selja@hepta

so how is xenia involved this time

the shirts i mentioned in that other posts? yeah, i was meant to be wearing them at assembly, since it seemed like a place where someone might get what the refrance. but that's not even the only place where xenia comes in, you might be surprised to find. more about that later

assembly

i guess you might not know what assembly is, so we should probably establish that first. assembly is a long-running series of events held in finland that started out as a demoparty in 1992, and was already pretty big even in its first year. by the mid-to-late 00s when i first really learned of it, assembly had for a while been a big lan party involving all sorts of people from demosceners to gamers and also just anyone who wanted to hang out on a big lan. nowadays gaming has sort of become the primary thing with lots of esports and whatnot. (there's also a second event, assembly winter, which has been held since 2007 and is exclusively focused on gaming without any demoscene presence)

so, in summary, assembly is a big computer and gaming party held in helsinki. while gaming is probably the bigger show these days, as i mentioned, the demoparty aspect is definitely still there. especially the main demo compo still drew a big crowd in front of the main stage, so i feel relatively secure in claiming that it's probably one of the bigger demoparties, too. the result is kind of interesting - you end up with a lot of people who didn't really come there for the demoscene, but who likely the show anyway, since it's right there in the main hall.

and what was i doing there anyway

the traditional way to participate in assembly is to bring your own desktop pc and reserve a LAN seat that includes power and an ethernet connection to the party network, and that you can decorate to your preferences (often resulting in very fancy computer desks!). i only brought a laptop this time, however, so i spent more time walking around and lounging in the quieter areas than actually in the main hall where the pcs were.

(well, i say quiet areas, but i was often near the scene area, which in turn was near the rave area. "quiet" may be overselling it a bit.)

with gaming being the big show, a lot of the competitions (or compos, as they are usually abbreviated) ended up only being shown on a smaller screen outside the main hall. the big ones, and especially The Big One, the main demo compo, were shown on the main stage in the main hall, though, and drew a big crowd!

other than that i mostly... chilled, i guess? slept in the sleeping hall, wandered around, met friends, ate food truck food and did some programming.

demoscene

i can't exactly claim to be an old-school demoscener or anything, but i have been adjacent to it for a while, and watching compos was definitely one of the bigger reasons i showed up.

this is where xenia comes up again, actually! in the freestyle graphics compo there was an entry by Neotheta featuring xenia. i may be slightly biased, perhaps, but i thought it was definitely in the upper half of the entries. somehow it came second last. i guess assembly goers just don't like fox? yip y🦊ip? (oh, and there's a real shader in the text editor in that picture! if you transcribe it and paste it into shadertoy you will see a cool image)

i didn't feel super strongly about most of the entries, i suppose. liked the top five of 4k, oldschool had The Scroll of Antonius, and the winner of fantasy console was a fun five minute megademo. i feel like almost everything in the main demo compo was pretty strong. There was a skrolli party invite and what you might call a joke demo in there, too, and with the way they were ordered the showrunners clearly already knew which one was going to win and. If nothing else, check out the winning entry. it got into pouët's Top of the Month within probably half an hour of being shown, and for good reason (the top criticism and one I'd agree with is that it probably could've been cut for time and been stronger for that).

so, like, i liked the demos on offer. something that i heard lamented was that there weren't really that many new competitors in the more interesting categories, and it is a shame - maybe i should learn to make a demo...

anything else? final thoughts?

it was pretty hot and it really didn't help that i kept forgetting to drink water. apparently there were panels, including an alan wake 2 demo, but i missed those entirely. never been good at going to conventions and watching shows, anyway. and certainly i didn't expect to get more exercise than i've had in a while by going to what is essentially an enormous lan party.

final thoughts: i really should've been less sleepy when i wrote this, i have no idea if there's any consistency in here. if you have any comments send them via postcard

(actually on that note i promise to have something like a contact email here, eventually, or maybe i'll post on one of those newfangled social media sites that allows comments)