Category Archives: Conferences and events

GDC 2009: iPhone Development: Exploring The New Frontier

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Things have been so busy ever since I got back from GDC that I never got a chance to upload the slides for my GDC presentation. So here they are. You can download the Keynote file directly from here, or view it online.

The presentation went very well. The room was *completely* packed, with every seat taken and people standing along the walls. In retrospect I shouldn’t be surprised because it was the only iPhone presentation in the main GDC conference. Clearly there is a huge amount of interest in the platform. I’m already pushing to have a lot more iPhone content for next year, so you can all look forward to that.

Because it was the only iPhone presentation in the main GDC, I had to keep it very high-level and focused on the question of “what can you expect if you switch to develop games on the iPhone”? Not like I can really answer that, but at least I can share what my experience was. Hopefully next year I can really dive into some juicy tech topics.

In the meanwhile, if you’re dying for some more technical content, go check out my latest column in Game Developer Magazine dealing with multi-touch input devices with the lessons I learned from Flower Garden.

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Update: Ari Braginsky recorded the audio of the session (part 1 and part 2), so if you want, you can follow along with the slides. Thanks Ari! I believe that the synced audio and slides will be available through the GDC web site for registered attendees too.

Becoming Indie: 360iDev Presentation

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360|iDevHere are the slides for the 360iDev presentation I gave a few minutes ago. They’re in Keynote format. Thanks everybody for coming and all the questions at the end. It was lots of fun!

Session description: This session will cover the experiences of a professional game developer, used to 200+ person teams, multi-million dollar budgets, and 3+ year schedules, who left all that behind to become a one-person indie company developing exclusively for the iPhone. It will explain how things are different and how some things are very much the same, and will show specific examples of graphics technology, development environment, and asset pipeline. I will be using my current iPhone project, Flower Garden, as an example. The audience will learn what the transition is like and what to expect going indie making games for the iPhone.

BecomingIndie.key.zip

Presenting at GDC 2009 on iPhone Development

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gdc09It seems like GDC was just the other day, but GDC 2009 is around the corner! And this year, I’m going to be giving a presentation titled iPhone Development: Exploring The New Frontier I’m sorry about reverting to the cliched format of having a colon in the presentation title. It was too hard to resist :-) .

I’ll be sharing my experiences transitioning from traditional AAA console game development, with teams of 100+ people, multi-million budgets, and several years of development, to indie iPhone development. There are a surprising amount of things that carry over from “big game development”, and quite a few that are totally different. I’ll go into what’s involved making games for the iPhone, and what game developers can expect when making the transition.

Apart from my talk, I’m particularly excited about this year’s GDC. It seems that the amount of content on indie game development and iPhone game development has shot through the roof. On Monday and Tuesday we’re treated to not just one, but two great summits: The Independent Games Summit and GDC Mobile! Last year, the Independent Games Summit was the best part of the show. Meeting all the other indie game developers out there and hearing their experiences was great. This year I’m hoping for more of the same plus all the iPhone-specific content.

Of course, the main conference is packed with great content too, but I haven’t had time to go through all of it and pick the sessions I want to attend yet. Too busy wrapping up my current project.

So if you see me around the show, stop by and say hi. I’m always glad to meet other fellow developers, and it’s always nice to put a face with a name for those of you that I know know through Twitter or online blogs.

A Whirlwind Tour Through GDC 2006

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Spring was supposed to be the season of flowers, new leaves, and good weather returning. Here in San Diego we don’t get much of that, or rather, we get it all year around. So Spring can really sneak up on you, and before you realize it, it’s already gone. Spring also seems to be the season for game-development conferences and travel: just a few weeks apart we get Sony’s conference, Microsoft’s, and, of course, GDC. I’m not even going to count Dice and E3, also happening around the same time. Continue reading →

SIGGRAPH 2005 Quick Take

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The SIGGRAPH conference continues to evolve with the times. Ten or fifteen years ago, it was very academically driven, solving problems that nobody had solved before just for the sake of doing something different or more realistic. Today, SIGGRAPH has a much more pragmatic character. Most solutions and techniques presented have been developed out of a need for movie rendering, model authoring and manipulation, or even real-time graphics applications. At the same time, SIGGRAPH has retained the same rigorous background that it always had, making it quite a change from what we’re used to in game development.

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