Compos & Rules

No demoparty without compos, and at Solskogen we’ve tried very hard to host the compos that you want! Sign up for the live compos here!

Submissions can be submitted to our party system, but remember the deadlines – and that you will need a ticket to participate! Submissions coming in after the deadline will be ignored. Wuhu login information coming soon for direct submissions!

House rules (also relevant for when we are streaming)

To ensure a fun and welcoming party for everyone, we expect our visitors to behave like normal adult people. If we find you to be ruining the party experience for other people we might impose punishment anywhere in the range from a polite reprimand to evicting you from the party and/or ban you from any online event.

In order to make things crystal clear, here are the rules we expect people to follow:

No violence. We have a zero-tolerance policy for any violent behavior. Zero.
No harassment. Solskogen is for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or technology choices.
No illegal drugs. Pretty self-explanatory! Don’t break the law.

Competitions

The following compos will be held at Solskogen. Click on them for applicable rules and other info you need to know if you want to participate (which you should!)

Code

Newschool demo (PC, Mac, Consoles, Browsers)
Oldskool demo (A500, A1200, Atari, C64)
Combined 4k/64k intro (All of the above allowed!)
Live Coding (Bonzomatic)

Music

Newschool music (Ogg Vorbis/MP3)
Oldskool music (4 channel MOD / XM / IT / SID / SND / GameBoy)
16k executable music (All platforms allowed!)

Graphics

Logo (Create a logo for your group, handle etc.)
Newschool graphics (16/24-bit JPEG/PNG)
Oldskool graphics (Max 32 colors)
4k executable graphics (All platforms allowed!)
Live Graphics (Live and real-time!)

Other

Wild (Anything goes!)

Compo machines

All entries will be shown on the big screen using this computer. Please use 720p60 or 1080p60 native resolutions and refresh rates to ensure that your entry can be displayed properly.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 2700X
Memory: 16 GB DDR4
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti
OS: Windows 10 64-bit (with the latest DirectX and common libraries installed)

We will also provide hardware for the following oldskool platforms;

Commodore 64, 1541 Ultimate II, SidFX with 6581R3 and 8580R5, USB and/or MicroSD card reader
Commodore Amiga 500, Kickstart 1.3, 512KB chip RAM + 512KB fakefast, floppy emulator
Commodore Amiga 1200, Kickstart 3.1, Blizzard [email protected] with 64MB RAM, Compact flash and/or SD card reader

If your production is for some other, esoteric platform, then you need to bring it with you. Please also bring a video file of your entry! Fallbacks = golden.

Rules

A few simple rules and guidelines for you to follow. Don’t worry, it’s not hard to comply, and be sure you do, otherwise, our excellent compo crew will be rude to you.

Common for all compos

Only one entry per participant per compo. As in: no, you can’t submit three entries to the Newschool music compo because you finished three songs in time. Pick your best one and submit that one.

The compo crew reserves the right to disqualify entries that are too unserious, boring, bad, or contain racist, pornographic, disturbing or otherwise illegal content. We do not allow previously released material to be entered into any of our competitions. Nor do we accept contributions that look 99% like something released by you or your group already. There is remixing, and then there is downright lazy. We will not tolerate the latter. The democrew is all-knowing and all-seeing, and of course we have the final word in cases of doubt.

Contributions can only participate in a single compo. Yes, this includes delivering your demo soundtrack to any of the music compos.

Entries must be delivered using the on-site party network compo system. If your file is too large to be uploaded, you can bring the file to the compo crew after an entry for it has been created in the compo system.

You are allowed to submit your entry remotely.

Don’t use copyrighted material — you are responsible for what you hand in, not us.

Don’t use YouTube ContentID after the party! This enables monetization of our party coverage videos which leads to ads being forced on people, which sucks. If you do this, we reserve the right to disallow you from entering future compos, because it’s such a dick move.

Common for all demo compos

Maximum showing time is 8 minutes, but your demo should be extremely interesting to justify being that long. When in doubt: shorter scenes please.
Your demo/intro must not write anything to the disk
Try not to restrict your demo to hardware from a specific vendor (as in: AMD or NVIDIA only)
If your demo runs on a platform that normally isn’t full-screen (like a web-browser) you should have an option to make it run full-screen, or at least: fill the screen

Newschool demo (PC, Mac, Consoles)

Must be quittable (ESC-key, fire-button etc.)

Oldskool demo (Amiga, Atari etc.)

