Vammala Party 2025

The compos are on

The traditional summer event, Vammala Party, took place in Ikaalinen in mid-July. Part demoparty, part gaming event, all chaos.

The heatwave was unforgiving. Visiting Budapest earlier in the summer in 35+ degrees heat had hardened me somewhat, but the nights were still relentless.

This was the first time ever I had a full-size colour CRT at a party, but after going through the essentials (Rambo, Blue Max, Saboteur, Buggy Boy, Stunt Car Racer, Snoopy) it didn't serve much of a purpose, except perhaps adding one more SID wail to the party soundscape. Without a card reader I couldn't even transfer programs from the Linux to the C64.

The obligatory "fire up Rambo" session

A variety of activities can be crammed into an extended weekend. I actually have to think a little of where and how I spend time. As I can't currently concentrate much on coding or playing games at home, I wanted to make sure there's enough such entertainment at the party place.

Also, I've not been able to do much creative coding lately. I heard a rumor the democompo had less entries. As the opportunity now presented itself, I took it. I created a filler entry from nearly nothing using Processing/Java.

For audio, I used Suno-generated AI songs. For this reason I used a pseudonym "Dr. Errorz", surely no-one will ever associate it with me. I cut audio from two separate AI outputs, so some human sensibility was used. It didn't take many hours to do. It didn't finish last, which was positive.

A frame from Mega_Amiga_Boing_Filler

Making the minimal demo wasn't particularly stressing, as I had set the bar extremely low for code quality. Instead, trying to get audio to work and generating the video output turned out to be a chore, as the Movie Maker in Processing 4 didn't work.

The solution involved ffmpeg from the command line and Kdenlive. Instead of delving deeper into ffmpeg, I used Kdenlive for combining the video and audio, because I already knew it would work. Time optimization. Even then, using Kdenlive on a low resolution screen was a little confusing, as the UI didn't fit properly.

MSX Juhannus, for MSX. 256x192

For the graphics compo I had already an MSX bitmap, but I continued working on it on-site. A landscape is a rarity for me, but there's a reason for the choice. It's sort of a commissioned work. But the production it belonged to, did not materialize at this party. We'll see.

I made a PETSCII on location, as is almost the tradition.

I'd say neither gfx were my best work, but they did land me the 2nd and 3rd place in a competition that had perhaps more serious entries than I can ever remember.

Overall there was quite good attendance and good entries for all compos. Is Vammala Party becoming a more serious demoscene event?

Stunt Car PETSCII

I made a hasty entry into the Tuplain (audio-video combination) compo, and surprisingly it got the 2nd place. Both times this has happened, I lost to Marq. Curse you Red Baron!

The camping stove hobby was also present at the party. Well, it's another hardware to play with. At times it felt silly to boil water at the yard as a kitchen was available, but this way I got some peace and variety to the activities.

I used the combination of the Outzone burner and the Trangia coffee pot, although there were other pots too.

Morning coffee

From the fleamarket table I did buy a couple of things, a SiDi FPGA multicore and a real crappy joystick. Oh and Deactivators for ZX Spectrum. I'll get back to these later.

Vammala Party 2025 at Demozoo