At the Scene: Sommarhack 2024
Marco BreddinOne of the most important meetings of the 68000 scene is the Swedish party Sommarhack, which has been held in Grådø since 2009 and is organised by the bustling Dead Hackers Society.
The DHS blog magazine provides interested parties with all the news and links to current and past activities in the Atari scene.
Grådø seems to be just a sleepy little town about 166 kilometres northwest of Stockholm. But every year, the district town is transformed into one of the most colourful places for Atari fans. Just right for the traditional demoscene event, which now attracts many international guests. Here, oldskool feeling is celebrated and new developments are worked on in equal measure, showing popular retro systems such as Atari ST/E, Falcon, Jaguar and even Lynx their new limits.
22 entries were received for the Fullscreen competition, which demanded no less than 832x273 pixels at 4 colours (interlaced) in the medium ST resolution.
This year, the popular coder and artist competition has been divided into seven categories, all of which can be viewed via Demozoo:
One of the special achievements of the ST scene is to elicit new sounds from the very modest sound chip year after year. Thanks to the meticulous work of Gareth Morris (gwEm) and the implementation of new features in the popular MaxYMiser, breathtaking chip compositions can be created that were unheard of in the heyday of ST computers.
This year’s 32K Music winner – a cooperation between 505 and mOdmate – shines with the skilful use of the two new MaxYMiser features “Square FM” and “PWM”, which once again take the aged YM2149 into previously impossible worlds of sound – all without samples or DMA features of the STE!
STay4Evr by Cream. The German demo group around sound innovator Tao have renovated old routines and transferred a C64 demo including SID synthesis to the ST.
A Series of Raster Effects by SFMX. 2nd place in the Zero Bitplane Contest shows a very creative and technically sophisticated vintage colour demo.
In counterpoint, many of this year’s results exude the vintage charm of old Atari consoles and XL computers, and celebrate the 4-bit feeling with gigantic pixels and retro raster transitions. All the results, including a 3D boot sector of the legendary Swedish coder The Flying Egg (Omega), the congenial ST realisation of a C64 demo by Cream, many elaborate full-screen photos and the new Atari ST game Chroma Grid by T.O.Y.S, can be seen in an uncut contest video...