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.
Profiling Tools and Techniques: New Guidelines for Finding Where
Your Time is Going
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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.
Back to top
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.
Picture Perfect: Gamma through the Rendering Pipeline
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speakers: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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.
Back to top
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.
How to Break Game Security
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: Shane White
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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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?
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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?
Speakers: 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?
Speaker: 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)
Speaker: Dan Tunnell
Back to top
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.
Games for
Windows: A Deep-Dive into the Program, Process and Technical
Requirements
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker:
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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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.
Back to top
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.
XACT to the Extreme: Game
Audio Building Blocks for Programmers and Content Creators
Speakers: 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
Speakers: 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
Speaker: 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
Speakers: 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
Speakers: 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
Speakers: 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
Speakers: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speakers:
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.
Back to top
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.
Don’t Interrupt, Don’t Detract: Using Massive to Incorporate
Non-Invasive In-Game Advertising
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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)
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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)
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speakers: 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
Speakers: 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
Speaker: 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.
Back to top
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.
Extending the XNA Framework Content Pipeline
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speakers: 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
Speaker:
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
Speaker: 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
Speakers: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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.
Back to top
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.”
Getting Your Game on Xbox LIVE Arcade
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: Dave Albert
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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speakers: 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
Speaker: 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
Speakers: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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.
Back to top
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.
Building Lifelike 3D Game Characters Cost-Effectively
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speakers: 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
Speakers: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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
Speaker: 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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