FRIDAY
Uncharted 3: Outsourcing with Naughty Dog and Xpec
This was an incredible talk (to those of us dealing with Outsource partners).

Main take-aways were they have too much management between the artist/outsourcer.

Not an ideal situation.

Outsourced entire level designs.  Highbar established in-house for first part of level, then iteration happened on their end.

Shipped a ‘lite’ version of their engine to outsourcers to test and ensure adherance, unfortunately due to technical iteration on state-side end, this proved to be lost time and NOT a good way to go.

THURSDAY
The Cameras of Uncharted 3

• Used more smaller targeted cameras
• programmer based
• using maya, spline, etc
• then created cam blend system
• amazing in-game cam spline system
• fixed cam and debugging features
• bake cameras down to character
• had a parenting system that they used to hookup to options and then scripted object
• cam collision probe/aoe
  cam damped spring /softened
  flip 180 rule in brawl cam
• embed multiple melee cams into the animation
• left rotation but parented position
• low frequency shake
  gave ability to animators

Another great round of talks today. I spent a good deal of the day in meetings, but attended two fantastic sessions. One was from the company that bought the failed APB game.

APB monetization challenges

• hailand rising
• APB reloaded
• fallen earth
• UGC – assisted publishing
• reloaded games
• platform@reloadedinc.com
• sword of new world
• freetoplay they own trademark!
• they set M title
• music editor in game!
• unreal mgmt server system
• amazing custom character

merging ok with losing

1. bad missions
2. skill ratings system sucks
• curve matching Bayesian matching
• if win first match 30% to spend $
3. rewarding bad behavior
• encouraged cheating/tools
• went to double threat = bad

map inflexibility

too large, no noob zone, too procedural, no manual map building.

had to build NEW all by hand

no signposts

removing tutorial = 20% bump in retention, learned ease/accessible

?tutorial: why not make it better?

• scammers/cheaters/dos attacks/game optimization
  • gear, guns, cars, clothing
  • time-savings

  premium accounts
  -shorten time
  weapons added trials
  gear-cosmetics is lowest revenue
  -monetization it was NOT important
  end of match push buy premium
  1000 days to find f2p peak
  plan for peak revenue
  140k
  .5 players
  shooting for $30 arpu

Technical Art of Diablo 3

The second talk was from Blizzards Lead technical artist regarding how their technical art team evolved over the course of Diablo 3 production.

Takeaways:

• turned into imagineers
• by allowing for rapid iteration with tools able to become designers

Key takeaways
Hansoft dependency tracking = suck

Tuesday-Techart Bootcamp
powershell

Rob from Bioware

Seth

jason Hayes volition

description

Function

justification

understand the end user

be mindful of over-engineering

Phased Development

Tactical

interface design

Architecture Design

The costume / mods have been updated. Goggles are near complete and made some progress on the xbow.

http://bangrevolution.com/wordpress/?page_id=199

Great article/interview on Gamasutra talking with Nathan Martz and Tim Schafer of Doublefine regarding their new Sesame Street Kinect Game:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6295/capturing_the_spirit_of_sesame_.php

Now first let me say that I rarely quote myself, but occasionally I spout something that after reading I’m proud to say I wrote it. Today was one of those occasions. A co-worker had asked me what I think of the recent changes at work. This was my reply.

“I am a hopeful optimistic. Life is too short and this space too small to have a negative outlook.
Change is always difficult no matter where you are in this industry (or life for that matter).
The abilities to reach out, speak up, react and adapt are admirable qualities that few possess and fewer still acknowledge.

With that said, change never comes easy, but for those willing to work hard, work together, and more importantly execute they will reap the benefits. I believe we have a really good crew and if we can stay focused I have 100% confidence that what we turn out will be nothing short of greatness.”

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/

Older link, but great explanation of quaternion vs euler and rotation orders.

http://www.guerrillacg.org/home/3d-rigging/the-rotation-problem

http://gigaom.com/2008/04/17/pixars-brad-bird-on-fostering-innovation/

older article, but very relevant information for ALL companies