GAMEFEST 2007 PRESENTATIONS AND AUDIO RECORDINGS

Please note that due to technical issues, audio recordings for select presentations are not available.  Also, some presentations and audio recordings are not available by request.  

System Programming for Windows and Xbox 360

Graphics

Quality Assurance and Certification

Producer and Business Development

Audio

LIVE

XNA Game Studio

Games for Everyone

Visual Arts

 

SYSTEM PROGRAMMING FOR WINDOWS AND XBOX 360

Making today’s multi-core architectures work effectively is becoming more interesting with each generation. This track focuses on getting the most out of profiling and performance tools, exciting new features of the Xbox 360 SDK, lessons we’ve learned over the last two years of real world title development for Xbox 360, and tips and tricks for making sure your Windows Vista title is ready for prime time.

 

Presentation	Speaker	Description
Profiling Tools and Techniques: New Guidelines for Finding Where Your Time is Going	Bruce Dawson	Effective CPU performance tuning allows you get the best gaming results on Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 profiling tools continue to expand and improve. This talk explains how to use the new profiling tools and libraries effectively, with an emphasis on CPU performance.
Performance Update and Optimization Case Studies	Bruce Dawson	The Xbox 360 compiler has added new features and fixed old problems, so the state-of-the-art in writing quality Xbox 360 code has changed in many ways. This talk explains the changes and shows new solutions to CPU performance problems.
Effective Game Disc Usage: Compression & Caching	Zsolt Mathe	The new lossy and lossless codecs available in the latest versions of the Xbox 360 XDK enable titles to greatly improve disc usage and streaming performance. The new automatic caching feature provides seamless HDD caching integration into titles. This talk covers integration of these features, best practices, and achieving optimal performance.
Just Make Windows Work	Jason Sandlin	Windows supports a huge number of hardware and software configurations. As a result, authoring and deploying a game with a great user experience on Windows can be tricky. This talk examines the most common trouble spots encountered when developing games on the Windows platform. Topics include installation, patching, security, and the file system.
VMX Optimization: Taking it up a Level	Ian Lewis	The Xbox 360 VMX vector unit holds the potential to speed up floating-point calculations by several hundred percent. But for many developers, a move to VMX yields lackluster results. Why? Frequently, it's because optimizations are done at too low of a level. In this talk, we discuss some of the pitfalls of VMX programming, including pipeline latency and data-alignment restrictions. Then we demonstrate how to move VMX optimization up a level or two, out of low-level math libraries and into higher-level algorithms where its power can truly shine.
Multicore Programming, Two Years Later	Ian Lewis	Two years ago, the games industry was dominated by single-core machines and haunted by the necessity of going multicore. To help smooth the way for Xbox 360 developers, the Xbox performance team rolled out a set of recommendations for getting the most out of a multicore processor. How well have those recommendations stood up over the last two years? What have we learned since unleashing the Xbox 360 on the world? This talk discusses threading models we've seen in shipping titles, suggests an updated set of best practices for multithreading, and presents some techniques for moving multithreaded code from the console to the less predictable world of multicore computers.
Building High-Performance Data Pipelines Using the .NET Framework	Andre Bremer, Electronic Arts	With the ever-increasing amount and sheer complexity of game content, developers face a constant challenge to keep data build times to a minimum. This session highlights the use of innovative techniques in combination with the .NET Framework to create a high-performance XML-based content pipeline for Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars.
Static Code Analysis on Game Code	Marwan Jubran	This talk covers the built-in Visual Studio code analysis parser. This parser was designed to assist in detecting code defects that lead to product instability, expose security vulnerabilities, and reveal performance bottlenecks. We share our experience and strategy conducting static code analysis, process optimization, and lessons learned specifically for the games industry.
Practical Steps in Game Security	Dave Weinstein	This talk presents a step-by-step guide to basic techniques that developers can readily integrate into the game development process. Some techniques covered include source code analysis and integrated data fuzzing.
Why Your Windows Game Won't Run In 2,147,352,576 Bytes	Chuck Walbourn	For several years now, many blockbuster Windows titles have been running out of memory—exhausting the 2 GB virtual address space of 32-bit applications, and in the process often getting strange crashes or having difficulty during content creation before final optimization. In the past year, we've reached a critical point where games need to leverage video cards with 512 MB, 640 MB, 768 MB, or even 1 GB of video RAM while utilizing 2+ GB of system RAM. Simple arithmetic shows that this is doomed to failure, and 64-bit technology with its 8 TB of virtual address space is the only way out. This talk covers strategies for managing that transition, options for getting some breathing room on 32-bit Windows, and investments required to move gaming into the world of 64-bit computing.
Visual C++ 2008: A Game Developer’s Perspective	Boris Jabes	Come discover the new features available in Visual C++ 2008. Many of these features target improving productivity in the IDE, from building faster to improving the debugging experience. Also, with the advent of the C++0x standard, the C++ language and library functionality are growing, so we present these enhancements and identify which are currently supported in Visual C++. Whether you are a seasoned developer or a novice, there is something to discover in the many new features available in VSTS that make life easier for game developers.
Magic and Technology: Migrating from One to Many Cores in Shadowrun	Joe Waters, Microsoft Game Studios	Shadowrun technology began life as a single-thread, Windows-based game architecture and now utilizes six hardware threads, task multithreading, and worker threads. This talk covers the progression of changes made to move from one to many threads, with a strong focus on debugging tools and unit testing used to expose memory overwrites and thread collisions.

 

 

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GRAPHICS

Are you dedicated to taking full advantage of the graphics processing power available on Xbox 360 and/or Windows/D3D10? Would you like to know more about how to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of your graphics engine? Are you interested in hearing war stories about real-world development on both Xbox 360 and Windows Vista (D3D10) – and finding out what really works (and of course what doesn’t)?  Learn all this and more in graphics talks running the full range from deep exploration of platform technologies to real-world experience from other graphics experts in the field.

 

