"evolution" got 5th at the Assembly'99

"evolution" is amuQ creations' contribution to the PC accelerated demo competition at the Assembly'99 annual demo party held in Helsinki, Finland from the 6th August to the 8th August of 1999.

In that compo, "evolution" made the 5th place after "Virhe" by Mature Furk, "Traumatique" by Trauma, "Do Zen" by Komplex and "Käyttökuksa" by tAAt. Two other demos were shown, and four demos were disqualified due different reasons; one of these, "Platipus" by Incognita, was disqualified because the compo jury did not do what the the info desk crew promised, though it could have easily got placed very well (perhaps even first).

Where to get "evolution"

You can download evolution from these places (4.9 MB):

• www.amuq.net

• www.nic.fi

The history of "evolution"

Somewhere in spring 1999, we, some people from Cheat the Machine and Snowsphere Illusions and some other groups, planned to create a demonstration for the up-coming Assembly'99 demo party. The demo should be released under the name of our new group, called amuQ creations. The team working on the demo was enlarged by Dr. Destiny and estrato from Secundum Artem.

After some time of preparing us (that is, the lazy one working on the demo system to be used for the demo and the others playing around with stuff useful for the demo), iron maze, our main graphician, wrote a storyboard. Some months before the Assembly taking place, we started creating the final demo, after iron maze drawn a graphical storyboard for the first part (also take a look at the right side).

In the following time, the demo system DSYS2 was heavily enhanched to provide all the features neccessary for the demo itself, and many stuff was created for the demo.

Around one week before the Assembly started, the lazy one traveled to Finland in order to meet with Vulc, Extrian, Spiikki and Zbaaga to finish the demonstration. The last effect was added to the demo at the evening before we traveled to the Assembly itself, and the last fine-tune was done some hours before the compo deadline (6th of August at 22:00 local Finish time).

The story board of "evolution"

Here a desciption of all parts of "evolution" will follow:

First, when you launch evolution, you should be able to see the configuration menu of the demo system. Here you can change video adapters and resolutions, configure the sound device, look up information about your 3D accelerator and about the demo system itself. To finally launch the demonstration, press the "Launch the demo" button.

The first part starts with an pixely "amuQ creations" logo scrolling onto the screen from the right side. In the middle of it's path to screen domination, it blurs up and fades out, being replaced with a cool looking "amuQ creations" logo zooming out to the upper left edge. It morphs into a light blob meanwhile with a rotating colorful background. The light blob floats into the middle of the screen and morphs into a cool "evolution" logo, which will be blurred and living and very slowly zooming out of screen, when the screen fades to white, and after a flash nothing's left except a pixely "evolution" logo, which will fade out after some time.

A simple flat-shaded box will be faded in next, rotating around. Suddenly textures start to fade in and the box' surfaces start to live. One surface will build a spike, which turns back into the box and forms a tunnel, where the camera will dive into. The screen now fades in with a fly-through in a tunnel looking like a hallway, with texts of a poem by iron maze fading in and out. At the end of the tunnel, there will be another tunnel faded in which mounts into a cave containing a torus knot and some colored light sources creating cool lens flare effects. When the poem has finished, the scene will be flashed out.

Now, an ugly landscape will be faded in, which turns after a symbal clash (?) into a very nice smooth landscape with a fog effect and animated procedural water.

After some fly-around, the screen is flashed, and you can see an asteroid with cartman from South Park sitting on it. The camera zooms out, then after a flash zooming in on his mouth, and after another fade it will re-appear in cartman's gaullet, while cartman produces a surprised sound.

The camera will follow the gaullet a bit, but instead of his stomach you can see some sky; meanwhile a funny "evolution" sequence is faded in and out of the screen in the bottom line.

After a fade, the scene continues with a flight over a sea to a small island, with an green dinosaur in a river and a grey egg on the land. The egg splits up and a small yellow duck jumps out of it and into the water. When the duck swims over the tail of the dinosaur, the dinosaur beats the duck away with it's tail, and the duck smashes into the water surface away from the island with a big splash.

Now the camera is below the water surface; you see the duck diving into the water, and see a dolphin swimming from the right. In the next camera setting you can see the dolphin snatch the duck and swimming down to the surface. The camera now swings to another spot. to notice some bubbles with greets reflecting in them.

After a flash, you see a pixely image by iron maze, called "exodus". Suddenly, the image starts to fly away and to rotate and bend. After some time, it rotates so you can see the back side and comes back to fill the entire screen. The back side contains a high resolutioned version of the picture.

After that, there will appear a tunnel fly-throught with motion blur, and a light source flying around the camera creating lens flares. Over that animation, you can see the credits faded in and out. After the last credit, you can see a text "Thanks for watching" and the screen fades out slowly.

After that you see the amuQ creation "Q" logo splash in and out.

What is DSYS2?

DSYS2 is an abbrevation for Demo System 2, which is a system which allows the creation of (3D) animations which can be shown in real time. Because DSYS2 is still under development, you can just check out some other demos made with it. You can get them from the CHEAT THE MACHiNE homepage, which can be found at www.amuq.net/ctm. The demos (re)made with DSYS2 are called "Anton 4 - find ich gut!" and "CTM - the older demos!".