So the GDC is over and done with. I took over 30 pages of notes (the paper kind). The sessions Jeff and I chose were on casual games or web-based games whenever possible. Brian Robbins led three roundtables on different aspects of web-based games, which encompasses most casual games. We participated in all three sessions and it was definitely worth it. I had been a little apprehensive about getting out there and getting involved but the discussions there really made me feel that I'm on the right track and what I'm doing makes sense.

This morning we started with a session called How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days. The two presenters, Kyle and Kyle, shared lessons they'd learned while working on the experimental gameplay project from Carnegie Melon University. They also showed some of the games that came out of the project. There were lessons I'd heard and some that I didn't expect.

In the Experimental Game Play project, participants followed 3 rules:

1. The game must be made in less than seven days.
2. The development team for each game has a size of one. One person does concept, design, programming, art, and sound (that's one person for all those features, not one each).
3. The game would be built to include a previously ageed-upon theme. There were many sessions for the project over the year and each session had a theme that participants must include. Examples of themes were things like gravity or springs.

Last night we got together for dinner with Erik, Dan Howard, and Scott. We got to talking a little about scrum and agile development, micro ISVs, and working in the software industry. All-in-all what you'd expect when some software-types get together and chat. Today we took it easy, tooled around Mountain View a little bit in the morning. Scott took us for a quick walk around Yahoo! It sounds like they're doing some pretty exciting things there. The next generation of Photos will be pretty sweet. Here's what the weather's been like for us: Okay, it hasn't rained the whole time, but I've seen a lot more of the windshield wipers this time than any other California trip.

The drive yesterday was simply amazing. Jeff and I have seen LA before and we've both been to San Jose, but the drive between the two has some of most beautiful natural views I've ever seen. We flew in to Los Angeles on Saturday and spent the afternoon there. After picking up dessert at Real Food Daily we drove up to Ventura where there was a room at La Quinta waiting for us. After checking in we took the half-hour trip to Santa Barbara for dinner at Spiritland Bistro and drinks in a local bar. The part Jeff and I have been planning out over the past couple months however, was yesterday's journey. I've done parts of Highway 1 before - Candace and I travelled between Malibu and Laguna Beach last year on our E3 trip (you can see some of the photos from that trip at OnBeaches.com). This year Jeff and I packed the whole 350-odd miles into one day. In the morning we got on the road pretty early, maybe a little after 8:00. Jeff drove first and I took a few pictures out the window. I know logically that there's no real reason to pick up a camera in a car driving at 70 miles per hour, but there's something that gets me every time I'm on a trip. There's this instinct to capture and hold on to great memories of great places. There's no real shareable value in photos shot out the window of a moving vehicle. Generally they're only of interest to the people who were there since the quality is only good enough to act as a queue to the sense of adventure that the scenery stirred up in the first place. When we got into Santa Barbara in the morning we went up State Street (the main drag). There's a wharf that juts a long way out into the water. We took a walk out to the end and soaked in the ocean smells and clear views out to the horizon. The wharf also affords a look back over the city laid out in front of the mountains. I'm still learning to use my new camera - a Digital Rebel XT, but I think I shot a few nice ones. We'd hoped originally to spend some time on Leadbetter beach, but when we got there it was way too windy. I took a couple pics of the highway winding up and away from the city and a couple of the sand and surf, and that was enough. I guess next time I'll pack a little warmer when the weather reports say 50 degrees and overcast.