Presentation

Speaker

Description

Picture Perfect: Gamma through the Rendering Pipeline	Steve Smith	Many aspects of gamma correction in the rendering pipeline can be a mystery. This talk explores gamma as it affects content creation and rendering pipelines on both Xbox 360 and Windows. We explore exactly what gamma means to your visuals, and how and where you should tweak it to get the best results.
Xbox 360 GPU Utilization: Past, Present, and Future	Michael Dougherty	How is the Xbox 360 GPU utilized by top-selling games? We show detailed GPU utilization patterns from our top titles. Game designers and programmers can use this information to set scene complexity expectations from real-world–derived statistics. We also discuss where there is room for growth in the future and how to optimize for resource utilization at the macro level.
GPU Font/Vector Rendering and Approximating Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surfaces with Bicubic Patches	Charles Loop	Find out how to render resolution-independent text, without needing different sized bitmaps for different resolutions—all through leveraging the GPU to do text and spline curve rendering. We also explore how to approximate Catmull-Clark subdivision (subd) surfaces with bicubic patches. Doing exact evaluation of Catmull-Clark subd surfaces on the tessellator unit requires a lot of memory access and math operations. Instead, we approximate these surfaces with a much-easier-to-evaluate proxy that is visually indistinguishable from the original. This allows acceleration of common art assets on GPUs equipped with programmable tessellator units.
GPU Data Structures and Advanced Lighting: State-of-the-Art Techniques from Microsoft Research	Hugues Hoppe, John Snyder	This talk covers some of the latest advanced work from Microsoft Research. We examine compressed random-access trees for coherent spatial data—a GPU-based data structure for compressing images with large coherent regions, such as light maps and HDR luminance. We also look into texel programs for random-access, antialiased vector graphics—another GPU data structure that lets a pixel shader evaluate general vector graphics (layers of filled and stroked shapes) with very good antialiasing. Finally, we look at real-time design and rendering of inhomogeneous, single-scattering media.
From the Trenches: Xbox 360 Development War Stories	Kutta Srinivasan	This talk covers a number of different topics in CPU/GPU optimization based on experiences drawn from Crackdown, Gears of War, and Halo 3. One major topic is antialiasing (with and without predicated tiling) and its impact on performance, visual quality, and latency. Reducing render CPU usage is another major pain point for developers, but the most effective solutions—pre-compiled command buffers and caching systems—are not trivial undertakings. This talk explores issues encountered when implementing such a system. A number of other topics are also discussed, including particle system optimization and post-process optimization.
Performance Considerations for Graphics on Windows	Kev Gee	Learn how the Microsoft game performance team (XDC) applies tools and analysis techniques to identify the worst bottlenecks in games. This talk identifies common issues experienced when developing high-end graphics experiences on Windows XP and Windows Vista and outlines approaches to mitigate those issues.
Windows to Reality: Getting the Most out of Direct3D 10 Graphics in Your Games	Shanon Drone	This talk delivers stories from the trenches based on experiences developing D3D10 engines for shipping games. We examine common performance and architectural issues, along with content development and other issues we encountered when moving high-end D3D9 engines to D3D10.
Mapping the Dark Corners: Creating a Flexible Framework for Dynamic Shadowing	Dan Amerson, Emergent Co-Written by: Matt Bailey, Emergent	Real-time shadowing is an important graphical feature for modern games. As algorithms and graphical processing power increase, interactive applications must support an increasingly diverse array of requirements to support modern shadowing techniques across a variety of hardware configurations and scene arrangements. Using the shadowing system developed for Gamebryo, this talk focuses on the design and architecture of a shadow map–based system supporting arbitrary shadowing algorithms across arbitrary scenes. The discussion does not center on the implementation of specific shadowing techniques. Instead, we focus on the design of the supporting structures and data flows to enable the culling, post-processing, and shading techniques necessary to support any combination of shadowing algorithms for any type of game. This discussion assumes attendees are familiar with common shadow mapping algorithms.
Windows Vista Graphics Development Drilldown: Direct3D 10 and 10.1	Sam Glassenberg	Learn how to make Direct3D 10 do your bidding! Discover how to take advantage of new hardware, API, and effects-system features to construct rapid-fire Direct3D 10 material systems that blast way more unique content into your scene. This talk focuses on practical usage of the Direct3D 10 API—driving the latest hardware with maximum efficiency. We also explore the enhancements provided by the upcoming Direct3D 10.1 interfaces.
Xbox 360 GPU Performance Update	Matt Lee	Effective graphics performance optimization is a key to getting your title running smoothly with ever-increasing content requirements. Learn about the newest graphics performance analysis tools in PIX, and get a recap of the most effective graphics profiling techniques. The talk also discusses performance pitfalls commonly seen by recent titles and how you can detect and eliminate them from your own games.
Advanced Xbox 360 Graphics Techniques Using Command Buffers and Predicated Tiling	Matt Lee	Two holidays after the launch of Xbox 360, title developers are still squeezing graphics performance out of the Xbox 360 CPU and GPU using the powerful and often daunting predicated tiling and command buffer Direct3D APIs. In this talk, we examine the inner workings of commonly misunderstood APIs so you can make best use of their functionality. Come see tricks from real game titles, such as how advanced state inheritance can allow render target flexibility with command buffers.
Graphics Futures: Direct3D 11 and Beyond	David Blythe	Direct3D 10 has paved the way for vastly more complex processing on the GPU. This talk discusses where graphics processing is heading next with D3D11 and how it will affect the way game engines and content are designed. We discuss possibilities for how rendering pipelines may change in the future and cover the growing adoption of GPU processing into other parts of the game engine, from physics simulations to AI processing. This talk is designed for beginners and experts alike.

 

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QUALITY ASSURANCE AND CERTIFICATION

As the complexity of games increases, so does the complexity of game testing and certification. Quality Assurance professionals, it’s time to arm yourself for the next generation!  Learn about a variety of advanced technologies and testing techniques that will improve game quality and reduce the certification costs of both Xbox 360 and Windows game titles. Explore unique approaches to address the significant challenges teams face today in TCR compliance, security testing, test automation, and more.

 

