[IMAGE] INFORMATION FILE Welcome to the official N.A.I.D. 96 Info-file. Please feel free to look around. Comments can be sent to our E-Mail adress. This is version 2.3, updated May 10th 1996. _________________________________________________________________ NEw! NEw! NEw! "Frequently Asked Questions" Page! _________________________________________________________________ INDEX A "*" means that there have been modifications made to this section since the previous version of the info-file. INTRODUCTION * General Information. * Party Features. THE EVENT * Activity Schedule * *Competitions + Prize packages. + General information. + Competing at NAID 96. + *Rules and regulations. *(Changes in Music and VgaCard)* + The selection process. + Distribution. * The Sponsors + Sponsors list and info. + Friends-of-Naid list. * The Organization + Organizers list. + Compo supervisors and judges list. + How to be part of the Naid 96 crew. GETTING TO NAID 96 * Directions * Planned bus trips from various cities ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS * What you wanted to know. * Last minute news & rumors. * *How to contact us. *TEL#* _________________________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION __________________________________________________________ GENERAL INFORMATION You are reading the official invitation text-file to the North American International Demo Festival's 2nd edition, still held at Edouard-Montpetit College in Longueuil, still 15 minutes from the well known city of Montreal, in the province of Quebec, Canada. Well, to summ it up, we think your gonna like what we have in store for you this year. More activities, prizes, games, compos, the works! And even better, you still don't have to cross one of the major oceans to get there. Phear it, something this fun comes only once a year! =) The event will last 3 days, from the 31rst of may to june the 2nd. Ticket costs will be : 20$ for the 3 day pass 8$ for a 1 day visit (Canadian funds) If you like to, you will also be able to rent your room on the party place itself, so prepare with your group a total of 25$ can. for the whole group in the room. You will also be asked for a 20$ deposit (in order to pay the key if you guys run away with it after naid like people did last year). :) You should bring some money too for souvenirs like the many happy CD-Roms poping around at naid. Please note that the 3 day pass is needed to have access to the dorm and to be a contestant in the competitions. Places are limited to 1400-1800 people, so buy your tickets today! (20 canadian bucks? Close to nothing for something this fun. Dare to compare! =) _________________________________________________________________ PARTY FEATURES There will be on-site at the festival: * Demo competition. * Intro competition. * Music competition. * Gfx competition. * Lim-0-naid Music & GFX compo. * 42*10^-1 kb Intro compo. * 3 Channel chiptune compo. * Best new effect compo. * Disk, keyboard and font throwing compos. * Free-for-all compo. * HUMONGOUS Dolby Surround sound system. Nothing impresses the crowd like a swooping baba-cool surround effect in a demo. Just tought I'd mention it. =) * HUMONGOUS screen, latest technology. Specs will be included in a future info-file. Watch for them, don't get caught by a slow mode switch that ruins your demo. We've been told big screen technology has improved quite a big deal since last year, so prepare to be dazzled. * HUMONGOUS professionnal-quality stage light setup. * On-site Olympic size pool. Bring your bathing suit! * Multiplayer network games * Free Internet access on-site. * 2nd edition of the dinosaur museum. Bigger and better! You can sell/swap/show-off your PC Junior, XT, C64, Apple IIe, Sinclair, etc... We are also looking for brave souls who'd like to demonstrate their programming abilities with these machines, so if your'e interested, contact us and we'll set something up. * Space and free electricity! Bring your computers, stoves, cappucino machine, whatever! (Reservations possible for early ticket buyers. Yet another reason to bring your computer. But if it gets decapitated, trampled on, or simply thrown into the olympic sized pool, well... JUST TOO BAD ! :)) The organizers are not responsible for your equipment) * Easy access to water, bathrooms, showers. * Security guards on service 24h/day * First-Aid available on the site 24h/day * Lots of comfortable and quiet sleeping places (Bring your own sleeping bags). Classrooms (where people will sleep) can be locked to ensure luggage safety. You can reserve classrooms in advance if you are a group. Contact us! This year, a fee of 25$(Can.) per -classroom- will be charged. (No Matter how many people you want to be in that particular room. (Covers those pesky cleaning costs) This covers the whole 3 days of the party for one room. * Lots of Parking space * NAID 96 t-shirts, posters and such, the perfect show-off momentoes for your buddies back home =) * The Party-place is close to every luxury this civilisation can provide (transportation, restaurants, bars, malls, etc.) * And probably a few other suprise events as well! Look for the N.A.I.D. 96 Intro. Keep looking at this page to get