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GDC Extras Archive

The GDC (Game Developers Conference), previously the Computer Game Developers Conference, is a series of events held worldwide to bring together developers, marketers, management, artists, and others involved in the creation of electronic entertainment. Besides the main events, GDC also maintains an archive of presentations and recordings at The GDC Vault.



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In an unholy psychological fusion, Jason has merged the 5 Domains of Play and the Big 5 with Scot Rigby's PENS model SDT. The result is a startlingly usable model of your player's motivational journey through time. It starts with taste, expectations, and individual variation; and then carries through to long term satisfaction, nostalgia, and deciding to buy the sequel. Knowing which of your proposed game design features fit with what part of your player's motivational journey is what this talk...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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What goes into making a cult hit? Taro Yoko, director of games like Nier and the Drakengard series, talks about the process he uses to create worlds and stories that get noticed and foster dedicated fans. Recounting his experiences on those games and others, Yoko-san will explain his personal development methods, such as backwards scriptwriting (where the ending defines the entire setting), and what he calls "photo thinking" -- thinking photographically to maintain a cohesive setting.
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Discover the artistic journey that Ninja Theory embarked on in re-imagining and rebooting Devil May Cry and its iconic protagonist Dante. See the beginnings of the process, from concept and inspiration, through to the 3D realization of the game's bright and bold art style. Visual Art Director, Alessandro "Talexi" Taini, discusses how fashion, music, architecture and art influenced Ninja Theory's decision's when they explored how to bring Dante and Devil May Cry into the here and now....
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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March 22-26, 2004 San Jose, CA
The lecture outlines Cryptic Studio's struggles with using a SQL database for CITY OF HEROES and CITY OF VILLAINS, the decision to move to a different database technology for future MMORPGs, and the architecture of that new technology. The reasoning behind this decision and the internal workings of Cryptic's database system will be discussed. Scalability, reliability, operational simplicity, and lessons learned from years of live operation are presented.
Topic: GDC
The recent success of games with strong narratives such as Bioshock Infinite, The Last of Us and The Walking Dead points to a future where game narrative is viewed as an asset, not an add-on. Unfortunately, the often adopted Three-Act Structure - Hollywood's classical story paradigm - meshes so poorly with game design that it has become a roadblock to narrative development. This talk will explore an alternative paradigm, Sequence Structure, which melds story seamlessly with game elements such...
Topic: GDC NEXT
GDC Extras Archive
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F.E.A.R.s AI was designed to provide a combat experience as exhilarating as multiplayer against a team of skilled humans. Enemies work in squads, laying suppression fire as allies advance. When confronted with a threat, soldiers shout orders to each other, and if necessary dive crashing through a window to safety. Soldiers advance in formation, split up into organized search parties, and flush out the Player with grenades. The typical game AI techniques of the past could not meet the demands of...
Topic: GDC
Game physics engines are used to create games like Portal, Titanfall, Smash Hit, and Diablo 3. Games would be far less compelling without the realistic physics simulation that engages the player's intuition and stimulates their motion awareness. Physics has become a staple of the modern gaming tradition as we try to re-create and re-interpret the world around us. The Physics for Programmers tutorial brings together speakers from Blizzard, Respawn, Mediocre, and Valve. Topics include numerical...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Large, open-world games like Fallout 4 require an efficient approach to creating many high-quality locations in relatively short period of development. Modular art kits and an iterative level design process are essential to the team at Bethesda Game Studios. This presentation provides an in-depth analysis of the techniques used to create art kits, the level design workflow which takes advantage of them, and the production approach which empowers a relatively small content team to make an...
Topic: GDC
For a relatively small team of environment artists to create the huge open world of Sunset Overdrive, we needed new ways to streamline the production of art assets while still pushing the visual quality to the next level. The Ultimate Trim became our name for a texturing technique, utilizing a certain trim layout and normal map structure that solved a lot of the problems we knew we were facing with production speed, memory usage and performance. During the early phases of development we spent...
Topic: GDC
This lecture focuses on the interactive simulation of water surfaces such as puddles, lakes, rivers or oceans. While simple particle systems are well suited for blood or splashing effects, the simulation of larger bodies of water requires more sophisticated techniques. Full 3d fluid simulations are too computationally expensive to be used in games today. However, simulating the water surface alone as a 2d heighfield reduces that cost significantly and can still capture most visual effects of 3d...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Collection of variant computer-generated Game Developers Conference logos, likely to be used to head sold materials and video assets related to the 1999 Game Developers Conference.