Presentation

Speaker

Description

How to Break Game Security	James Whittaker, PhD	Online security is getting a great deal of attention these days, and traditional targets such as e-commerce vendors and online banks are going to extraordinary lengths to secure their applications. As these targets become more secure, attackers are methodically seeking new online assets to replace them. One of their favorite new targets is game software. Some games are themselves high-value targets with their own online economies to exploit. Games are also widely installed, representing a potential entry point for installing spyware or adding new machines to an existing botnet. Like it or not, game developers have no choice but to pay close attention to their attack surface and threat model. This talk discusses game security from the point of view of the attacker, including attack vectors, threats and exploits that impact design, and development and testing of game software.
Five Hundred City Blocks of Pure Destruction: Adventures in Testing Crackdown	Jami Johns	When games scale up from simple levels to teeming, towering, highly-detailed cities, how can test teams keep pace? See some of the strategies and techniques developed by the Microsoft Games Test Organization to test the content in Realtime World’s open-world sandbox game Crackdown. Using examples from the game, the talk covers concepts that testers, developers, and artists can use to maximize their test team’s effectiveness, limit the time lost to bad bugs, accelerate bug regression turnaround, and generally test more games in less time. The talk also presents some lessons learned about strategies worth avoiding.
Serving Multiple Masters with Build Instrumentation	J McBride	Is your test team frequently over-tasked and divided between design, development, and production activities? Do you need to gather data to analyze test coverage, how your game behaves, or how people play your title? Find out how a little bit of code can produce a lot of meaningful data for your test team and other disciplines. This talk showcases how the Games Test Organization within Microsoft Games Studios has successfully implemented build instrumentation as a method for finding bugs, reporting coverage, providing game-balance feedback, and more.
The Xbox 360 Diaries: A Collection of Test Solutions Utilizing the XDK	Andrew Marthaller	As with any toolset, the more familiar you are with it, the more you get out of it. The Xbox 360 XDK is no exception. The Microsoft Games Test organization has been engineering solutions with the XDK as long as anybody, and they would like to share their accumulated knowledge. This talk focuses on important XDK features for test engineers, including console automation, debuggers, save-game tactics, and more. Come see how Microsoft teams are using the XDK to their advantage to increase test coverage.
XSim – How to Find Bugs with Simulation of XInput	Steve Dolan	Microsoft Game Studios has used controller simulation to find bugs in games dating from the original Xbox console through to the Xbox 360 console. Intelligent use of controller simulation has added thousands of hours of test coverage for every Microsoft Games Studios title. Starting with the August 2007 XDK, this functionality will ship to the development community at large in a new API called XSim. This talk discusses the features of the XSim API and then dives into how teams at MGS are currently using it.
Passing the First Time: How Activision Successfully Navigates the Submission and Certification Process	James Galloway, Activision	Passing Microsoft certification on your first submission significantly improves your chances of keeping your product on schedule and increases your ability to stay within budget. Presented by Activision, this session provides information on the testing, submission, and certification process. Topics include planning, organization, communication, structure, testing methodologies, and the submission of games. This talk is particularly relevant to new and veteran producers, test managers and directors, test leads, and testers of games.
Better, Faster, Smarter: Using Tools for Certification Testing	James Jacoby	Have you been looking for ways to make your certification testing more efficient and effective? Find out about the latest tools used by the XNA Game Quality team when certifying Xbox 360 titles. Explore the use of existing tools to create custom certification test solutions. See hands-on demonstrations and learn valuable tips and tricks. Find those nasty non-compliant issues before submitting for certification, and help get your game to shelf on time!
TCR Failures, Taxes, or Death: Which One Can You Prevent?	Darin Metzler	Come find the answer to this question and many others such as which TCRs are often roadblocks to getting a game to market? Why does a specific TCR exist anyway? How is a TCR created, and how does it expire? The information you gain from this talk will enable you to walk away with the confidence you need to properly assess TCR issues specific to your game and prevent the extra expense of resubmission.
Submission Pitfalls and How to Avoid the Crocodiles	Jay Blanton	Are you submitting an Xbox 360 game for certification? Before your title can enter testing, it must be submitted and pass a set of checks. Learn about the top reasons for rejection from the Mastering Lab and how to avoid them. Review tools and techniques to identify these problematic issues that can affect full game, Xbox LIVE Arcade, demo, and title update submissions. Ensure a painless submission and path into certification!
Are Your Games “Games for Windows” Ready?	Chris Wilson, Mark Rabold	What are the gotchas that most commonly happen to Windows titles? What do I need to do with my patches to maintain compatibility? What tools are available for me to use to validate my game? Where do I get the technical requirements for Games for Windows titles along with the test cases that go with them? If you are asking yourself these questions, then this is the talk you need to attend. Come and learn what the top five technical requirement failures are and how to avoid them in your Games for Windows title. See how to use tools such as application verifier, MT.exe, and more.
What Is Games for Windows – LIVE?	Mike Gamble	Imagine a world where a single online identity allows you to find your friends across Windows and Xbox 360 platforms, earn achievements on Windows-based computers, and enable cross-platform gameplay. Now imagine going through the Games for Windows – LIVE certification process. Come hear a comprehensive introduction to Games for Windows – LIVE certification so you can get your PC-based titles ready for the next generation of gaming on Windows. Get the scoop on Mastering Lab signing, Service Level Agreements, and Technical Certification Requirements (TCRs) specific to Games for Windows – LIVE.
Medic!!! First aid for games hemorrhaging packets (and other common-networking problems)	Dan Tunnell	Networking bugs can degrade the performance and playability of any network-aware game. Lag and frame-rate spikes are common in multiplayer games. Have you ever wondered if these occurrences were caused by the networking code instead of the game code? Sometimes these bugs and others like them are difficult to pinpoint from within the game, and external tools must be used to identify the source of the problem. This talk addresses networking basics, capturing data via Microsoft Network Monitor (NetMon), analyzing the data, and identifying common problems found in many online games. The focus is primarily for titles developed on the Xbox 360 platform.

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PRODUCER AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Learn everything a producer or business development attendee needs to know for Microsoft gaming platforms. Learn about recent developments in the Games for Windows and Games for Windows – LIVE program. Hear about our marketing and retail efforts. Get updates on Xbox LIVE, DirectX 10, Marketplace, Dashboard updates, in-game advertising, and much more! You’ll leave the conference with a solid understanding of how to be successful building games for all Microsoft gaming platforms.

 

Presentation

Speaker

Description

Games for Windows: A Deep-Dive into the Program, Process and Technical Requirements	Brian Benincasa	The Games for Windows program is much more than a branding and marketing effort; it’s an entirely new way to approach game development, testing, and user experience on the PC. This talk walks you through the process by which you plan for, develop, test, brand, and market your Games for Windows title successfully. The talk covers new details for those who are already somewhat experienced with the Games for Windows program as well as the basics for those who wish to learn more about it.
Third-Party Marketing: Process, Priorities, Partnership	Katrina Strafford	You know how to take advantage of your internal resources to create and execute great marketing plans, but do you know how to partner with Third-Party Marketing to create go-to-market plans that are even more effective and that take advantage of Xbox and Games for Windows platform opportunities? In this talk, we discuss how the Third-Party Marketing team is organized and how they work. We discuss how the team establishes priorities, and how you can better partner with them to create successful product launches. This talk is designed for anyone who wants to better understand how the Third-Party Marketing team works and all the opportunities that exist to partner with the team.
PANEL: How to Engage the Community, Without Outraging Them	Moderator: Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb	Panel Members: Liz Loverso, Director of Product Development, Red Storm Entertainment, Inc. Robert Bowling, Community Manager, Infinity Ward Jeff Pobst, CEO, Hidden Path Entertainment David Weller, XNA Community Manager, Microsoft Working with the community, and especially being the public face of the community, has its own challenges and rewards. Larry Hryb, “Major Nelson,” leads a panel on building and keeping community credibility through podcasting, blogging, community events, forums, and community programs. This talk also covers how to get your community noticed and how to deal with the inevitable negative attention that will come with it. This talk is intended for community managers and anyone interested in the power and perils of community.
Bend Microsoft Project to Your Will	Mike McShaffry	Almost everyone agrees that scheduling game production with Microsoft Project is somewhere between difficult to impossible. This talk demonstrates some tricks in Microsoft Project learned over ten years of consistent use. Come learn how to organize your schedules and how to schedule milestones; learn the difference between using priorities and links; understand how to use custom working schedules; and see how to enter extra data into your schedules to keep everything in order. The talk also shows how to keep your schedule up to date, making it a consistent and near-perfect picture of your project’s current state.
A Producer’s Guide to Games for Windows – LIVE	Drew Johnston	Learn more about what it means to bring your Games for Windows title to the Microsoft LIVE Gaming and Entertainment Network. With the recent release of Games for Windows – LIVE, Microsoft has extended the Xbox LIVE network to the Windows platform. We’ll put to rest some of the myths and misconceptions around Games for Windows – LIVE and get the facts on how you can enable your titles to be LIVE titles. This talk covers the features available on Games for Windows – LIVE, including support for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, DirectX10, integrated voice, cross-platform play, achievements, List Play, dedicated servers, and what it takes to get approved to be a LIVE title. This talk is for producers or business development team members interested in cutting through the confusion and getting to the bottom of what it takes to make a Games for Windows – LIVE title.
The World Beyond Retail: Maximizing Your Game with Connected Consumers	JJ Richards	You’ve made a great game. You’ve hit all the usual suspects to deliver a successful launch at retail. Now what? If it’s a runaway hit, how are you going to capture the upside? If it’s underperforming, what are your contingency plans to hedge the downside? Have you thought about any of this yet, or were you planning to do that after the post-ship vacation? There’s a lot more to your game than the $60 retail box, but you have to think about that stuff early if you want to take advantage of it later on. Come learn about all the opportunities that connected consumers can bring to your game, including advertising, free and paid marketplace downloads, promotional tie-ins to music and video, events and programming, feedback and viral marketing, and so on. Come learn what connected consumers want in your game and what keeps them connecting. Learn how to manage the entire lifecycle of your game, not just its birth at retail.
The 10 Things You Should Be Thinking About for Your Next Game	Michael Maston	February, April, June... It seems like the Xbox 360 XDK and DirectX SDK are coming out all the time and they seem to be filled with new things you have to know about and consider using in your next game. Which new features are most important and will help you get your next release out on time and looking spectacular? Which ones are going to save you from those sleepless nights and let your team spend more time putting the “fun” in the game? This talk walks you through the key new enhancements and tools and tells you why your studio should be looking at them for your next project.
Developing Games for Xbox LIVE Arcade	Mark Coates	In this session, whether you’re a seasoned developer or brand new to the platform, we provide an overview of the Xbox LIVE Arcade publishing process from concept submission to product release. The Xbox LIVE Arcade team has some new best practices to aid in the development of high-quality, successful games for Xbox LIVE Arcade. We identify core platform features and share advice for building these features into your game design. Discover what we’ve learned from publishing 70+ games over the past few years. This talk is intended for anyone who is interested in publishing or developing games for Xbox LIVE Arcade—especially producers and designers who drive the overall creative vision for their products.
A Producer’s Guide to Xbox 360 Certification	James Jacoby	Getting through the Xbox 360 certification process is one of the final steps in releasing a game to market. Learn about the Xbox 360 game certification process end-to-end. Find out about the biggest challenges around TCR compliance, certification scheduling, and the title mastering process. Explore opportunities to identify problems early and pass certification on your first try—get your game to shelf on time! This talk is intended for producers of Xbox 360 games.
Bringing Games to Everyone	Marc Whitten	Games are spreading further than ever before as gaming enthusiasts around the globe embrace the current generation of consoles and computers. Still, an opportunity and a challenge lie before us: How do we take these compelling experiences and make them accessible, attractive, and meaningful to people beyond the core gaming market. In this session, Microsoft covers some of its strategy “beyond the core” and discusses specific developments in content, peripherals, and services. Most importantly, the session shows how you can take advantage of these efforts in your game titles in the coming months and years.

