Coding
The games industry clearly remains the most exciting and varied sector for a programmer to go to work in. In the Coding Track our seriously knowledgeable and experienced technical speakers will show you exactly how to rise to the many challenges and opportunities facing game programmers today - including new and emerging platforms like VR, AR and MR.
Coding sessions
Developing a Cross-Platform Game Using a Custom Engine in 2018
Are you writing or considering writing a custom engine for your next game project? This session discusses the lessons learned from developing Wargroove for Windows, Mac, Linux, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Playstation 4, using a custom engine written in C++14. It explores why Wargroove went with a custom engine, whether it was the right choice, and how big of an undertaking it was. It also seeks to answer whether a custom engine is the right choice for you, what challenges lie ahead of those who go down that road, which skills will be required of them, and how this choice affects the wider team, beyond programmers. Finally, it provides some practical tips that should be helpful if you are interested in writing your own engine.
Takeaway
- Should you write a custom engine for your next game?
- How big a task is writing an engine?
- what skills do you really need to write a game engine?
A Technical Deep-Dive into Unity's Asset Pipeline
Assets are at the very core of any Unity game, and yet the asset pipeline can be one of the most opaque systems to developers. In this session, one of Unity's internal developers will deep-dive into the process your assets will go through from being dragged into the project window, to being loaded by the engine when you hit play. This session will also feature a low-level look into how assets, dependencies and scenes are represented within Unity and how you can use a deeper understanding of these systems to improve your game's performance and your studio's development experience.
Takeaway
A deeper understanding of:
- How assets are represented in Unity
- What really happens during the import process
Knowledge that can be directly applied when:
- Designing your studio's Asset workflow
- Creating advanced game systems and editor scripts
Top Unity workflow tips from one of Unity's internal developers
Optimising Dynamic Graphics for PSVR in Unity
This talk is going to use the development of a Sony Funded PSVR game as a case study in how to optimise for large numbers of dynamic objects in a VR environment. The nature of the project required many custom solutions that departed dramatically from the typical Unity render pipeline. Using code examples, performance benchmarks and GPU traces from the project the talk will walk through modern graphics pipelines, shader/lighting optimisation and performance bottlenecks. We will compare this to a more typical high performance VR project and show how to understand where Unity performs well and where alternate solutions may be needed. While this talk will focus on Unity and PS4 as the primary environments many of the elements discussed are applicable to different engines and platforms. The talk will be constructed from the dual experiences of the Lead Programmer and the Lead Technical artist on the project.
Vehicle AI Through the Ages
This session will start by outlining the greater complexity of Vehicle AI over Character AI, especially when writing one that controls a simulated vehicle instead of an emulated vehicle, and cover the reasons why you would want to do this in games. I will move on to explain the problems that were faced over time, and the solutions used to overcome them. Finally I'll give an insight into where the Vehicle Specialist Team at Ubisoft Reflections will be taking this topic in the near future.
Enhancing Your game's AI using Unity Machine Learning Agents
The session focuses on the implementation of the Unity Machine Learning Agents API (introduced in 2017 and continuously updated ever since) into an existing game or project. The talk includes an introduction to Machine Learning and it is open to all developers. No prior knowledge is required. Alessia will cover how this is approached by Unity and what the best tips and tricks are to get up to speed with it. You will be introduced to some examples of small projects produced by the Machine Learning team at Unity, and then look at a feature demo breakdown to see how this is done in-engine. The session aims to give an intermediate understanding of Reinforcement Learning and of the workflow of Neural Network training based on a Unity environment.
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It’s the one opportunity in the year where it feels like so much of the UK development community is right here – it’s a great place to find out what people are up to and what are the latest trends.
Dan Bardino
Sony Interactive Entertainment
There’s something creative about Brighton, so it’s the perfect place to have the conference.
Graham Devine
Magic Leap
It’s great for inspiration and just to keep up to date. Coming down to Develop you can see a lot of people at the top of their field talking about their wok and sharing insights.
Simon Oliver
HandCircus
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