Captain Felicing and SpouseWoman Danie/RainbowChazer/Paula. A sane starting time not too far off a normal crime busting workday follows. The three of us set off hopefully in a small gold coloured car with sports thrusters and a hidden booze compartment, shortly before 09.00 seasonally adjusted Blunder-time.

As we get nearer to the Chunnel, the thin superhero facade splinters off in the air friction generated by the motion of the car, and we're comparatively normal again by the time we arrive in deepest Kent.

As befits an Easter holiday, the normally serene Channel Tunnel terminal is packed with people and nascent super-villains, Luton Airport style. We carry out a few necessary functions and purchase a leisurely Burger King fat bastard special. Suddenly, our departure is called and with a tyre stripping reverse manoeuvre out from the car park, we clutch desperately onto our half-eaten lunches as we veer wildly towards passport control. I cram in my last remaining mouthfuls, whilst white-gloved check-in staff run their testing kits over the golden car paintwork. They are looking for traces of suspicious substances, such as Burger King fart gases?

The tunnel does not award us with an extra delay this time and France is straightforward. Belgium, the land of flat landscapes and motorways, is as unmemorable as ever. Apart from when we reached the Easter snarl-up that was the Brussels ring road system. Just about every commuter there manages to find themselves in the wrong lane and needing to urgently change that, usually two lanes at a time and regardless of any other motoring metal physically occupying the space where they want to get to.

The scenery got more interesting as we approached the Ardennes Forest region. Military history fans, this formerly impenetrable area has now been given an easy and convenient invasion route, otherwise known as the motorway we were travelling on. Doh!

As time wore on, we approached Luxembourg and Germany, the view outside grew darker and more tunnelly. I'm sort of looking forward to the journey back to experience some of the undoubtedly spectacular Saarland scenery in daylight.

The last half-hour was enlivened by a very nervous driver in front of us, who may have had problems with night vision? We also passed the aftermath of a very recent collision, with the front end of one car comprehensively mashed in, and emergency services as yet to fully arrive. Our arrival at the Ibis Hotel in the centre of Saarbrucken, was sometime around 20.30hrs, after a bit of road works assisted satnav confusion with the final quarter mile of the journey.

We check into the hotel and collapse with relief, surrounded by wine and carefully conveyed sausage rolls and foodstuff.

The following morning (this morning!) was spent in tourist mode, enjoying the highlights of mostly closed down for Good Friday Saarbrucken, before we turned up at the party a short while before this report got started.

Saarbrucken in tourist mode..

I'll log off for a short time, enjoy some casual pursuits, before coming back with a rundown of the party location itself.

18.50hrs

Here's a bit about the party now.

The location is a venue called the E-Werk in a retail park west of the old city. A stiff stroll back in the teeth of biting winds will sober up certain party members (Felice!) tonight. The three of us are set up some way back in the main hall, next to some friendly Commodore 64 dude (who was earlier on expressing curiosity about my Atari STE.) We have set up nicely on a table for three, with my STE/UltraSatan combo and Felice and RainbowChazer's laptops. Felice has managed to colonise part of the unoccupied next table, where his Atari STFM, is on rolling demo screening duty with a HxC drive stuffed with disk images of classic demos to play for the enjoyment of passers-by. (He had also brought along a ZX Spectrum 128 with a newly acquired DivIDE CF-Card drive for it, but did not get this out for the party.)

There is a lobby or reception area, with the infodesk, assorted enterprises of different kinds and access to the legendary toilet tunnel. This is less of a rather long and arduous journey and more of a toilet humour based theme park with various multi-media additions. But without the overpriced souvenir shop or photos of people's facial expressions 'caught in the act' at the exit.

The rather legendary underground toilet tunnel!

Of course there is access to the rather shivery 'real party outside', where further and more substantial food stands can be found. I chewed the fat, or rather an icy wind conditioned waffle with Hauohmaru for a while, discussing the merits of this and other parties. Another chap whose name escapes me, but has seen me at other parties, including the Luton-based Sunrise Party, struggles with the fact that this is my first time at Revision.

From first impressions, and over the next couple of days, I will get to know this location very well. It is full of character and fun, comparing well with the rather flat Mekka Symposium Sportshalle at Fallingbostel. There is also reasonable room to breathe at your workstation, which is another point in its favour.

