krypt0nian
Banned
http://www.xfestevents.com/
What's the deal? Who's going?
This event will explore Xbox 360-focused technical information for game developers, including several case studies of Xbox 360 games. Registration is now open to employees of game development companies who have a signed non-disclosure agreement (NDA) on file with Microsoft for the purposes of material discussed at the event.
Because space is limited and participation is expected to be greater than the past, please sign up as soon as possible to reserve your seat. There is no event fee for attending this conference.
Xbox 360 CPU Track:
Efficient C++ on Xbox 360: Using C++ effectively on Xbox 360 requires some new ways of thinking. Unlike PC-style CPUs that can perform out-of-order and branch prediction magic, Xbox 360 is not designed to make inefficient code run fast. This talk explains how to work with the compiler to create efficient code for Xbox 360. It covers practical tips and warnings based on ATG's experiences with helping to ship the console and launch titles.
Low-Level Optimization War Stories: Sometimes you need to make a piece of code run really really fast. This talk presents some interesting problems encountered in the development of Xbox 360 audio/video codecs and DSP code, and the techniques used to squeeze every bit of performance out of the CPU cores. These low level techniques should be in the toolbox of every performance-conscious developer.
Secrets of Back-Compat Performance: Backward compatibility on Xbox 360 is an engineering marvel. The back-compat team overcame huge hurdles to eliminate emulation overhead and achieve real-time performance. This talk focuses on the dos and donts of code generation, CPU optimization suggestions, optimal use of the Xbox 360 multi-core architecture, and GPU-based graphical enhancement.
Multithreading Tips and Tricks: Xbox 360 was designed to run multiple independent hardware threads. This talk demonstrates techniques for implementing multi-threading on Xbox 360. Appropriate ways of implementing various multi-threading algorithms are shown, along with performance measurements, profiling, and debugging techniques.
Effective Profiler Use on Xbox 360: With so many profiling options it can be hard to know where to start. This talk covers PIX, /callcap, /fastcap, performance counters and trace recording. By analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each option, youll see how to use them together to effectively squeeze the best performance out of your game.
Trace Analysis and Memory Optimization: A CPU trace recording file holds a wealth of information, but extracting that information and acting on it can be tricky. This talk explains how to analyze CPU traces with tracedump or with custom tools, so you can ensure your games cache and memory usage are optimal.
Xbox 360 GPU Track:
Developing Gears of War in Unreal Engine 3: Epic Games has been developing Gears of War with a relatively small team. This talk shows the tools and processes theyre using to create Unreal Engine 3, along with demos of gameplay, a discussion of the overall development process and the tradeoffs made to achieve an excellent balance of performance and detail on Xbox 360. The presentation also touches on several areas of interest to game developers, including visual scripting, lighting and shadowing, and streaming of seamless worlds.
Xbox 360 Direct3D: Predicated Tiling and Other Updates: Direct3D on Xbox 360 continues to evolve. This talk covers new support added for predicated tiling, precompiled command buffers and performance profiling. Well conclude with a look ahead at tools and features coming in future XDKs.
Graphics vs. Gameplay vs. Sales: The face of computer graphics continues to change. Understanding the trends is key to producing and selling a successful product. How has graphics affected sales in various industries over time? What are the technology trends and where are they going? Well survey the evolution of computer graphics from several industry perspectives and draw conclusions about how graphics relate to other factors with respect to production cost, consumer expectations, and sales. This talk is intended for graphics developers, designers, and producers.
Xbox 360 HLSL: This session focuses on your game's inner-most loop: HLSL pixel and vertex shaders. Using examples and statistics from real titles, youll see how specific shader optimizations can lead to significant performance gains. Well also discuss a variety of other issues relevant to HLSL development, including engine and tool chain architecture, information about the shader compiler itself, shader debugging with PIX, and a postmortem of shader compiler improvements implemented during the launch window and beyond.
Achieving 60 fps: Using PIX to Avoid Speed Traps: Start your engines! The Xbox 360 GPU is a powerful beast, but optimizing for it is not always straightforward or intuitive. This talk presents PIX usage tips and frame analysis strategies. Well show how to detect and get past vertex and pixel shader speed traps. The knowledge gained from this talk will put your game well on its way to running at 60 fps.