Topics: GDC, GDC Extras, Logos
The intelligent use of terrain by game agents was a turning point in modern shooter and action games. Gone were the days where the enemies simply ran straight toward the player. However, the need for spatial awareness quickly went beyond static cover points. Designers wanted to incorporate more complex spatial behaviors such as searching, running away, maneuvering for better line of sight, or even group tactics. Environments also became richer and more dynamic, which made manual markup and...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Technical art is evolving rapidly. In many studios TAs play key roles in developing efficient tools pipelines, and ensuring art content is visually striking and optimized for performance. TAs bridge content and engineering, helping make both more successful. However, many studios have still not fully embraced the TA role. Their TAs are smart and eager to make an impact, but are not sure how to best prove their value, and be given key roles in development. A group of experienced, respected...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Today's MMOs often have hundreds of types of agents in their game world - each with potentially dozens of actions they can take. Hand crafting the AI for every agent can be a time-consuming process fraught with brittle, unpredictable results. Often, the only way to achieve the breadth of characters is to sacrifice the depth of behaviors that they can take. This session will show a new architecture that combines a modular, utility-based AI system and a powerful influence map engine. With it,...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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In the last five years, the business of game publishing has completely transformed. Massive structural changes in the way games are created, distributed and consumed have eliminated the traditional choke-points that empowered publishers: scarce shelf space, expensive manufacturing of packaged goods, access to development money, and conventional media marketing. As a developer, it has never been easier to get a game to market by yourself. So, is publishing dead? In this session, game...
Topic: GDC
This session will describe how Infinity Ward leveraged hardware tessellation in Call of Duty: Ghosts to improve image quality and artist efficiency on PCs and next generation consoles, while maintaining the games trademark high-frame rate. Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces are an artist friendly, efficient representation for next-generation models. Recent research, including feature adaptive subdivision surfaces by Matthias Niessner and Charles Loop, has made it possible to efficiently render...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Game balance is a task that must be performed on virtually every game, and is thus vitally important to a game designer. Yet there are no textbooks, few writings, and even fewer classes that look at this niche topic in depth. What would a game balance course look like? In this session, game designer and educator Ian Schreiber will present a summary of his college-level course in game balance, examining the major topics covered in the syllabus and a set of assignments that can be used to further...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Stealth gameplay poses unique challenges to the level builder, and a poorly-designed level will frustrate players as surely as a well-designed level will please them. The challenges are exacerbated when stealth is an auxiliary element rather than the core gameplay. We've all wanted to quit in disgust when we got to the one badly integrated stealth level in an otherwise well-designed game, right? Whether your game is all about stealth or just includes some stealth gameplay, this presentation...
Topic: GDC
In the late 1960s, precocious auteurs like George Lucas and Martin Scorsese went from film programs at USC and NYU to fomenting a revolution in Hollywood. Almost four decades later, similar waves have begun in the video game industry, as a result of the recently formed interactive media programs at universities. In the spring of 2006, Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen went from being soon-to-be MFA graduates to owning a company with a three game deal for PS3. Originated as a test bed for Jenova...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Sometimes called "MegaTexture", sparse virtual texture memory is a method using pixel shaders to access gigantic virtual textures that are only sparsely stored in physical texture memory, with no visual artifacts. This lecture shows how to implement sparse virtual texture memory, allowing fully-unique textures across very large spaces, extremely high-detail textures without separate repeating detail layers, or higher-quality textures on hardware with less texture memory. Texture data...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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This session is about using the QuickHull algorithm for convex hull creation. Dirk will show how to implement the QuickHull algorithm in 3D and how it is used for collision authoring at Valve. The talk will introduce the algorithm in 2D first and then extend to 3D. It will also cover numerical issues which will be handled mostly by using face merging, and show why face merging is important for stable contacts in rigid body simulation.
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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March 20-24, 2001
 
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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March 4-8 2003 San Jose, CA
GDC Extras Archive
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Computer Game Developers Conference 1998 ======================================== The CD you are viewing contains many different types of content.  Some content may require viewers that are not already installed on this machine. The WebCD software will automatically install the Adobe Reader software on supported platforms. In addition to PDF files, this disk includes Word DOC files and Power Point PPT files.
