Underground Conference is a very special party, and so are its features and competitions. While the party itself could very well be regarded as satire on existing mainstream events, this doesn't mean it needs to suck.
At this point we'd like to point out that cheating, hacking the voting system or handing in your entry into the wrong competition is absolutely welcome.
A detailed timetable will become available soon. Rule of thumb: There will be fast compos all week, and all compos listed on this page will run Thursday to Sunday.
Finally a real-life party to release all your amazing releases at. Fuck streaming. Experience your work on our bad-ass bigscreen with perfect sound system under the open sky.
While UC might be an event focussed on rather weird competitions, we all do appreciate serious art, too.
Therefore the following old-fashioned compos will be held:
PC Demo
PC Combined 64k / 4k
Oldschool Demo / Intro (all platforms older than 20 years)
Pixel Graphics
We have more than enough music compos to pick from.
To make your releases shine we got a bad-ass compo PC:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900K @ 3.50GHz 3.50 GHz,
32.0 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090
Invented for UC9, this turned out to be so fucking amazing again and again on UC9, UC10 and UC11 that we had to do it once more:
This compo is taking place on the private lake using boats provided by the organizing team.
There will be three teams (with one boat each) formed per round. Each team may consist of up to 4 people. Each member of the team may select one item of the below:
• Painting tools
• A massive supersoaker water pistol of doom
• Paddles
(Bonus: Everyone will receive a life vest as this lake is seriously “deep in the underground”)
The goal of the compo is to paint the best graphics entry on a canvas that is mounted to the boat.
To win, there are multiple strategies:
• Try to destroy other peoples entries using the super soaker
• Try to flee from other people trying to destroy your entry using the paddles
• Make sure you are the only one to actually have an entry
• Try to do all you can to protect your graphics artist from attacks
All entries that have survived afterwards will be judged by the audience, and the best one will win.
This is the longest-running compo at Underground Conference, existing since back in 1995. Beat on an old pot with a stick. We will sample it and measure the BPM-Rate. You have to get as close as possible to 180 BPM and then stay there to win.
That's actually not at all easy.
PerfectPC is disqualified and banned from this compo, due to cheating at UC8. This means he is more than welcome to enter again.
Love is all around? Not so at Underground Conference. We want you to show your hate. All of it. Pick any demo/intro you really really hate, and screw it up. Replace parts, distort it, whatever. Just make really plausible that you really hate it.
Happy Hardcore used to be a non-mainstream kind of electronic music. Cheesy vocals, strings and pianos, combined with a hard beat at between 180 and 190 BPM. The dutch flavour of it often also contained break beats.
These days Happy Hardcore is typically called "UK Hardcore". This is because the dutchies went for Hardstyle (which is related) instead, where the UK guys kept it up for a couple of years, before the scene over there also mostly died.
Back when Happy Hardcore was close to what could be called "popular", a couple of commercial tracks from people like "Blümchen" or even (yuck) "Scooter" entered the charts. Create a music track that's better than that.
In case you need some reference, check out these mixes done by scamp. The best of audiophilicczyzs excellence combined with some seriously lacking mixing skills:
This is the compo most often underestimated by first-time UC visitors. The general idea is to hand in a really bad tune.
But as you'll learn, Shitmusic is a true art form.
No, it's not just a matter of not hitting the notes, or having a crappy beat, or tempo changes. To stand any chance against world-class record holders, you'll need to have all of that and far more.
"Just because you are bad at it doesn't mean you are good at being bad."
Just so you know what you are competing against, here are a couple of tracks to use as a reference:
JCO - John Williams Rehersal With Professionals
Saga Musix - Music a Music remix Remix
Bundy - GoT in a Nutshell
Let's face it, music compos often are boring, especially if the music compo orga is corrupt, deaf, or both, and/or no pre-selection happens.
We'll have nature do the pre-selection.
You may hand in any track you've done, and we don't care if it's good or bad. However, it will only be played while and as long as you are executing any directions that your "creative drill instructor" is giving you, which typically is much worse than it may sound.
Due to the new compo name we will only allow OGG music files. GIF may be acceptable, too.
This competition one day used to be about doing headbanging on stage while some c64 SID track was being played. It escalated quickly from there, from people beating each other with ladders, over hurtful body slams, up to rather weird on-stage performances.
Basically, anything goes, as long as you are on stage and a SID song is playing in the background while you are doing whatever you believe to have to do.
Throw these bloody HDDs into the air! Due to a (very) long-standing tradition, measurements are done in Elitegroup member steps.
No SSDs allowed!
However, it has been a proven tactic in the past to try build catapults that then fail miserably. Rockets have also been done. You'll find your way to cheat through this compo again.
Well, this is not really a compo. However, due to the RULE card payment system, we can track how much you are drinking at the party. So let's make a challenge out of it: Try to impress your "friends" by drinking far too much alcohol just to become the top of the pops.
And in case you are wondering: The amounts on the picture here are given in LITERs, so don't believe this one to be easy to win.
Everyone loves it, so make sure not to miss this chance for a contribution. Create a module with your favourite tracker (mp3s are ok too, these days...). At the party you have to "support" your song live.
Either with your voice or with some weird instrument or whatever comes into your mind. Yes, penis enlargements do count as a musical instrument.
This is a fast competition happening on-site. Everything is how you would expect from a graphics competition, however, you will be required to work with an upside-down Monitor we will be providing only.
Create a device or machine that is able to produce music. The device may NOT contain any kind of traditional loudspeakers. You may use things like dot matrix printers, floppy drives or whatever you come up with. It doesn't need to be something electronic however, you can also rock the stage with your self-made instruments of the analogue kind, eg. a digeridoo out of your old sink, a pan-flute out of milk cartons, or a guitar with strings made out of your granny's used floss.
We know it. You did have the idea for the best demo EVER. If only you would find the time to implement it... Well, now is your time to shine. Create an Audiobook where you describe your demo in full glory. Make us see it in front of our eyes, a great demoshock to brain. You may use your voice, and use any kind of audio effects to bring your point through.
You will be provided with a stitching board at the beginning of the party. You then have the week to create wonderful pixel art on that stitching board until the end of week.
