Posted on 14 March 2021 by Alexander Pirogov & Victor Stepanov

GameDev Tools weekly made by Alexander Pirogov and Victor Stepanov.

AI Gaming Research Summit Videos

AI
Computational Creativity

If you are interested in AI + Tools we recommend you watch “Computational Creativity (Day 1 Track 2.1)” and “Computational Creativity (Day 1 Track 2.2)”.

Recordings from the #AIGamingResearch Summit are now live!

Catch the plenary talk and opening remarks from @XboxP3 and @katjahofmann: https://t.co/utfymShf3B @o_saja & @nancybaym discuss responsible gaming: https://t.co/Q9nAMXzy5X

Watch all the videos: https://t.co/J0jGrOpVve
— Microsoft Research (@MSFTResearch) March 8, 2021

To Blueprint, or not to Blueprint

Unreal Engine

Check out this amazing video from Alex Forsythe. Some people say it is like watching Bob Ross but for UE.

I've made a video explaining why @UnrealEngine offers both Blueprints and C++, and how they typically fit together in a game project. I often hear the tradeoffs oversimplified to "Blueprints are easier to use, but C++ is faster." I wanted to do better. https://t.co/IT57TF9B6f
— Alex Forsythe (@alexforsythe) March 12, 2021

Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment 2020 Videos

AI
Procedural Content Generation

The AIIDE'20 presentations are now online.https://t.co/nV5zyidjZr

You should definitely take a look at the AIIDE'20 presentations if you are interested in artificial intelligence and digital entertainment. @AIIDEconference @Yawgmoth46
— Levi Lelis (@levilelis) March 4, 2021

Interview questions

Work

What questions do you ask when interviewing for a Tools Engineer position?

From all coding tests I've seen I think SuckerPunch had the best one (in one problem they cover what most of other tests would do in multiple questions/problems): https://t.co/DhSWcsw8Hf
— Бранимир Караџић (@bkaradzic) March 10, 2021

UX of working with AI

UX
AI
Computational Creativity

We are hosting another workshop on User Experience with #AI in Games at @FDGconf.

Please share:
Call for papers is here: https://t.co/SjlB2ZcWbu
Deadline: April 16th.

Organizers: @henr_war @magiseif @jichenz @harkover @MirjamPE pic.twitter.com/2sYamNbAgW
— Christoph Salge (@ChristophSalge) March 13, 2021

Free Book on 3D Math!!!

Learning

Such a great resource is now available for free!

Fletcher's book was one of the first great and really accessible introductions to 3D math, and remains so today.

If you are starting out, or feel your 3D math needs brushing up, this is a great starting point. https://t.co/asAAFIdHf3
— Christer Ericson (@ChristerEricson) March 13, 2021

Debugging with hot-reload

C
C++
Workflow

I detach the debugger to rebuild and reattach it afterwards, so it lets go of the PDB file. Works in most cases, but not if you want to debug the reload mechanism itself.

To do that I put `while (!IsDebuggerPresent());` right after the plugin is reloaded.
— Niklas Gray (@niklasfrykholm) March 11, 2021

Porting to Linux

Our Machinery
Engine

Our newest addition to the team, Raphael, blogs about, “Porting #TheMachinery to #Linux “ #gamedev https://t.co/FcMp5ZYG81
— Our Machinery (@ourmachinery) March 8, 2021

How do you support scripting?

Our Machinery
Engine
Scripting

One of the reasons we’re using C APIs is to make it possible to bind ANY scripting language using FFI.

We’re thinking of whether we should also have one “blessed” scripting language. It would have some advantages — out of the box support and a more cohesive scripting community.
— Niklas Gray (@niklasfrykholm) March 8, 2021

C++ learning resources

C++
Learning

A great list of C++ resources in the thread.

What is your favorite C++ resource / reference / blog / YouTube channel, etc?
— Jason Turner (@lefticus) March 12, 2021

Improving UX with hardware

Random

Do you have modes in your tools? Do they need a hardware switch? :)

This reminded us of William Chyr’s “MIDI CONTROLLER FOR TWEAKING VARIABLES” article mentioned in GDC 2019 Tech Toolbox mico talk of Em Lazer-Walker (skip to min 24).

Vim Clutch – A hardware pedal for improved text editing (2012) https://t.co/JKhiRcKsHF
— Hacker News (@newsycombinator) March 12, 2021

The Toolsmiths updates:

The Toolsmiths are slowly migrating the conversations from Slack to Discord
via GIPHY
Toolsmiths @ GDC 2021
- GDC Tools Summit
  - We are waiting for your submissions for the GDC 2021 Tools Summit! Send your talk proposals to Geoff Evans and David Lightbown
- GDC Tools Roundtables:
  - Join us this summer at the virtual Tools Roundtables!
We are continuing our 3rd season of the Vault Club in our Discord Server.
- We are discussing programming languages and how they apply to Game Tools development.
  - Just finished discussing:
    - Rust
    - Dion
    - Odin
  - We still plan to discuss:
    - Jai
    - D
    - Kotlin
    - Zig

Notable Releases and Updates

Promethean AI has some updates

Hey Friends! We just pushed another build and in an effort to serve our community better we put up a cool public trello board with an animated list of all the build updates!https://t.co/JP1ngRFPOe
Give us your input on Discord! We'd love to hear it ♥https://t.co/xhabg1dDnc
— Promethean AI (@PrometheanAI) March 12, 2021

Only 1 work day since our keynote and we've already pushed a number of fixes and new features that you have requested! Like stickers for example. Thank you so much for being such so active!
If you haven't yet - join our discord not to miss all the fun! https://t.co/xhabg0W2vE pic.twitter.com/fYRRL3aWMr
— Promethean AI (@PrometheanAI) March 9, 2021

SHADERed update

SHADERed v1.5 is out!
- detect undefined behavior in your shaders
- variable value viewer
- global breakpoints
- instruction heatmap
- profiler
and more...

Download: https://t.co/lIcJzzucu9
Blog: https://t.co/nKHUUILcIT
Video: https://t.co/ameihqpASA #gamedev #indiedev #shaders pic.twitter.com/dBtfZRYUi9
— dfranx (@dfranx_) March 11, 2021

GameDev Tools weekly - Issue 5 — March 14th, 2021