Alrighty so this is a very old report i wrote back in 2001 after visiting the first click convention. I just found it and it hopefully makes for a fun read. Sooo here it is

Welcome to the full report of the click convention. Let me introduce myself first. My name is Rikus Kras from The Netherlands. I am 20 years old and been using the click tools since the beginning. I always liked the idea of meeting the people from the click community for real so i was really excited when Sarah posted the first message about the convention. After a couple of days when Liam found a nice Hall the U.K Click Convention was born.

I have made a full report on the 2 days I was in the U.K from start to finish. I hope you enjoy it.

Saturday 04:55 am
After breaking my Alarm Clock I come to realize that it has the most annoying sound in the world. I step out of bed and do the normal morning stuff. I have to leave for the airport in about 30 min so I better hurry up.

06:30 Am: When checking in at schiphol airport they tell me that my plane has been delayed for 50 minutes. The old waiting room chairs at Schiphol Airport are made out of hard plastic so sleeping is out of the question. After a while the plane finally leaves and the trip to the U.K Click Convention begins. Inside the plane I check the maps I printed out the day before. I have come prepared and when I leave the plane I have to find the Buss-station. But when I actually do leave the plane someone is holding a sign saying: Rikus in her hands. It turns out to be Liams Mom. A very nice and friendly person. She tells me that Francois is already at the airport and both him and Liam are waiting for me. In a nice restaurant I meet the man who created Klik&play: Francois. He turns out to be a very friendly person and he seems really excited in coming to the convention.

08:30 Am: When we step inside the car me and Francois see that the steering-wheel really is at the right side. An amazing discovery. As we ride to the convention hall to check it out, me and Liam start to fire the first questions at Francois. It turns out that Jamagic 3d has not been completed yet but that they should finish in about 2 months. Francois starts to talk about multimedia fusion 2. “Because Imsi owns the name to multimedia Fusion we had to come up with a new name”, Francois continues “we wanted to combine the 2 names of the games factory and mutli media fusion. Something like The Fusion Factory.” Me and Liam look at each other and agree that this is a really good name. Liams mom is noticing that Francois English is very good, we all agree.
09:30 Am: We finally arrive at the hall. We check the outside, but we cant go in yet because Liam has rented it from 11:00 am till 19:00 pm. We decide to go back to the hotel so that Liam and Liams mom can pick some other people up from the train station.

10:00 Am: We arrive at the WaterMill hotel. Its a really nice hotel and the rooms are perfect. Liams mom say’s she will pick me and Francois up at 11:00 o’clock, so that we will have time to fresh up.
10:45 Am: Francois calls me up and asks if we should wait in the loby for Liams mom. I agree and when Francois walks out of his hotel room I ask him to sign my old Klik&Play Manual. He laughs and says its the first time he had to sign something like this.

11:00 Am: Liams mom arrives and she takes us to the convention hall. She tells us that the first guests are already there. When we arrive at the hall we meet Rosa, Sarah, Jason etc. In the kitchen of the hall. Its great seeing these people in person. After a while some more people start to come in and we move to the hall. Liams mom brought some food and drinks with her. The Pc is installed and after some talk with each other the convention is about to start.

