About the .au xmas compo

So ... what is it?

"the .au xmas compo" is an online xmas demo competition. Everyone is invited to submit a demo or intro, which will be made available for public download on around the 20^th of December.

After the productions are released, we will begin the voting phase of the competition where the public are invited to vote for their favourite entries.

Some time after Xmas day, we will declare a winner and they will receive ultimate glory and hot chicks^*.

^*subject to seasonal variation.

Yep. Great. What's a demo?

A demo is a non-interactive real-time application that you run on your computer and watch and enjoy (generally ;)

In a way, demos are like music videos, only they are rendered in real-time on your computer using programming techniques similar to those used in games.

The best way to learn about demos is to watch some. The biggest online demo archive is at scene.org, and their "viewing tips" section would be a good place to start.

Some history

Cast your mind back to 2002, a time where the Australian scene had no more actual scene parties left. It didn't look like the Coven party was going to be held ever again, and things were starting to stagnate.

The .au xmas compo was born because it was seen as an "easy" way of picking up where Coven 2001 left off, getting Australian sceners off their collective slack arses and making demos.

We happily held 3 annual xmas compos until in 2005, disaster struck the disasterarea laboratory and we were disconnected from the world.

Thankfully, gyr/kaolin picked up where we left off, and kept the compo running in 2005.

Gyr gave the reins back in 2006, and here we are - time for the xmas compo 2007!