Windows Crossplatform Development on ATI Hardware: ATI presents the similarities and difference between modern high-end PC hardware and Xbox 360 graphics. We will examine the primary consideration for porting between the two platforms, with particular emphasis on porting from Xbox 360 to ATI's latest hardware. Then we'll take a look into the future, with a feel for how the new Direct3D10 API and hardware change the landscape on Windows Vista. We'll also examine the new opportunities this creates and which techniques best exploit the new hardware.
Xbox 360 Art Track:
The HD Factor: The Essentials for Creating Quality HD Content: Every console shift has given us more fidelity, although the shift to high-definition is huge. Pretty graphics is an important factor in the next generation of games, but we also have to start thinking about new and innovative graphical experiences. This talk covers both the technical details of HD on Xbox 360 along with current display device capabilities and what it means to visual artists. Well also discuss the aesthetic implications and the future of visuals in games.
Capturing, Editing, and Using Your Own HDR Images: Many people know what high dynamic range (HDR) images are, but not everyone understands how easy they are to create. This talk shows the entire process of using HDR images in your games, from photographing with a digital SLR, to editing and combining multiple images into one HDR image. The talk includes a variety of demos and practical examples that show how to utilize the power of Xbox 360.
Outside the Box: Game Interface Design Principles, Processes, and Tools: This session is designed to give visual designers, interaction designers, and producers an overview of the design philosophy of the Xbox 360 Dashboard interface as well as a practical understanding of the Xbox User Interface (XUI) tool. An exploration of the design principles and tools used to build the Dashboard is used to springboard a discussion on how you can use similar processes and tools to help design and implement game interfaces. Most of the session will be dedicated to a demo of the Xbox UI Tool (XUI) and walking through a sample application build using XUI.
Toy Shop: The Devil is in the Details: In The Toy Shop, the ATI demo team has created their most immersive and detailed environment to date. This session reviews a selection of the most interesting, complex, and innovative techniques used to bring this rainy city to life all from an artists perspective. In particular, well focus on parallax occlusion mapping: how it works, what kind of art assets are required, best practices for creating these assets and limitations of the technique.
Project Gotham Racing 3 Art Production: The presentation will be an overview of the art creation process for a next generation racing game. Bizarre Creations Peter Roe talks about the entire cycle of art production from the initial concepts through to research and design, right on through to the final Post-FX processes that breathe life into the most detailed cities and cars to appear in a videogame.
Art Panel Discussion: Creating Games for Xbox 360: A question and answer session about developing next generation art for the Xbox 360.
Xbox 360 Audio Track:
Mixing Best Practices for Xbox 360: One of the big challenges for the next generation of games is balancing sounds and coming up with a final mix that rivals what our counterparts in linear media can obtain. Critical concepts such as dynamic range, reference levels, and limiting/compressing are often overlooked in the accelerated post-production process of game implementation. This presentation discusses some of the challenges and solutions for mixing audio to take full advantage of 5.1 and stereo outputs. Additionally, well cover the challenges and some solutions for sound prioritization, ducking, and dynamic mixing rules.
Secrets of the (XMA) Universe: The Xbox 360 native audio format and the powerful hardware that supports it have been shrouded in mystery, understood only by a select few until now. Prepare to plumb the previously unknown depths of XMA audio and the Xbox 360 XMA decoder. Well cover XMA from the ground uphardware quirks, bitstream gotchas, API oddities, and all. This talk contains technical details intended for programmers and audio engineers.
An Introduction to Audio Features of Xbox 360: Xbox 360 provides an extraordinarily flexible and potentially overwhelming pipeline for audio implementation. This talk presents an overview of the basic audio technology, libraries and tools provided to assist with audio implementation on Xbox 360. Topics include XAudio, Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), X3DAudio and the Xbox Music Player (XMP) library. The talk also has overviews of topics presented in more detail in other lectures (XMA, DSP effect signal processing, etc.).
3D and Realtime Effects on Xbox 360: 3D implementations have expanded significantly from early left-to-right pan to fully-rendered 3D positioning with geometry modeling and advanced distance simulation. In this talk, well discuss the features of the X3DAudio library, designed from the ground up for Xbox 360 for flexible 3D implementations, including sophisticated multichannel sound source positioning, multiple listeners, and emitter-listener independence. In addition to demos of various 3D positioning techniques, well cover extending X3DAudio to provide even more immersive positioning implementations.
