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

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