UNITE 2013 Talks

It turns out the IGC is going to be supplying a healthy amount of content for UNITE this year. Here’s the rundown of the talks we’ll be giving!

Postmortem: Girls Like Robots. Or: How I Accidentally an Adult Swim Game.

Ziba Scott, Luigi Guatieri – Popcannibal
Thu. 16:00 – 17:00, Room 211
Small team? Tiny budget? Big aspirations? Popcannibal shares the corners they cut, the lies they told and where they rolled up theirs sleeves to make “Girls Like Robots” the 13th best reviewed iOS game of 2012 (metacritic). Scoff at our foibles and glean some tips for tiny teams with more ambition than time. Topics: Lazy 2D tech. Porting to 7 platforms. Art. Playtesting. Scope. Tutorial and puzzle design. Contractors. Boothing. Fear of plugins. Analytics. TV Advertisements.

Runtime Remix: Dynamic Audio in Real Time

Trevor Stricker – Disco Pixel
Thu. 17:30 – 18:00, Ballroom B
Dynamic soundtracks rock. When your player is being clever, your music wants to go dum-ditty. When the player is being really clever the music wants to go dum-ditty-dum. Ever try triggering samples to make music? It sounds like a toddler on a xylophone. Ever try storing an hour of music? Doesn’t work with a mobile game. You really want to generate the track on the fly, at runtime. This is useful for dynamic soundtracks, for drum machines and step composers. The examples will be in C#.

Console to Mobile: Bringing an AAA Console Title to Mobile with Almost Zero Asset Modification

Alex Schwartz, Devin Reimer – Owlchemy Labs
Fri. 13:30 – 14:30, Ballroom B
Owlchemy Labs discusses bringing Shoot Many Robots, an AAA 3D game for PS3 and Xbox 360, to iPhone, iPad and Android devices with minimal 3D model changes. With some clever optimizations and some early planning, we were able to create an entirely new mobile game with the original console assets in under 6 months. Attendees will get a peek behind the curtain at the shaders, pipeline and platform-specific optimizations as well as practical examples of our real-world limitations and constraints.

Successfully Avoiding Common Pathways to Heartbreak and Disasters in Your Art Pipeline

Elliott Mitchell – Vermont Digital Arts
Fri. 16:30 – 17:00, Ballroom A
Want to make games that look fantastic and run well on all platforms including mobile? Creating, tracking and optimizing your art pipeline is key to successfully avoiding common pathways to heartbreak and avoidable disasters. A little commonsense coupled with some best practices can go a long way to ensuring your art assets do not hinder your game’s success. Elliott Mitchell has been working across the games, education and 3D art industries for 30 years. In this session Elliott will share his accumulated knowledge of 2D, 3D and animation art pipelines as they relate to Unity across platforms including mobile, web and desktop games.

We hope to see you there!