Everything on this page is a huge work in progress. You have been warned.
That said, the big question on everybody's minds might be, well, "Why MAGFest?" The answer really is quite simple: MAGFest is awesome and affordable, and even more importantly, it is already pretty much to game consoles and chiptunes what a European demoparty is to household microcomputers, chiptunes, and graphical effects. It's also a pretty laid-back sort of place, and the staff and invited guests are generally very approachable if not completely welcoming. We felt that bringing even a small part of the demoscene to MAGFest was appropriate based solely on these points alone. We're Popular!Hi, everyone! We're working on getting everything together as quickly as possible. Excuse our dust... (Consequently, editing this page has made me realize that I still hate WYSIWYG interfaces. Go figure.) If you want to help out with running the actual event and things like that, please do send mail! That said, if any of you who're reading this want to help out right this moment, we could really use a logo to jumpstart getting the real site online. If you want to provide one for us to consider, send mail to nrr@corvidae.org. Any format understood by The GIMP or by a recent version of Photoshop will be accepted. (On 2009-07-23, madbrain and SigFLUP have contributed logos! Awesome! And more are supposedly coming!)     Some time after news of this hit demoscene.us and bitfellas.org, NO CARRIER sent mail regarding helping out with some equipment and things of that nature. We're waiting for a response back from him, but he offered to let us use a Commodore 64, an NES, and a Game Boy Advance, not to mention some other neat things, if we needed them. Location, Time, and Financial StuffAs we've said elsewhere here, the first edition of Nurupo will be meeting during MAGFest 8, which will be running from 31 December 2009 until 4 January 2010 and returning to the Hilton Mark Center in Alexandria, VA, USA, for its third year there. As of whenever, preregistration for MAGFest appears to be open now. The absolute lowest tier is $40, which is actually cheaper than some European gatherings, and accommodations can be reserved for $99/night, but we advise trying to share a room with someone whenever possible.
The Actual PartyplaceThe partyplace will be the LAN gaming room at the convention. Not much else is known about it right now except that it's now upstairs from its location last year because it has outgrown its old room. We will have a beamer at the very least with a halfway decent sound system more or less in the works.
Throughout the party, we will be showing a pretty wide variety of demos (in realtime, not as videos) almost nonstop. Our playlist will include the demos enumerated in http://entropia.de/wiki/GPN8:Demoshow as well as several others that we personally like or for which we have a particular fondness. When we're not playing demos, we will be playing a mixture of tracked and streamed music from the demoscene.
CompetitionsI really need to get real rules and whatnot set up for this so that folks can tell me whether or not I'm on drugs or a complete idiot. I have Brendan's blessing (and now Gargaj's incredibly helpful input) for at least part of this, I think.
We're looking at hosting mostly streaming music, old school music, fast music, high-resolution graphics, and wild competitions with a combined demo competition planned just in case we get enough submissions to make it worthwhile (even if we show two or three, that's good enough; we're expecting this to be a <50-person party, including visitors just there to enjoy the show). There will be no live coverage of the event broadcast to the Internet unless some sort of arrangement can be made to bring a decent link to the partyplace. No, your HSDPA radio modem will not work for this. Anyway, as far as the general rules are concerned...
Combined DemoWe've not actually planned anything for this, but given the fact that we're allowing remote submissions, it seems like a good idea to provide a spot for a proper democompo anyway. Time to sort out rules! (Look at the rules from Function 2008 per Gargaj's suggestion for what ours might eventually look like.)
We're still working on figuring out what our competition machine(s) will be. We have one so far, and the specs are the following:
Streaming MusicThe streaming music competition is for entries in some sort of streaming format that is produced with any assortment of tools.
Old School and Tracked MusicThe old school and tracked music competition is for entries in some sort of tracked format or hardware-oriented format.
This is just another way of saying "One-Hour Compo," except it'll be slightly longer.
There are bound to be at least some artists attending MAGFest. The rules for this one will be a 1024x768 (or 768x1024, we don't discriminate here; just be aware that the possibility of scaling or cropping is much higher than with 1024 pixels wide by 768 high) raster image in one of either JPEG, PNG, or TIFF format that is the product of tablet-based or mouse-based hand drawing, raytracing, or rendering of a nature not involving a scanner. In addition, we will also require at least two work-in-progress images showing the progression of the work. This is the lymphatic system of our competitions; anything that doesn't fit the above compos goes here. If you can think of something creative to show off, submit it to this competition. This includes live performances (bring your own gear!), interactive games, interesting console hacks, and so on.
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