I've been working on developing some new ideas that fall in the web-based casual game area. The problem for me is that most often casual games are built on Flash and fit into a certain business model. I've also read that the budget for the typical casual game on the order of $100,000. I tried to find a source for that figure, but I think it was at CNN and the closest I can come now is a review for a few casual games published just yesterday that bizarrely talks about three games available "on the net" but with no link. CNN doesn't get this whole "hypertext" thing apparently. Without giving away too many critical business secrets about the hordes of developers in the Late Night PC web-gaming division, we don't do Flash and we don't have $100,000 for a game. Not doing Flash isn't a rule, it's just not hip or cutting-edge enough. It doesn't garner all that cool open source love like SVG, XUL, Ajax and Javascript do. The not having $100,000 for a game isn't because we can't afford it, it's just that we're not willing to cut into the Latte Budget this month. Really, Jeff and I have been debating some framework ideas that build on accessible web standards, while still trying to pop out some fun playable experiments. Jeff's had a couple of them, I've got one tutorial up so far. So this all comes back to the Game Developers Conference, of course, and the three roundtables that Brian Robbins will be running. The roundtable sessions all focus on different aspects of web-based games. They'll cover

It's been a while since I did any planning for the conference. I've spent more time in the last week staring at maps of the coast than I have thinking about the actual purpose of the trip. So I'm getting back down to it. Last year was the first time for the poster sessions at the Game Developers Conference. It sounds like a good way to pack more content in to the time available. They must have no shortage of ready speakers and poster sessions are a good way to accommodate them. I know I could come up with something to present. The way the posters work is the presenter puts together the information on their subject and might have a talk or a paper ready to go. They don't get a room to talk in or overhead slides though. They get an area I'd guess about 4'x9' on which they can lay out the diagrams and information that go along with the presentation. They also have a one hour time slot to give their talk that goes along with the ever present poster. The great thing about a poster is that it's always out there. People are going between sessions (the non-posters, that is) and might have a few minutes to read or they could be wandering in or out of the expo and they get drawn in. So the poster is up there with the basics of the presentation and the viewers know that they can come back at a certain time (I think it's posted) and talk to you in person. So there is a period of time when the poster presenters have to be on the spot and get to give their talk. I suppose people might be more likely to wander away than they would if they had seats, but that goes both ways: people are also likely to wander over to see what the crowd is looking at. There are eight sessions listed in total now. Most are on the Game Design or Programming tracks. The two outliers are both

Adrian Woods is giving a talk entitled The Make Art Button: Batches, Actions, and Scripts. I think he sums it up in the session description just perfectly:

Do something once, it's creative. Do something twice, it's repetitive. Do something three times, you can probably automate it.

I've said the same thing many times, but maybe I start to automate at twice.

This session will use comand-line tools, Photoshop automation, and MaxScript for 3DS Max. For myself, I've used plenty of command-line tools, a tiny bit of MaxScript and no Photoshop automation. I do find that a lot of Photoshop tools have counterparts in the Gimp however. Given the work he's been involved in on Microsoft Flight Simulator, I'm looking forward to hearing what kinds of work he recommends automating and how much effort it's worth. The question that I have about automation for art is about balance. Specifically how to balance the work needed to produce new tools for automating a very specific task against the work needed to complete these tasks manually. The way I approach this issue is by considering a few factors that are all around time savings, reuse, and repeatability.

The Game Developers Conference is coming up in March 2006 and Jeff and I will be going again this year (I think it's our fourth trip). One difference this year that I'm excited about is that we'll be spending eight days in California instead of the usual four. We made that commitment because there's a lot to learn at the GDC if you're ready for it. So instead of just the expo and the free/sponsored sessions, we're looking for talks that share deep insight into game design, programming techniques and the expertise and tools needed to make first-rate games. We also missed the booth crawl last year and were pretty pissed when we realized it. So this year we'll be arriving in ample time to chill in Cali and still take in the most interesting tutorials, talks and panels that the conference has to offer. As I've mentioned before, I find that I get much more out of the conference when I'm psyched up both and prepared for the material.

A summary of the winners and a couple of my notes for the games I had the time to try out...

Darius Kazemi points to the new Game Developers Conference Proceedings Archive at Gamasutra. Skimming, I see a few that sound familiar like the one on the Xbox launch by Peter Isansee in 2002 and the one on Memory Optimization by Christer Ericson (a lot of good compiler details) from 2003. It's not the same just reading the slides, but they can be great for jogging your memory.