My Picks for PDC 2009
Oct 13, 2009
With a little over a month to go before Microsoft’s biggest and best developer event, I wanted to pick out which PDC sessions look super interesting (to me) this year: Dan’s picks Windows 7 Developer Boot Camp (Mark Russinovich, Arun Kishan)– I’ll be setting up some projects during this time, but it would be great to go to this workshop. Note that this is FREE and you don’t have to be registered for PDC to go to it.…more
PDC Recap
Nov 10, 2008
With PDC just about a week over, it’s about time I finally got around to blogging about it. Here’s the random list Windows Azure: Ray Ozzie launched Windows Azure and Microsoft’s Cloud Strategy (video here). Charles on Channel 9 did a bunch of videos on our Cloud services. If you want a no nonsense explanation of Windows Azure, check out the interview with Manuvir. Manuvir Das: Introducing Windows Azure For a great recap on the Windows Azure, check out Dare Obasanjo’s blog.…more
CodePlex Community Meetup at PDC
Oct 20, 2008
As Sara mentioned in the CodePlex blog, we’re having a CodePlex meetup at PDC on Wednesday from 1:30 - 2:30pm where volunteers will be able to show off their Codeplex projects and you’ll be able to check out demos of new CodePlex features and give the CodePlex team feedback on what they’re delivering. Full details on the CodePlex blog: Want to showcase your CodePlex project or your favorite CodePlex project at PDC?…more
Opening the kimono on Windows 7
Sep 24, 2008
Today we officially announced that PDC is the first time Microsoft will be discussing Windows 7 in-depth. The big announcements are that: Steve Sinofsky will keynote on Tuesday at PDC * There are 21 sessions on Windows 7 at PDC on everything from kernel, audio, graphics, networking, and more. * All PDC attendees get a pre-beta build of Windows 7 on a custom 160GB external USB drive Nice!
Coding4Fun Talk at TechEd
Jun 11, 2008
At TechEd this year, I gave what can only be described as an overly ambitious talk given I only had 45 minutes: **Coding4Fun: **The Secrets to Programming YouTube, iTunes, Microsoft Zune, Windows Vista Peer-to-Peer APIs, and Even World of Warcraft I say overly ambitious as YouTube, Vista P2P, and Warcraft could easily have been dedicated 75 minute sessions so covering all of them enough to be meaningful in 45 minutes was….…more
Session Notes: Life on the Bungie Farm: Fun Things to do with 180 servers and 350 processors
Feb 22, 2008
**Speakers: **Luis Villegas, Sean Shypula from Bungie Distributed client/server system split up, runs it in parallel * processes user submitted tasks in parallel * 180 rackmounted machines 300 processes * can use * Advantages speed up time consuming tasks - (rendering goes from day to a few hours) * see results of work more frequently which means more iteration which enables adding more polish * Automates complex processes and reduces human error, ( * click a button and get email when job is complete Main processes on the farm…more
Panel: Future of MMOs
Feb 21, 2008
**Speakers: ** MC of event, Jon Wood - Managing Editor MMORPG.com * Jack Emmert - Founder, Cryptic Studios, Champions Online, City of Heroes/Villans * One other person, Mark Jacobs or “Matt” from Cryptic * Ray Muzyka - General Manager of Bioware, haven’t released one yet * Min Kim - Free-to-play, Cart Rider, * Rob Pardo - SVP of Game Design at Blizzard, Lead designer of WoW Format: Panel and audience questions…more
Session: Star Wars, The Force Unleashed
Feb 21, 2008
**Full Title: **Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: How LucasArts is Building a Game Development Team and a Technology Pipeline…at the same time Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a new, upcoming title **Storyline: **Darth Vader’s secret apprentice, between episodes 3 and 4 Designing the Game Big 5 questions - What’s the story, what thing is going to always be fun (using force powers) * unchecked ambitions * Concept art - Lots of images and they’re beautiful, some landscapes look like Wow’s Outland concept art * Pre-Vis work * Rapid prototyping - If I had to do it again, I would have devs prototyping gameplay planning and scope - Add a step to milestones to cut off scope - we shot for the moon, it was too hard, make it decreasing scope a part of every milestone.…more
Top 10 Interesting Nuggets from the Microsoft GDC Keynote
Feb 21, 2008
The US video game industry revenue is now $18 Billion and continues to grow. 2. Games have not only surpassed the movie industry, they have also surpassed the music industry (source: Jupiter Research) 3. 7 different Xbox titles sold over 1MM units in the 2007 holiday season 4. Xbox has the highest number of games rated > 80 by Metacritic 5.…more
Session: WiiFit: Creating a Brand New Interface for the Home Console
Feb 20, 2008
Speaker: Takao Sawano WiiFit Examples Family weighing themselves and tracking health * Father doing push ups on balance board * Mother doing yoga on the board * Games: Kid taking headers playing soccer goalie * Games: Grandfather using ski-jump * Games: Mother walking on a tightrope Sold over 1.4 million units Europe: April 25th * US: May 19th Wii Fit Package Contents Balance Board and software Not born of strategic process,…more