19.05hrs

An email from Cyg indicates he might have a pre-release ready for 9pm tonight. With a final party version tomorrow. He has indicated there is at least one effect which hasn't made it, but should be in the final post-party version.

20.20 (hindsight?)

An opening ceremony awaits. The currywurst scene of the crime has been revisited and pronounced delicious. We'll see whether it tries to escape prematurely or not.

In other news, the covert wine bar within our party lair has been opened. Wait a while for Felice's more playful tendencies to emerge :-)

20.35hrs

An opening ceremony, a lot of people stood on it. The theme for this year is 'order' or nice robot versus 'chaos' or evil robot. Unlike the 2002 party, there are no knights in there.

I seem to remember my limited previous party experience at the Easter biggies, (1996 and 2002) being almost totally dominated by the spawn of evil chaos robot! Will this time be different?

23.15hrs

Is that really the time?!

Quite a lot has happened since the last log entry. I've enjoyed a little oldschool gaming action, courtesy of Pipemania or Pipe Dreams. More importantly, Cyg came through with the v.0.9 version of his demo, or the single disk party version, as it should be more correctly known.

Hours of hilarity ensued with various attempts to transfer the files across. Between Felice's Mac and Paula's Windowze laptop, the initial zip-file failed to transfer across. The issue was down to my transfer card behaving like a total bitch. It took a sadistic pleasure in getting stuck on the 'read only' lock as it has a loose selector tab. Once the files were coaxed across, a TOS 35 error was my reward. Even the read.me file displayed as garbage.

A second attempt with Cyg sending across the unzipped files, had me rummaging around in the disordered midden that was Felice's download folder. Eventually, these were all located safely to a folder on his desktop. Incidentally, at about this time the overall background noise level shot up and Cyg then turned up on IRC asking what was happening.

The same result ensued, with no life sign from the demo. I tried a spare SD-card and this accepted the files. Even better, it ran, and ran without any issues. So it looks like we're just a short breath from the final party version. I'll be able to record that from the relative sanity of my hotel room and laptop and hand it in tomorrow morning. (Note to self - Cyg recommended a 400 x 200 pixel frame size for capture purposes.)

Other news from Rome is good, nay brilliant. It appears there is a shuttle bus service back to the city so a long cold walk back from the party may not be on the cards after all.

00.19hrs - It's Caturday!

Or eleven hours and forty-one minutes to the handing in deadline!

Some of that time had better be occupied with sleep!

Well what a first day it's been. We're at Revision, nothing really horrible is happening, mind and body are still intact. I've even managed to reconstruct the iffy transfer SD-card that was giving me 'issues' earlier on.

And we may well have a demo for tomorrow. I *think* what Cyg sent tonight was the party version? We'll see.

Okay, time to wrap this one up for tonight. See you again in the morning.

11.40hrs

We return to the scene(r) of the crime, after an exciting and sleepless night and morning.

There was a night bus provided by the organisers back to the city centre. An excited and drink enhanced Friday demoscener crowd crushed on to the 01.00 bus. Felice of course being *super-relaxed* at this point! He even managed a coherent conversation with some Swedish sceners who were at about the same state of fermentation. Back at the hotel, he fluidly wobbled out of sight.

But for some of us, the real work of the day was just beginning....

Not being sure whether the binary that Cyg had sent through last night, complete with much wailing and gnashing of teeth on faulty SD-cards by me, was the final party release or not, I decided to start encoding a movie file via the Hatari emulator. After some experimentation and the odd wrong turn, I had finished. A final check of my email finds a new message from Cyg with the precious final party version ready to download. So I start again and it is some time after 04.00 when I finally get to bed.

So some of the text on here later on, may well reflect that!

I also had a chilly but pleasant interlude, walking between the hotel and the party place after breakfast. This took me through a series of progressively less prosperous neighbourhoods, industrial sites and eventually, waste ground and general bleakness. I managed to cross underneath the railway bridge and locate the retail park where the E-Werk was located, before the terrain degenerated any further into land-mines, barbed wire and toxic chemicals! Not one I would care to have to do at night!

