Evoke 2023

Executable

General

  • Pressing ESC or the platform’s usual exit hotkey (Alt-F4 on Windows) must end the production immediately.
  • Productions will be shown in 1920x1080 if available, or alternatively in a lower 16:9 resolution such as 1280x720. If you only provide resolutions that are non-16:9, note that they will be shown with aspect preserving scale, i.e. not stretched out to the whole screen but letterboxed or pillarboxed.
  • If you’ve got a resolution selector or similar, and the sensible thing to do is not just pressing OK, please give instructions in the organizer notes during submission.

Windows

  • Our compo machine will be an Intel i9-10900X, 32GB with a GeForce RTX 3080, running Windows 10 21H2 with the latest drivers (GPU drivers will be the latest one from NVIDIA without Geforce Experience)
  • Nothing else will be installed. No DirectX9 package, no Visual C++ runtimes, etc. Make sure your production runs on a freshly installed system. (non-size limited demos can of course supply any number of additional DLLs in the executable directory)
  • For size limited productions we’ll turn off Windows Defender, so don’t fret if it flags your compressed executable. (but don’t try anything funny. We’ll find you.)

Linux

  • The compo PC is the machine described in the Windows section, running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with proprietary NVidia drivers
  • Same as Windows and Mac: your production should run on a default install of the respective distro. No extra libraries allowed.
  • If you really, really can’t live without additional libraries, please provide a shell script that installs them via apt
  • Bringing your own device is always an option!

Mac

  • We’ll have an M1 Max Macbook Pro (32 GPU cores, 32GB RAM) for running entries
  • As with the other platforms, do not rely on anything installed other than plain macOS

Browser/JavaScript

  • We’ll run JS demos under Windows
  • Chrome, Edge, and Firefox will be installed. Default configuration for running productions is Chrome with –allow-file-access-from-files; if you need a different browser or config, please state so in the organizer notes
  • Most importantly, modern browsers won’t allow audio unless the user interacts with the page, so JS demos (if you’ve got audio) MUST include a button or similar that the user has to click before the production starts. This also applies to size limited productions!

Competition: PC Demo

  • No size limit!
  • Maximum running time: 10 minutes
  • Pure animations (as in just playing back a video file or standard vector animation format) are not allowed. Please submit them to the Animation compo.

Competition: PC 64k-Intro

  • Limit for all files needed to run the intro: 64k (65536 bytes)
  • Maximum running time: 10 minutes

Competition: PC 4k-Intro

  • Limit for all files needed to run the intro: 4k (4096 bytes)
  • Maximum running time: 10 minutes

Competition: 256 byte intro

  • Every platform is allowed (including, but not limited to, 8-bit platforms, fantasy consoles and DOS)
  • Limit for all files needed to run the intro: 256 bytes
  • Maximum running time: 2 minutes
  • If possible, provide a platform-traditional way to quit the intro (e.g. ESC on DOS, mouse-click on Amiga)
  • For DOS entries, we will provide the option of FreeDOS (with no sound) or DOSBox-X (please provide a config file if needed!)
  • If you plan to enter an intro on a non-PC platform, please contact us in advance so we can assess hardware availability. We will pre-record those entries before the compo, but providing a good quality (at least 1080p at 50 or 60Hz) video of your entry helps.

Competition: Alternative Platforms

  • Every platform is allowed (e.g. game consoles, mobile devices, oldschool homecomputers etc.)
  • Bring your own hardware!
  • Pure animations are not allowed.
  • Maximum running time: 10 minutes.
  • We will pre-record the entries before the compo (when and where applicable). Providing a good quality (at least 1080p at 50 or 60Hz) video of your entry helps.

Please contact us in advance (at least a week before the party) if:

  • Your platform of choice doesn’t provide a standard video signal or needs a special video cable. We can handle PAL/NTSC composite and S-Video, most RGB, YPbPr (component), VGA, DVI, and HDMI (no HDCP) signals, over most standard connectors.
  • You need us to provide hardware to run your entry in the compo. We can provide a selection of popular homecomputers (C64 and other CBM 8 bits, Amiga OCS/AGA, Atari ST(e)/Falcon, CPC, etc), including a range of expansions.
  • You want to test your entry on our hardware.