 

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AUDIO

 

Making noise on Microsoft platforms is more dynamic and powerful than ever! Presentations will cover the array of tools, libraries, and services provided for adding sound to your title, including the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) for Windows, Xbox 360, and XNA Game Studio Express. Other topics include case studies of titles that have pushed the envelope for audio innovations, audio middleware technologies, programming the native low-level audio layer, developing cross-platform audio strategies, using real-time effects and audio compression formats, and working with multi-channel audio. This track is intended for audio programmers, composers, sound designers, and audio directors, and will offer applicable content for both expert and novice game developers.

 

Presentation

Speaker

Description

XACT to the Extreme: Game Audio Building Blocks for Programmers and Content Creators	Brian Schmidt, Scott Selfon	The Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) continues to undergo enhancements for programmers and content creators alike. This talk presents an overview of the capabilities, interfaces, and usage scenarios for Xbox 360, Windows, and the XNA Game Studio environments and offers updates on new feature areas relating to real-time sound control, in-game editing and iteration, and future plans for the XACT engine and authoring tool.
A Field Guide to the XACT Authoring Tool	Scott Selfon, Scott Morgan, Brian Schmidt	Come join us as we observe the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) in its native habitat, working in a symbiotic relationship with composers, sound designers, and audio programmers. This talk covers both introductory and intermediate concepts in XACT, including the creation of wave banks and sound banks, categories, runtime parameter controls, reverberation, auditioning, mixing/monitoring, and deployment on Xbox 360, Windows, and XNA Game Studio.
Power to the Core: Audio Foundations on Microsoft Platforms	Brian Schmidt	Microsoft’s three primary gaming platforms offer enormous potential for audio implementation and development. This talk presents an overview of the audio tools and technologies available on Xbox 360, Windows, and XNA Game Studio. Topics covered include audio services on Xbox and Windows, including low- and high-level libraries, compression formats, and voice support, as well as tools for creating, implementing, and profiling audio for your titles.
XAudio 2 Goes Green: Making Game Audio a Sustainable Resource	Brian Schmidt, Dugan Porter	The August 2007 DirectX SDK and Xbox 360 XDK releases introduce the beta of the new XAudio 2 cross-platform audio engine — the same game code and content can now be deployed for Windows and Xbox 360 titles, using an engine with sophisticated signal processing flexibility and intelligent default features. Learn about the XAudio 2 audio model, standard and optional features, and how to get the best mileage out of audio playback, mixing, and signal processing, as well as the vision for the library from here to launch and beyond.
Learn to Speak XAudio 2 Like a Pro: Translating from DirectSound and XAudio	Brian Schmidt, Ian Lewis, Dugan Porter	Designed to be the long-term, low-level audio rendering solution on Microsoft platforms, XAudio 2 may look quite familiar in many ways and more exotic in others. DirectSound users will find significant improvements and enhancements over the “old” ways of Windows game audio. XAudio users will find many similarities but also advances based on user feedback. Bringing together these previously foreign tongues into XAudio 2 allows for true native cross-platform audio development. This talk covers the most common techniques for moving from the old interfaces to XAudio 2.
XMA: Ndrstndg Prseptul Adyo Cmprshn	Ian Lewis, Scott Selfon	The XMA compression format provides enormous compression gains over previous-generation game audio technologies, while addressing many of the game-specific issues relating to perceptual formats (looping, seeking, and so on). The Xbox 360 hardware XMA decoder means that virtually all game sounds are XMA-compressed. The designer-specifiable quality setting allow for a balanced approach to aggressive compression versus the introduction of objectionable artifacts. In this presentation, we explore some of the reasons behind these artifacts as well as techniques for minimizing them and allowing for even smaller compressed audio asset sizes.
Positioning Yourself for 3D: X3DAudio and Sound Spatialization	Duncan McKay, Scott Selfon	XAudio 2, XACT, and XAudio all abstract their notions of 3D into a separate math library—X3DAudio. This library provides tremendous flexibility for how titles implement 3D, with support for multipoint emitters and multichannel sound sources, independent listener and emitter objects, and transparent calculations that can be utilized, replaced, or enhanced at will by the title. This talk offers a sampling of X3DAudio functionality, with demonstrations of various techniques for making soundscapes immersive and dynamic.
Paint-by-Noise: Practical DSP Implementation Techniques	Ian Lewis	Digital signal processing (DSP) can afford enormous audio manipulation with a minimum of asset creation, disc space, and processing time. The language of audio DSP is perhaps even more sophisticated and mature than the graphical equivalent of pixel shaders. Learn how to harness the power of DSP with the deep-down mathematics that replicate or simulate audio processes such as filtering, radioization, and noise shaping. Discover how to bring the mastering effects of the studio (compression/limiting, EQ, and others) into the real-time interactive mixes of game titles. Audio examples will be provided.
xAPOs Mark the Spot: The DSP Implementation Framework for XAudio 2	Duncan McKay	Windows Vista introduced Audio Processing Objects (APOs) for sophisticated, real-time digital signal processing (DSP) of audio streams. Now XAudio 2 makes APOs practical for real-time in-game implementation, on both Xbox 360 and Windows. In this presentation, we walk through the objects and interfaces required to implement a DSP effect, including such topics as channel manipulation, data sharing, exposing parameters, and optimizing the audio processing path of your DSP effects.
Case Study: Shadowrun: Magic, Tech, and Guns, Oh My! Audio at the Service of Gameplay within the Constraints of a Multiplayer-only Title	Tobin Buttram, Audio Director, Microsoft Game Studios	Shadowrun delivered a number of industry firsts: first Games for Windows – LIVE title, first cross-platform title for Xbox LIVE and Games for Windows – LIVE, and first title to ship with the AudioKinetic Wwise audio engine. This presentation focuses on both the aesthetic and technical challenges of creating audio for the bleeding edge, multiplayer-only title, using FASA’s proprietary game engine and a brand new third-party audio solution.
Dolby Digital 5.1: Taking it Back to the Basics	Matt Tullis, Dolby Laboratories	This talk starts with proper 5.1 studio set-up, calibration, bass management and downmix considerations for Dolby Digital on Xbox 360. We then move on to mixing techniques for your game audio engine. We also use live demos to illustrate examples for creating compelling ambiences, the use of dynamic range, and how to best deal with multichannel music.
Audio Tools Summit: A Panel Discussion	David Rudolph, CRI Middleware Inc.; Jacques Deveau, AudioKinetic; Andrew Scott, Firelight Technologies	The breadth and depth of audio tools available for implementing sound on Microsoft platforms offers incredible choice and specialization for developing immersive and dynamic soundscapes. In this panel, we bring together some of the leading audio tools developers for an interactive conversation regarding the current state of audio implementation and a future vision for tools and audio implementation development.