upgrades... _________________________________________________________________ THE EVENT __________________________________________________________ ACTIVITY SCHEDULE Rather "incomplete" at the moment. + Friday : + 19h00 Doors open for good! (Nobody allowed before that hour) + Sunday : + 19h00 Doors are closed for N96. + (Helpers can stay if they like (we adore that!), + but we can't give anybody access for the night this year, + since there is classes on the monday morning...). :( __________________________________________________________ COMPETITION Prizes packages Prizes will be composed of cash and hardware. All numbers and prizes are subject to change, but it is unlikely they will. All the following are in canadian funds. Cash prizes are as follows Per category RankingDemoIntroMusicGraphicsTotal 1rst Place1500$900$600$500$ 2nd Place1000$600$400$350$ 3rd Place500$300$200$150$ Total3000$1800$1200$1000$7000$ Plus many many other little prices for smaller compos. Hardware prize packages info is unavailable for now. General information Well, the competition rules have seen some changes since the last edition of NAID. The reason is simple. Experience. We have much better idea of what to expect and the issues we have to adress. (Well, atleast we like to think so :) Since we have a pretty good idea of how it must feel to see your entry disqualified after weeks and weeks of work, we cannot urge you strongly enough to read them carefully and not take chances. So be forewarned, these rules will now be strongly enforced. Every entry must meet the requirements below or face elimination. Reasons for not meeting these requirements are non-existant. We don't care if disks sponstaneously combust, your brother died or your luggage got ran over by a truck. The NAID organizers are not inclined to give slack this year, no matter how nice you where last year :) Deadlines will 99.9% sure be followed this year. In case of a major catastrophy, (Earthquake, martians, media frenzy, killer bees nest found in the compo computer, the coming of the antechrist, etc...), and that the deadline just HAS to move, a public announcement will be made to that effect, and then periodically repeated. Late entries will be disqualified. Don't say we did'nt warn you. Each compo will have a maximum number of competing entries. If we get more entries than available air-time, a pre-selection process by judges will decide wich entries qualify. And concerning the playing platforms we use, contestants have limited choice this year. The reason for this is simply time. We do not have the luxury to have a good compo and change the hardware/software for each piece. We believe the options we offer are sufficient to do anything one might want to do. If you disagree, or think we missed something, please tell us and if the demand is there, we might be able to add a couple of elements you think are missing from our list. Competing at NAID 96 Application must be filled in at our submission booth on-site at NAID 96. (See the distribution section of this document for more details.) It is also possible, yet again, to get your stuff screened at NAID if we have time. Even if you can't be there. But, participation in the official compos still requires, on site, a member who contributed to the piece. (Otherwise you obviously cannot win prizes and such.) Rules and regulations Demo Compo : o The Demo's runtime size must not exceed 3072k. o Maximum running time is 20 minutes. Intro Compo : o The intro's runtime size must not exceed 102400 bytes. o Maximum running time is 10 minutes. *Music Compo : o You must chose 1 of the 5 players in our list. (See available specs for more detail) o Maximum uncompressed size is 1024k. o Song length cannot exceed *5* minutes. o Limit one song per person. (Including co-op tunes) Graphics Compo : o All graphics must be "hand drawn" (so to speak). o No ray-traced, ripped or scanned images. o Maximum resolution is 640x480x256. o The latest version of CSHOW will be used to display the pics. o No less than 3 pictures of the work in progress are needed to qualify. o The given pics must clearly show the progress of the work from first draft to final version. o The burden of proof is on the author. o We discard every entry that does'nt respect all of these requirements. o Limit one pic per person. Lim-0-naid Music : o 10 minutes run length time to track the music. o The samples (there shall be six of them) are provided, and may be altered within the possibilities of the tracker used, but one competitor may not take any external sources for samples but for the ones provided. o No other rule. You do the best you can, in the number of channels/patterns you wish. You don't have to use all the samples, and you can do whatever you want to track your tune. o Please note that the (six) samples provided will prolly be the six worst samples you've heard in your entire life =). o Provided trackers will be Impulse Tracker, Scream Tracker 3, and Fast Tracker 2. Lim-0-naid GFX Compo : o 10 minutes to do the drawing. o 320x200 format is to be used by all participants. o The palette given may not be altered in any way by the competitors, there will be 6 colors provided (6 horrible colours of course) that the participants must use to do their drawing. 