12:00 Pm: After everyone introduced themselves, Francois starts booting up Jamagic 3d and he starts talking. “Did anyone here try out the jamagic beta version?” Well sorry ‘bout that. He tells everyone that because of some problems he can’t show the examples in full screen but only in a windows screen. Francois starts with a game. “We had to use programmers graphics for the examples because the normal graphics where not completed yet.” Still the first game he boots up looks pretty impressive. Its a race car game. “You may notice that there is absolutely no fog.” Francois tells us. We are all impressed with how fast the engine really is. After some racing he dives in some water with his car and its game over. After that Francois shows us puzzle game and as he tries the game in a high resolution he say’s that the game is still very playable. And he is right. Next up is a screensaver. Its shows the strong graphical effects jamagic can do. Everyone is impressed. Francois could not show the open gl feautre because of the laptop but it is supported. But still the direct x software mode went pretty fast to. “Compared to our competitor Dark Basic we are windows friendly. Jamagic 3d can do dialup boxes, pop up menus etc. So there are a whole lot of instruction interrogated into that. Because you might not want to have a game all the time in fullscreen. You might want to have your games in windows.” Jason then asks if the jamagic 3d engine and multi media fusion engine are compatible. “They are incompatible because multimedia fusion is event based. In jamagic you will not have active objects you will have sprites if you want to have an active object with a path movement in jamagic you must program it yourself, or wait for someone to make the code. Its very object oriented so you can create your own object and its reusable for other people” Francois then shows us how to make an object. “We also wanted to have lesser windows then in multimedia fusion. The picture editor is very similar but its more usable and we corrected some problems and protection problems. The animation editor is going to support more formats then multimedia fusion and we made it simpler.” The 3d editor looked very cool and you got 4 screens displaying the 3d world. “In the 3d editor we have done it so you could actually see the 3d structure.” Francois then shows us a 3d robot in a tunnel within the 3d editor. He makes the camera follow the robot etc with just a couple of lines of code. And its very easy to type in to. “The 3d editor is designed to pick objects from this and there and put them together to create your own world. Creating light camera’s etc are all done in this 3d editor screen.” Then Francois says that Jama 3d can handle the normal music files but also mp3 and mod files. “Its also easy to open a video inside a 3d world” Francois says. Then Francois shows us how to create an executable file. The nag screen you got with klik&play has now been transformed into a rather nice looking small 3d graphic that you see for just a couple of seconds when you end the application. Its not annoying at all and I think Francois and his team made the right choice in choosing this kind of graphic. Francois also started to talk about the network possibility. “We Asked Sea Poling to do Moo Objects for Jamagic.” Jason asks if there is anything Multi Media Fusion can do what Jamagic cant do. Francois reply is simple: “No. Jamagic can do everything that Multimedia fusion can do.” After Francois is done its time to ask some questions. The first question is of course: When will it be done? “We will release it hopefully before the end of the year, after that one person wich is David will work on the Linux version. And then on the mac version. After that I will go back to multimedia fusion and we will make Multi Media Fusion 2. The goal of making multi media fusion 2 is to get the simplicity of the games factory and the power of multi media fusion. Because there has been a big lose in easy of use in Multi Media Fusion. Multi Media Fusion 2 will still be 2 dimensional, it certainly will have some better scrolling motion etc. For the 3d object we will be using the other engine. We may allow some objects from jamagic into multi media fusion 2.” After the questions we decide to eat some food and talk outside.

16:30 Pm: Its now time for Paul Boland to talk. Paul is a real nice guy, he was a bit nervous but he did just fine and showed us his 3d tutorial. Somewhere in his cool speech he makes a valid point about truespace. He say’s that many people (including me) checked the demo for a couple of seconds did not know how it worked and deleted it again. This was also because they did not have any documentation to get them started. With Paul’s 3d tutorial you will be making 3d models with ease. He tells us that the full version will be on his website soon. I cant wait to check it out and learn 3d modeling.

17:00 Pm: Next up is Liz Tucker . Liz is a very nice lady and she talked about how getting and keeping a group together. She also had trouble starting her own group and it was very hard for her to find the right people.

17:30 Pm: Then its time for Jason Darby to speak. Jason told a very interesting story about his dream and how it kinda fell apart. I still want to thank Jason for telling this, he is indeed a very brave person. Jason made this program with the click tools. He pressed all the cd’s and it costs him allot of money. He advertised in the popular pc magazines and then waited for the orders to come in…the only poblem was that the orders did not come in. There he was with all these boxes in his living room, and nobody would buy his program. After a while he sold 8 of them to his family. “The main problem was with the program itself” Jasons say’s. But he learned many things from his mistakes and he is already working on version 2 of his program. And he wanted to warn us not to make the same mistakes. He had written his whole story down on paper so if you want to check it out ask jason for it.

18:30 Pm: After that its already time for the last speaker: Jason Darby. He is a cartoonist and he tells about how you can make animations and other cool stuff with Corel Draw. Its was also an interesting talk and I learned some thing from him that i never knew you could do with Corel Draw.

18:50 Pm: Unfortunately we run out of time and have to stop the convention. Its time to clean up. It was a very interesting day.

19:00 Pm: Outside we take a couple of digital pictures for the forum and we say goodbye to some people. The others go down to the hotel to eat and drink something in the pub after that. At this time I was getting really tired so I cant join them. I say goodbye knowing that I will see them back tomorrow for some breakfast.

Sunday: 09:45 Am: As I walk into the breakfast room in the hotel the convention group start to clap. Everyone laughs as I sit down to eat some food. When I am done I say goodbye to everyone because its time for me and Francois to get back to the Airport.

Sunday: 10:15 Am: As we ride back to the airport with Liam and Liams Mom I ask Francois one last question.

Do you know a site called Silky’s? “Yes I remember it, it was very popular. What has happened to it now?” I say the site died a couple of years ago.
Sunday: 10:30 Am: When we arrive at the airport, I say goodbye to Liams mom and Liam. And i thank them for all there help. Me and Francois walk a bit to the airport and say goodbye. “I will see you at the forum” Where his lasts words as he finds his check in point.

Sunday: 13:15 Am: As I fligh back to the Netherlands I can only but smile and think that the U.K Click Convention was very successful and that I am looking forward to the next one.

Thanks to everyone who has been there and thanks for reading this report. I hope you liked it.

Rikus Kras