Enjoy being a beginner

That's a quote that stuck with me from an interview I read about Nolan Bushnell, and I've always thought it was something to aspire to. Because I find as I get older, it is can be easier to just stick to what you already know professionally. Inertia can settle in if you're not careful, and if a particular task is already in your wheelhouse, you tend to gravitate toward it.

The last year at Midway I was exclusively doing graphics tasks, and it was nice to completely focus on one area for an extended period after having hopped around to whatever systems fire was highest priority on Stranglehold. Even then, I'd done a fair amount of graphics work before over my career. Some of the things I'd worked on were areas I wasn't familiar with at the time (spherical harmonics), and in the process I learned a lot.

Now, though, I'm doing something completely different at the new gig. Unfortunately the project is still top secret and I can't get into any detail lest I inadvertently give something away. But unlike graphics, this is an area where aside from a handful of toy projects over the years, I haven't done anything before.

These kind of opportunities are a big reason why I like working on games -- the breadth of the work available is really wide, from the lowest level shaders to the highest level tools. I'm sure there are some other programming gigs that have this kind of range, but I can't think of many. Sure the expectations in terms of what can be done, how long it takes, and how many people it will take to do it can be pretty high, but every once in a while it pays to step back and remember that the work can be very rewarding in its scope and variety.

Changes, continued

I just started my new gig at 2K Boston. So far, so good!

The Future is Now

Engadget brings us news of the Zeebo -- a game console that only offers games available for download. Sound familiar?

It is supposed to be released in Brazil in 2009. It is not intended to compete with the front-line consoles such as the PS3, 360 or Wii, and is targeted at emerging markets. Now this may be vapor, and there is some confusion as to the retail price - $599 seems pretty damn steep for anywhere, let alone emerging markets.

It is probably not surprising that the innovation in abandoning the boxed retail model is coming not from the big console manufacturers, but from smaller, more nimble players. I hope for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo's own sakes that they are not too entrenched in the boxed retail mindset to realize that it is only a matter of when, not if, boxed retail dies.

Please Get Your Physics Off My GPU

I hope to have some more substantial thoughts on GDC, but one nice trend was a number of talks that focused on offloading graphics work off of the GPU and onto CPUs (in this case, SPUs on the PS3).

For the last couple of years there has been a major push by the graphics card manufacturers to get non-graphic-y things onto the GPU. Cloth, physics, heck I'm sure there's even some GPU AI examples out there somewhere. These are things that console game developers I know don't particularly want or need.

The lion share of console games are GPU bound. The last thing I want to do is put more stuff on the GPU. So even if your cloth or physics solution runs really fast on the GPU, I'm not going to use it because there is no room at the inn. Even if a CPU solution is slower, it won't matter since I've got the spare processing capacity due to having to wait on the GPU, or have processing elements that are not used during a frame.

What I want to do is offload as much as possible to the CPU, since most games still probably are not maxing out the CPU capabilities of the PS3 or 360. It was nice to see some talks focusing on doing hybrid GPU/CPU solutions to things such as lighting or post processing, and I imagine this trend will continue.

The Problem with GDC

It always seems like I'll have a day that has 4 or 5 sessions booked at the same time that I want to see, and then on another day have some time slots with nothing that I want to see. Obviously, you can't please all of the people all of the time, but Wednesday definitely seems like the busy day.

Anyway, here's what my current schedule is looking like (I am not sure why blogger is inserting all this whitespace):

Session Title	Date	Start Time	End Time
Discovering New Development Opportunities	03-25-2009	9:00 AM	10:00 AM
Hitting 60Hz with the Unreal Engine: Inside the Tech of MORTAL KOMBAT vs DC UNIVERSE	03-25-2009	10:30 AM	11:30 AM
Next-Gen Tech, but Last-Gen Looks? Tips to Make your Game Look Better - That Don't Include Bloom and Motion Blur.	03-25-2009	12:00 AM	1:00 PM
Out of Order: Making In-Order Processors Play Nicely	03-25-2009	2:30 PM	3:30 PM
Deferred Lighting and Post Processing on PlayStation(R)3	03-25-2009	4:00 PM	5:00 PM
The Unique Lighting in MIRROR'S EDGE: Experiences with Illuminate Labs Lighting Tools	03-26-2009	9:00 AM	10:00 AM
From Pipe Dream to Open World: The Terraforming of FAR CRY 2	03-26-2009	1:30 PM	2:30 PM
Morpheme & PhysX: A New Approach to Combining Character Animation and Simulation	03-26-2009	4:30 PM	5:30 PM
The Cruise Director of AZEROTH: Directed Gameplay within WORLD OF WARCRAFT	03-26-2009	3:00 PM	4:00 PM
Fast GPU Histogram Analysis and Scene Post-Processing	03-27-2009	9:00 AM	9:20 AM
Mixed Resolution Rendering	03-27-2009	10:30 AM	10:50 AM
Rendering Techniques in GEARS OF WAR 2	03-27-2009	2:30 PM	3:30 PM
Dynamic Walking with Semi-Procedural Animation	03-27-2009	4:00 PM	5:00 PM

Changes

A short personal update:

Last Friday was my last day at Midway Games. After seven and a half years I decided it was time for me to move on and will soon be pursuing another opportunity. It was sad to leave in some ways, as there are many people there who I have enjoyed working with, but it was the right time for a move.

I'll have updates about the new opportunity soon, and hopefully some more content.

Should Have Known Better

Of course, one day later, Penny Arcade makes the point I was trying to make but much better.