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.