I thought I’d take a moment to explain the UKScene entry into the Realtime competition at this weekends Forever7 party, which took place in Trencin, Slovakia. It didn’t win the competition, but I think that’s perhaps because it was a little too “high-concept”.
The theme of the Realtime competition was “The Magnificent Seven”, this being the 7th Forever party. We needed to produce something (a demo, screen$, or music) based on that theme. I suggested we (the party-goers from the UK) create a 7-byte Intro. There’s not much you can do in 7b, so it seemed like an amusing idea. This soon progressed to become a 7x7b Intro. All aspects of the Intro were based around the number 7 (well, most aspects).
A 7-line BASIC program loads 7, 7-byte code-files. Each of these 7-byte code files contains a small routine – the first is a “random selector”, which picks one of the other 6 to run. The aim of the remaining 7-byte code files is to produce an effect in only 7 bytes. We had effects in the border, a couple routines to print text (“Zxxxxx…” or random keywords), a strange crash-like effect, and (my personal favourite) an 8×8 pixel overscan effect. After running the program, you need to reset and run it again. Hopefully it won’t take long to see all of the possible effects.
By chance, this also turned out to be the 7th entry into the Forever7 competitions from the UK Scene. We accompanied it with a 7×7 character file_id.diz, and a 7-line text file.
We came 3rd. I kind of wish we’d come 7th.
I don’t have the download – it exists on Gasman’s computer so hopefully he’ll have it uploaded to Demotopia sometime soon. Until then you can only dream of seeing this masterpiece of obsessive design.
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“We came 3rd. I kind of wish we’d come 7th.” – Why haven’t you say in advance? Wotnau could have announced it as 7th entry in the Realtime compo ;-)))