IGDA

Denrei’s recent post reminded me that I should reflect on attending the IGDA…

This was the first IGDA Madison meeting and was necessarrily geared towards organizing and aquainting. It was interesting to hear about peoples experiences. We talked with a guy at Human Head about their build system and how they are re-evaluating the system for their next project. They had tried Subversion for assets management, and came to the same conclusion we had: it blows. He eventually mentioned that they were now using PerForce which is basically like Subversion but much faster. This guy was a rendering programmer and I would have liked to talk to him longer, but didn’t get the chance.

A startup company called Frozen Codebase was there. They recently setup shop in Green Bay and received some venture capital. Currently they have a team of 7 people working on their first game and a few interns from the local ITT Tech Institute. I found this very interesting because it’s exactly how my current place of employment operates. Except there are only three people.

Someone asked why I didn’t just use the Torque Engine. I explained that I wanted to try developing an engine with the lightweight shader system that I explained in a previous post. I was interested in making engines and tools with new technology, not making games with the same tools.

Later someone said that he heard the PS3 was hard to develop for. Compared to the development system of the Xbox 360, it must seem unbelievably difficult. The PS3 doesn’t tie directly into an IDE like Visual Studio, you can’t hit F5 to compile and run your game. I told him I found it an interesting platform to develop for and plan on looking at the PS3 linux development kit. He seemed shocked…

All in all it was a good meeting. Everyone there was making games in some form, so there was a common ground. (At the UPL’s game SIG there was often no common ground which was frustrating). I’m looking forward to the next meeting even more. SIGs are going to be formed to focus on specific aspects of game development. I will be attending the programming SIG. I can’t wait.

Provocative thought: Raven Software seemed to be the only non-independent developer in attendence.

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