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CONFERENCE  

|    Programming
    PROGRAMMING

As new platforms emerge and existing platforms evolve, programmers face an ever increasing challenge to produce games that capture the attention of the public and the media. The Programming Track focuses on these challenges and the opportunities presented by next and current generation development including: mature consoles, new handhelds, a highly competitive sales environment, and increased demand for very high production values in games.

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2013 HIGHLIGHTED SESSIONS

Fast and Awesome HTML5 Games (Presented by Mozilla)
Vladimir Vukicevic (Mozilla Corporation)
Alon Zakai (Mozilla Corporation)
 
Modern advances in JavaScript tooling and execution allow near-native-code speeds. Combined with standards such as WebGL, Web Audio, and the rest of the HTML5 stack, the modern web is emerging as a platform for high-quality games that have traditionally required consoles or attention-losing downloads and installs. With the web, instant delivery to players is possible, whether users are on desktops, tablets, or mobile phones. In this presentation, we'll talk about techniques for blazing fast JavaScript execution and easy porting of existing titles and libraries in a cross-platform and cross-browser way. We'll show what the web platform offers for graphics, multithreading, networking, and audio. We'll also describe our experiences using these tools to port real-world demos to the web, and show off a number of examples.
Running the VR Gauntlet -- VR Ready, Are You? (Presented by Oculus VR)
Michael Antonov (Oculus VR, Inc.)
Nate Mitchell (Oculus VR, Inc.)
 
Virtual reality may be poised to revolutionize the way we play our favorite games, but creating a great VR game is surprisingly challenging. Developers have to carefully consider latency, user input, rendering performance, UI design, and overall user experience. We'll discuss what developers need to know about supporting the Oculus Rift, how to tackle the major technical hurdles associated with truly immersive virtual reality, and what we've learned so far from building a new platform for VR games.
Network Serialization and Routing in World of Warcraft
Joe Rumsey (Blizzard Entertainment)
 
Online games need robust, easy to use network APIs. No one should still be struggling with how to get their data from one place to another. JAM is World of Warcraft's inter-server serialization and routing layer. This talk describes how JAM came to be, and how it is used today. Real world sample code from WoW and other Blizzard projects are used to illustrate key concepts, such as machine generated code for serialization, and dynamic protocol negotiation. Comparisons to similar open-source projects will be made.
Creating the AI for the Living, Breathing World of Hitman: Absolution
Mika Vehkala (IO Interactive A/S)
Maurizio De Pascale (IO Interactive A/S)
 
Hitman: Absolution is a third-person assassination game, where action and stealth are treated as equal citizens, granting the player total freedom in the way missions are tackled. Its gameplay is a combination of voyeurism, social stealth, action stealth, and tactical combat. All these styles, as well as the transitions between them, must be challenging and fun to play. This requires an AI that adapts to multiple situations and reacts to the player's actions in a believable way. This presentation explains the rationale behind design choices, and provides detailed information about the implementation of the multiple software layers driving AI and NPC animation in Hitman: Absolution.
Outernauts: From AAA Console to AAA Flash Games
Joe Valenzuela (Insomniac Games)
 
Insomniac Games recently launched its latest Flash game, Outernauts. The release of Outernauts marks a number of firsts for Insomniac: the first non-console game, the first free-to-play (F2P) game, and the first game not written in a low-level language (C++). It required effort to maintain Insomniac's standards of production quality, and learn a new development environment and tools pipeline, especially while aiming to follow idiomatic Flash development practices. Joe Valenzuela (@jvalenzu) describes the technical challenges involved in making Outernauts, and focuses on the differences from traditional console title development.
Rendering Assassin's Creed 3
Jean-Francois St-Amour (Ubisoft Montreal)
 
The presentation describes the rendering techniques used for the latest opus in the Assassin's Creed series. Assassin's Creed 3 takes place in an extremely vast and varied world, in both summer and winter, and this required work across a wide number of topics. This talk will cover the game's weather system, lighting solution, ocean rendering and material system. In addition, this presentation covers what the AC3 team believes are the biggest bang for the buck improvements that can be made to current-generation titles being ported to DX11 PC hardware.

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