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LIVE

The Xbox LIVE service has continued to grow and evolve, from Xbox to Xbox 360, and now Games for Windows – LIVE. With new features ranging from party-based matchmaking and host migration, to XLSP and server-based gaming, the LIVE service is more committed than ever to enabling the most dynamic platform for online gaming. Get the latest details on integrating LIVE with your Xbox 360 and Windows games, learn how to use these technologies to drive innovation and excitement in your games and online player communities, and have a peek at what's coming next.

 

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Don’t Interrupt, Don’t Detract: Using Massive to Incorporate Non-Invasive In-Game Advertising	Mat Adams	There is no question that game development costs are rising, along with the ever-increasing pressure to offset those costs by any means possible. The next generation of games offers a great opportunity—in-game advertising—that can help you to accomplish this cost savings while creating a more dynamic and immersive gameplay experience. It’s critical that the advertising not affect aesthetics or gameplay, and that there should be minimal impact on scheduling. Microsoft's Massive Software Development group has spent the past few years enabling developers to do exactly this. And now, with the release of the August 2007 XDK, we take the next step forward in easing the technical burden of integration as the Massive SDK is now part of the XDK. This talk focuses on the new C/C++ APIs, best practices on how to integrate the AdClient into your games, and a peek into what the future holds for in-game advertising on Microsoft platforms.
Ranking and Matchmaking: TrueSkill Revealed	Ralf Herbrich	Skill-based ranking and matchmaking is a central component of most next-generation online games, and is often vital for the long-time success of a game. Since the launch of Xbox 360, Microsoft has offered game developers a centralized ranking service called TrueSkill™. The TrueSkill system is accurate and fast. In order to give game developers and designers a more fine-grained control for their online stories, a number of extensions have recently been added to the TrueSkill system. In the talk, we present all the extensions and tools developed over the last 12 months. These include partial play, partial updates, match-specific draw probability, and so on. Each extension is thoroughly discussed both from a “How-to-do-it” and “Pros-and-Cons” perspective. In the second half of the talk, we present a set of matchmaking recipes based on the lightweight Xbox LIVE session model that can greatly enhance the competitive online gaming experience. We discuss common pitfalls in skill-based matchmaking using TrueSkill and how to avoid them. The talk frequently references existing games and presents some analysis based on those games.
Let’s Get This Party Started! (Matchmaking and Parties)	Jeff Sullivan	Playing online is about much more than just being thrown into a match with strangers—people want to play online with their friends. Xbox LIVE already supports Invitations and Join-via-Presence as base functionality, but what if you want to gather a group of friends into a party, to play online against others? How do you use this party-based system with Ranked Matches? What’s the best flow for a Custom Match? How do you make your cooperative game TCR compliant and easy for players to get into? All these questions and more are answered here. This talk is intended for those who want to dig into the details of how to best take advantage of the range of options available for Matchmaking, using the Sessions system. Come see how design and technology interact to create a virtual couch over Xbox LIVE.
Learning to Share: User-Generated Content	Zsolt Mathe	As gaming becomes more connected and many gaming communities are created all over the world, having a rich online presence and content sharing is increasingly important. User-created content opens up a new avenue for users to customize, create, and share content, making the game their own. User-created content can take many forms, from the simple the ability to create skins for avatars, vehicles, and weapons to putting your face in the game and in user-created levels. The talk discusses different approaches that games have taken to enable user-created content, covering high-level design choices as well as technical implementation details. This presentation is intended for those who want to learn about the avenues of adding user-created content and for game developers who want to learn about LIVE services that enable content sharing.
Developing Server-Based Games on LIVE (I'm Looking at You, MMO)	Ian Lewis	You’ve done network achievements and leaderboards, matchmaking, and downloadable content. Now what do you do to take your networked game to the next level? More and more titles are answering that question by building custom title servers on the XNA LIVE Server Platform (XLSP). Tapping into the endless possibilities of custom servers using XLSP isn’t technically difficult, but it does raise a host of questions—from scalable design to legal issues—that most game developers haven’t faced before. This talk introduces technical and nontechnical attendees to the possibilities of custom title servers. Topics range from simple data collection all the way up to full-scale massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, Come see how Microsoft is making it easier to develop and deploy server-based games on LIVE.
Bringing the Best of Xbox LIVE to Windows	Rod Toll	With Games for Windows – LIVE, we have worked to give you the ability to integrate the best features of the Xbox LIVE network into your games, while keeping a watchful eye on the needs of the PC-platform player. This talk covers a range of features specifically designed to enhance your title, while keeping the features PC players have come to expect—from free multiplayer and dedicated server support, to achievements, leaderboards, and more. In addition, this talk reviews what features are available to silver users, and what’s offered to gold subscribers. If you want to learn more about how to incorporate these features and what this functionality means to your players, or you just want to know more about incorporating Games for Windows – LIVE into your next hit title, this is the talk for you. This talk is intended primarily for engineers, since it does cover technical aspects of the APIs used; however, anyone looking to gain greater insight into Games for Windows – LIVE will certainly find the talk valuable.
Connecting Worlds: Cross-Platform Game Creation Using Games for Windows – LIVE	Arka Ray	There is a new buzzword in the industry: cross-platform gaming, generated solely by the unprecedented connection between Windows and Xbox 360 through LIVE. The introduction of Games for Windows – LIVE has opened up a whole new methodology for designing and implementing games: games that are not just built for Xbox 360 or Windows, but rather, games that are designed to connect the two platforms and take advantage of each platform's unique strengths! This talk covers both the technical and design aspects of cross-platform games. We address the ease of porting Xbox LIVE code to work with Games for Windows – LIVE. In the process, we cover the similarities and differences in fields such as audio and graphics and the overall API set. We also discuss some lessons learned on designing and balancing games across platforms from the early adopters of Games for Windows – LIVE.
Keeping it Secret, Keeping it Safe: Top Security Lessons from Xbox LIVE	Greg Hartrell	It's a challenge to build secure online experiences for gaming. Unlike other common online experiences, such as banking, unwieldy security barriers can ruin the entertainment value of your title or offering. This talk explores several approaches to classic security problems that affect gaming, each presented as lessons derived from the Xbox LIVE service during this session. This isn’t a crush-this-box security uber-nerd–style of talk—just practical thinking and concepts you can take away and integrate into your own work. The talk includes walkthroughs of scenarios and threat models.
Online Features of Forza Motorsport 2: The Rewarding World of Community Gaming	Brian Spanton, Steven Jackson, Che Chou and Bill Giese	Online features are the new frontier in gaming. Forza 2 has embraced this frontier, paid its cost, and been greatly rewarded. This presentation, which is targeted for those who want to learn the ins and outs of designing such features, will also appeal to those responsible for implementing those designs. We touch on Tournaments, Photo, Spectator, and Gifting, but focus primarily on Auction House and Reporting. Come see how custom online features can add immense differentiating value to your game. The talk covers the types of technology involved, and helps you understand some potential barriers to entry and some likely pitfalls, and ways to mitigate both. Listen to Turn 10 designers talk about how powerful it is to be able to build a vital player community, and get detailed data on what that community is doing in your game. The talk concludes with some post-mortem observations and fascinating stats from Forza 2’s online feature usage.
Donnybrook: Making Networked Games More Fun	Jay Lorch, John Douceur	Resource limitations such as ill-provisioned servers, low bandwidth, and high latency can really suck the fun out of networked games. This is especially true for twitch games such as first-person shooters. The Donnybrook project within Microsoft Research aims to overcome these limitations and make networked games more enjoyable. In this talk, we discuss a couple of solutions we've developed. First, we show how to make computer-controlled opponents more challenging by offloading an overloaded server's AI computations to clients with spare resources. Second, we show how to allow first-person shooter games to scale to hundreds of players, all interacting with each other seamlessly, despite the seeming lack of adequate network bandwidth. In both cases, we developed Quake-based prototypes to illustrate the effectiveness of our techniques.
Adding Creamy Nougat and a Crisp Candy Coating to the Network: XRNM and QNet	Vance O’Neill	Multiplayer networking is difficult, but getting it "right" can be so sweet. Dig in to the XRNM and QNet libraries—two very different ingredients that help make your online game delicious. This talk presents fundamentals and optimization strategies with the flexible point-to-point communication heart of XRNM. It also details the benefits and common pitfalls of the simplified LIVE session management wrapper called QNet. No matter which ingredient suits your taste, come learn recipes for success that will keep users hooked.

