Back in October, we wanted to attend the forthcoming Alternative Party event. I think one could say it is a demoscene event, but with a broader or different scope or goals – for example, encouraging or embracing artistic expression with niche platforms (either niche by being rare, or niche by being so old).

So, we thought about taking part in the alternative demo competition. The platform is mostly free choice there, but the compo name itself directs you to think about something different. I thought that maybe it could be interesting to make a demo which would consist of only a single static line with changing colors, and try to take most of that limitation. That is, to make a “1-Dimensional Demo” (at least by my definition).
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Writing a bit late about this, but in August I attended the Assembly 2011 event, as well as had the chance to visit Evoke 2011 in Cologne soon after that. I was actually going to GDC Europe and Gamescom events, but the Evoke luckily happened to be held just on the previous weekend in the same city.

As usual, I spent a little bit of time to make some entries to the event competitions. Read on for videos and a bit of info.
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Here’s some notes about anti-aliased lines.
For these tests of rendering anti-aliased lines my goals were roughly as follows:

• relatively high-quality anti-aliased lines (better than subsampling or postprocessing)
• simple low-tech solution extendable to wide range of platforms (e.g. not relying on availability of shaders)
• visually better consistency than what you get if you just ask graphics API to anti-alias lines for you, and you might not even get any if the hardware is lacking
• try to solve issue of anti-aliased lines showing a “roping” effect
• concentrate on case of single lines without yet going to additional complexities such as line caps or joins between multiple lines

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The Assembly 2010 summer event was held last weekend. Once again I did something to contribute in the various competitions held at the event. At right you can see thumbnail from Afrika by Rustbloom & XZM. It’s our try at making a 4 KB intro with semi-abstract/stylized 2D vector graphics and bit of a story. Yes, the executable is only 4089 bytes long (0.004 megabytes). Check it out from Youtube, or download the original executable version (only for Windows). The intro ended up at 5th place of 16 entries, which isn’t bad at all.

Some time before the event I also spent a moment to wade through Box2D physics engine documentation, and made a little prototype game called Luomuheinäseipääntapinheitto (a.k.a. Organic hay pole peg throwing), entering it also to the gamedev contest (placed 8/19). Background music is Test Drive by Zapac. Check out a video from Youtube, or download and try it (only for Windows).

Here’s links (mostly Youtube) to some other highlights from the event: XMunkki’s gamedev entry Raya Racer for N900, Evoflash’s winner Flash demo from wild compo, Archee’s 4k intro with physics and AI, winner 4k, Pier 64k from Hedelmae, Tricky truck – Archee’s winner entry from gamedev, 64k intro compo 1st and 2nd, Fairlight’s demo (2nd in compo), and finally ASD’s winning demo.

I was just reading Chromium Blog and it just announced: WebGL Spec Initial Public Draft Released. Well, I was quite surprised at half way to the post when I noticed they mentioned that one of the show cases a port of my San Angeles Observation 4 KB intro. I downloaded a fresh Chromium build (a development version of the Google Chrome web browser) to try it out, and have to say that I was quite impressed – the thing runs really smoothly. Let’s hope this tech becomes available as soon as possible to all major browsers. :)

Continuing with the theme from my previous post, here’s the first introductory video for the new Stair Dismount for iPhone and iPod touch.

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAeTxPINttw

Me and few others have recently posted some “Dismount Moments” photos to Facebook, as seen here for an example. These images originate from the all-new Stair Dismount, created for iPhone and iPod touch. It is of course a direct successor to the original Stair Dismount released in 2002. The game has been submitted for Apple’s approval to the App Store, so it should be available for purchasing quite soon (just a few weeks). Here’s a short introduction of what the new game is all about…
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Last week I attended the Assembly’09 summer event, like I have done every year since 1992. Although this time I didn’t make a game and didn’t hold a seminar session, I still contributed in the 4K intro competition… twice, actually.

Again I worked with XMunkki on an intro called Dream Creditor, which ended up at the fourth place in the competition (Download Windows zip / YouTube video). Additionally I made a tongue-in-cheek-production with little marching elephants called Irrelephant. Audience seemed to like it a lot so it placed on the 3rd place! (Download Windows zip / YouTube video). You can probably also easily spot that my little 2D walker prototype (from my previous post) ended up as part of this production.

Like I said, I’d post a bit about some prototyping. Nowadays I’m usually using Processing for small prototypes. Some years ago I used to use EVALDRAW for little algorithmic tests. I love it for the immediate feedback when working with it, and also the different modes it provides.

But after I started to like more the whole concept of isolated first-stage prototypes, I felt EVALDRAW wasn’t just enough for all of my needs. After pondering with some alternatives I ended up “standardizing” on Processing, although it would still have a lot to learn from EVALDRAW. :-) However the one cool thing with Processing is that you can export your creation to be a stand-alone mini-app or even to a web page. As long as you have installed Java.

Lately when working with some ideas for a platformer game, I wanted to make some tests for a “walker”. To be exact, the simple kind which would just use some carefully chosen formulas like sine curves to move feet and body.
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Assembly’07 is over. I held a seminar presentation there about Immediate Mode Graphical User Interfaces (IMGUI for short), together with Jari Komppa. You can check out the slides.

With XMunkki I once again created a 4 KB intro, Rose Shank (download Windows zip). What’s special about the creation is the fact that it was created in a custom language which uses LISP syntax (Lisp-ahtava aka IL4). The code is compiled into a custom minimal bytecode and a VM for that particular case. Respect to XMunkki – he is the brains behind that nice little system which we have talked about for some years, and he finally got around to implementing it!

If you hadn’t heard yet, I recently also quit working for my previous employer Sulake Corporation and co-founded Secret Exit Ltd together with Jani Kahrama. We created a prototype of one of our game concepts for the Assembly Game Development competition. Cinnamon Beats took the 3rd place although it’s still in pre-alpha and we have received many positive comments about the game.

Update: Sources for Rose Shank are available.
You can also view a YouTube video of it!