Max size of archive 32 MB
Must make a clean exit to prompt (except in the case of bootloader-demos)
If you have a 16:9 oldschool entry and wish for us to zoom so that it utilizes the entire big-screen, please say so in your compo submission notes. Place your graphics in the middle of the screen and we’ll crop for you.

Combined 4k/64k intro (All previously mentioned platforms allowed!)

Max size 65536 bytes (64k) or 4096 bytes (4k)
Must be a single executable
Must be quittable and make a clean exit where that is applicable (oldskool platforms need not comply).
Should have easily accessible option to run in full-screen. If this is not technically possible, frame your draw area with #000000

Newschool music (Ogg Vorbis/MP3)

No sizelimit (but don’t be a dick)
Max playing time is 4 minutes
Accepted file formats are: 1) Ogg Vorbis (.OGG), 128-320 kbps (-q 7 equals about 224kbps at VBR, VBR is heavily recommended), and 2) MP3, 128-320 kbps. A good encoder is recommended. We like OggDrop and LAME, respectively.
We will limit the final screening to 10-15 entries. The selection will mostly be based on originality and production quality.

Oldskool music (4 channel MOD / XM / IT / SID / SND / GameBoy / SNES)

Max size is 1 MB
Max playing time is 4 minutes
Accepted file formats are: .XM, .MOD, .IT, .SID, .SND and .SMC
Entries will most likely be played with XMPlay (note that we’re not responsible for faulty IT playback, so TEST IT!)
If you are making a tune that cannot be played by XMPlay, please also deliver this as a streaming audio file (.OGG, .MP3 or .FLAC) – no post-processing allowed! It has to be an original, clean recording.

16k executable music (All platforms allowed!)

Max size is 16384 bytes
Max playing time is 4 minutes
Entries will be run from the realtime, native executables – all platforms allowed! (we might record them before the compo, for convenience, but no post-recording treatment will be applied)
Must be quittable and make a clean exit

Newschool graphics (16/24-bit JPEG/PNG)

No sizelimit
Accepted file formats are: .PNG and .JPG
Max resolution/bit depth: 1920×1080 / 24 bit (you are free to deliver a higher resolution image, but make sure you also hand in a 1080p image, scaled, cropped and sharpened to your liking, for the projector)
Image may be rendered, pixeled, mixed media, or a combination – no limitations on style, but pure photos are not allowed. This is a graphics compo, not a photo compo.
Images must be supplied with three representative work-in-progress snapshots, and a short text file describing the process and tools involved

Oldskool graphics (Max 32 colors)

No sizelimit
Accepted file format is .PNG only
Max resolution/colors: 320×256 / 32 colors
Images must be pixeled – if you don’t know what pixeled means, this compo is not for you
Images must be supplied with three representative work-in-progress snapshots, and a short text file describing the process and tools involved

Logo (Create a logo for your group, handle etc.)

It has to be your handle, group name, “SOLSKOGEN” or a demoscene related word or phrase (state relevance in the .NFO file)
If you use software: follow the same rules as the other graphics compos.
Real world: draw on paper! (remember all thoose cool 5.25″ disk coverart pieces from the C64 and Amiga scene?)
Real world: spray a graffiti piece on a wall (that you are legally allowed to spray on) and submit a picture of it (and one with you next to the piece as well)
Real world: Use crayons on you local sidewalk (have your kid help you out! 🙂
Real world: draw a painting with acryl, water or oil-paint
Images must be supplied with three representative work-in-progress snapshots, and a short text file describing the process and tools involved

Speedpaint World Cup (Live and real-time!)

See the full rules here!
10 minutes to draw an image from a theme
Bring your own computer and peripherals (drawing tablet, mouse etc)
Your computer must be able to output 720p or 1080p over HDMI
You can use the drawing software of your choice!

4k executable graphics (All platforms allowed!)

Max resolution/bit-depth: 1920×1080 / 24 bit
Max size is 4096 bytes
Entries will be run from the realtime, native executables – all platforms allowed!

Wild compo (Anything goes!)

No max-size, bring your own storage rack if you need it (but you need to bring it, and take it with you again!)
Max playing time is 8 minutes (but keep it short if you can, 8 minutes — in the wrong hands — can be excruciating)
If it is a recorded entry, deliver it on a USB-stick, and make sure it’s in a common format (.MKV, h.264 MOV/MP4 etc.)
If you have a demo for a platform not listed anywhere else, this is the place to compete
If your wild-entry requires extra setup of some kind, contact us in advance!

SOLSKOGEN