To help boost a fledgling American demoscene and more generally encourage greater output in classical computer art styles, several competitions ("compos") will be held at the event. Anyone, attending or not, who thinks they have something cool to show off in the available categories is welcome to submit an entry. Live screenings of all entries will be held at the event, and audience voting will decide the ranking. Prize-ranking winners may receive their prizes in person at the prize ceremony or be mailed their prizes (we'll do our best).

Submissions have closed. Thanks to everyone who submitted!

Voting has closed. Thanks to everyone for providing your votes!

Results

/------------------\
|Freestyle graphics|
\------------------/
1. pixels alive 90pts
2. Insecti-side 82pts
3. MotionPicture 77pts
4. Famous In Vegas 75pts

/------------\
|General Demo|
\------------/
1. Premas 73pts
2. dspc 64pts (tie broken by higher average)
3. 19 bytes for color 64pts
4. Doctor Whaa? 55pts
5. Flow 54pts
6. GP2X Twistro 54pts
7. BITS 5021 "Flash Stars" 52pts

Entries

A full archive of entries may be found here.

Prizes

Freestyle graphics

$50 1st place

Freestyle music

$50 1st place

General demo

$150 1st place
$50 2nd place

Special bonus prizes

$50 Best local demo (currently live within the metro Pittsburgh area - CMU students especially encouraged!)

Top winners in each category will also receive a small trophy, certificate, and probably a random take-away gift.

Do you want to encourage this art form too? Contact us if you'd like to donate to boost these prizes.

Detailed Rules

Don't worry if these seem overly long. We aren't going to be picky, we just want to lay everything out formally so there isn't any uncertainty.

General Compo Rules

Submissions must be original, unreleased work
Any content contained in a submission that is not by the author must have copyright owner approval. By submitting, you affirm that any such approvals have been secured
Submissions containing particularly/unusually profane, disturbing, or "shock" content will be rejected at the organizers' discretion
All submissions must adhere to the format requirements dictated by the submission system. Organizers will attempt, but are not obligated, to contact you regarding potentially disqualifying submission issues.
All submissions will be posted by the organizers for unlimited public distribution. By submitting, you agree to such distribution.
Organizers may submit entries but are not eligible for prizes (prizes will pass to the next entry).
Organizers reserve the right to cancel, combine, or split any categories for any reason
Organizers reserve the right to change rules at any time prior to the submission deadline and will attempt, but are not obligated, to widely advertise such changes.
Issues not explicitly addressed herein are subject to consensus decision by the organizers, and such decisions are final.
The submission system requires slightly more metadata than most other demoparties so as to better inform the audience. Please review these questions in advance of the deadline to avoid surprises.
Deadline for all submissions is 3pm US Eastern time (19:00 UTC) on Saturday Oct 13

Remote Submission Rules

Remote entries, defined as being from a person or group having no representative attending the event, are welcome and do not require a representative to be present to claim prizes
Remote entries are equally eligible for prizes, which will be mailed to you via standard US/international mail if you have provided a valid mailing address
Submission procedure and deadlines are the same as for entries by attendees

Graphics Category Rules

Entries may be of any static graphical art form: a photograph, hand-drawn sketch, 3D rendering, etc.
Entries in classical demo style are especially encouraged for best audience exposure to this art form
Any common raster graphics format (formally, any graphics format supported by a default installation of imagemagick) or SVG is acceptable
Entries may be of any resolution and aspect ratio but will be viewed at the smaller of the image's original resolution or 1280x720, with black letterboxing as necessary
Entries may contain a signature or watermark, but bear in mind that overbearing sigs will detract from its appreciability
To better prove the image's originality, at least ONE intermediate graphic created during the final image's development must be included. Additional intermediate images may be included to avoid any uncertainty if you wish.