GDC Extras Archive
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This workshop provides a platform for designers to showcase their risky new work. Each designer gives a dense 15 minute presentation, illustrating how their new game design is different from what has come before, and explaining what they hope to achieve through this experimentation. This video segment features Keita Takahashi discussing Katamari Damacy. Speakers: Jonathan Blow, Keita Takahashi
Topics: gdc, experimental gameplay, Keita Takahashi, Jonathan Blow, Katamari Damacy, 2004
This talk is a detailed walkthrough of the game engine modifications needed to make The Last of Us Remastered run at 60 fps on PlayStation 4. Topics covered will include the fiber-based job system Naughty Dog adopted for the game, the overall frame-centric engine design, the memory allocation patterns used in the title, and our strategies for dealing with locks.
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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This video presentation from the 1999 Game Developers Conference explores the architecture of id Software's latest first-person shooter, Quake 3 Arena. Brian Hook discusses basic research into curved surface rendering, issues dealt with in deploying an OpenGL based game, the architecture of the back-end shading pipeline, the lighting model, and LOD algorithms for models and curved surfaces.
Topics: Brian Hook, Quake 3
GDC Extras Archive
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What goes into making a cult hit? Taro Yoko, director of games like Nier and the Drakengard series, talks about the process he uses to create worlds and stories that get noticed and foster dedicated fans. Recounting his experiences on those games and others, Yoko-san will explain his personal development methods, such as backwards scriptwriting (where the ending defines the entire setting), and what he calls "photo thinking" -- thinking photographically to maintain a cohesive setting.
Topic: GDC
One of the greatest challenges of video game AI is that of creating believable companions that inhabit the world. Rather than being "alive" for merely seconds, they are engaged with the player for hours - and are often meant to be the focus. Complicating things further is when the companion is expected to be both leader and the follower, both dynamic and scripted, both the entertainer and the entertained. Architecting a system that handles all of these divergent needs can be daunting....
Topic: GDC
Iterative constraint solvers work great, but there are cases where we could use better convergence. This presentation explores various Mixed Linear Complementarity Problem (MLCP) solvers and the Featherstone articulated body algorithm and how to mix them.
Topic: GDC
Kickstarter is becoming a legitimate but challenging option for indie developers to try to raise funding for game development. It isn't an easy endeavor, requiring skills that can be different than typical game development. And though the category is large, success is not a given: only 23% of video game Kickstarters launched have been successful and less than 3% of all game campaigns raised more than $100,000. Give yourself a head start and hear from those who have run successful Kickstarters...
Topic: GDC
One of the most exciting features of DirectX 11.2 is tiled resources, which allow for full-featured, hardware-accelerated virtual texturing that overcomes many of the limitations of traditional software-based virtual texturing algorithms, all while working on a large variety of already shipping graphics hardware. This talk will cover the basics of how to use the tiled resources feature, and cover a set of rendering techniques to allow your game to take full advantage of the feature.
Topic: GDC
While epic multiplayer gameplay has long been a defining characteristic of Blizzard Entertainment games, the company's approach to achieving that result has evolved greatly over time. With each new project, Blizzard developers have applied lessons learned from the company's previous games to continually update how they design and implement competitive and cooperative play features. In this presentation, Rob Pardo will discuss the goals the company strives for and the pitfalls it tries to avoid...
Topic: GDC
WARNING: Content of this presentation features nudity and graphic computerized sexual scenes. Please do not come if you are offended by such images or are under the age of 18. Before Hot Coffee, before Playboy: The Mansion, even before the 1980's Leisure Suit Larry series, there was sex in video games... and lots of it. From flirting in MUDs to hardcore sexual simulators to the emerging field of teledildonics, sex in games is nearly as old as the medium itself. Sex isn't limited to the games...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Technical art is evolving rapidly. In many studios TAs play key roles in developing efficient tools pipelines, and ensuring art content is visually striking and optimized for performance. TAs bridge content and engineering, helping make both more successful. However, many studios have still not fully embraced the TA role. Their TAs are smart and eager to make an impact, but are not sure how to best prove their value, and be given key roles in development. A group of experienced, respected...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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In real life, people often do several things at the same time, but games typically limit agents to performing actions sequentially. For The Sims 4, we developed a system for authoring interactions that allows simulated people (called Sims) to express multiple concurrent behaviors. Interactions are largely data-driven and are defined in terms of constraints, which specify the state a Sim must be in to perform the interaction. Constraints are used to test whether interactions are compatible, and...
