Inércia 2022 Party Report

Context

Inércia Demoparty 2022 was the 1st Demoparty of the revived “Associação Inércia”, since 2006.

From 2002 to 2006 Inercia demoparty was held by the previous Inercia association. From 2006 to 2021 the organization fell back to psenough and jeenio, depending on the edition.

Inercia demoparty is the only regularly held demoscene event in Portugal.

So as far as I am concerned this demo party represents a new stage for the Portuguese demoscene. We may be few, but the Portuguese scene is still alive and well.

A small disclaimer : I’ve been involved only in designing and making the trophies for the Inercia Demoparty 2022. And this report is not meant to be a comprehensive report on every event at the party. And that this party report is my own personal opinion.

The Party Place

Like the last physical edition, the party was held at “Academia Dramática Familiar” in Lisbon, Portugal, from 4th to 6th November.

Bar and party place food

The partyplace had a bar, on a self service configuration, and the food at the party place as sponsored, therefore you only had to pay for the drinks.
And this year we could even pay our tab with debit / credit card, a major plus for convenience.

Use of the Party Place space

An improvement over last edition was the fact that the party place it self was not held at the auditorium, but instead much better use of the facilites compared to last edition :

  • The auditorium and the “main hall” were on different floors : no more you had to be working on your prods in the dark during the shows. This greatly improved comfort.
  • Access to the terrace , so one could easy get some fresh and have more space for socializing.

Note : By “Main Hall” I mean the room where the attendants socialize and have their PC’s set.

The compos (competitions)

This year’s edition had 16 competitions. I wont describe the categories here, nor describe each entry, but I would like to highlight a few points :

  • The Drone music compo entries were too long to the point of disrupting the demoparty time table.
  • The championing system for the compos did not avoid the lack of entries for the tracked music compo.
  • The TV of the “Main Hall” should be set from the beginning to the compo showing, allowing attendants see the compo show from the main hall.
  • Too many competitions?

Despite the points above, there were a LOT of entries, local and remote, witch was pretty good. I personally did not like that the demo , intro and fast demo compo were combined, but looking at the entry distribution, and that were already 16 compos, it made sense that they were combined.

The shader royale competition was as impressive as usual is.

The seminars

The seminars, on my opinion, are one of the most interesting parts of Inercia Demoparty.

I really liked the Load ZX Museum seminar by João Diogo , and I was definitely impressed by their conservation efforts. I must get to visit their museum sometime.

There were also a seminar on Material Maker by Paulo Falcão , and there was a roundtable on the “Demoscene past and future “ where outreach strategies were discussed.

There was also a Portuguese Craft Beer seminar presented by João Trigo, and lastly a performance by the Toplap Lisbon. I was looking forward to it, but somehow I missed it (gladly the video is already up on youtube).

What I should improve next year :

  • Start to work sooner on my demoparty related activities :
    • Work on my prod’s sooner. – Avoid finishing stuff on the party place! Less coding , more socializing !
    • Improve the lead times for the Trophies (see post mortem of the trophies here)
  • Get better photographic equipment for low light, indoors photography.
    • Make better photographic documentation of the event.

Summary

I’m quite happy to see that Inércia Demoparty 2022 was, on my eyes, a success. There were more attendees than last edition, and there were people from Russia to Switzerland.
The usage of the venue was better than last year.

The entries were plenty, and most importantly, I was able to be with old and new colleagues, and meet people I met online in person.

I must add that the organizers were tireless on the endeavor of organizing the demoparty, and did a good job.

Unfortunately I was only able to participate on the photo compo. This year I’ve decided to make a demo for the sega Saturn, but issues with the libyaul (code breaking changes to libyaul) made me lose too much time at the party place.

Looking forward to the next year!