42*10^-1 kb Intro Compo : o The intro's runtime size must not exceed 4301 bytes. o Maximum running time is 3 minutes. 3 Channel chiptune Compo : o You must chose 1 of the 5 players in our list. (See available specs for more detail) o Maximum uncompressed size is 32(16?)k. o Song length cannot exceed 2 minutes. o Limit one song per person. (Including co-op tunes) Best new effect Compo : Winners are determined by jury only. Can be a variation on an older effect, but 30 to 40% of the score is given for originality. Thanks to OS2/Man and the #coders crowd for help and hints in creating this compo. o The effect's runtime size must not exceed 32k. o Maximum running time is 1 minute 30 seconds. o Must be 100% original code. Disk, Keyboard, CDs and Font throwing Compos : A good old throwing compo. Nuff said! And no, we won't tell you what the font throwing is all about :) o Chunks also count in the distance evaluation :) Free-for-all Compo : You have 5 minutes on stage, and the basic compo equipement plus anything that you brought along is allowed. Winners are determined by vote, thus the contestant with the most impressive display of -whatever you want- wins. Prepare something or just watch. o Must be legal in Canada. o Maximum time allowed is 5 minutes. o Must be 100% safe if you use any of our equipment. (Consult us early if you think you'll need our stuff.) o Must not require anything above 2 minutes setup time on our part. Deadlines : All deadlines are during the actual party. Exact time will be found in the next version of this info-file. Equipment available The computer used for the compos will be : o INTEL TRITON II Pentium 100 with 16 Megs of RAM 256k pipeline cache o Svga Diamond Stealth 64 Serie 2001 1Meg RAM o And a Gravis Ultrasound, 1Meg o No Keyboard (Kiddin') :) Software supported: o ST3 v.??? o FT2 v.??? o Impulse tracker v.??? o Capamod v.??? o Cubic player v.??? o CShow v.??? Basic available configurations : o We use a standard DOS 6.2 environment with additionnal system files relevant to the hardware present in the machine. We will only be using standard DOS 6.2 configuration options, with the relevent soundcard drivers. (I.e. No QEMM memory managers.) The contestants will have 3-4 basic configurations to choose from, ranging from plain vanilla HIMEM only to the whole EMM386/SMARTDRV (yuck :) package usually only needed when running windows. o Now, being aware that this might cause problems in some cases, it might be a good idea for contestants in the demo and intro competitions to take some precautions to make sure their demo : 1. Doesn't exclusively work on their own home computer. :) 2. Is a tidbit flexible when it comes to running with your standard/typical memory configuration. o A copy of the competition computer's CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT will be available on the party site, so our competitors will also have the chance to make possible last minutes adjustements to their entries, just in case. We will also be open to suggestions as to add some choices we might have overlooked, within the boundaries of the available options. (I.e. Again, no QEMM memory managers. Only "standard" DOS memory config options.) o Don't worry, our goal isn't to force anyone into using memory managers or any fixed configuration, but needless to say we encourage our contestants to have productions wich are as flexible as possible. The demo scene in general can only profit if coders take some care to make their productions a little more versatile, not forcing the "users" to rewrite their whole configuration files from scratch every time they want to run the piece in question. The judging process. Entries will be judged following a point system. Public votes will be given a certain importance (30-40%) to attribute a final 'grade'. Details concerning other criterias judged will be released as soon as they are available. In case of a tie, the public vote percentage will determine our winner. (In the unlikely case of a tie at that level, the judges will take a tiebreaking vote themselves.) Distribution. The distribution system this year is different. First off, every entry at NAID must be shareware. (I.e. Distribution of the entry for non-profit purposes must be authorized by the author(s).) Furthermore, a NAID 96 CD-ROM is now in the works. Thus, while keeping the entries shareware, the author(s) will also have to give the right to Walnut Creek to use their entries on the CD. Basically, what this means is that for all intents and purposes, you still own the rights to your entries. If anyone wishes to put your entries on any CD besides the NAID 96 CD Walnut Creek will be publishing, they still have to come to you and make a deal to get further distribution rights. Now, maybe some of you are thinking 'Okay, that's all fine and dandy, but what do *I* get out of this?'