ParaCon7 reminder by Paradox [web] & Paranoia [web]
::: . ::: . ::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::: : ::: : ::: ::: : ::: : ::: ::: : ::: __ : ::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::( )::::::::::::::::: _____:::____ _____ : ____ ___::: ____ __ :____::: / \:/ \ / \:/ \ \:: / \ / \:: __/ __ \ / __ \ \: ) __ \: / / \ \ / \ \ / / \ ::: : ::: : ::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::: . ::: . ::: .:. .:. invites you to .:. . .:. . .:. . .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. .:. _____ ___ ____ ___ _____ ____ __ __ / \ \ \ / \ \ \ / __/ / \ / \ / \ .:. / __/ ___\ \/ / ___\ \( (___( ) \/ \ __/ /___/ \_/ \__ .:. ____________________________________ / .:. .:. / / .:. .:. .:. / / .:. / / .:. .:. .:. .:. / .:. The ParaCon 7 organized by Paranoia sponsored by Textildruck Fuchs November 25th to November 27th 2005 DLRG-Heim Selters/Ts. Germany _____________ __|The ParaCon 7|____________________________________________________ Once again, for the fifth time in a row, Paranoia invites you to a ParaCon-party, namely the seventh. The party is taking place from Friday, November 25th from about 17:00, to Sunday, November 27th, around noon, in the DLRG-Heim in Selter/Ts. in Germany. Once again, we like to invite all Atari 16/32-Bit and all Commodore 8-Bit fanatics to spend a constructive and creative weekend among friends. Once again, Paranoia will try to top last year's breakfast service and this time, our sponsor, Textildruck Fuchs, has something really very special for you. _________ __________________| Details |________________________________________ Now that date and place are set, let's come to the usual details which are of interest for a ParaCon-party: [ ] Preregistration To attend you need to be registered. To do so, you can send an email to paranoid@atari.org. [ ] Web site More and up-to-date information about the ParaCon 7 can be found under the URL http://paracon.atari.org [ ] Attendance Fee The ParaCon party costs you 12 Euros. You do not need to pay on registration but on arrival. [ ] Breakfast Service Paranoia will serve breakfast on both saturday and sunday. [ ] Sleeping area A warm and cosy sleeping area is provided. Earplugs are strongly recommended though. __________ ____________________________| Features |______________________________ The all new ParaCon 7 mixes well known features with a list of new ones added. + Cosy and friendly location + Easy to reach by car, train and even by place + Parking lot directly nearby + 2 Supermarkets directly nearby + Cosy and Warm Sleeping Area (Earplugs recommended!) + World Class Breakfast + Pizza and other food service + Special Bonus by our sponsor Textildruck Fuchs + Christmas Market on Sunday afternoon Register now and you can enjoy the features of ParaCon 7 already on the last weekend in November. _________ _______________________________________| Licence |____________________ Please read the guest user licence described below. By attending the ParaCon 7 you affirm you have read and accepted the issues described there. - The location itself is a no-smoke area - Use of toasters, microwave ovens etc. is not allowed. - The organizers are not responsible for your equipment. Please keep an eye on it yourself. - Please mind that the location is not very big and restrict the amount of equipment you bring - The use or swapping of illegal software will be legally prohibited - No narcotics or illegal drugs! (Mind German laws) - The organizers preserve the right to remove any attendant from the party without prior notice and without any kind of refund if they consider it necessary to maintain the party safe and sound _________ __________________________________________________| Options |__________ While the usage of Microwave ovens, toasters, barbequeues, coffee makers or water boilers in the main room is not permitted, the organizers can prepare coffee or hot water on request. Please do not use the kitchen without explicit permission. The area is cosy but kind of smallish. Please bring only the equipment you really want to use during the party and leave optional computers, monitors, printers and other gear at home. This will make it much easier for the organizers and other attendants. The sleeping room is indirectly separated from the main area. It's easy to reach and has a warm carpet. Since people actually sleep on this floor, please leave your shoes outside this area. Also, earplugs are strongly recommended. There is the option of ordering Pizza and other food several times during the day but usually not before early evening. The organizers will also collect orders from time to time. Finally, there are a few locations within walking range. There are 2 supermarkets nearby and a gas station is roughly 2km away. Two pretty good restaurants are just a few minutes away as well. _______ ____________________________________________________________| Route |__ The location is easy to reach by car and by train and indirectly, even by plane. Please find the detailed route plans below. The target location is the DLRG-Heim