I came across this website while browsing the web recently and looking for something interesting to read. Mark Twain once said "he who is bored of the internet is bored of his own life" and true enough I've been feeling a bit fatigued recently. Maybe it is because I've just had 6 very intense (and enjoyable) weeks of concentration trying to start (and finish) our latest demo - for Assembly 2018!
Since Iconoclash (Happiness is around the bend, from 2010) you may already know that we've been to Assembly again twice to present Spin and Monolith. That last one was in 2015.
The new demo was surprisingly easy to write. It has been, by far, the most straightforward and painless experience among all our big demos (worst was Dreamchild and Lifeforce, the latter due to the sheer amount of work and collaboration with other team members, the former because I didn't know what I was doing).
At the moment I am very happy with the result and cannot wait to link with the music; and I will share some information with you, o loyal reader of this ancient blog:
- It's a long "megademo" with many vignettes/scenes, true to classic form and with a story to tell
- It is fairly fast paced, more so than Monolith or Spin in terms of scenes/min or action; which suits it very well
- "0 polys" (but not 0 shaders!), there are no traditional triangle-based meshes but rather a combination of raymarching and particles.
- I tried to make it colorful - there is a recent trend for grayscale demos which is very obvious and overused. Actually, grayscale vs color can be used as a story element itself
- No more SSAO !
- Lidar and other 3D scans mean that, despite my best efforts, the demo is very big in size, but still within the limits of Assembly open demo competition
- No idea about the music yet, but we'll try to disconnect it further from the visuals. Try not to have something happening with every cross fade and camera change. This should make our life easier when it comes to the fusion. And easier for your ears too.
I will visit again, maybe post a work in progress or something.
Other than that, all is good. If you come to DemoBit 2018 (a lovely party in Bratislava), be sure to catch another ASD and friends demo. And say hello.