. Well, that's a perfectly justifiable question, and here's the explanation. Walnut Creek would earn the distribution rights as they will be shelling out 100% of the prize money. Yup, you heard right. Furthermore, every contestant would also get a copy of the NAID 96 CD. (At the very least those who qualify for the compos, which means something between 20-30 per compo, and 1 for every entry if we don't get something like 100+ entries in every compo category. In any case, it will be specified in the application form/contract you will have to sign at the party.) Now, I am told that the 'target audience' for that CD, besides your usual demo-freaks, would be software compagnies interested in recruiting talented young artists/programmers. Thus, you might agree when we consider this whole thing to be a win-win situation. Maybe some of you still aren't convinced, but think of it this way. In the music business, you usually have to pay for that sort of publicity, and not the reverse. (The music business comparison isn't so far fetched if you think about it. I know a lot of similar contests taking place in the music industry around montreal work this way.) I'm sure some of you will have some questions about this whole question of distribution rights and so on, so feel free to contact us at naid@autoroute.net and we'll do our best to answer them. _________________________________________________________________ THE SPONSORS Current Official Sponsors : * Collège Édouard-Montpetit * A.G.E.C.E.M. * COOP Montpetit * Fond de developpement Édouard-Montpetit * Internet provider Autoroute.net * Mediatrix * Walnut Creek * Gandalf * M-Link Collège Édouard-Montpetit and NAID. Collège Édouard-Montpetit is the biggest CEGEP (roughly a US College equivalent) in the province of Quebec. CEM's involvement with NAID gives a chance to it's computer science students to come show what they are made of, and in the process, opening it's doors to artists, musicians and computer enthousiasts from all around the world. NAID owes it's existance in good part to this fine establishment. The organizers would like to send thanks to everybody in the school administrative and student staff involved with the event. _________________________________________________________________ THE ORGANIZATION [IMAGE] MAIN ORGANIZERS Mr. KhanÉtienne Caron MEdÉric LagacéSite Coordinator StrukLaurent GauthierBusiness Coordinator THE CO-ORGANIZERS TEAMS Main Organizers [Demo Compo] Main Organizers [Intro Compo] Shawnm & Ara [Music Compo] ??? [Gfx Compo] Depth [Lim0naid Compo(s)] France Viau [Site Decoration] Christian Mailloux [Security Officer] Equipe Sante [First Aid] Full credits will be given to the co-organizers in our post-NAID 96 report that is planned to be released x month/week (pref. 1 week :) after the event, somewhere towards the 1rst week of july. _________________________________________________________________ Getting to NAID 96 __________________________________________________________ See the "Frequently Asked Questions" page. Updated listing of bus trips to N.A.I.D. 96 __________________________________________________________ Answers to frequently asked questions ____________________________________________________ WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW. This section tries to answer the most common questions we get about NAID 96. See also the link to "Frequently Asked Questions" in the main page... Q: I'd like to reserve a ticket. How does it work? A: Well, it's simple really. Buy early. :) This entitles you to a table for you and your group , plus a place in the classrooms wich serve as dorms for the party. We'd like to offer reservations like last year, but frankly we found it was a rather inefficient way to work. So to keep it fair for everyone if we ever run out of space, we have to work like this. Don't worry, a counter with the number of available tickets left will be put up if we ever hit 1000 in pre-party sales. The addresses and relevent info (adresses and such) can be found at the bottom of this nfo-file. __________________________________________________________ LAST MINUTE NEWS AND RUMORS. -The rumors concerning the rad "GrEeN hAiR" discount are not valid, Even tough it would be a great deal of fun to see you all GrEeNd! -It is true that there's going to be A LOT of kewl lights this year. -It seems that there will be tickets left at the door, but it's only a rumor ! :) -It seems that we might have europeans dropping-by this year. -It seems that we might even have Australians dropping-by this year! (woah!) __________________________________________________________ HOW TO CONTACT US Internet: E-Mail adress is naid@autoroute.net World Wide Web: Official NAID 96 Web Page http://www.autoroute.net/~naid Or an alternative is ??? Thanks for the NAID 95 hawaii page go to Rhys/The Elven Nation (TEN), Rhys/The Apollo Project (TAP) aka Mr. Sunny Walker; http://sunny.hawcc.hawaii.edu, swalker@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu --> Snail-Mail: NAID / APRAXIA, Local A-19 College Edouard-Montpetit 945, chemin de Chambly Longueuil (Quebec), CANADA J4H 3M6 *Telephone: (514) *679-2630*, extension 363 during normal office hours. We share this line with another school organization. Ask to speak to a NAID organizer, if we aren't there, please leave a message, and we'll get back to you. Don't hesitate to call / write for info! To order tickets please check out our ticket ordering forms, wich can be found either on our web page, or as a file named order.nfo in our NAID 96 invtro package. [INLINE] Go back to the MAIN Home Page