So, it is time for my first post. My name is plokk and I am one of the founding members of Hedelmae. My role is to create graphics. I have been working my ass off in my day job this summer and I have no vacation what so ever so I am trying to spend every bit of a free time I have on this project. This is the second day of our two man democrunch weekend and we actually have got some stuff done already. I have been drawing some concept art and fragment is creating 3d models based on them. I am already surprised of how much stuff we have managed to put together. Now it is time to open an ice cold beer and spend some time sitting in the sauna, so we will see how the rest of the evening goes :)

-plokk

Here is the list of people whose names should be found in the credits when the demo is finished.

I (fragment) will be doing the most of the coding and the 3D modelling. Cyrus is the musician and plokk will do graphics. Zef might give some support in the coding process. Ideas and other support have and will come from other members as well.

It will be interesting to see how much the list will change.

There will probably be some kind of introductions from each member later on..

–fragment

Most of the members have been interested in demos and demoscene since the early 1990s but it was at late as early 2000s when we actually started doing our own real-time productions.

In 2003 our first demo was released. It was called “LCD megademo” and it was written for a 20×4 character LCD. By changing some characters we extended the resolution to 20×12. The display was connected to a PC running Linux via parallel port. We had lots of processing power and the effects were simple so the demo wasn’t technically too impressive but the presentation was somewhat unique.

Two years passed and we released another LCD demo, “Liquid Crystal”. This time the LCD was bigger and graphical instead of character based. Also we used an Amiga 1200 with 50MHz Motorola 68060 processor to run the demo. Personally I thought the demo was better than the earlier one but it failed to get enough votes at the Assembly 2005.

At the same event we released our first mobile demo, “Back in Time”. The device used wasn’t really mobile but the rules allowed it because it weighted under 300g and run on batteries. We got the hardware from FirstTechnology so big thanks to them for loaning it. The device used was a PXA-3 and it run Linux. It had a 200MHz Intel XScale processor and 32MB RAM. Unfortunately we started writing the demo too late. We worked furiously at the party place trying to finish it but there was just too much stuff to do. We ended up releasing the demo anyway and placed 4th which was a small surprise. There were six entries total in the mobile competition.

Another year passed and for Assembly 2006 we had some ideas and a new device to abuse. This time we wrote the demo for GamePark Holdings’ GP2X. Again, we had some problems with the schedule but we managed to write the missing parts for the demo at the party place although some parts looked very bad and unfinished. The name “Pulque” was chosen just before deadline. But the effects worked and the crowd liked the demo and we won!

We also made a quick demo called “Debris” about a week before Assembly for a small demo competition. The platform was the same. We used two days for the demo and placed second.Later in the year 2006 we made our first Windows demo called “Carbon Monoxide”. It was made for the TMDC which is only for textmode demos. Although we got very positive feedback we only placed 4th which was a slight disappointment.

Hello,

I never thought I’d start writing a blog but here we go..

The reason for writing this is to tell you about our biggest project ever. We are working on a demo for Assembly 2oo7 and this time we are playing in the big boys league. We are going to participate in the combined demo -competition which is basically the main event of Assembly.

Hedelmae has always been interested in special platforms from custom hardware to obscure computers and consoles. Therefore our next platform is an interesting and a natural choice: the Microsoft XBOX 360! Running your own code on the XBOX is possible with the XNA framework. You can read the details from the XNA homepage but basically the application/game/whatever is developed on a Windows PC with the XNA Game Studio and then deployed to the console via network. The application can then be launched from the XBOX 360 dashboard. XNA Game Studio can be used to write Windows applications for free but to run XNA programs on the XBOX a “Creators Club” -license must be purchased.

We have less than two months to finish the demo and there is much to do. We are going to write about our experiences with the XNA framework and the general flow of making our demo. We also try not to reveal too much about the demo so you can read our blog and still enjoy the premiere on 4th of August at the Assembly 2oo7 in Finland.

Also, in the coming weeks we are going to tell you a little about ourselves, our history and future. You can expect posts from various members of our group. Each will tell about their part of the job, problems encountered, techniques used etc etc..

Feel free to register and post comments and questions! Or if you are feeling shy you can write us to nicknameofthemember@hedelmae.fi.

I hope you’ll enjoy our stories,

– fragment