Fewer competitions, more room for discussion

In the spirit of accessibility and fostering learning, we will host fewer competitions, and instead provide a forum to shed light on their making, inspiration, tools and makers afterwards. Bring your best game, and share your tips and tricks afterwards - or bring your first entry, and tell us what inspired you, how you selected your tool and your way to it. Inbetween the program, we will invite all participants to a laid-back roundtable with the respective compo organiser for a drink, for people to ask questions or listen to your tips, tricks and experiences.

General Rules:

Remote entries are allowed for all compos except, naturally, the OHP Compo.

Only original work is allowed in our competitions. Any copyright violation charges will be passed on to the submitter of the production.

Using derivate-generators ("AI", e.g. Midjourney, Suno, Sora, etc) for any part of your production is disallowed. This also counts for parts of your production (e.g. the soundtrack or single graphics elements).

All entries must not have been previously released to the public, and must be handed in before the deadline (as per timetable).

By taking part in a competition, you are agreeing that we’ll spread your contribution (e.g. through files.scene.org or other sites). We recommend a brief licensing info in your .nfo or README file. The licences aligning with demoscene practice the most are probably CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, so we would recommend that one, but you are of course free to make your own decision.

Please submit a screenshot with your release, and compress your entry to .zip before submission.

Please list all tools you used in the slide to be presented to the audience.

This way, you help newcomers as well as our mentors to find and try out tools for their own productions. And it gives you bragging rights in case you handmade everything from scratch. Keep in mind that most of our competitions target multiple platforms and/or media. A good description will help the audience to appreciate the work put in to it as well as the output shown.

We reserve the right to disqualify entries, make changes or cancel competitions for any reason. In such cases we do not show or share your submission, so you are free to submit it again at another party.

PC Realtime

High-end PC demos allow for the widest range of artistic freedom and fidelity. For breathtaking graphics in only a few kilobytes or multiple megabytes. Join us and sway the audience to up their game in composition, artistic expression… or of course self-limitation and the crunching of code, to wow the audience what can be done in just a few kilobytes!

• Max length: 8 minutes incl. load time.
• Maximum filesize: 1024Mbyte.*
• Platform: PC running Windows 11, Linux Mint or CachyOS. Contact us in advance if your entry requires a different OS / platform.
• Maximum resolution: 1920×1080 @ 60 Hz. Other acceptable resolutions are e.g. 1280×720, 1024×768.
• The entry has to be delivered as single .zip file including all necessary runtime and libraries. Any engines or libraries used will be made publicly available and thus require a licence permitting to do so.
• For Windows, you may expect standard DirectX and .NET Framework 4.8.1 installed. Do not expect VC runtime, XBox SDK or other 3rd-party libraries installed. For Linux, the distributions' default packages and the GPU driver will be installed.
• Browser entries will be shown using latest Chrome or Firefox. Do not expect plugins including Flash, Java or PDF. Entries must be able to run from local file system (for Chrome, this means running using --allow-file-access-from-files).
• For remote entries: if feasible, please provide us with a video capture of your entry (even if it is a crude one) so that we can check if it runs as intended on our hardware. We will not share this capture afterwards unless you wish so.

* If we receive enough entries with a size ≤64kb, we might split these into a separate "PC Realtime - Size restricted" competition. In such a case, you will be informed beforehand.

We will run the PC Realtime entries on a machine with the following specs:

• AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
• 128GByte DDR5 RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

Alternatively, a second competition machine with the following specs is available:

• AMD Ryzen 5 7600
• 32GByte DDR5 RAM
• Radeon RX 7900 GRE

Oldskool and Alternative Platforms Realtime

At its core, the love for and limitations on “oldschool” devices has always been at the heart of the demoscene. From the C64 to Amigaaaaaah, or exotic devices that people might not even have heard about - compete in this compo not just to show off your skill, but also the specialty and peculiarness that encourages you to produce demos for them, and tell us about it!

• Max length: 8 minutes incl. load time
• Available hardware:
  • Commodore 64 - U1541-II , Action Replay attached (No REU no 2SID demos)
  • Amiga (A500, 512kB Chip and 512 kB Slow Mem)
• For C64 : Please state which SID chip to use (6581/8580). This information will be displayed on the info slides for your production.
• VIC-20, Atari (ST), ZX Spectrum and other platforms: Please get in contact with us before the party, either via info@mountainbytes.ch or via our discord server so we can check if we can provide a suitable machine or capturing equipment. When in doubt: Bring your own device and videocapture.
• For remote entries: if feasible, please provide us with a video capture of your entry (even if it is a crude one) so that we can check if it runs as intended on our hardware. We will not share this capture afterwards unless you wish so.

Combined Graphics

Whether you are into Pixelart, Hand-drawn, 4k Graphics, 3D Models… this is your place! Show off your artwork, and discuss with us afterwards the pleasures of your trade, where you get inspiration and introduce guests to the tools you use.

Entries will be shown at maximum resolution 1920x1080 pixels. Larger images will be scaled down, smaller images may be shown at double/triple size without interpolation to preserve pixel clear display

• Include up to four working stages for non-procedural graphics
• Preferred format for submission is PNG. In case of graphics entries for non-pc platforms and executable graphics, please also submit a version of your entry as a PNG image file (for reference)
• Maximum rendering time for executable entries: 60 seconds

Combined Music

Be it trackers, DAWs or even music recorded live: the sky's the limit! Compose a song to be played on Dreiklang's amazing sound system, and afterwards use the chance to discuss styles, your approach, favourite tools and composing tricks with us!

• Maximum playing length is: 3:30 min
• Entries may not loop and have to end with silence.
• Executable Music: Part of the submission must be a .wav writer and instructions on how to use it. The .wav writer and additional information do not count into the size of the entry. Maximum pre-calculation time (in case your player needs it) is 60 seconds.
• Tracked Music: Allowed file formats: .mod, .s3m, .xm, .it
• Streamed Music: Allowed file formats: mp3, ogg, opus at a bitrate of 192kbps or higher, or flac. Please complete ID3 tag or OGG file info with as much detail as possible.

OHP - Overhead-Projektor

Another old tradition from Buenzli/Demodays is celebrating its return - the Overhead-Projector Compo is back! That’s right; you remember them from your classrooms from back-in-the-day, where you worked on project presentations together with your classmates, or dreaded the foils being uncovered by your teacher during exams. Now it’s time to show in a live-performance, what those machines are capable of!

• Max duration: 6 minutes
• GenAI derivates for music, graphics or animation, as in all other compos, are not allowed
• You're allowed to do whatever you want, except making any modification to the OHP itself or providing additional light sources.
• Take care with liquid or any other mobile material in case you use some – after your entry was shown, the OHP must be dry, clean and ready for the next performer.
• There will be material available at the party place for you to prepare and create an entry on site (mostly scissors, glue, some leftover overhead transparencies, pens and of course the projectors).

• We’ll play your music choice along with your performance. Bring your soundtrack with you as an .mp3, .ogg, .flac or .opus file. As we will publish a video capture of your performance, your soundtrack must be either free of third-party rights, public domain or Creative Commons-licensed and you must have obtained the permit by the creator. As the soundtrack will be played by our orgas - please add a minimal description for how to start/end/repeat the soundtrack. E.g. to which point we should seek back if the soundtrack ends before your performance.

Still no idea what this is about? Have a look and get inspired by some of our favourite OHP releases at previous parties - and then participate! It's fun, we promise!