For your current information. The new 'party final' binary tested fine on my real hardware. The differences from the version before include a credit and greet text you can actually read, and a general smoothing out and slight lengthening of some of the effects. This version has a run time of approximately four minutes.

Gasman was happy to take the entry from me. There may be a slight possibility of an issue with our musician, DMA-SC, as his home address was required as part of the very self-protective registration process. The precautions are needed as the German royalty collection organisation (GEMA) have taken on extremely far-reaching powers. To cut an hour's worth of seminar from the previous night brutally short, any GEMA members are effectively banned from Revision competitions, as the financial implications for the party would be truly horrendous if they did enter.

Still, Gasman did not think there would not be an issue but I've forewarned Cyg and asked him to get DMA-SC's details, just in case they're needed.

12.10hrs

The deadline for Oldschool has now passed.

The other two have now turned up, after an equally bracing and health-giving foot passage from the city to the party place. Gasman has also reappeared and is not sure whether the pre-recording will pass muster, or they will need to take a further recording?

12.35hrs

Organisers have sensibly decided that hacking together a suitable video cable from scratch wasn't a viable use of their available time. Gasman has carried out a final visual check to make sure he was not believing what his eyes were telling him on real hardware. So that seems to be all sorted and ready to roll later on then.

From my earlier visit to the compo organisers inner sanctum, I found out there were oldschool entries for ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, two or three for the Commodore 64, and a small handful for the Amiga 500. So a well populated competition then.

14.43hrs

It's gone all quiet from the competition entry side of things, so I guess that there are no further issues, even weird and obscure ones enshrined in German copyright law to prevent Cyg's entry being shown tonight.

In other news, a couple of competitions skated through our consciousness and ear plugs, namely the tracker and photo compo's. I've added the local pizza, salami, flavoured with jalepeno's and Tabasco sauce to my list of things to destroy innocent tastebuds. The STE has been switched off for a little while, as it was just acting as a scenic room heater during the competitions.

Outside is pleasant, for the prevailing wintry conditions, so much so, our nocturnally accustomed vision struggles in the harsh daylight. There may be the ashen remains of a couple of sceners who didn't realise they were vampires until it was too late, that I've just walked through?

16.39hrs

The party venue, the E-Werk, is probably in one of the least romantic locations known to party-kind. It is in the middle of a retail park. There are thousands of more or less identical versions across the world, apart from the brand names varying from nation to nation.

We didn't really notice this yesterday, bound up in all the excitement of getting to the party. However, with today being the only normal shopping day over the Easter weekend, I was instantly transported to the mundane dimension when I left the immediate confines of the Revision party compound for a small amount of supermarket sweeping, looking for food related souvenirs.

Apart from needing a 360 degree swivel neck to avoid getting killed in the car park. German drivers are not mundane...

17.30hrs

We're waiting for the next wave of 'stuff' to happen. I was showing a nice Finnish scener around some demos and in return, he informed me that there is going to be an MSX entry to the oldschool competition. I recall seeing what looked like a modified MSX or Spectravideo (the almost-MSX with the built in joystick) in the hall yesterday, but not really today?

17.50hrs

Did a run down the 'toilet corridor of doom' with some movie footage and a possible idea for a future wild compo entry. "Brave Sire Pissalot, you have been chosen to accept this most arduous quest!"

Note to self for next time with original hardware, mouse-mat please! This rodent is sliding around like a nervous overweight celebutard ice dancer, in their first training session.

18.10hrs

The period of short log entries is now upon us. A satisfactory ascii/ansi competition has just ensued. Good entries all round, even if the ascii ones will be disadvantaged against the colour ansi efforts.

Oldschool music is now!

19.25hrs

A series of competitions has skipped by. Including a strong movie and animation compo. (Got to get me some of that time lapsed Lubeck!) - Then again, the presentation of the 'Adventure Vision' system, featuring LED powered ZX81 level graphics off a flickery mechanical display and the primitive predecessor to the Intel 8088. There will be a wild demo for it, and this whetted our appetite nicely.

There has also been a games competition, which 'took the piss' on a 'weee' console and gave us some frightening insights into the murky underground of the Octoberfest.

23.55hrs

We're anticipating the start of the oldschool compo, the one in which I have a personal interest, shortly.