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XNA GAME STUDIO

XNA Game Studio continues to lower the barrier to entry for a new generation of Xbox 360 and Windows developers. Presentations in this track cover exciting new XNA Game Studio Express features that enable developers to create games faster and on a smaller budget than ever before. The XNA Game Studio line of products and services are covered in both high- and low-level detail with focus on new APIs, managed runtime performance, and partners. 

 

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Description

Extending the XNA Framework Content Pipeline	Frank Savage	The XNA Framework Content Pipeline allows developers to use Visual Studio to build their art into resources for use with the XNA Framework and XNA Game Studio. This talk covers how to create new importers and processors using C# to extend the functionality of the Content Pipeline as well as how to debug these importers and processors using XNA Game Studio. We go in-depth into the creation of the code for the importers and processors and do hands-on debugging of the resulting processor and importer to give the audience a clear idea of how to work with and extend the Content Pipeline.
Creating Content the Softimage|XSI Way for XNA Game Studio	Alexandre Jean-Claude, Softimage	This talk presents new tools in the integration pipeline between Softimage|XSI and XNA Game Studio. The talk explains the process of connecting Softimage|XSI into an XNA Game Studio project, and then presents a tutorial on content creation for geometry modeling, real-time shading, and animation. The tutorial is followed by a detailed explanation of how data created in Softimage|XSI can be accessed on the game side. We demonstrate an actual example running on the XNA Framework. This presentation is specifically targeted at programmers and technical artists who want to produce and consume high-quality content for their XNA Game Studio project.
Understanding XNA Framework Performance	Shawn Hargreaves	This talk is for programmers who want to understand how the XNA Framework works on Xbox 360, and the implications for writing high-performance code. The talk explains when and why the framework transitions between the Xbox user and supervisor modes, and why should you care. The talk also presents best practices for writing efficient graphics and math code, how to use multiple cores to parallelize your game, and which XNA Framework APIs can be called reentrantly while doing so. Finally, the talk demonstrates what tools are available for investigating performance on Xbox 360, and how Windows tools can help you understand Xbox 360 performance issues.
The Costs of Managed Code: The Avoidable and the Unavoidable	Rico Mariani	This talk is for those who want to understand the inescapable performance consequences of the managed programming method: the things you cannot avoid and the things you can. The presentation explains those few characteristics of managed code, such as array bounds checking, application domain isolation, and write barriers, that profoundly affect the code generation at a primitive level. Comparing and contrasting the consequences for the .NET Compact Framework and the classic .NET runtime, the talk explains the reasons for these overheads, the benefits they provide, and what practices minimize the associated costs. Additionally, we discuss some commonly occurring costs, such as boxing, that aren’t inherent to all managed code, and we offer some tips for minimizing those costs.
Pre-Mortem: Torpex Games' Schizoid	Jamie Fristrom, Bill Dugan, Torpex Games	Considering XNA Game Studio for a new commercial game project and want to know what you might encounter down the road? This talk covers the experiences of several AAA game developers who have almost completed an XNA Framework game for Xbox LIVE Arcade. We delve into the pros and cons of using the XNA Framework and share a few engineering tricks we learned along the way. This presentation is targeted at programmers and producers interested in learning about shipping an Xbox LIVE Arcade game using XNA Game Studio.
Developing 3D Games on the XNA Framework Using TorqueX	Clark Fagot, Adam Larson and Thomas Buscaglia GarageGames	TorqueX provides a rich set of 3D features to ease the development of XNA Framework games. The Torque Component system allows complex game objects to be created from easy-to-integrate parts. Rigid body dynamics, lighting, poly-soup collisions, and terrains rendered with clip maps are all first-class features of the engine. This talk introduces the key concepts in TorqueX development and demonstrates how to put a game together in minutes.
What’s New in XNA Game Studio 2.0	Mitch Walker	Last December 2006, XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 brought new levels of approachability and ease in developing video games for both Windows and Xbox 360. We are taking our commitment to democratize game development further with the upcoming release of XNA Game Studio 2.0 this holiday 2007. To learn more about this major update, join this talk as we provide an early look at exciting new features and tools shown publicly for the first time. Filled with great demos and code samples, this talk dives into the enhancements to the XNA Framework, content pipeline, and developer environment, and even offers a glimpse of our community sharing plans.
Networking with the XNA Framework	Mitch Walker, Shawn Hargreaves	Playing games by yourself can be fun, but it’s far better when you can play with others, whether cooperatively or head-to-head. Creating multiplayer games using XNA Game Studio, however, requires networking support in the XNA Framework for both Windows and Xbox 360. And that support simply isn’t there…until now! For the upcoming release of XNA Game Studio 2.0 later this holiday 2007, we will be augmenting the XNA Framework to include support for networked games. Come learn where we’re taking networking in the XNA Framework, what is supported and what’s not, and how you will soon be able to enable multiplayer support in your games.
XNA Game Studio for Fun and Profit	Frank Savage	One question resounds as more and more developers discover the productivity gains from XNA Game Studio. How do you make money from the games you create? This talk offers a sneak peek at developing an Xbox LIVE Arcade game along with details of how professional developers can take advantage of XNA Game Studio to produce commercial games.
Advanced Debugging in Managed Code	Matt Picioccio	XNA Game Studio offers a robust debugging experience that can greatly enhance a developer’s ability to investigate a game as it runs. Developers of managed games have many debugging techniques at their disposal, but not all of them are self-evident. This talk covers advanced debugging techniques useful to game developers, including demonstrations of powerful IDE debugger features and other tools provided by Microsoft.

