Blizzard developers to speak at GDC 2010
by Michael Sacco 
Dec 17th 2009 at 2:00PM
Brian Schwab, Blizzard's Senior AI/Gameplay Engineer, will be presenting a lecture on AI architecture ...
"AI programmers rarely use a pure architecture such as a State Machine, Planner, or Behavior Tree in isolation. Rather, several symbiotic architectures are mashed together, resulting in an overall architecture that is unique and powerful in its own way. This lecture is designed as a series of three mini-lectures where you will hear about several mashed up AI architectures along with intriguing lessons and insights."
... and Erin Catto, Blizzard's Principle Software Engineer, will be presenting a workshop on physics engines.
"This one-day tutorial continues the 10-year tradition of the Math for Programmers and Physics for Programmers tutorials by bringing together some of the best presenters in gaming physics. Over the course of a day they will get programmers up to speed in the latest techniques and deepen their knowledge in the topic of physical simulation."
More information, including panel times and availability, can be seen on BlizzPlanet's writeup of the announcement. This is basically total nerd talk -- it's very unlikely that we'll have any new WoW-related info from these panels, unlike Kaplan's keynote, but anything is possible. We'll keep you posted.
Filed under: Blizzard, Interviews
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andrew R. Dec 17th 2009 2:07PM
I would love to attend that but there's two problems.
A) I hate math...no let me rephrase that. i DESPISE math so much that I avoid it like the plague whenever I can at work.
B) There would be so many numbers and terms flying around that I would leave with a massive headache and a look on my face that says "duh wha...?"
I'll just wait for WoW.com to give me the TL;DR, short and to the point version.
t0xic Dec 17th 2009 2:36PM
A) and B)?? You really ARE afraid of numbers. English major? =)
Jack Miles Dec 17th 2009 3:15PM
MMMMM, Maaaaths... /Drooooollll...
Phaed Dec 17th 2009 3:23PM
A and B? We math majors use letters waaaaaaaaay more then numbers.
seamusmc Dec 17th 2009 2:17PM
Esoteric? Those are bedrock topics for game development. This is the GDC, not a game conference.
I've had the pleasure of hearing Blizzard staff give tech talks before and they've always been good. Several years ago I got to talk to Mike Morhaime after he gave a keynote at a MS sponsored event, nice guy. (He talked about what Blizz did wrong.)
Blizzard sounds like an awesome place to work.
Michael Sacco Dec 17th 2009 2:20PM
Esoteric for a game designer? No, of course not. Esoteric for the average WoW.com reader? Absolutely. I'd love to go to either lecture, personally.
And you're very right about Mike Morhaime. A lot of what kept me plugging away at Blizzard was knowing that I worked for a guy like Mike.
CDave Dec 17th 2009 2:56PM
I don't know about you, but when I think of Blizzard I definitely don't think about how awesome their game physics are. If it was someone from Valve, I'd be impressed.
CDave Dec 17th 2009 3:05PM
I just researched this guy a little bit, he actually has some interesting material, and it's a wonder why he works at Blizzard.
Andrew R. Dec 17th 2009 3:30PM
I told you I avoid numbers whenever possible. =P
Procrastinator Dec 17th 2009 3:39PM
You're right bros! Those Blizzard guys know nothing about game physics. I mean, like, why don't they get the game graphics from Crysis and the physics of Half-Life 2, LOL. I mean, like, WoW doesn't even have ragdoll physics. They should get some of the dudes from Infinity Ward to talk, then I'd be impressed.
dawnseven Dec 17th 2009 4:31PM
Like, seriously.
Procrastinator Dec 17th 2009 3:44PM
But seriously, one of the main draws of WoW is that it can be played on practically any computer made in the last 6 years or so. I play it on a netbook. Blizzard could add all sorts of bells and whistles if they wanted to (they employ some of the best programmers around), but they would run the risk of losing a large number of their subscribers. To suggest that a Blizzard programmer might be unqualified to talk about cutting-edge issues in game development because WoW doesn't look like a modern 360 game is ludicrous.
dawnseven Dec 17th 2009 4:26PM
"Esoteric for the average WoW.com reader? Absolutely."
You can say that again.
/snore
Oomu Dec 17th 2009 8:23PM
ho the insults to the readers...
by the way, it's not "nerd talk", but "professional engineer talk", yeah, I know it's shocking : no more comics in basement and tv.
-
"esoteric for the average wow.com reader", please, continue to insult me, oh yeah.
Michael Sacco Dec 17th 2009 8:30PM
If you're misunderstanding me, which you might be, allow me to clarify:
1. Not a large percentage of WoW.com readers are software engineers or game developers, for whom these lectures are intended;
2. In turn, the information contained in these lectures is very unlikely to be of interest to the majority of our readers, who read the site for WoW-specific news and views; and
3. If the term "nerd" is offensive to you, you might be in the wrong community.
Raze Dec 17th 2009 10:05PM
That's interesting. You'd think if someone with know-how of game physics was working for Blizzard it would actually show in their games. lol at floating corpses and the sheer garbage of the game's animation in general.