Music Category Rules

Entries may be of any genre, but classical demo style is strongly encouraged for best audience exposure
No maximum length is required, but only at most 3 minutes of a song will be played during the competition
A "rendered" version is required. Any modern common audio format (formally, MP3/OGG/FLAC/WAV) is acceptable
If submitting a tracked/retro entry, the original file (e.g. XM/IT/S3M) may be included, and, if included and supported by a default installation of audacious's modplug on linux, will be played during the competition for greater authenticity unless you specifically request that the rendered version be played

General Demo Category Rules

Entries commonly in the oldskool, small-size (32b, 512b, 1k, 4k, 64k, etc.), full-size, and wild genres are welcomed, and preceding commentary will be provided by the organizers to draw attention to special properties of entries (e.g. the greater difficulty of small-sized demos)
To the maximum extent practical, an attempt will be made to play all entries on hardware if present in the large on-site collection
If you are present and wish to do so, you may provide your own hardware on which to run the demo. Almost any analog video standard is supported (DVI/HDMI is likely but not guaranteed). Audio must be line-level analog mono or stereo.
Failing a hardware attempt, an attempt will be made to play the demo in a default installation of the most common emulator for that platform (if one exists). Please provide emulator settings that are known to work best with your demo, if possible.
A pre-rendered version is strongly suggested as a fall-back should an attempt to play on hardware or in emulation be unsuccessful or impossible. Any modern common video format is reasonable (formally, any format playable by a default installation of mplayer on debian(+debian-multimedia) linux - this is nearly any format in existence). In addition to making absolutely sure your demo can be shown, this provides you with a chance to generate your own preferred archival video, as opposed to letting random people post shoddy captures of their own. If you do not provide a pre-rendered version, we may not be able to show your demo if we have problems running your binary or disk image, so please submit one.
- - Need help creating a video of your demo? We can help you in person if you are attending, and you may not have to worry about a video in some cases (e.g. you present hardware that clearly operates).
Maximum display resolution is 1280x720 and may be either 16:9 or 4:3. Standard VESA modes are strongly encouraged.
The following hardware platforms are available:
- Amiga 500 NTSC or PAL w/ 512k slow RAM expansion (provide floppy image)
- Amiga 1200 NTSC or PAL w/ Blizzard '060 accelerator 64MB RAM (provide floppy image or hard-disk runnable binary)
- Apple IIgs NTSC or PAL w/ Transwarp GS (provide floppy image)
- Apple Lisa (provide Lisa Workshop or Lisa Office runnable binary or dc42 floppy image)
- Atari 130XE PAL 1MB (provide floppy image)
- Atari 800XL NTSC (provide floppy image)
- Commodore 64 NTSC or PAL (SID version not guaranteed) (provide floppy image)
- Commodore 128 NTSC (provide floppy image)
- MAYBE: Commodore Plus4 NTSC (provide floppy image)
- MAYBE: Commodore VIC-20 NTSC (provide floppy image)
- DOS PC 333MHz Pentium II GUS(with-RAM-expansion)/SB16/Covox 128MB RAM (provide DOS binary)
- GamePark GP2X F100 original firmware
- Linux PC ??-core ??GHz Nvidia ??? ??GB RAM running almost-latest Debian or Ubuntu (provide linux binary)
- Sinclair ZX spectrum 48k PAL (via Speccy2010) (provide TZX/TAP/TRD file)
- Sinclair ZX spectrum 128k+ and +2 PAL (provide TAP file)
- Sinclair ZX spectrum Pentagon 1MB clone PAL (via Speccy2010) (provide TZX/TAP/TRD file)
- Timex-Sinclair 1000 (ZX81) NTSC 16KB RAM (provide ZXpand-compatible binary)
- TI-99/4A NTSC (provide floppy image)
- Vectrex (provide 32kb or 64kb [must adhere to normal bank-switching convention] ROM image)
- Windows PC ??-core ??GHz Nvidia ??? ??GB RAM running windows ?? (provide windows binary)
Maximum demo runtime is 5 minutes
Maximum size of program components (not including standard libraries etc.) is 128MB uncompressed
If any special runtimes or libraries are required, please either provide these or indicate direct download links. (As a special exception, Processing 1.5.1 may be asssumed, to encourage first-time demo coders to join in.) Please coordinate any special needs with the organizers. If a complex runtime situation cannot be resolved easily, we will not hesitate to use the pre-rendered fallback.
Typical demo interaction rules apply: the escape (or equivalent) key must exit the demo, and no input should be required beyond an optional initial load/configuration screen (except wild demos intended as interactive art)
Where applicable, entries may not require network access, modify system files (outside the directory in which the demo is run), or interfere with the playback of any future demos.

General Demo Translation for Newbies

Just write something! We can probably run it, and if not, we'll get you to help us run it.

Submitting

The deadline for all submissions is 3pm US Eastern time (19:00 UTC) on Saturday Oct 13.