02.03A Preview of GDC - by Jeff Ward
GDC has several tools centered talks this year, and I wanted to give everyone a heads up about a few of them (especially because searching for “tool’ or “tools” brings up every session that wants to give you the tools to succeed).
First, as happens every year, John Walker will be hosting his usual Technical Issues in Tools Development roundtable. John is an excellent roundtable moderator, and the discussions are always excellent. This year, John has smartly put in specialized topics for discussion each day, so you can know which day to go if you’re specifically interested in one topic. If you’re interested, you can view prior year’s notes on these round tables at the IGDA Tools SIG wiki, located here.
In addition to John’s roundtable, Jeff Hanna will be hosting the Technical Artist Roundtable, which very frequently talks about tools and tools design for artists.
On the lecture front, our own Geoff Evans will be giving a lecture on The Tech Behind the Tools of Insomniac Games. Geoff has already posted a little bit about this, and I’m sure the talk will be excellent.
Other talks that looked potentially interesting to tools developers:
- When Good AI Goes Bad: Tools, Techniques, and Strategies for Testing and Debugging AI
- Two pipeline talks from Gears of War 2, one on the cinematic pipeline and the other on the character pipeline.
- A talk on test tools called Test Tools Potluck, which won’t talk about development of the tools, but may give you a good idea of how tools can improve your testing process.
Lastly, but most importantly, I will be hosting a round table specifically to talk about the Tools SIG and our plans for the next year. I really want to encourage everyone to come out to this round table so we can get ideas and focus our initiatives over the next year. I also want to get an idea of who would be interested in helping with the many ideas for white papers and community contributions that have been floated on our discussion list in years past. So, if you’re free during that time, please make an effort to come out and support the SIG.
Anyone else know of any tools talks happening at GDC this year? Specifically talks on build process? They seem to be very lacking this year.
Can you guys make an effort to grab any resources (slides) from these talks and post them here? I’m still not sure if I’ll be able to crash the GDC this year! Boo!
kthxbai
February 8th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I’m sure we can get notes, but Think Services (aka CMP) controls the slides of most of the talks. I’m sure we can convince Geoff to post his slides here, and I’ll make sure that the notes from John’s roundtables and the SIG roundtable are posted.
February 9th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Thank you very much for the plug for the round-tables! It is my humble privilege to conduct this 6th year (8th year this RT has been at the conference).
As Jeff pointed out, this year is the first time there is a specified specialization for particular days. I can’t take credit for that change, it was at the request of the conference, but I support their decision. It is something that some of the “regulars” and I have discussed for the last few years, so I am eager to see how that works out.
Having said that, I want to reassure people that if the preferred topics are exhausted and time allows that we will move on to whatever subjects people want to bring up. The per-day topics are just a preference for topic selections on those days. The format I have followed (having inherited it from David Weinstein) is to solicit the attendees for topics rather than trying to specify them ahead of time. This has worked well in the past and I have no intention of making any radical changes.
For those of you who have not been to the round-tables in past years, I must humbly warn you that these sessions do fill up, even with the larger rooms which have been provided the last two GDCs. I certainly don’t mind people wandering in and out as their schedule allows, but the folks manning the doors are only allowed to let so many people in before they will close the doors. If you can, please show up a few minutes early; this will also increase your chances of getting an actual chair to sit in.
Please feel free to email me directly at john at w4lker dot net if you have any questions.
I look forward to seeing everyone I can at GDC; don’t forget to come up front and give me a ‘howdy’ before or after the sessions if you can make it.
Thanks,
– john
February 20th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
[...] one week away from GDC and the times for most of the talks have been solidified. The links in my previous post will be able to tell you where and when to catch some tools related talks. This includes our [...]
March 16th, 2009 at 8:03 am