We've have a nice sequence of competitions, with everything from Amiga intro, smashed by Britelight, through to PC 4ktro, featuring a range of high performance procedural alien landscapes and ambient soundtracks. It also seems that the competitions are running reasonably and not too delayed.

The sound of Okkie beat-boxing conceals an element of desperation as something major has broken behind the scenes. This should be taken as a warning, at any stage of the competitions!

Sontag:

13. 10hrs - Happy Easter Bunny!

Thoughts on the oldschool Compo, as recorded in the cool light of Sunday morning, erm, early afternoon.

Compared with some previous Revision oldschool competitions, this one was a welcome strong revival of the category. I distinctly remember sofascening one year, where we got a batch of indifferent C64 invitros, something that almost got going, and that was it.

Apart from Cyg's nightmare clown debut at Revision, as painstakingly handed in by me, we also had some very strong entries elsewhere. There was a neat MSX 1 entry, with some effects not too dissimilar to those shown in Cyg's demo. There was a worthy ZX Spectrum entry from the Polski kids, but the two best entries were for the Amstrad with an attempted 'Batman Returns' beater, and a revival of an old famous dead Amiga crew, Lemon Design.

Objectively viewed, even through a likely haze of name-voting, the Lemon Design production was 1993-era perfection and will almost certainly win the first prize here. The Amstrad prod, isn't really a Batman Returns smasher, but is a strong candidate for second place.

The reception for 'our' platform, I think could be described as 'polite acknowledgement' but not much more than that? On the other hand, individual feedback from speaking to different people at the party was that they enjoyed it very much. It will be interesting to see how the voting pans out. I'm hoping for a mid-table finish. We will miss the prizes.

13.20hrs

The back-story from then to now..

We finished Saturday on something of a dramatic note, as RainbowChazer, the spouse of the Felicing one, expressed harsh language with the table in front of us. These had been commemorating how demo parties were, twenty years ago. I've got mixed feelings on this, as without the overpowering sound system and Beavis and Butthead mannerisms, they were reasonable people to talk to otherwise, who took a friendly interest in our Atarian hardware.

This morning, as if to make the peace, one of the dudes came with a nom-de-scene attached. FieserWolf had a fun play around with the ancient 'Music-Mon' YM chiptracker and managed to dig up the bones of a reasonable tune on it in a small amount of time, completely made-up from scratch instruments and all. When I get back home, this can be made into a lengthier proper song by deconstructing and stretching out the layers in the tune.

This is getting slightly ahead of ourselves though, after we got back to the hotel, head hit the pillow with a resounding crash! Daylight saving time harshly chopped an hour off our respite, as the alarm went off way before I was ready for it.

Breakfast with fellow sceners who were also staying at the Ibis was pleasant and leisurely. I repeated the walk-through from yesterday, with a useful short-cut found, eliminating five or ten minutes from the foot-travel.

So here we are, with some new school bleeps and squawks.

DUCK FOR COVER - YES, FELICE IS BACK WITH ANOTHER 'INTERLUDE' ...

Glad to see that CiH has been doing his usual duty with writing these party reports, they certainly help to jog memories even from years gone by. Nope, not quite that senile yet, even though I've been a married man for over 5 years :)

(Yes you are! - Ed)

But in all seriousness, this has been a good and interesting weekend. It had been a very long time since we'd attended the big German Easter parties and quite a lot has changed. Most people are much more mature; apart from one or two nasties occurring outside of the party place involving a car window getting smashed (not ours fortunately) but these things happen.

Felice is lapping up the party outside vibe!

Saarbrucken is a lovely city. This time, my wife has joined us for the party weekend and we drove over in her car, putting some miles on it for a change. Normally at home, because we have a decent bus service we hardly use the car at all, so it gives the car a good run out on a 7.5 hour run between our home city and Saarbrucken. The hotel has been very good too, cheerful staff, lovely breakfasts and so on. Also good fast working Internet helps a lot too.

Over and out (as Chris is now back

Felice.

14.25hrs

I've been catching up on the party intranet and voting for stuff. Old Nokiyum smartphone is doing that business in lieu of the laptop, which remains back at the hotel.

