Hello and welcome to another episode of Visualize this!. My guest today is Patric Palm, CEO and co-founder of Hansoft. Patric will be speaking with us today on the need to for agile tools for game development teams.

Download link to a high quality MP4 video file of the show (about 150MB)

Community News :

--Mike Simpson from Creative Assembly started a blog on the Intel software network Visual computing community. You can read his blog here Encourage you to leave your comments as well and if you want Mike to share his thoughts on a particular subject. I am sure Mike will love to hear from you!
--Want to remind our audience about Idea zone - this is an area where we encourage our community members to submit their ideas on intel products and tools. There are various topics and each accepted idea is eligible to win a cash prize. So check out idea zone and enter your ideas!

Show Questions :

-- Tell us a bit about yourself and Hansoft?
-- Is there a difference between agile methods in traditional development shops vs visual computing teams?
-- Why is an agile/lean development tool needed for game /digital content creation companies?
-- How would you recommend implementing a tool?
-- what the the typical situations where teams have implemented a tool to manage their agile process
-- Is there an ideal team size where a tool for managing the project is recommended?
--How is Hansoft different from other agile products?

You can watch Visualize This! live alternate Tuesdays at 2:30PM Pacific on Intel Software Network TV, our new 24/7 interactive video channel. Come chat with us, or browse the On Demand section to see past episodes of our shows.

You can also automatically receive new show episodes as the become available. Subscribe to the Intel Software Network TV feed in your favorite aggregator (iTunes users, click here), or sign up to get an email when new episodes are posted.

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What I’d like to see are the key stakeholders in the gaming industry start by considering the problem from the Consumer’s viewpoint & wallet. Today if I’m a gamer-consumer I’m assaulted with an array of Game System choices. Unlike music or movies, in order to play the game I want I’m forced to make some hard choices. If I want to play the next Halo when it releases I have to buy an Xbox. If I want to play God of War I’ll likely have to buy a Playstation. If I want to play the next Zelda I’ll likely have to buy a Nintendo Wii. If I want to play World of Warcraft I’ll have to buy a PC or a Mac & so on it goes. The irony is that these same key stakeholders in wanting to ‘wall off their gardens’ are actually costing themselves and the consumers more money in the end. Everyone in this current ‘fail-boat’ scenario is a loser.

Enough! Am I the only person that thinks this is a bit crazy and unfair to consumers? Imagine if we were to extend this same business model out to include movies & or music? I’d have to buy three or more systems to play all my movies. I’d have to buy another three or more systems to play all my music. Imagine if this scenario extended broadly to certain broadcast networks (e.g. CBS, NBC, etc) and I then have to purchase separate TVs? In a word this is ‘nutty’. My living room would be stacked floor to ceiling with twenty or more media playback devices.

There is one platform device that has the ability to play all media (Games, Music, and Movies) very well so why not fix it? If I have to spell it out that would be a PC. In order to do this though there would need to be some sort of Hardware and Software standards in place; likely set at a certain agreed upon cadence with all the key stakeholders.

Let me briefly touch upon and preempt the naysayers on two big topics that are bound to be mentioned for the PC.
1) Piracy is killing PC gaming? Really? Do we ever hear about the impact of secondary sales on the Console? Ask yourself what is worse? I sold my old Console games on Craig’s list. (Cha-Ching!) None of that money went back to the Game Developer or Publisher. Both are very serious issues though that I’ll tackle in a later blog. Fundamentally though Game Developers will most likely have to shift the value propositions of their games to the cloud & or somehow stay tethered to the internet to combat Piracy. The Pirates only have themselves to thank for that one. We’re seeing Consoles jumping on that band wagon now. I’ve also mused about how the OEMs feel about Proprietary Gaming systems but I digress.
2) Ease of use? Again … nothing a PC can’t handle here either. Time to load a game, menus and so on. The bulk of these issues are so easy to solve by following some game design 101 basics. A game on any platform should always work and be easily accessible. Solutions here are really not that hard.

So there you have it. Someday I hope to retire; and when I do walk into my local retail or etail store, I hope to be able to simply pick up the game, or download it, and have it work. I for one will definitely be averse to having to continue mixing and matching devices to games. Hopefully by then the gaming industry I’m so fond of will have matured a little by then. While I’m bound to hear primarily from industry insiders who I’d like to hear from the most is actually the gaming-consumers. How do you feel about all this?