Xbox 360 Audio Solutions: A rich set of audio solutions is available on Xbox 360 for content creators and programmers alike. In this talk, well cover several, including the Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), which provides a library and authoring tool combination allowing for rapid prototyping and flexibility in the design of sound effects. Well focus on the current features of various audio offerings, including some of the newest XACT features, as well as best practices for authoring with XACT. Topics include variation, reverb and 3D implementations in XACT, runtime parameter controls, compression and DSP effects.
Creating Your Own Digital Signal Processing Programs: Custom real-time DSP effects are the new frontier for game audio implementations. Whether its creating a mastering chain thats up to the challenge of dealing with ultra-high-fidelity source assets or creating that perfect radio-ization from a dry studio voice recording, this talk discusses how its done on Xbox 360. Beyond plugging realtime effects into XAudio or XACT, this talk provides demonstrations of DSP effects in action, low-level mathematical analysis of DSP basics and performance evaluation on Xbox 360.
Xbox 360 Live Track:
Achievements and Gamer ProfilesBest Practices: Do you know what players are ranting and raving about when it comes to Xbox 360 achievements and gamer profiles? Find out by reviewing the highlights and shortcomings of existing titles, so you can build on the experiences of these forerunners. Well walk through the best practices of using gamer profiles and achievements to create a compelling game experience. This talk is intended for game designers and game developers concerned about the player experience.
Networking Best Practices: Is your networking experience all it could be? Do you experience frequent dropouts and lag? Well talk about why thats happening. Well cover differences between network programming for Xbox 360 and Windows, how to best take advantage of available bandwidth, and little tricks you can use to manage massive sessions without slowing to a crawl. Well also examine the network analysis tools, including NetMon and NEW, that you can use to find bottlenecks in your networking code and test multiplayer scenarios under real-world conditions. This talk is intended for developers and network architects.
Matchmaking, Sessions and TrueSkill: Looking for guidance on how to make the best Xbox Live multiplayer experience for your players? This talk covers ranked and player match game types, including descriptions of the back-end algorithms, recommendations for managing game modes, and best practices for getting the most out of each game type. Additionally, well address the TrueSkill ranking system in detail, including setting draw probabilities, ranking players appropriately at the end of a session, managing early drop outs, and displaying TrueSkill rankings in-game. This talk is intended for game designers and developers.
LSP: Your Servers Ticket to the Xbox Live Party: You love the Xbox Live feature set, but wish that you could extend it with your own special functionality? Maybe youve heard rumors of a mysterious technology called LSP that allows you to integrate your own servers with the Live backbone, and wondered if it might be right for you. Wonder no more. Well blow LSP wide open and talk about what it is, how it works, and how it can work for you. Well discuss upcoming features and go over best practices using Gotham TV from Project Gotham Racing 3 as a real-world example. This talk is intended for developers and network architects
Xbox Live Web Services: Curious about how your game is represented on Xbox.com? Looking for ways to extend your game experience? Want to know what you need to do to build a web site similar to Bungie.net or Xbox.com? Well talk about the options that are available to you today and those that will be available in the future. Find out what you need to do to build a solution using Xbox Live web services. The talk also covers how you can leverage Xbox.com user feeds. This talk is intended for game designers and developers.
The Evolution of Xbox Live in 2006: Welcome to the world of Xbox Live on Xbox 360, where every gamer has their own identity defined by their games, their achievements, their themes and gamer pictures, their preferences and settings. This overview talk explores the current successes of Xbox Live, then lays out the general course of future feature work to broaden and extend the gamers identity in the Live universe with groups, deeper MSN integration, and richer Marketplace experiences. This talk is intended for anyone interested in the past, present, or future of Xbox Live.
Xbox Live Arcade: Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360 is the groundbreaking and widely acclaimed destination for small downloadable games. Since launch, Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360 has broadened the console audience, providing new gaming experiences and opportunities for gamers and developers alike. This talk will discuss the Microsoft strategy for building Live Arcade support into every Xbox 360 and tips for getting your game on the Xbox 360 Live Arcade platform.
Xbox 360 Certification and Producer Track:
Certification Overview: Launch Lessons: This session covers the major lessons learned from the launch experience. Well discuss submission issues, common failure cases, and what to expect if your title has yet to go through the submission and certification process. In addition, the session touches on what the Game Quality team is doing to make the overall experience of submitting your Xbox 360 game easier.
