breakpoint 2006 report

the mixed car and train trip to this years breakpoint started very early at 5 o'clock in the morning. the streets were pretty empty and so our car trip from berlin reached after less than 5 hours the train station in frankfurt from where i continued my journey by train. at around 12:30 i reached the party location, namely (like 2005) the futuristic looking 'rundsporthalle'. after one year of complete absence from german parties i'm now as an affinity member here and to submit a demo for the group (just watch their nullarbor demo 'desolation' if you don't know them yet). thanks also to qlone for lending the flat panel. the camp fire was already burning and the food stands open. at around 15:00 we were thrown out of the hall for some preparations by the organizers and to pay the entrance fee. finally after this was done also the party network with internet access worked. some chat (with flapjack and digisnap for example) and also some hours later it was time for the opening ceremony: the search for the lost scene spirit and the scene friends. now we are just waiting for the live concert by ultrasound. in the meantime dj yoda was at the decks in the beer tent in front of the hall entrance. finally around midnight ultrasound started with their live concert in which they have played several well known demo soundtracks and other music. it seems that the most visitors liked it. the dsl connection to the outside world was for some longer time pretty unstable, but now on the early morning it's ok again.

after some hours sleep it was time to have a shower. luckily the showers were open at this time :). if you want to go to the toilet then you'll need some time since there are not really much toilets available for the several hundred visitors. todays weather isn't as nice as expected, but atleast it's not raining yet and the sun shines through the clouds from time to time. the demoscene.tv team is filming here and atleast yesterday there was also a livestream from breakpoint for some time. also the german tv station swr is filming here today. 13:20h was a memorable time since it was the first time that a demo was running on the big screen (except for the visualizations during the ultrasound concert). at 14:00 the first compo started, namely the tracked music compo with several pretty good tunes. this applies also to the executable music compo which followed right after it. as usual you could follow these compos also outside at the food stands. but now we are heading for the 4k compos (pc, amiga, c64). and the pc 4k-compo brought us (again) some very nice stuff. especially the entries by bitpopler, tggc and the dancing robots in the intro 'cubeman' by bero^0ok were excellent. t$' raving tomatoes returned once again, this time on a submarine in 'holy blasphemy'. the amiga 4k-compo was cancelled due to only one entry. this one was moved to the 64k-compo. in the c64 4k-compo the intro 'artefacts' by krill + fanta of plush was clearly the best, setting new standards. quite much visitors are actually also outside boozing or making a bbq. loonies were beating easily all 64k-intros in the amiga-compo with their moved 4k-intro 'planet loonies'. be sure to grab it! the animation/video compo was a real highlight this year. watch out for excellent releases by jco (dreamchaser), aenima (egon & donci 2), a 'memorize your future' parody and a hell funny cartoon video about escaping tits by pluisje + solenoid. from the c64 democompo you should be sure to get the kickass demos 'error 23' by resource & the dreams and 'non plus ultra' by singular crew. at 22:30 the welle:erdball live concert started, regular visitors of german easter parties probably know them from mekka-symposium 2001. atleast the volume during the concert was twice as high like in any compo before. two local nazis tried to enter the hall, but according to scamp they were removed successfully by the security team and local police.

this years host for the scene.org awards was netpoet, the show started with some bigger delay at 0:30. during the scene.org awards (for the results check the awards page, big winners are 'aether' by mfx and tbl's ocean machine) there was a short live video conference to the gathering, additionally a short video with greetings from the gathering was shown. after some pinball playing on an amiga it was time to sleep a bit. for some unknown reason everything at breakpoint 2006 is about chuck norris, atleast on the party irc and sometimes even on the big screen :). the first compo on this sunday was sir garbagetrucks ansi/ascii compo, followed by executable music (oldschool), the photo compo and the streaming music compo. the music compos featured again some pretty good tracks. after these compos i have played an electronic music set in the beer tent for about 2 hours, featuring a mix of commercial and scene music (playlist). so i have mostly missed the 96k game compo. the only game which i saw was 'pinball dreams' - on a c64! excellent work. shortly after 19:00 it was time for the console/wild compo with interesting entries. for example a mobile demo for sony-ericsson k700 phones or a demo which ran on a pc cluster consisting of 8 pc's. all 8 monitors formed one big picture. an amazing gba demo came from the shit faced clowns. shortly before the pc 64k-compo kb told the visitors about an offcial letter with greetings from the authorities of the town bingen. in the 64k-compo imo the intros 'memento' by conspiracy and especially 'meet the family' by fairlight were the best but you should check also the other releases. once again the amiga compo was remarkable and you should especially watch out for the demos by iris (kilofix), ephidrena (lux aeterna luciat eis) and of course tbl with their 'requiem'. now we can have a rest from the many compos. i had an interesting chat with nosfe outside the hall. at this time the bass live concert started inside the hall. and the bass was really ear hurting over a longer period.

shortly after midnight it was time for the very last compo, namely pc demo with 29 entries. but pretty much of the demos were only average or even clearly below and there was no real outstanding highlight. after watching the compo i think that the affinity demo 'bloodshot' deserves atleast a place between 10 and 15 without wanting to much. the highlights of the compo were the demos by anadune + nah-kolor (moonstone), synesthetics (electric kool-aid), asd (captive) and mfx (deities). the compo itself ran mostly without bigger problems, just the beam system for the info screens was broken for some time. now that the votes are casted the party continues outside at the fire or in the beer tent. there i had also a nice talk with the iris members. in the morning hours there was a nice jam session with about 10 sceners near the hall entrance. the party was all in all very good even when the special flair of breakpoint 2003 + 2004 is hard to top. for the results check the usual sources since i must leave the partyplace a bit earlier to reach my car trip back to berlin.