:MeetPi

The following are notes I made during one of the sessions at Game Connect Asia Pacific 2008.

MS game development for PC Xbox and Zune development. Can develop with only a PC. You use XNA GS 3.0. XNA is a framework for building games. Visual Studio (also free version) used, code in C#.  You can make games using free versions of all the required software downloadable from MS.

http://www.xnagamefest.com

We’re getting a live demo of building games in Visual Studio. They have templates that let you just build a game.  Select template, compile -> game works.  Good way to learn how to make games because you can hack the template games.  All assets are included, too.

The basic kit is free but you can only build games for Windows. You can buy premium membership and develop for XBox360. You can easily transfer builds from your computer to your XBox over a network cable.  Students can get free Xbox-capable kits to test, but can’t publish. Can’t publish from Australia yet either. MS needs to chat with the Classification Board, but are expecting Australia to come online by the end of the year.

Lots of education materials on http://creators.xna.com.

Developers of live community games get a 70/30 split in profits in the developer’s favor.

To submit a game to live community you need premium membership.  Not sure how much this costs. When you submit a game you need to self-rate using a form as part of the upload process. You then add a bunch of other data and upload the binary. This can be 150 megs max. You also select a microsoft points price (MS points are like credit on XBox, you can purchase points with a credit card or a store card like an iTunes card).

This raises all kinds of issues about user created content. What about copyright materials in the game – especially if they contain music and graphics? Microsoft says they bear no responsibility – you’re on your own if you upload illegal or prohibited content.  A lot of people don’t understand copyright in my experience – I’m expecting this to be a learning experience for many.

When you submit it has to go through a peer review process. This process is about content and legal issues, not about the value if the game. There’s a list of prohibited content and it’s meant to be worldwide, so things in the prohibited list reflect the most stringent standards of the most restricted participating country.  Part of this process is identifying copyright materials as well as illegal materials.  MS will inform authorities is you try to upload highly illegal stuff.

Games need to be reviewed by eight people. This is currently taking around 10 hours to complete. Games are then quarantined for 48 hours before becoming available to the world.  You can release timed trials too, so people can play your game for a short time for free.

Microsoft won’t own IP. You are free to republish your games in other formats.

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Jay Wilbur – Epic. Jay used to be with id software. Jay is speaking about looking at Unreal Engine 3 as middleware.

Showed a demo of Nurien’s Mstar from Korea as an example of an Unreal based game that does not look like a typical Unreal engine game. Game is part of the whole Korean online community thing which is huge.

Jay is really selling the engine, making the point that it does not really make sense to build engine tech from bottom up each time. Game devs can license middleware for use in multiple titles, build libraries of content and realise efficiencies.

Content is the most expensive part of any next generation game. Jay says that this makes it even more vital that companies expend less energy on the engine tech. He says that with licensed tech, content development can start immediately.

Middleware is ‘battle tested’ which makes it more robust, more optimised and more useable because it is well supported by tools.

Middleware is not just the engine. Components can be used in isolation to the engine. For example, physics engines, audio engine.

Jay is now discouraging people from modifying the game engine. He says if you use it out of the box, it’s cheaper , simpler, less risky. Something called ’support outlets’ which allow developers to share fixes and features. A kind of closed open source thing. In fact, they use an internal mailing list system for support – when a licensee sends an email in to support, all Unreal team people get it. Someone who knows then answers it. Clever. Avoids horrible helpdesk syndrome without exposing tech staff to hammering.

Using the Unreal tools for developing content are recommended – discouraged from using other software. Assets may be created elsewhere, but should be brought into tools early so the tools can produce final assets that are optimized for the engine. In fact, they say to optimize content before code. Overly complex content is major source of performance issues.

Rowan Wyborn from 2K Australia now talking about their experience with Unreal on Tribes:Vengeance, Swat4, Bioshock and a currently unannounced title.

Team is split into core tech (5) and game code (10) teams.

Fast to get games up and running, supports multiplayer and multiplayform out of the box.

On Bioshock 2K did a lot of custom feature creation. This made it difficult to merge their codebase with updates from Unreal. Rowan says this was a mistake and led to a lot of additional work. Now they keep their codebase in sync and use OO techniques and #defines. Makes life complex for coders, but allows them to keep in sync with Unreal codebase.

The interesting thing is that this does not mean you don’t need a solid technology team. What is gained seems to be the ability to maintain traditional sized tech teams on next ten platforms.

Back to Jay.

Unreal Engine being used in movies – a multitrack cinematic linear editor built in. Lazy Town uses unreal for Cg. A number if others are starting to make linear stuff using Unreal. Even Dreamworks have looked at UE for previz.

Again, the whole convergence thing.

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