Announcing Xbox 360 Central: Announcing a new and improved Xbox 360 Central developer website! This talk describes the improvements to search, navigation, content and usability based on your feedback from Xfest 2005. The key features will be described and demonstrated.
Compliance and TCRs: Top TCR Failures: This talk covers the most problematic Xbox 360 TCRs and top CFR issues seen during certification testing. Additionally, the talk provides a TCR update including what's new and information on upcoming changes. The aim is to help attendees understand the top issues seen during compliance testing and to provide information that can help bring your testing in parallel with the testing performed in the Xbox Game Quality testing lab.
Xbox 360 Marketplace: Marketplace is the one-stop-shop for content downloads and premium subscriptions on Xbox Live. Marketplace replaces the content downloader of the original Xbox and features both Dashboard and Guide versions where players can easily browse, find, and download content (including arcade games). This talk will cover the features of Marketplace, an overview of the APIs that Marketplace exposes to games, and the submission processes for Marketplace content. In addition, well discuss how to use Marketplace features to position and manage your content offerings for the customer.
Functional Test: Top Issues and Functional Test Cases: The Game Quality team performs two types of game tests, compliance (TCR) testing and functional testing. This presentation explains the Xbox 360 functional testing process and offers suggestions on how you can get through certification the first time. This talk will cover the goals of functional testing, how to look for potential failure cases in your own QA process, and how the functional team tests games. Well also cover many of the specific test cases used by the functional team.
Submitting Your Game: Top Issues Seen in the Burn Lab: This talk concentrates on the most common issues seen in the Xbox Burn Lab when processing an Xbox 360 title, and how to best avoid any complications. Topics of focus will include submission requirements, what files to submit, what tools to use, XLAST and SPA files, and checks you can do to help ensure a clean submission.
Improving the Player Experience in the Next Generation of Games: Graphics and audio are not the only areas of gameplay that players expect to improve by leaps and bounds in the next generation of video games. Players also expect games to improve in terms of flow, intuitiveness, and accessibility. This talk examines some of the key "common sense" areas of gameplay where you can improve the player experience with minimal impact to your schedule and budget.
Xbox 360 System Track:
Building Game Content with XNA Build: Setting up a reliable and efficient game build system that serves the needs of an entire studio is difficult. Building games for multiple platforms using different build technologies is fraught with problems. Enter XNA Build, a system designed to meet these challenges and produce content and executables reliably and efficiently. This talk also briefly covers other forthcoming XNA tools.
Streamlining Game Loading: Console games have always had load time issues, but the high-def world is putting new pressure on load times. How do you efficiently get all those high-fidelity textures and audio into memory so players are playing not waiting? Theres no silver bullet, but there are dozens of techniques that can improve load times (or improve the players perception of load times). This talk enumerates tips and tricks ranging from programming tactics to UI techniques to disc layout.
Getting Gamers in the Game with Xbox Live Camera: Personalization and rich communications are core components of next-generation gaming. Learn how to take your game to the next level by using the Xbox Live Camera to give gamers the ability to bring their world into your game. This talk covers the camera hardware and software libraries, and how these technologies enable new opportunities for gaming. Well outline how to easily capture images, put gamers faces in-game, enhance games with video chat, or engage in immersive gesture control. This high-level talk is intended for producers, designers and developers interested in utilizing the camera.
Using XUI in Perfect Dark Zero: A Case Study: XUI is an Xbox 360 UI design tool and runtime library. This talk presents a case study of using the XUI tools and runtime in a large-scale commercial game. Well examine the workflow process involved with using XUI to develop a user interface solution in Perfect Dark Zero. The talk provides general recommendations for how any game could utilize XUI effectively.
XContent and System Storage: Xbox 360 supports a wide variety of storage devices. Learn how to easily and effectively manage these devices through Xbox 360 storage and XContent APIs. Well cover creating save games, using the hard drive cache partition and accessing Marketplace content. The talk walks through the storage architecture, provides code examples of how to optimally use the storage APIs and gives invaluable information on how to achieve the best performance.
Getting the Most Out of the XDK: Developer Tips and Tricks: All software tools have their own arcane backdoors and obscureyet usefulfeatures, and the XDK is no exception. We went straight to the source to find out how the XDK software team and ATG engineers work most efficiently with the tools they wrote. Come learn Visual Studio secrets, Launcher tips, command-line tool backdoors, and other useful XDK advice. The talk is aimed squarely at folks who use the XDK on a daily basis.