Selters in Selters/Ts., Germany. By plane: You'll be landing on Frankfurt Airport. Go to the Subway station and look for a train going to Frankfurt main station. Follow the route "By train" from here. By Train: Coming from the south (Frankfurt): Once you arrived at Frankfurt main station, look for a train going to Limburg a.d. Lahn. This train should be labelled "Regionalbahn", otherwise it might not stop in Selters/Ts. Probably you will have to change trains in Niedernhausen. In this case make sure the train going from Niedernhausen to Limburg is a "Regionalbahn". Coming from the north (Limburg): If you do not go through Frankfurt, your next waypoint would be "Limburg a.d. Lahn". If you arrive in Limburg, please look for a train going either to Frankfurt, Wiesbaden or Niedernhausen. Make sure this train is called "Regionalbahn". Leaving at Niederselters: The train station to get out of the train is named "Niederselters". Head for the station, which is an ugly green building and pass it towards the street. You should see a small street to the right side of the pub "Zum Bahnhof", leading slightly downhill. Follow this street until you cross a little stream over a bridge. Keep walking straight on for a few hundred meters and you will reach the DLRG-Heim in Selters, which is on your right. By Car: This way or other, you will have to get onto the A3, the autobahn connecting Frankfurt and Cologne. Coming from the south (Frankfurt): Get onto the A3 heading for Cologne. Exit the Autobahn in Bad Camberg. The exit is tricky, drive slowly and read the signs. The exit is actually before the gas station. Coming from the north (Cologne): Get onto the A3 heading for Frankfurt. Exit the Autobahn in Bad Camberg. Mind that the exit is under construction, so drive carefully. The exit is actually before the gas station. Take the next possible turn left, heading for Bad Camberg. The road does a few turns and then goes straigt downhill into the city of Bad Camberg, passing a small industrial area and crossing the railway station. Follow this road until you reach a T-Section with traffic lights. Turn left, heading for Limburg (B8). Keep going on this road, leaving Bad Camberg, for about 4 to 5km. After you have passed a Minimal market, which was on your left, you reach a cross section with traffic lights and a Penny market to your left. Turn left and keep going straight on for 200m. The DLRG-Heim is on your left. Additional options: Limburg a.d. Lahn is connected to the fast railway between Frankfurt and Cologne. This station is fairly easy to reach by train and depending on your route, it might be sensible to go to this station which can only be reached by a so-called Intercity Express (ICE). One of the organizers might be able to pick you up there. If you plan to do so, please ask the organizers as early as possible if it is possible to pick you up there and please, give us your cell-phone number so we can reach you if something goes wrong. Please mind that this is an option you will have to arrange with the organizers in time, i.e. a few days before the party. Just calling us saying that you just arrived and asking whether we could pick you up then is definetly not an option since the answer may very well be "no". ___________ __| Remindtro |________________________________________________________ Sorry for being so late again. This time, almost every- thing went wrong. While the basic effect ran rather soon (mid summer), the whole rest around it took longer than usual - And to be honest, it was completely and purely my fault. 505 delivered his great music almost instantly and Zweckform finished all graphics in time. But coding-wise, everything that could go wrong went wrong. Not to mention the fact that for rouhgly 1 1/2 weeks, it didn't run on the STE at all because of a "+34" instead of a "+36". Even worse, the stuff that usually creates problems, like implementing totally new music replayers with funky effects or new screen drivers, worked well this time. Therefore, the credits are as follows: - maxYMizer music: 505 - graphics: Zweckform - additional code: RA - font and code: The Paranoid - music replayer: gwEm Regards to 505 for using the "zync"-bytes of maxYMizer in an excellent way to provide timing for the effects and for helping with the design this way. Naturally, thanks must go to gwEm for the YM-tracker maxYMizer. Additional thanks to Ultra of Cream for his help with the 3D business. As usual, the demo-engine is losely based on Evil's, so thanks as usual to Evil of DHS. I have to apologize for 505 for the terrible delay this thing was released with ... And it's not even really finished. The code is a mess (besides the main effect) and i conquered one stupid bug after the other - I should have probably taken a longer time out after finishing Pacemaker. The graphics are also not finished but maybe, the effect will be re-appear in a more complete intro soon ... Finally, mega-greetings to RA for finishing his excellent old-school screen in time - Sync-scrolling, overscan and digidrums for the very first time ever on the ST - and