Unplanned, I went to the show of Moderat (Modeselektor + Apparat + Pfadfinderei) in Montreal. And they crafted a pretty good scene experience. Pretty solid minute by minute show, very progressive. Modeselektor and Pfadfinderei have collaborated before and you can see that clearly.
My first impressions (somehow important) where that the music has some resemblance to Boards of Canada (great), and the visual, except being mostly based on abstract real footage, reminded me of the good old demoscene time in its progressive style (please stay with me reference below ).
The video just teases you but if it works you can find all the videos of the show with previews on iTunes : here.
And there is a DVD available at retail (who uses that, now ? )
Here’s a little playlist, including some of the best Halcyon work and Kosmoplovci, there is no youtube video of minimalanimal, at your own risk ). There are much more so feel free to complete it.
I’ve been surprised again, TBC has pushed the limits. They did a demo, that fits in less than 1kb (1024 characters), music included. I really don’t know how they did it, because in my last experiments, a while ago, even initialization of 3d and sound did not fit into 1k.
Just enjoy the show :
Don’t forget to comment on pouet.net. Runs ok on Vista but the first 2 scenes are a bit slow on my laptop So be sure you have a class A video card.
For those interested in the technical details, most of the geometry is based on fractal formulas, these are classic 3d fractals. I don’t know how the music is done (generated or pure midi), or how the lighting is done, but it has 2 colors and a fog effect, it could be a shader, based on the hardware requirements.
It seems to use D3DX, a library provided by the Direct X SDK, that could help with mathematics or graphics calls. But just linking (even dynamically) with the library takes quite a few bytes.
The gathering and breakpoint 2009 where happening this week-end. The first demo that was noticed is Rapture by ASD (another gem from the amazing group ASD). It features a unique rendering. To run the demo prefer a lower resolution with higher framerate because the main effect is a bit detail destructive, but the animation is quite good. Here is the video :
Last week, I got some big news from my friends Francis and Thomas that founded Diplabs and Dipmedia based on the Smode technology. The results of this sample shows how smode can be used to project an image on real volumes to create an “augmented reality” scene.
Very nice result (thanks to the material and lighting properties that reality offers for free ) with a great audio/video sync by Albin. Good job guys.
The concept is not new, but the final look is stunning, and better than other things I’ve seen before ! It could be the beginning of a new era for dipmedia, if you want to contact them for business opportunities contact@dipmedia.fr.
For those who never heard of Smode before, it’s a technology that is used to combine building block of visual effects in a very flexible and powerfull way. The technology first started for demomaking (I did 2 demos with it), then thanks to great evolutions it became a tool for VJing (I did a live show with it), then it turned out as a technology for much more, look at dipmedia web site. What’s next ?
A while ago, I read this article on gamasutra called the Principles of Virtual Sensation, written by Steve Swink from Flashbang Studios (a company that seems in good shape, and uses Unity as their main platform).
It’s really rare to see articles on gameplay, for 2 obvious reasons, it’s difficult to explain what makes a good gameplay, we really lack of broadly used vocabulary and references; and secondly it does not interest much people, that’s for sure, they are much more interested in articles about storytelling,… sadly.
Hopefully, Steve did a great article, and while I tried to suggested a lot of my coworkers to read it, it hasn’t been a breakthrough. There is still a lot of work to have people go on that path.
My opinion is that sensation is almost the first reason why people play on console, and great games (top 10) have always provided sensations above game design and story. So if you are a gameplay programmer (a motivated one) that want to make a good game and you haven’t read steve’s article, go right now.
A few years have passed, and I see that Steve has released a book about the topic, which is probably good (no read yet) called Game Feel. The books seems to feature work from great indie developers including Jonathan Blow, which did a great talk last year in Montreal. So if you look at the book please let a comment about it.
And to finish, I’ve read an interview from the team at Flashbang Studio and they said they released their meeting and project post mortem in the wild as videos. Now you think I’m kidding but you have to watch at least one of these videos. It’s quite interesting… (indie spirit guaranteed)
If you haven’t played Blush give it a try this is pretty fun.
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