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Storefront > GDC Vault Store - Audio Recordings > GDC 2010

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Speaker: Paul Du Bois (Senior Programmer, Double Fine), Henry Goffin (Programmer, Double Fine)
Date/Time: Thursday (March 11, 2010) 10:30am — 11:30am
Location (room): Room 131, North Hall
Track: Programming
Secondary Track: Production
Format: 60-minute Lecture
Experience Level: Intermediate

Session Description
This is the talk we wish we had seen before implementing a streaming open-world game from scratch. We present the data-packaging and -loading pipe used in Brutal Legend, with an emphasis on I/O throughput. One of its key features is the offline generation of two digraphs which represent asset-asset references, and asset-asset dependencies. These graphs allow the requirements for packing, loading, and unloading assets (dictated by programmers) to be highly decoupled from the gross structure of the data (dictated by designers and content creators).

The other key feature is a cross-platform I/O scheduler. We discuss its simple yet highly effective algorithms, and present tips and insights we believe were vital to its success. We also show some neat pictures of graphs and dispel some myths about hard drives being better than optical discs.

Intended Audience
This session is intended for programmers of all levels. Basic familiarity with graphs and treaps is helpful but not required, as is general knowledge of how an optical disc drive works. Knowledge of your engine's data pipeline will be useful for you to relate the engine-agnostic techniques we present to your own game.

Additionally, producers will find interesting the sections of the talk concerning the development strategy we pursued and technical trade-offs we made; and concerning our focus on artist productivity.

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