The Invitation Demo - Behind the scenes
We've had a chat with the guys behind this year's invitation demo. Read more about who they are and how the demo was made.
Like every year since The Gathering's beginning, there has been made an official invitation demo for this year's party as well. It is a tradition that the demogroups that are active organizing the creative part of The Gathering also produce the invitation demo, and this year is no exception. Anders Knive Lassen is not only chief of the Creativia crew, but also one of the programmers behind the invitation. Another well known character who has been active both in the crew and as a participant at The Gathering for a long time is Ola Gundelsby, who have contributed with the music for this year's invitation.
"We started making a space-themed demo before this year's theme was decided", says Anders with a smile. Luckily, when the theme of the year, "Submerged", was announced, they found that many of the effects they had would fit just as well with the new theme. The idea was that the visuals should be experienced as if being under water, and they wanted to make used of the new technology from the latest version of DirectX to achieve the most advanced effects.
Morten Daniel Fornes has together with Anders made a brand new framework for this production, and together with Håvard Schei, who made all the 3d-graphics, they have shaped the visual expression. "It took us several hundred hours to create the demo, but much of the time went into learning DirectX 10 and create the framework", says Morten about the project.
For those who don't know how a demo is made; it is not very different from making a computer game. You need to program a "game engine", which is usually done in the programming language C++. You need graphic artists to create 3D-models and textures, and you need someone to compose an original soundtrack for your production. The tools used are often the same as professionals use: Microsoft Visual Studio, 3DS Max, Maya and Reason are well known tools to many in the demoscene.
The team entered the demo in the demo competition at Kindergarden 2009 and took home the first prize. The result can be seen here. This year, as every year, there will be a demo compo at The Gathering as well. For many, this is the main attraction at The Gathering.
Download the Invitation Demo
Berit Skog at NTNU has asked to do a survey on the participants of The Gathering. Unfortunately it's only available in Norwegian, sorry all foreign friends!
The compo case for this year's Hardcore Programming compo is now released. Now it's time to start coding your winning entry. Happy coding!
The Gathering has a Facebook fanpage! If you can't get enough of The Gathering at our official website (of course you don't!), we also have a Facebook page. You can join us at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Gathering/263724429193.
This year The Gathering will have a delivered capacity of 30Gbit/sec. This is six times the capacity of last year’s event of 5Gbit/sec.
The gathering is an event with a lot of people and a lot of sound. We've gotten several requests asking if some areas of the ship are more quiet than others, and we'll try to answer this now, as well as letting you know which areas will be colder than others.
If you're still looking for reasons to buy a Creative/demoscene ticket for TG10, look no further! Read about our Creative Lounge, and start planning for an Easter full of exciting seminars, cool people and frantic work to beat the competition deadlines.
The seating will begin the 1st of March, at 6pm CET, for groups of 30 or more. Read on for further details.
Large changes await you this Easter. When you arrive at The Gathering this year, you will find the stage in the middle of the "Viking ship".
This year, competing in our Game Development compo might be just the first step. After competing at TG, take your game further to the Norwegian Game Awards finals and compete for more prizes, fame and glory, and a lot of media attention.
Game competitions have always been a tradition on The Gathering. As Norway's big gather point for computer interested, we also attract lots of hardcore gamers.
We're proud to present the final list of creative competitions for The Gathering 2010, along with the prizes. We try to tweak the prize distribution every year to stimulate participation in the different competitions. Prizes total at over 180 000 NOK this year!
Are you interested in programming? Do you like logic, mathematics and problem solving? In that case, you might be interested in the Norwegian Olympiad in Informatics (NIO)!
Do you fancy sitting next to The Gathering's best coders, graphicians, musicians and other creative souls? All normal tickets for The Gathering 2010 are sold out, but if you'd like to spend Easter in a creative and inspiring environment within sneezing distance of exciting seminars and skilled people, you should know that we've still got tickets left for people like you.
Are you tired of eating eating noodles, cup a soup or whatever food you can prepare in a microwave oven? Then you're in for some luck, this year The Gathering is offering you a ticket for three breakfasts and three proper dinners.
Tickets
At the moment tickets are only available at http://partyticket.net
Private sales are NOT allowed at this point.
We've had a chat with the guys behind this year's invitation demo. Read more about who they are and how the demo was made.