The bit about the broken car windows was interesting. It was announced in the main hall. A sudden silence when around five hundred hearts stopped beating momentarily then followed. After that little bit of fun, the organisers relented and told us that the affected parties had already been told earlier, so there was nothing for the rest of us to worry about!

(Post-party Note:- This time, there were no issues coming from within the party. Opportunist smash and grab local youths were suspected. Comment was made however that some parked scener cars were little more than tempting scaled-up metal and glass Kinder Eggs, transparently showing off all sorts of tempting valuable goodies within. Not like the streetwise and sensible visiting Super-Zero posse who had unloaded completely when they first parked..)

15.31hrs

I've been sampling some of the 'party outside'. This is kept behind cages, whether to protect the public from them, or the rest of the world from our poo-flinging behaviour, is debatable. As it didn't harm me the first time around, I've opted for another round of currywurst roulette.

18.25hrs

We've just enjoyed a rather nice set of competitions, graphics of various kinds, culminating in an asskicking wild competition. Several homebrew and "unique" combinations of hardware were being tortured to make outstanding demo effects.

Bidding furiously for a top spot is the Entex Adventure Vision console mentioned yesterday with its John Logie Baird style "screen". It showed us a 4k demo. We ended with some crazy stuff done via a PS2 connected to a telly and two oscilloscopes.

The competitions so far have definitely been a strong point of Revision 2013. I am looking forward to the final block of compo's, including the rest of the oldschool (4ktro), Amiga demos and the inevitable PeeCee demos.

In other news, Samurai has materialised as a new arrival at the party. He had only previously caught the end of the oldschool stream, so I shared Circus2 BackSTage with his eyeballs.

Sharing Cyg's evil clowns with a wider audience!

I guess there is a bit of a hiatus until later.

20.10hrs

Mmmm! I've just enjoyed the unholy trinity of demo party junkfood, pizza, fries (with lovely thick mayo) and coke!

The hiatus is definitely over as DJ Hoffman blasts out on stage. We've also spotted a tall Dutch person called Havoc, who is here for today on a single day competition ticket. We catch up on the usual greetings and expressions of warmth for the forthcoming Outline Party.

21.38hrs

I spoke to Gasman who confirmed my suspicion that the running order for the competitions were based on leaving the best productions until last!

He also advised that the Amiga demo's could be potentially awesome, but last minute finishing was still going on. Also that the oldschool 4k's are nice, but not earth shattering. This year was a 'demo year' rather than an 'intro year'. You get one or the other, but not both at the same time.

I've also been topping up my photographic record with a few nocturnal additions. Meanwhile on the stage, DJ Hoffman raves on.

21.55hrs

DJ Hoffman comes to an end, and the compos are kicking off real soon now.

Montag::

01. 07hrs

We've been off the air deliberately for the last few hours. There was a feature packed set of competitions which demanded our full consideration and attention.

Highlights include a winning pair of Amiga demos including entries from Elude and Ghostown and Loonies. Elude's entry was in a classic style recognisable to fans of past glories from Black Lotus and others, the demo by Ghostown and Loonies was in a Steampunk style and did it very well. Random naughty thoughts about frame rate and how a CT60 Falcon might do the job a bit quicker kept sneaking in!

The PeeCee stuff was very wide ranging with a couple of smashers at the end. There was a timely Outline intro in there as well.

I think I worked out the distinctive natures of the Amiga high end and PeeCee scenes in the course of viewing their respective compo's. The Amiga scene has a vast back catalogue of heritage and goodwill in their favour. Also their more complex stuff is limited by processor spec, but that acts in their favour, with those scenes running at a comprehensible scale that mere human senses can cope with. A lot of the PeeCee demos, especially the more abstract efforts, tended to flood the GPU and overload the brain with thousands of objects running at 60 frames (or more?) a second.

I've been sitting with Havoc, who was great company as always, and definitely very much when discussing and viewing the merits or otherwise of certain entries in the final wave of competitions.

Anyway, the 'official' part of the party, apart from the prize giving is over. We're here until 02.00 for the next shuttle bus, and the volume level all around has cranked up massively.

I could be writing up my summing up, but I've already started this, it's late, and I'm gonna sign off. We'll see if there is time for a final live outburst of text, as I'm leaving this lot overnight and we're setting off home directly from here. Night for now!

