Crunch session - Part I

We are back from vacation and decided to have a demomaking "crunch session" (hello EA!) this weekend. Only a few weeks to go before Assembly is upon us and we are, to put it mildly, "a bit behind schedule".

It turns out that the CPU of the Xbox360 was slower than expected. A lot slower. It doesn't really have a lot of memory either, so we have to look into ways of getting around that. There were some CPU code that we thought we could easily move over to the GPU, but it turns out it wasn't easy at all. In fact it was so hard that we skipped the whole thing.

KMK and Svok coding while Gloom types up the demo plan on the Mac. Oh the irony.

While most of us are carrying on in Oslo, AM is in Stavanger and contributing via the internet (oh bless those wonderful tubes!). Our third coder might join us in a few hours as well, so we are hoping to kick it up a notch if he arrives. Music-wise, the basic structure and elements are in place, but the tune is a huge mess right now.

We've learned something else since last time, and that is that it is really annoying that you have to be online with the Xbox360 to start the "XNA Game Launcher". Now, this might not sound like a big deal, but it is when you are trying to run code on the box in a place with restricted internet access (like the University of Oslo).

Also; we find it quite funny that the place you run XNA software from is called "Demos and More". :) We will be back with more later on. Cheerioh!

Signed,
All of us

We have a sphere!

Another day, another demo-making session. So far we have been focusing on learning about XNA and re-writing things that we already had in OpenGL (re-doing old stuff sure is fun!), but today we actually managed to load an object and show it on screen.

Svok is happy with his sphere

Gasp! Progress!

We are still battling with the different formats and exporting from Maya, but as this next picture shows; at least primitive, non-animated shapes gets gobbled up by the Xbox360 withouth much fuzz. :) FBX looks like the winning format for us btw, we just hope that it still works when we try more advanced models and textures. It's usually around that time that things start to go wrong. There is nothing like a rotation error or b0rked UV-coordinates five minutes before the competition deadline.

We also nagged another coder enough that he agreed to write some lines. He is keen on computer graphics, so his help is greatly appreciated. We won't tell you who he is though - you'll have to wait for the very end of the credits scroller to find out :)

In other news:

Am has left for his vacation, so we won't get any support from him for two weeks, which is a little sad, but at least he left us with some test-objects and graphics to work with. It will be "EA-style crunchtime" for him when he returns. He can blame himself for that. ;)

Svok is leaving for his vacation in a week, and he too will be gone for two weeks. Poor Kmk and "The Unnamed Coder" who will have to pick up the slack when he is gone.

It looks like Gloom will be doing a second demo to Assembly, but in the Mobile demo category. As the greatest of rappers keep telling us; mo' demos, mo' problems. Oh, and he's also going on a vacation in a few weeks. ;)

If you have tips or want to get in touch with us, just use the comment feature. We'll be back with more later on.

Signed,
All of us

Picking a style

So the coding has begun, and while Kmk and Svok are focusing on getting a decent framework up and running (you know, the boring stuff :), me and Am are able to look into the fun part - pick a musical and visual style for the demo.

Am has a really unique and fantastic visual style, and the whole team really wants to "tap into" that creative energy to bring something new to our "look department" (if there ever was such a thing :)

Music-wise, I have a couple of tracks in the pipeline that might fit the demo, but we need to get more effect and gfx-ideas hammered down before I choose which track to go forward with. I do think that no matter which of the tracks we end up using, it will be a good one.

This was a little friday-night filler - more XNA and coder-specific stuff will follow.

Promise. :)

Signed,
Gloom

..and so it begins!

Update: now you can add your comments without being registered - what a crappy default setting that was. :)

Yep yep. So we are making our first Xbox360 demo ever. It will hopefully be entered into the demo competition at Assembly (Summer) 2007, but time will tell. :)

So - who are "we" you might ask? Well, we don't really have a name yet, but the crew consist of the following people:

• Svok / Portal Process (code)
  
• Kmk (code)
  
• Gloom / Excess (design and music)
  
• Am / Excess (graphics and 3d)

Svok with a the coolest cap ever (and a known demoscene symbol on the wall)

I guess we can't really say that the demo we are trying to make will rock your world, but we'll see what we come up with. :) So far, XNA has shown itself to be quite a different from the way we are used to work. Our initial reactions after the first lines of code are as follows:

• It's really a no-brainer to start working with XNA
  
• ..but once things get complex, XNA gets cumbersome
  
• The asset management system is annoying
  
• Not allowing the use of MP3 or other well-know formats is really annoying
  
• Syncing and timing might be a challenge
  
• The 360 is powerful as hell so we might go overboard on the math :)

Kmk and Svok discussing the various limitations of XNA

Well, that's it for the first post - be sure to check out the blogs of other people working on their first Xbox360-demos for Assembly - Synesthetics and Hedelmae.

Until next update.. toodles! (..and read up on the demoscene if you don't know what it is or why we are working on this project)

Signed,
All of us