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Coding
A Frame’s Life: Frame Timing, Synchronization, and Latency in UE
Every frame in Unreal Engine goes on a long journey before reaching the screen.
In this talk, we’ll walk through that journey from gameplay code through the game thread, render thread, RHI thread, DirectX, the GPU, and finally onto the display. We’ll explore how these stages synchronize, how frames are queued and presented, and how small decisions can add measurable latency.
By the end, you’ll have a clearer picture of frame pacing, vsync, VRR, swap chains, input delay, and Unreal’s game thread synchronization options, so you can make more informed decisions on the tradeoffs between performance and responsiveness.
Session Takeaway
The audience will learn about the many different factors that make up whether a frame makes or misses a vsync.
From Potatoes to Super-chips: Optimising Player Experiences Whatever the Mobile Device
Mobile players expect smooth, responsive gameplay regardless of whether they’re playing on an older phone/tablet or on a modern flagship device. For developers already targeting mobile, or considering extending PC and console experiences onto mobile, hardware fragmentation across many vendors and generations remains one of the biggest challenges to delivering great player experiences.
In this talk, Nordeus share practical lessons from developing and optimising Top Goal, a football title currently in soft launch aimed at supporting a wide range of devices and regions. Arm will complement this with insights into on-device profiling techniques that empowered the Nordeus team to make efficient and effective performance improvements where it counts.
The session will cover accessible, free profiling tools available to developers today, along with concrete examples of feature scaling and optimisation strategies that preserve gameplay feel across low-end and high-end devices alike. We’ll also discuss why mobile is increasingly important for player retention, enabling engagement between PC and console sessions in short, everyday moments.
Attendees will leave with a clear, practical approach to tackling device fragmentation, improving player experience, and making informed performance decisions that scale from “potatoes” to modern super-chips.
Session Takeaway
- Why to profile on real devices, early and often. (Emulators and desktop builds don’t reflect real-world CPU, GPU, or thermal behaviour)
- How to optimise for frame stability and responsiveness, not just FPS. (Consistent frame pacing and low input latency define player experience)
- How to scale features intelligently, not indiscriminately. (Preserve gameplay feel across “potatoes” and super-chips by targeting the biggest bottlenecks first)
Moving from Engineering To Management
This talk will explore the different pathways that an engineer (or IC) can take in order to move into management. It will include personal experiences within management (both as an employee and as a manager) and a thorough dive into management itself, exploring the pathways to management, different types of managers, and how to properly balance opportunities. Additionally, it will discuss in detail the different steps an engineer must take and the responsibilities that come with each of those steps.
Session Takeaway
- The questions to ask and conversations that can be had to define a path into management
- How to balance engineering and management responsibilities
- The different options available within management
Postmortem - Shipping Godot VR and Porting to PSVR2
We set up an indie studio because we wanted to build cool things in VR. Part of that is working directly with hardware so we chose Godot so we could build our own tech stack overtime. This talk dives into the technical challenges of using an unproven engine and shipping in a difficult technical space where almost everyone is on Unity/Unreal with multiple layers between them. The challenges of hitting framerate and the design and technical choices and mistakes we made.
Review rewriting the font engine, dealing with undocumented APIs from platform holders and variety of corner edge cases that taking control of your tech stack as a tiny indie studio bring. Then add on the decision to port to PSVR2, Apple and variety of other hardware.
Session Takeaway
- How to build an engine as an indie.
- Understanding of Godot, and the pros and cons of seeding your tech state with an existing engine.
- Some VR / Godot specific programming lessons.
Stealing from AAA for Fun and Profit: Lessons in Code Quality
Scaling a project from prototype to production is a time when a lot of technical debt comes due, as the small team at Failbetter Games working on our upcoming game, Mandrake, found when entering production. This is a talk about how (and why) we decided to tackle this problem head-on with a focus on code quality and architecture, the challenges we faced, and the benefits that came back to us as a result.
Session Takeaway
- Where the cheap wins are when adopting a focus on code quality.
- Tips on moving from prototype code to production code.
- The cost/benefit tradeoff of doing all this at indie scale.
Technical Debt : Keeping your House Clean and Tidy
Technical debt is a phenomenon both overpresent and understudied. No matter your role in a production team, you've certainly encountered it yourself, or heard someone complain about it.
But what, exactly, is technical debt? What causes it? How bad is it? Can we avoid it? How?
We'll shed some light on the scary monster that plagues so many projects, see how it came to be, why it's often here for good - or at least unavoidable - reasons, and how, if we learn how to handle it intelligently and without fear, it can become a familiar part of our daily job.
This talk is non-coders friendly !
Technical debt does not happen only in code, and managing it is not the prerogative of programmers.
General examples and daily-life metaphors will be used, and while there will be some anecdotes from my own experience as a developer, we won't be digging into technical details.
Session Takeaway
A better understanding of what technical debt is, how it can hinder your production and impact your team.
Learning to identify its root causes and understand that you often can't avoid it...and that sometimes you don't want to.
Practical tips on how to evaluate and manage the debt you will create so it doesn’t overwhelm you.