The journey home...

Before I get to the endpart, with some conclusions and summing up, there was a return journey to undergo.

The final night is slept through all too quickly again, and the final leisurely breakfast is enjoyed. I didn't say a lot about this before. For a small extra charge, we had a comprehensive breakfast buffet featuring both hot and cold stuff, not to mention unlimited glorious gorgeous coffee! Mmm! Whilst in the dining room on different days, we found out that other sceners were also staying at the Ibis, identified by their orange party wristbands. These included luminaries such as mOd and Silverlance, who had attended Outline Parties previously.

Checking out is straightforward, apart from the anguished screams coming from my bank account, (then it suddenly fell silent.) We take our bundles of stuff back to the E-Werk, with a handy shuttle-bus going to the party venue, where we are able to catch up with the prize-giving ceremony and carefully bundle our worldly goods into the car, so we can make a quick getaway at the end.

The prize-giving is carried out efficiently. Pretty much all of the expected winners got their just prize desserts. The Amiga demo compo resolved itself into the Cyberpunk entry coming out on top, with Elude getting the second spot. The big PeeCee demo's number one and two places are as predicted earlier by myself and Havoc.

One competition's results are watched with keen interest by this author. The oldschool demo competition has the expected Amiga Lemon Design demo on the top spot, with the Amstrad entry coming second. Cyg's clowning around backstage at the circus only attracts a lowly seventh (out of ten) place. There may have been good reasons for this. The demo was a cut-down 'party' release, rushed and without proper sync. A lot of people may be indifferent to the subject matter or find it messy to look at. There could also be an element of negative platform voting, but on the other hand, those people who came over to look at what we were doing at the party were nothing but positive and encouraging, so I'd tend to be reasonable in hindsight and apply the speculation brakes to that last thought.

The prize-giving concluded, it was time to leave, so leave we did.

It is cold, but bright and sunny as Felice sets the navicomp controls for the heart of the 'back to home' star system, aka the channel tunnel terminal. We get to enjoy the spectacular Saarland scenescape sliding past, thinking, well it's rather a lot, industrial. The car wheels thrum busily on the motorway surfaces of Germany, then Luxembourg and Belgium, the day remains bright.

A hint of anxiety creeps in, as it appears the navicomp has selected a slightly different route back from the one we took getting to the party. Unfamiliar place names glide by, and it is with some concern that we pull into a service station for a calibration check, much-needed fuel and poor quality toilets. After some considerable time pre-calculating and re-calculating, a route is chosen. Upon careful reflection, it was almost certainly the same route from earlier on. (Having had a week to think again, the difference arose from our not activating the satnav until the first service stop in Belgium, when we would have passed the turn-off for the shortcut we took going back.)

After not too long at all, the familiar duo of Dunkirk and Calais are in our sights, and the Channel tunnel terminal looms up in a welcome fashion whilst we're still nice and early for our booking. Even the generally tedious passport controls are negotiated relatively quickly, and it turns out we have an earlier train and a little while to kill.

Familiar patterns of retail therapy are taken up by the other two. We are looking to find space in an already loaded car for the contents of a booze tanker! It is whilst we are doing this, that the mishap occurs.

Returning to the terminal for an overdue shot of le junk food francaise style, we watch the delayed train announcements in an unconcerned fashion. When it is time to return to our car, we do so. An accusing empty space, where the ticket hanger with its identifying letter previously lived, laughs silently at us.

Situation:- Our train has been called, we have no ticket. The services are running to significant delays and are very busy. There is next to no chance of rebooking for a later passage.

Resolution:- As I've got the paperwork, the infodesk in the terminal seems to be the best place to get an answer. The nice French lady is very helpful in getting a replacement ticket hanger in a timely fashion. We leave, before a jihad is called down by Paula on the oversized vehicular occupant in the adjacent parking space.

Our train is still available to catch, leaves with only a small delay and does not break down on the way back, so we're able to complete the final part of the journey back on UK soil. The road system is behaving itself tonight, this last part of the journey finishes in high spirits. There is a minor detail of an additional hours driving home, but I'm still back at a reasonable time before midnight on the Sunday evening.

Conclusions..

So that was Revision 2013, done and dusted off. What are the 'lessons' to 'learn' if any?