Topic: GDC
The vertex shader is often overlooked when trying to improve performance, thinking it should only be used for basic vertex transformations. DirectX, however, allows for a lot of flexibility in how vertices are passed to the vertex shader, which enables techniques like vertex shader instancing. This talk will explain some of the ways that the vertex shader can be used to improve performance by taking a fast path through the vertex shader, rather than generating vertices with other parts of the...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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The words "intellectual properties" are hotter than ever in both video games and feature films. Both triple-A studios and indie developers around the world are working hard to forge their next big IP. A successful IP can become the company's breadwinner for years and entertain millions in the process. However, with more and more IPs crowding the market, it is increasing difficult to generate new ideas. In addition, going down the wrong visual path for an IP can put the studio into...
Topic: GDC
While the standard AI algorithms we all know (and love?) look good on paper, we often run up against barriers when we put them into practice. Usually, these barriers occur when NP-Hard problems clash with limitations on memory and processing cycles. Add in the necessity to allow for the simple, expandable creation and management of behaviors, and the scope of the problem expands significantly. This lecture will show three different tricks for helping AI solve difficult problems while staying...
Topic: GDC
As programmable shading has grown increasingly sophisticated, an industry-wide problem is happening: shader authors are losing touch with the underlying hardware. This lecture argues that low-level thinking is still a relevant practice, and shows examples of why this is the case. The connection between high-level shading constructs and the resulting hardware instructions that are generated will be discussed, as well as what the compiler is able to optimize and what the shader author must...
Topic: GDC
The match 3 puzzle genre is almost as old as it gets. Scour the App Store and you'll find hundreds of different varieties out there. Very few of these succeed however, and even less manage to hit the number one spot on the U.S. Apple App Store top download chart. Wooga's Jelly Splash managed to do just that, and in this session Florian Steinhoff, the creator of Jelly Splash, will give a detailed account on how his team managed that and what he learned throughout the development process.
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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This lecture covers several practical issues around using spherical harmonics for games. Particular issues addressed include: efficient ways to easily compute/rotate light sources in SH, efficient shader code for evaluating SH, how to extract simple light sources out of SH, what ringing is and what you can do about it, and how to compute the product of two SH functions and where you might want to use it.
Topic: GDC
Free-to-play MMO game monetization differs significantly between games from Western and Asian developers. Western developers have focused primarily on limited monetization systems, striving to achieve a harmonious game balance for free players and spenders. Asian developers have focused on selling power through gear and weapons enhancements, resulting in much higher ARPU, but sometimes creating a perception that the games are pay-to-win. This presentation explains how Asian free-to-play MMOs...
Topic: GDC NEXT
Technical art is evolving rapidly. In many studios TAs play key roles in developing efficient tools pipelines, and ensuring art content is visually striking and optimized for performance. TAs bridge content and engineering, helping make both more successful. However, many studios have still not fully embraced the TA role. Their TAs are smart and eager to make an impact, but are not sure how to best prove their value, and be given key roles in development. A group of experienced, respected...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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In this talk, art director Matt Nava will present the artwork he created during the development of the game Journey by thatgamecompany. The audience will learn about the creative processes, inspirations, challenges, and constraints that were encountered while designing the art direction for this critically acclaimed and award-winning PS3 title. Based on the book "The Art of Journey" which Nava recently wrote, the lecture will cover the design of the character, creatures, landscapes,...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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This presentation introduces Motion Matching, an innovative new approach for creating high quality, fluid and complex character movement. The team adopted a declarative animation philosophy, where instead of placing small animations in a big structure, they place small structured markup on top of long animations. This manual markup is necessary for logical information that can't be inferred automatically, like attack types and defense stances. For navigation, they don't have to manually...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Rendering Kyrat, the beautiful world of Far Cry 4, inspired the development of many new graphical features to use the power of the new generation of hardware. First, the foundations were laid down by lighting and material improvements. An anisotropic BRDF was created, high-resolution directional sky occlusion was added, and the global illumination system was extended. Next, the vegetation system was rewritten from scratch, resulting in individual leaves being modelled up close to tessellated,...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Using everything from 1950s wire recorders to modified stethoscopes, 'Hyper Light Drifter's' sound design was anything but conventional. Over the course of three years, the soundscape for the game was slowly forged, though it took countless revisions, refreshes, and retries for the audio design language of the game to come together. Join this talk for a behind-the-scenes look at 'Hyper Light Drifter's' unique sound design and learn how developers of all disciplines can garner massive emotional...