that on its 20th birthday. Oh, almost forgot the requirements for the little reminder. It's a Paradox-production so it runs on an [X] Atari STE with 1MB or more RAM [X] Atari MegaSTE with 1MB or more RAM [X] Atari Falcon030 with 4MB or more RAM with VGA or RGB It doesn't run at all or at least not very well one [ ] Atari ST [ ] Atari STE with 512KB RAM [ ] Atari TT [ ] Atari Falcon030 with a CT60 or CT63 upgrade As usual, it has been tested on the following systems: [X] Atari Falcon030 VGA, 14MB, FPU, Nemesis, NVDI 4.11 [X] Atari MegaSTE, RGB, 4MB, NVDI 4.11 ______ _______________| Help |________________________________________________ Again, this text should feature some technical stuff as well, so here goes. The Atari STE was the first 16/32-Bit computer of the series to feature horizontal and vertical fine-scrolling. While vertical fine scrolling merely requires the ability to set the low-byte of the screen address accordingly, the horizontal fine-scrolling requires the ability to have lines larger than the current resolution and to make the graphics chip to skip a certain amount of pixels at the beginning of each line. While the Atari STE offered all of that, the latter came with a problem, as it is officially affirmed by Atari: "Setting the Video Base Address Pixel Offset during the VBL from unequal to zero to zero might result in corrupted display." As a result - and so it is explained in the STE-FAQ as well - this register should be treated in a HBL-Interrupt rather than the VBL to avoid resetting it during the VBL. However, for many programs, this means the introduction of the HBL-interrupt as an additional interrupt source and might mix up timing with music/digi-sounds etc. Therefore, the HBL-Interrupt is not desired. Often enough in magazines and on webpages a solution without requiring the HBL-Interrupt is debated, but so far, only fragments of a working routine have been presented and the results were not very satisfactory. Nevertheless, a simple solution is available even during the VBL and even better, it works on the STE, the Falcon VGA and RGB and even on the TT. The procedure is quite simple. During the VBL, you first write the screen base address (mind the order): move.b adr_high,$FFFF8201.w ;High Byte move.b adr_mid,$FFFF8203.w ;Mid Byte move.b adr_low,$FFFF820D.W ;Low Byte Now write the new pixel skip and line offset in no special order move.b line_ofs,$FFFF820F.w ;Offset between lines move.b pxl_skip,$FFFF8265.w ;Pixel Skip (0-15) This might actually lead to the Shifter interpreting the following lines in the wrong way and therefore doing corrupted screen display. Funny enough, the Shifter will always perform correct display when writing the address counters by hand: move.b adr_high,$FFFF8205.w ;High Byte move.b adr_mid,$FFFF8207.w ;Mid Byte move.b adr_low,$FFFF8209.w ;Low Byte Once these values have been loaded directly into the screen address counters, the Shifter seems to correct its faulty line interpretation and will correctly display the next frame. So much for the technical stuff this time. Personally, i kind of wondered that this easy solution works, but it does very well. ______ ______________________| Misc |_________________________________________ Why is the ParaCon 7 nicknamed "Family Reunion" ? Actually, with the disappearance of Paranoia as a demo- group, the meetings have gone rare and less productive and Paranoia has reached the state of perpetual sleep. Not dead, but not really moving either. Yet again, in autumn, Paranoia-members suddenly awaken, start to buy enormous amounts of food, rent a video beamer from the city of Offenbach and write odd text files. All of a sudden, Paranoia meets more often to plan and coordinate the upcoming party, making it again a very cooperative and family-like group. This is why the ParaCon 7 is nicknamed "Family Reunion". Again, we'd like to apologize for inviting you to this party this late and also for the very very late release of this text. Again, we'd like to thank our sponsor, Textildruck Fuchs, for supporting us in a very special way this time. Also, greetings are sent to the DLRG in Selters, which have once again provided us the location without any hestitation or restriction. Additional thanks must go to 505, Zweckform and RA of Paradox for supporting the invitro so well and on short notice. Greetings to gwEm for his great and flexible MaxYMizer tracker and his help on how to implement the replay routine. Special greetings to Der Komtur who prevented the ParaCon from being cancelled. In fact, the weekend for the ParaCon was registered beginning of summer this time, just to find out in autumn that the location was already booked for a first-aid-examn, but nobody remembered this double-booking. Der Komtur immediatelly organized a location for the first- aid-examn so that we can have the DLRG-Heim instead. As usual, nothing of this would have been possible without our favourite, Afri-Cola. Well then, see you on the ParaCon 7. The Paranoid/Paradox [ OK ] [ CANCEL ] [ APPLY ] [ RESET ] [ HELP ]
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