Sunday, 1st of June 2025 and Monday, 2nd of June 2025
Time to wrap up this year's Outline experience and conclude this reportage. The party has been covered to quite some degree the past days (part 1, part 2, part 3). Hopefully you got a picture of the event and the surrounding happenings. Feel free to add your own points, views and opinions in the comments or elsewhere. For the truly complete experience, it is of course recommended to visit the party itself.
Now as the party is over, people traveling back home, it's time to write down a few things that come to mind.
First of all, thanks for putting this up again, dear organizers and all the helping hands. The amount of work and energy put into the event was impressive again, but that's only the part I could witness. Beside the usual logistics, the compo organization, bar setup and required flexibility, I was amazed by Numtek's installations of a gigantic big screen and also professional light and laser show equipment to support the atmosphere. As the party went by, I think with Gasman's show on Friday and the actual compo main block on Saturday we had two wonderful peak events.
It was nice to see some Atari activity in the different compo categories, but also in general it was a colorful and satisfying bouquet of contributions, leaving visitors without any "oh that's it already" moment after the compos. This brought me to the ever-repeating conclusion, that it's good to contribute with submissions and support the event and the joint visitor experience by doing so.
Let's have a quick look at the compo entries released there. Regarding the music compo, Aki won the music compo with a maxYMiser track, appreciating the Atari roots of the party, as she said. Dma-Sc released a chiptrack called "Dragon Dance" with a remarkable new YM clap instrument, sounding like a crisp sample - magic work on that sound design. Another music stayed probably a bit underrated: Sunnyvale Heavy Sixer by Marv1994 a track that was apparently created combining hardware oscillators. The sound was impressive, reminded a bit to the VCS 2600 sliced metallic bass sounds and the composition was great, too.
In the graphics category, we had only two 16 color graphics entries, one by Suule and one by Akaikoshi but both were very nice. In the freestyle gfx compo Imagician delivered an amazing picture called "Man Vs Machine" and rightfully won that compo.
Winning 16 color graphics entry by Suule
Regarding intros and demos there were serveral blasting Bytros on the Atari-front: with Superogue's "Phased", a 128-Bytro for ST and even more impressive "Aztec ride" in the 256-Bytro category - another "blows you away" release. Also for the Atari ST, grz/The Orz released a very stylish and nicely developing intro in iso-perspective called Isopolis.
42Bastian contributed with two nice Atari Lynx intros, one parallax scrolling one and another one named "Raster sind mein Laster" re-approaching the classic Alcatraz-Bar approach. The optical illusion in that one was really strong.
Actually, the complete range of entries in the 256-Byte Oldschool category was very diverse and fantastic to watch.
Then we had the oldschool demo compo which was filled with little releases of mixed quality, focusing on the fun part of things.
"May Bee" a quickie by TiNKer, 505 and spkr
Also the wild and the newschool compos were stuffed. PC scene celebrity Skrebbel was in place with his two crew members (well, his two kids!) who worked on and released a new PC demo in the compo! A very nice setting and production. Maybe I am stepping in muddy water here, but I have a few recommendations of non-Atari releases worth checking: We got tasty Hot chocolate served in 3D look by Plex in the Outline 2025 Newschool 256-Bytes Intro competition. The very same Plex also delivered a beautiful 128 Bytro called "Town 6", one of my personal favourites from the party. Also worth mentioning: the climax of the newschool demo compo where Bitbendaz entered a full blown demo (invitation for Compusphere), leaving all visitors back with a fully satisfying compo evening. Thanks for that to all the contributors!
Despite the number of platforms, the compos went very smoothly. Sometimes the introduction slides before entries were shown very shortly or the platform description was missing, so you could not really grasp what you were hearing or seeing. On the music compo the audio levels were comparatively low and varying from track to track. This seems to be the unfortunate destiny of music compos at many parties. But all that's just nitpicking and shows that there is actually nothing major to improve in the compo department.
During the rest of the time the usual party happenings took place, time flew. The afternoons and evenings were accompanied by a number of livesets (Dma-Sc, Numtek, zootime, gwEm, Teo and others) while the usual activities and chats were taking place - if volume allowed (cunning comment, I know).
On the hardware side of things there were a few Amigas, about 2 Atari 800 XL, some Spectrum derivatives, a CPC in full beauty (the machine of Prodatron, the SymbOS creator), an exotic Sanyo computer, an full-fledged yet not fully working Atari Transputer Workstation with all kind of related documents and boards in place, an Atari Lynx and a few C64. The few Atari STEs around were actually organizer related machinery, used for the different music livesets mostly. It's likely this list is not complete.
42Bastian's Lynx is equipped with a TFT-display and a VGA-output. Beetle kindly printed the "Lynx-stand" for him directly at the party with his self-built 3D-printer.
Xyzzy's Atari Transputer Workstation at the party place
Quite a surprising machine - Sanyoman2, the owner of this rare 8088 based Sanyo-PC even released a nice intro for the system, which will make all three Sanyo-PC-users in the world happy (as roughly estimated by Sanyoman2)
As mentioned before this was my first Outline in 10 years. And it was indeed very, very good to see old fellows and many Outline veterans again after such a long time, e.g. it has been 10 years since my last encounter with Dma-Sc, Havoc, Tinker or the Nordlicht folks and even 29 years since I met 42Bastian at the Intercon 1996 party. If I naively extrapolate that frequency there are only few occasions left. That's scary and shaking up! Maybe this also explains the partly extraordinary long chats about Atari, life and all the rest until the morning hours. And somehow it was heart-warming to realize that "nothing has changed" at least in regard to the mutual passionate connection. But also meeting people in person, that were known only "via the Internet" so far was enjoyed a lot, as mentioned by many. Good to see a face and person behind those nicknames after all (hi superogue, harekiet, teo, cyberzax, f#ready).
Ommen tried to impress with this 3D-model, but the framerate fell short of expectations
Speaking of "nothing has changed": Outline is still the same easy going, open minded and colorful mix that it used to be. Regarding releases, the Bytro-section is the strong aspect of Outline since many years and impressed again with many different, technical or funny entries. However, I would love to see the one or other bigger oldschool production being released here, too. It's a bit like the party waits for it!
On Saturday night, Havoc hold a pretty personal, goose-bump inducing and at the same time entertaining speech after the prize giving, which would qualify as a high-ranking entry in an "emotional party organizer speech" compo category. As he made clear all things are evanescent and yet there might probably be another edition next year, which was happily received. So feel free to take out your notebooks and put a reminder for Outline for next ascension weekend in there.
No effort was too much for the organizers: Saturday night they prepared a truly spectacular lightning show on the horizon to be enjoyed from the outside benches. The rain didn't kick in in the end, so with the lightning part we were served with the best bits of the thunderstorm (photo provided by Dma-Sc)
Thanks to the organizers and the visitors for the great common time. And thanks to J. Cove for the egg.
🔗 Outline live reportage (part 1)
🔗 Outline live reportage (part 2)
🔗 Outline live reportage (part 3)
🔗 Outline live reportage (part 4)
🔗 Outline Website
🔗 Outline on Demozoo
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