Topic: EU
In this session, John McDonald will demonstrate a new, border-free technique for rendering Ptex datasets in real-time, on any OpenGL 4 (or Direct3D 11) capable consumer hardware. By jettisoning borders, the memory overhead of this method has even dropped below those of standard texture mapping. Session attendees will see a live Ptex demo running on commonly available consumer hardware. They will dive with John, deep into the guts of a complete, working OpenGL implementation.
Topic: GDC
Game physics engines are used to create games like Portal, Titanfall, Smash Hit, and Diablo 3. Games would be far less compelling without the realistic physics simulation that engages the player's intuition and stimulates their motion awareness. Physics has become a staple of the modern gaming tradition as we try to re-create and re-interpret the world around us. The Physics for Programmers tutorial brings together speakers from Blizzard, Respawn, Mediocre, and Valve. Topics include numerical...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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WARNING: Discussion at this roundtable may include descriptions of graphic sexual activity that may be offensive to some. Please do not come if you are offended by such discussion or are under the age of 18. Hardcore "AO" games are here to stay. Last year's crop of sexy games are on their way to sequels or expansions and a new group of games is ready to push the boundaries even further. Online games like DreamStripper and VirtuallyJenna let players explore their wildest fantasies and...
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Topic: GDC
Game physics engines are used to create games like Angry Birds, Half-Life, Tomb Raider, Red Faction, MotorStorm, Limbo, and Diablo 3. Games would be far less compelling without the realistic physics simulation that engages the player's intuition and stimulates their motion awareness. Physics has become a staple of the modern gaming tradition as we try to re-create and re-interpret the world around us. The Physics for Programmers tutorial brings together speakers from Blizzard, Dtecta, Havok,...
Topic: GDC
Among game genres, the visual novel has by far the strongest sense of narrative.But what is a visual novel, and how does it differ from other linear games and types of media such as movies, cartoons, comics, and books? In Japan, where domestic growth of visual novels has been strong, these games are often packed with eccentric and exciting new ideas. The methods that have been cultivated by numerous visual novel creators over the years could very well be applied to other video game genres to...
Topic: GDC
Technical art is evolving rapidly. In many studios TAs play key roles in developing efficient tools pipelines, and ensuring art content is visually striking and optimized for performance. TAs bridge content and engineering, helping make both more successful. However, many studios have still not fully embraced the TA role. Their TAs are smart and eager to make an impact, but are not sure how to best prove their value, and be given key roles in development. A group of experienced, respected...
Topic: GDC
This talk will focus on the technical side of Killzone Shadow Fall, the platform exclusive launch title for PlayStation 4. It will present the details of several new techniques that were developed in the quest for next generation image quality, and the talk will use key locations from the game as examples. The talk will discuss interesting aspects of the new content pipeline, next-gen lighting engine, usage of indirect lighting and various shadow rendering optimizations. The talk will describe...
Topic: GDC
Over the last three years, inkle has been making increasingly complex narrative games built on a foundation of well-written, choice-based interactive text. Taking elements from parser-based text adventures and from paper game books, titles such as Sorcery! and 80 Days have brought interactive stories to the mainstream, earning commercial and critical success. In this talk, we'll describe how our design strategies evolved across the course of three games, with examples focused on how we make...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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The European Innovative Games Showcase (EIGS) at GDC Europe's Independent Games Summit returns for its third edition, showcasing the most intriguing and different independent games from all over Europe. Each selected game is going to showcase what's unique and special about their in-development or already released game in a series of fascinating mini-talks. Come and get inspired! The winning games and studios of 2016 (in no specific order): A Normal Lost Phone (Accidental Queens), La Petite...
Topic: EU
 
Topic: GDC
WGA New Media Writers Caucus member Tim Langdell chairs this Hollywood Writers panel in which Bruce Feirstein, writer of EA's JAMES BOND: EVERYTHING OR NOTHING; Dean Orion, writer of Vivendi Universal's VAN HELSING; Suzanne Oshry, writer of Legacy Interactives LAW AND ORDER: DEAD ON THE MONEY; and Flint Dille, and John Zurr Platten, writers of Vivendi Universal's THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, discuss how their skills as storytellers translate to the language of games. Topics include story-gameplay...