I can't say enough about the necessity for doing this properly. Trying to rough it would be a poor choice now, only undertaken if you couldn't afford anything else. As it turned out, there was quite a large choice of alternatives, and the Ibis performed very well as a back-up GHQ away from the party in the format of a competent city hotel. Their quiet rooms, reliable wifi and lavish breakfasts were all appreciated greatly here.

I've got some nice words to pour over the heads and shoulders of the organisers. The facilities were more numerous than my limited experience of previous big Easter parties. There was a welcome choice of (delicious junk) food, reasonably priced.

The often contentious issue of in-party network support generally held up very well, with only a couple of slow spots through the entire time. This apparently improving on last year. There was a lot of thought put into the little things, with a well attended infodesk, a reasonable choice of drinks of different kinds, even free tea and coffee, which was very much appreciated here!

Having decent sponsors on board meant we also got things like the totally non-essential, but fun to have goody bags.

Another important factor in keeping mind and body intact and reducing post party stress was the welcome provision of a night bus service back to the various hotels and city centre. Otherwise it was quite a walk from the party venue. Something which was acceptable on a fine day, when you were sober and in daylight, but not so good late at night and in less than optimal condition perhaps.

The organisers recognised the importance of earplugs (aka sanity defenders), and provided these from the infodesk.

In general terms, the organisation of Revision 2013 was professional, unobtrusive, efficient where that was needed, and provided a lot for your 60 EUR entry fee.

In spite of the generally poor economic situation, party prices were reasonable and my personal spending was kept well under control. The spare euro's will be recycled for the forthcoming Outline party in May.

As for the E-Werk, the main hall is the right size for the numbers involved. The space per person is reasonable and not cramped either. There was a good attendance in the high hundreds, all fitted in comfortably.

The all important party mood felt friendlier than the other Easter events. People were curious about my STE and were pleased that a demo was being entered for it. The hyperactive 'Kidult' behaviour which made other parties so 'enjoyable' has reduced and was *mostly* not an issue. Interesting as one of perpetrators this time around proved otherwise friendly and engaging person to talk to the rest of the time.

There seems to be a gradual toning down of excesses over the years. Some of what is left can be described as the bare bones of ritual activity. Reading about memories of very early parties resurrected in a handy Pouet thread makes me wonder how any organised activity actually took place at all? Also how the organisers of these parties managed to evade legal action and prison? (Physical violence and urination on people, attempted arson, hard drug usage, neo-nazi's, monitor defenestration from a third floor and the comparatively light relief of smoke bombs set off to delay competition deadlines were all mentioned.)

I suspect that, to the vast relief of most sceners, none of this is missed.

Saarbrucken as a host city and completely new destination was enjoyable for me and the other members of our party. A scenic location with lots of historic interest. It might be nice to see it more closely sometime when it isn't closed for Easter!

The people factor was there of course. Perhaps not quite so strongly felt as at other parties where more of the people are known to me. However, shout-outs should go to the never dull FieserWolf, Gasman, Haohmaru, Arthur Van Dam, Nosfe, Okkie and his rainbow shoes, Dotwaffle, Sir GarbageTruck, Samurai and Havoc on the final day.

There were also a bunch of people who I don't have a name for, who took a look at our various activities in the main hall. Kudos to you for taking the time to look.

We enjoyed the welcome return for mOd with SilverLance to the scene world, sighted at our hotel before it was officially known they were going to be at the party. Revision 2013 hosted a smallish UK scene presence, many of these were helping with the organisation, so I didn't get to talk too much to these. I spotted members of CRTC, familiar from the Sundown parties, but didn't get to talk to them at any point either.

There was a warm and runny feeling in successfully infiltrating the prime PeeCee/Amiga/C64 party with an Atari entry. (I almost forgot there was a VCS 2600 intro as well.) The oldschool compos in general were the best for some time, with a number of different platforms duly represented. The warm and runny feeling was nothing to do with the currywurst attempting to leave early, in case you weren't sure.

So in a final sentence finality, I would probably return to a future edition of Revision or its replacement Easter event organised on similar lines by the current competent team. Not necessarily next year, but certainly sooner than a decade plus!

CiH for Mag! - March/April 2013.

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