Introduction:
When the ROMA.EXE party was announced, I was excited about this new Italian demoparty and the opportunity (dare I say excuse) to visit Rome proper. So come june, I was ready to pack my bags and fly off to Rome to face my destiny amidst the challenges of dealing with a 35 degree celcius european heat wave ;-) I was travelling with Blossom and Harekiet and upon arrival on thursday night we found out that the metro lines closed at 12 so eventually we had to get an uber to find our way to the Hotel...
Pre-party:
The next day on Friday we travelled to the colosseum to start the pre-party tour of Rome. We had a lovely old lady showing us around, carefully threading the smaller streets to somewhat shield us from the heat. The tour was amazing and the lady seemed like she was enjoying telling us all about the history of Rome. Turned out she was a sticker collector as well, so at the very end she didn't want a tip but was very much interested in some demoscene stickers :D
After the tour we went to a small Italian restaurant for a wine-tasting and social dinner. We were presented with 4 different wines (2 white, 2 red) and especially that last red wine was really nice. The soft-spoken lady presenting the wines at the restaurant was met with about 25 sceners making a lot of noise so she had a really hard time trying to get the information across :D
In either case the food and wine were great and we were able to interact with both familiar as well as new faces, like SoDa7 for example whose music I quite liked. After dinner it was time to head back to the hotel to prepare ourselves for the main party day.
Party Time:
Come Saturday and we were ready to jump onto the Metro Line and head to the main event. The party place was pretty easy to find and was quite large, with a well staffed desk, more than enough tables and huge ROMAEXE banners across the walls.
We met up with Harekiet and set up at one of the many tables available. Turned out that right behind us there were two more non-demoscener dutchies that were here for the Master Boot Record concert, but took an interest into the demoscene as well. They were very friendly and we were able to explain a few things about the demoscene to them.
Compo Time:
And then it was time for the competitions. The compos started off strong with lots of amazing entries in both the ANSI/ASCII and Pixel Graphics competitions. Our absolute favorite entry was Schrödinger's Cat on the Run by .mischa. and it turned out the audience agreed because that image ended up winning the Pixel Graphics competition. The graphics competitions were quickly followed byt the music, game and wild competitions which had some nice entries as well.
Then after a short break it was finally time for the 256 Byte Intro competitions. First up was Oldschool 256 Byte, which had some nice entries by F#READY and 42Bastian (that for some reason didn't make the top-3) as well as an entry for ZX Spectrum and C64. The winning entry (on PC DOS) involved various generated filenames that were set on fire!
Up next was the Highend 256 Byte intro competition, which had quite a few entries on a wide range of platforms. Dominikr had a nice entry which implemented an APLAY routine on Linux and Rudi had a nice entry with a full 3D shape, which we later learned the wasn't the final version that was shown in the compo. Furthermore Plex had a nice entry with 3D cubes spelling out ROMAEXE, Atari scener Ivop had an amazing firstie for DOS and Hellmood had a nicely themed entry in JavaScript! My own entry involved a 3D scene with ruins aptly named Colossus, inspired by all the nice structures and statues we'd seen across the city the previous day. Sadly there seemed to be an issue with the sound, so no sound was heard inside the party hall (nullifying about 25% of the size budget ;-)
Up next were the C64 and Amiga demo competitions, followed by the PC 4K and PC Demo Competitions. I would say the highlight of this competition block was the new Darkage demo for Amiga, with a nice soundtrack by Soda7 and Graphics by Steffest. Which non-surprisingly ended up winning the Amiga Demo Competition.
Roof Time:
After the competitions, it was time to quickly grab something to eat and head off the the rooftop for the late-night portion of the program. An amazing concert on the roof. When we arrived at the rooftop, the venue was better than expect and the entire venue was packed to the brim by locals and/or people coming just for the concert.
We walked in during the second act, which was this crazy garbage man with some amazing chiptune gameboy stuff. He was very good at working the crowd and at some point had random members of the audience (and at a later point his own garbage can) perform stage dives which was amazing to see! Then Master Boot Record started their gig. I had seen them before at Revision but for some reason they were even more impressive up close here on the rooftop in Rome.
They had a pretty long set with amazing visuals of classic demoscene and videogame productions.
After the concert we had a few beers to chill out for bit before heading back to the hotel and call it a (amazing) night.
And we will walk 500 miles...
On sunday we headed to the prize giving ceremony and said our goodbyes to the various sceners, before Blossom and Harekiet and myself were heading out for a hike across Rome. We started at the colosseum station where we acquired a paper map that would allow us to plan our routes. We start by circling across the back of the Colosseum and making our way to the Circus Maxximus. From there we went through a park and across the river to an old part of town.
This part was almost free of tourists and filled with small corridors and typical Italian appartments. So we decided to take a lunch at one of the few restaurants before continuing our journey.
After finishing lunch we swirled across a few bridges at the edge of the city center before making our way to the botanical garden and park. From here it was a very steep climb to eventually end up at a beautiful vista across the entire city. After enjoying the view for a bit we continued our journey just to end up at the Vatican. I must say St.Peters square was indeed quite impressive.
From here we went to the old castle that was close and eventually head back into the city center to get some dinner. Quick checking on the distance walked: 20km... Oh, put some food in us and we're ready to continue our hike!
After dinner it was time to make our way through the city center back to the nearest Metro Station, which turned out to be a good 5km away still. From here we were able to travel to the "aquaduct gardens" where we started the tail end of our hike. The area was kept up quite nice and the remains of all the Aquaduct were impressive as well.
We continued our hike as far as we could across the area, before finally making it back to the edge of the city and after a few more km a bus stop that would take us back to the Hotel. We said our goodbyes to Harekiet (who was staying for one more day) and made our way to the airport the very next morning.
The Making of Colossus:
Right, lets head into the technical part about the intro a bit. The intro consists of Apolonian fractal core nested inside a ground plane to give it that cave-like quality. The scene then gets heavily distorted at the beginning and end of the intro to create a somewhat cohesive progression from outside (when its still fading in) to the inside, before eventually stopping the camera move and zooming away from the scene.
A lot of the size budget went into the fairly complex shape of the structure, coloring and the progression (fading, camera movement and scene deformations working together), so for this one I had to keep the soundcode a little more basic with just the droning sound of stacked oscillating triangle waves giving some vibe to the entire thing.
Conclusion:
I'm writing this blog on the airplane back to the Netherlands and I can tell you that visiting the ROMA.EXE party has been a great experience all around! I would highly recommend anyone going if the organisation decides to do another edition. These days I prefer to go to parties where I have other things to do besides sitting inside the party hall, so this party has been excellent in providing that experience.
You can check out the amazing releases from ROMA.EXE 2026 at Demozoo