Topic: GDC
Driver overhead has been a frustrating reality for game developers since the beginning of the PC game industry. On desktop systems, driver overhead can decrease frame rate, while on mobile devices driver overhead is more insidious"robbing both battery life and frame rate. In this unprecedented sponsored session, Graham Sellers (AMD), Tim Foley (Intel), Cass Everitt (NVIDIA) and John McDonald (NVIDIA) will present high-level concepts available in today's OpenGL implementations that...
Topic: GDC
Huge, open world games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 demand a great deal of development talent, and can be daunting to plan and create - especially when subject to the constant and often unpredictable flux of a game in development. This level design oriented talk will share insights into the iterative approach used at Bethesda Game Studios to help their level design team plan, implement, test and polish massive amounts of content. The talk will also discuss how this approach allows the team to...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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EEDAR co-founder Geoffrey Zatkin presents a tour de force romp through video game industry data, patterns and trends, covering everything from next generation consoles to the maturation of mobile games to how review scores anchor your perception and everything in-between. Guaranteed to raise your game industry IQ. Attendees will gain a better understanding of recent macro and micro trends of the video game industry - not anecdotal, but trends based on actual, objectively quantifiable data. A...
Topic: GDC
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Vertex animation uses the power of mathematical functions to manipulate vertices on 3D models at the shader level. Using math to drive vertex positions opens up new possibilities for how models can be animated, which will be explored in detail during this session. The mathematics behind some of the unique vertex animations found on assets in Bungie's Destiny will be fully dissected and analyzed. Techniques covered will include strategies for converting mathematical expressions into animations...
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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This is a collection of gameplay videos from a selection of 1996-era computer and console games, including Super Mario 64, Virtua Fighter, Civilization II, Quake, You Don't Know Jack, Wing Commander III, and many others. In some cases, the same footage loops or different sequences of similar footage is shown in various configurations. While it is not clear what the purpose of the tape was, it was likely to be an editing scratch tape (to test out editing sequences or image quality) or might have...
Topics: GDC, GDC Extras, Sizzle Tape
GDC Extras Archive
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From the introduction of the original The Legend of Zelda in 1986 to the graphic design of 2002's cel-shaded The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker, The Legend of Zelda series has undergone many significant changes over the years. Some modifications were accelerated by technological improvements and others stemmed from the desire to adjust theme or graphic representation. Eiji adresses the challenges faced by Nintendo's development team while creating The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The...
Topics: gdc, Eiji Aonuma, Zelda, 2004
GDC Extras Archive
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GDC Extras Archive
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The lecture walks through the construction of a humanoid skeleton and rig from head to toe. The presenter covers at least two alternative strategies for all the main body parts and develops a set of strategies for matching the rigging technique to your application. Attendees should have a basic knowledge of an animation package (either 3dsMax, Maya, or SoftImage). The lecture is intended for animators and TDs who want to move beyond the basics to advanced topics in rigging.
Topic: GDC
Learn how the characters in DRAKE'S FORTUNE were developed. Reduced high-level animation complexity by using abstract animation states. The nuts and bolts of AI/Animation integration as well as our decoupled character movement. With focus on game play, which techniques were used and which ones were not.
Topic: GDC
Technical art is evolving rapidly. In many studios TAs play key roles in developing efficient tools pipelines, and ensuring art content is visually striking and optimized for performance. TAs bridge content and engineering, helping make both more successful. However, many studios have still not fully embraced the TA role. Their TAs are smart and eager to make an impact, but are not sure how to best prove their value, and be given key roles in development. A group of experienced, respected...
Topic: GDC
Building a community can be a big challenge for the indie developer or small studio. How do you find your community? How do you find the right person to manage and grow your community? What kinds of resources are needed for community building? What is wrong with your social media presence? How do you work within the social media terms of service/promotions rules without violating them or the law? Our panelists will help show you ways that you can create and sustain indie studio communities,...
Topic: GDC NEXT
 
Topic: GDC
Great game dialogue is tough to write, which is why so many games have wooden, corny, cliche, or so-so. This session presents 18 techniques you can use to make your game dialogue sound natural - and covey information to the player - while simultaneously giving your characters and game story emotional richness. Make your characters sound real and alive!
Topic: GDC
GDC Extras Archive
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Producers come from all different functional roles and see production through the filter of their past. Producers get most of their experience on the job and as production cycles have grown, so has the learning curve. This leads to producers with varied skill sets that sometimes don't apply to new teams and genres. But whatever their background, all producers need to understand certain key principles and best practices in order be successful. Attend this session lest you drink the bitter dregs...
Topic: GDC