My first demoparty

General Background

My friend Aaron (slerpy) is a professional demoscener known for his award-winning cool demos. For some unknown reason, it inspired me to create an entry for Evoke, my first proper demoparty.

I aimed to create a 4k executable which meant squeezing every detail into a maximum file size of 4 kilobytes or (4096 bytes). The 4K entry pushes creativity under constraints, forcing one to rely only on procedural methods for creating graphics. The curious ones can check out more intriguing results here. As for me, instead of creating something extravagant, I focused on simplicity and executed it well. It is also something slerpy keeps reminding me of.

As a child, I and my friends enjoyed launching paper airplanes from the top of the terrace. It was one of those exciting moments where we would design paper aeroplanes and compete for the distance. I wanted to recapture that nostalgic moment with this entry. Not only that, but I also wanted to add another piece of symbolism about flying home as depicted by the airplane flying towards the house. Despite being a technical challenge, it was a simple and fun endeavour nonetheless.

Though it may not seem apparent in the final render (because I didn’t render it to convergence for the submission), you can see lines on the paper! That was one small detail I added to the render.

Details of the render

For my competition entry, I wanted to start with something straightforward. The hills were created using just two spheres. Initially, I planned to have the airplane flying over a meadow. However, I found it quite challenging to pull off without delving into the complex maths.

The house and the planes are quads and triangles with each primitive delicately adjusted to fit into the desired location. I chose the asymmetrical design because it felt authentic enough to capture the innocence. The sky is just a gradient and the texture on the plane comes from grid lines sampled from the texture buffers. All the materials are diffuse and the scene is lit using an environment box.