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GAMES FOR EVERYONE

The core gaming audience that drove the initial growth of the games industry represents only a fragment of the worldwide consumer audience for games. Learn about Microsoft Casual Gaming services, including MSN Games, Xbox LIVE Arcade and Windows LIVE Messenger, as well as lessons that casual games teach us about making big budget games accessible to a much broader audience. Hear about Microsoft’s upcoming efforts to broaden the audience for Xbox 360, and for games across all platforms, and what these efforts mean to developers who want to drive the next growth of the entire games industry to include “Everyone Else.”

 

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Description

Getting Your Game on Xbox LIVE Arcade	Katie Stone	Xbox LIVE Arcade continues to be the premiere platform for distributing and playing high quality, easy-to-pick-up-and-play games. This session covers what’s new in creating and deploying on Xbox LIVE Arcade and developments heading into 2008. Get insight into changes in requirements, the process by which concept submissions are reviewed and titles selected, and what to expect out of the production process.
Everything You Need to Know About Developing for MSN Games	Kim Pallister	With over fourteen million unique visitors per month, MSN Games is one of the leading casual game destinations in the world. Properly deploying on such a site requires an understanding of the different services offered and business models used. This talk covers all of MSN Games services, business models, technical requirements and acceptance criteria for games submitted to the services. The talk also covers the “how” of getting deployed on the service along with the correct engagement points.
The Quarter-Billion-User Game Platform: Developing Games for Windows LIVE Messenger	Debbie Thiel	With over 250 million users worldwide, Windows LIVE Messenger is an excellent vehicle for developing and delivering multiplayer casual games. With every user’s friends list being its own community, and with Windows LIVE Messenger having such a broad international audience, the platform requires a different approach to game design and development. This talk covers Windows LIVE Messenger details, audience demographics, and what it means to develop and deploy on this unique platform.
Clues in the Puzzles: What Casual Games Can Teach About Accessibility	Ellen Beeman	The game industry has no shortage of quotes from pundits about the need to take games “beyond the core gamer.” However, in looking for games that have appeal beyond the hardcore customer base, you need look no further than the casual games industry. In making games easy to approach, easy to pick up, and easy to play, the casual games industry has learned lessons that apply across games of all genres and all platforms. In this session, we look at some of the lessons learned in developing casual titles on a variety of platforms that successfully went “beyond the core.”
LIVE as Design Tool	Joshua Howard	With Xbox LIVE, Microsoft introduced a quality online service for consoles that offers multiplayer play, community, and metagame functionality. Games deploying on the platform integrate the LIVE service’s functionality. While at first glance this may seem like a development task, it should also be viewed as an opportunity for game designers: the opportunity to use LIVE as a design tool. In this session, we examine examples of how the metagame can give developers freedom to encourage replay, drive play behavior, and enable out-of-context activities in their games. We present many examples from Xbox LIVE as well as MSN Games.
A Producer’s Guide to Games for Windows – LIVE	Drew Johnston	Learn more about what it means to bring your Games for Windows title to the Microsoft LIVE Gaming and Entertainment Network. With the recent release of Games for Windows – LIVE, Microsoft has extended the Xbox LIVE network to the Windows platform. We’ll put to rest some of the myths and misconceptions around Games for Windows – LIVE and get the facts on how you can enable your titles to be LIVE titles. This talk covers the features available on Games for Windows – LIVE, including support for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, DirectX10, integrated voice, cross-platform play, achievements, List Play, dedicated servers, and what it takes to get approved to be a LIVE title. This talk is for producers or business development team members interested in cutting through the confusion and getting to the bottom of what it takes to make a Games for Windows – LIVE title.
Microsoft Casual Games APIs for MSN Games and Messenger	Jiunwei Chen	Two of Microsoft’s most widely deployed gaming platforms, MSN Games web games and Windows LIVE Messenger, both offer APIs for deploying Flash-based or custom ActiveX control–based game titles. This session gives an overview of both APIs as well as the development environment and tools for each.
Windows Vista and Casual Games	Kim Pallister, Chuck Walbourn	Windows Vista provides casual gamers with a whole new games experience, enriched by graphics and features that were not possible on previous operating systems. Join us for a deep-dive on how Vista benefits the casual game developer and enhances the casual games experience. This session covers challenges and opportunities in development and distribution, and what it means for the casual games community.
Building Games for Windows Mobile	Brian Lio	Learn about gaming on Windows Mobile! Find out about the current state of mobile gaming and learn how to build, certify, and sell your game on Windows Mobile. The talk offers the opportunity to hear from and talk to a current Windows Mobile game developer, Jetpack Games.
Making Social Games that Are Fun for Everyone: Lessons Learned from Consumer Testing	George Moutsiakis, Tom Fuller	A unique set of challenges arise when designing social gaming experiences that are compelling and approachable for a broad audience. To help developers address these challenges, the Games User Research team at Microsoft has tested social and broad appeal games with hundreds of consumers. These findings will be presented, along with practical methods for collecting feedback from consumers. Findings will include group play patterns and interactions both on and off the screen, and recommendations for supporting compelling social experiences for a broad audience. Case studies will also be used to highlight findings and recommendations related to approachable gameplay, GUI, controls, and use of the “Big Button” in social and broad appeal titles.
Bringing Games to Everyone	Marc Whitten	Games are spreading further than ever before as gaming enthusiasts around the globe embrace the current generation of consoles and computers. Still, an opportunity and a challenge lie before us: How do we take these compelling experiences and make them accessible, attractive, and meaningful to people beyond the core gaming market. In this session, Microsoft covers some of its strategy “beyond the core” and discusses specific developments in content, peripherals, and services. Most importantly, the session shows how you can take advantage of these efforts in your game titles in the coming months and years.
Developing for Xbox LIVE Arcade: The Developer's View	Steve Taylor, Wahoo/NinjaBee	With three successful Xbox LIVE Arcade titles under their belt—Outpost Kaloki X, Cloning Clyde, and Band of Bugs—Wahoo/NinjaBee are seasoned veterans of developing for Arcade. In this session, attendees get a look at the developer’s perspective of building and deploying games on Xbox LIVE Arcade. From lessons learned, to tips and tricks, to how to turn the Arcade publishing team into your thankless, tireless minions, this session will prove invaluable to anyone planning on developing games for Arcade. This talk is intended for developers and producers.

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VISUAL ARTS

The demand for talented technical artists in the game industry is greater than ever before. The visual fidelity expected in the current generation of Xbox 360 and Windows titles demands even more sophisticated techniques, requiring wider and deeper usage of the key tools available to artists. Hear about the latest and greatest from some of the best companies in the industry you know best, and learn how to boost the power of your art pipeline.

 

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Description

Building Lifelike 3D Game Characters Cost-Effectively	Alexandre Jean-Claude, Development Manager 3D products and games, Softimage	This session focuses on the production of digital characters for games. This talk leads you through best practices for setting up a 3D character creation pipeline, and then demonstrates methodologies that enable a non-destructive workflow for modeling, texturing and weighting using GATOR. We then show how to build and design a character animation pipeline that uses a heterogeneous set of content creation tools, such as Autodesk 3ds max and Softimage|XSI, by using Softimage|Crosswalk.
Tools-Based Game Animation Systems	Simon Mack, NaturalMotion	This talk discusses the use of tools-based pipelines for in-game animation. Using NaturalMotion’s morpheme as an example, we examine how the use of visual tools for authoring run-time animation can dramatically improve the quality of in-game character performance while reducing production timescales. The talk also demonstrates practical animation authoring techniques and looks at how they impact the roles of animators, developers, and designers within game teams.
The Art and Technology of Whiteout	Abe Wiley, Lead Artist, Game Computing Applications Group Demo Team, AMD	Whiteout is the latest chapter in the adventures of Agent Ruby, ATI’s real-time graphics heroine. This installment of the Ruby franchise is significantly longer and more complex than any other demo ever created by the Demo Team at AMD. Come join us for a discussion of the challenges faced by the team as we raised the visual bar yet again. In this talk, we discuss how we redesigned our art pipeline from the ground up to provide us with a new level of creative control and flexibility. Attendees will learn how the highly detailed and expansive environments of Whiteout were textured using artist-directable procedural shader effects. We also discuss how we were able to team with Image Metrics to bring Ruby to life using their performance-driven animation system.
Improving Static Lighting: Experiences from DICE	Henrik Halen, Software Engineer, Dice; Rasmus Bonnedal, Software Engineer, Illuminate Labs and David Larsson, Software Engineer, Illuminate Labs	When Dice prototyped their latest game, it became clear that ordinary solutions for baking static light maps with direct lighting would not be enough to recreate the look of the concept art. By integrating Beast from Illuminate Labs with Unreal Engine 3, they managed to bake light maps with global illumination without sacrificing the power and ease of use of UnrealEd. In this talk, Dice introduces some of the challenges and solutions to making their latest game stand out. Illuminate Labs will present Beast, the platform-independent GI baking and rendering software that made the unique look of the game possible.
Integrating High-Level Shading Effects into Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya	Ryan Meredith-Jones and Bernard Lefebvre, Autodesk Consulting	This technical talk for shader writers describes the range of high-level shading effects that can be integrated into the latest versions of the Autodesk applications 3ds Max and Maya. We discuss each application's draw architecture, and explain how high-level shading components integrate with the architecture to produce complex effects. We also discuss mechanisms for building effective customized shader user interfaces in both packages, and touch on topics relating to our support for next-generation graphics APIs.
Play It Forever: Designing Game Art for Today and Tomorrow	Kevin Bjorke, Art & Technology Evangelist, NVIDIA Corporation	This talk addresses one of the thorniest decisions artists and producers must make in designing PC-based games: how can we capitalize on the impressive ongoing advances in game hardware and APIs while making our game accessible to as many players as possible? Should we aim low, for the broadest market today, while ignoring the high-end hardcore gamers, or should we aim high, pleasing our most dedicated customers and anticipating the capabilities of the wider market in the future? Can we do both? Can we afford to? Can we afford not to? These are even tougher questions for makers of online games, where they may have many simultaneous players in the same game environment, each with computers of widely-varying capabilities and with different expectations of image quality—and where producers hope to make games that will remain playable for year after year. How can we future-proof our assets? How can we build game art that is most useful for the current wide range of player hardware, whether console or computer? This talk covers a range of strategies and techniques that have been used successfully by game studios, new ideas for techniques developed by NVIDIA and partners, and realistic tools and information to help producers and artists make the best art-pipeline decisions.
Athletic Performance: Creating Believable Interactive Character Motion	Henry LaBounta, Chief Visual Officer, Electronic Arts	One of the biggest challenges for Next Generation games is achieving believable character motion. This presentation combines examples of game footage, live action footage, and real-time software demos to illustrate how Electronic Arts is achieving organic motion and improved gameplay in their sports titles.
Natural Outdoor Lighting in Games	Otavio Good, Senior Architect, Secret Level	This presentation covers Secret Level's lighting tools, techniques, and pipelines. We focus on our outdoor lighting model that tries to be as physically accurate and artistically flexible as possible while still maintaining 60 fps. The talk explains to both artists and programmers several advanced lighting techniques including: preprocessed bounced light, hemisphere sky lights, GPU acceleration of lighting preprocesses, spherical harmonic prelighting for particle systems, and storage and streaming of lighting data in real time.
Track Environment Creation from Real-World Reference	Mark Peasley, Technical Art Lead, Turn 10	This talk covers the steps involved in creating real-world race tracks for Forza Motorsport 2 on Xbox 360. Topics range from planning and executing a successful photo/data reference trip to converting it into game-ready assets. The talk also covers some of the additional design and implementation challenges of fictitious race courses.
Introduction to Human IK Middleware: Complementing Your FK Animation	Jason Walter, Autodesk Consulting	Visual realism for characters has made many strides over the past 10 years. It is now possible to create very detailed characters in real time. Much of today’s in-game animation has been driven by forward kinematic (FK) animation. This talk introduces techniques for adding inverse kinematics (IK) to gameplay and discusses how to use IK to complement traditional forward kinematic animation. HumanIK is a standalone library that has been extracted from the Autodesk MotionBuilder animation engine. It provides realistic, real-time, full-body, human inverse kinematics and real-time retargeting. We use Autodesk MotionBuilder to demonstrate HumanIK middleware functionality with specific game scenarios.
Future of an Illusion: Game Animation for the 7th Generation	Steve Theodore, Bungie	Animation has long been the most neglected of the game art disciplines. While new hardware and graphics techniques have revolutionized environments, models, and effects in the last few years, animation has seen mostly incremental improvements. However, all that is changing: with new technology and the increasing power of multicore platforms, game animation is due for a shakeup. This talk takes a look at promising new animation technologies and techniques. The topics we cover range from physically based systems to completely procedural approaches, with an eye towards the potential uses and pipeline realities in these new approaches to bringing characters to life.

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