What do you think is most influential aspect of a game? The story, characters, game play,interface, options, console availability, interaction, the audio? What is it that draws you and makes you want to play that game?

GPA 2.2 has been released with a few major pieces of new functionality. First and foremost, GPA now supports DX10 across the entire tool suite. You can now analyze DX10 games with both the System Analyzer and Frame Analyzer. Secondly, GPA fully supports Windows7. Finally, System Analyzer now supports "frame based" metric counting. Metrics in System Analyzer are no longer displayed in charts based on time, they are now displayed simply per frame.

The major features within the GPA Frame Analyzer that have been extended to support DX10 are:
1) Erg Bar Chart: GS duration per draw call (along with VS and PS from DX9).
2) Erg Bar Chart: GS duration within the GPU Breakdown chart option - now supports VS, GS, and PS all at the same time.
3) Scene Overview Spreadsheet View: GS duration metrics along with VS and PS can be added as columns.
4) Details Tab: GS duration is displayed as a cumulative sum across all selected draw calls.
5) Shader Tab: Each GS is displayed and can be modified.
6) DX State Tab: All DX10 states are available for viewing and modification.

Remember, if you modify any resources in the GPA Frame Analyzer, the tool displays for you both the performance impact of your change (bar chart and scene overview) as well as the visual impact of your change (render target viewer).

Download GPA 2.2 today on the GPA webpage.

Remember that GPA is free!

PCs scale: Sure, it's a glass half-full or half-empty situation, because component upgrades often break your wallet. Question is, would you rather have a platform that can play nearly anything, past to present? Or be locked into a totalitarian managed plastic mold that's only changed out once every half-decade or so? Ok so really every 3-5 years...

Emulation: So a major point for the PC is that you can grab an emulator and play any old console titles, or Arcade hit. A stack of ROMS, or cool emulation software and some Mountain Dew, excellent!

The Laptop: so not like the old days when your PC was a frankenstien creation and the size of small child. You can take your PC anywhere and with the tech today play almost any title on the right gaming laptop! Although I do not suggest sitting it on your lap! =)

Keyboard and mouse nough said: not much more to say here nothing todate is as great for interface controls. The Wii is good but come on I have never hit myself in the head with a mouse before! Plus you can use an Xbox 360 game pad on your PC also.....

Consoles get blue err red rings of death also! Plus they patch and update and need more hard drive space to save your game. Soooooooooooooo, ok next point.

PC will never go away: The console could disappear eventually for any muber of reasons, the PC however is major part of our lives, from work, to casual interface to too many You tube videos being shared and you can still fire up WOW and any other number of games. Also with the advent of the Spawn device you can soon play your console on you PC.

So this can go on forever; however I have a couple more points in defense of the PC and PC gaming.

First anything a console can do or play a PC can do it better, second the PC is the life blood of gaming as almost all of your game development is done on the PC and all your creativty is started on the PC and then ported to a console. For example take all of your Physcis solutions!

Finally PC titles are cheaper to make and cost less to buy and the big daddy of the topics!

Piracy its not just for PC's anymore: Console piracy rates barely touch the PC's large numbers, yet that is. The more people playing console games, the more the console titles get pirated and disc swithcing, Xbox hacking, workarounds come about. So the whole piracy does not happen on the console is a myth, much like Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster and thinking your cool cause your mom told you that you are!

Just my thoughts, what do you think.....

Basically you have to thank Super Mario for providing the inspiration to Carmack to create a rapid side scrolling game for the PC. This of course led to Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake etc which also led to ID software and Romero licensed the engine technologies to other developers.

This of course led to several other break throughs in development in PC games (like the Unreal engine) which made so may great console games popular and possible...

My thoughts anyway, what do you think?

My guest today is Drew Sikora executive producer at Gamedev.net. Drew will speak about the trends and challenges in game development

Download link to a high quality MP4 video file of the show (about 150MB)

Community News :
--I had recently spoken with Ganesh Rao and Kath Knobe about Concurrent Collections for C++. New version .4 of intel concurrent collections for c++ is available at
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-concurrent-collections-for-cc/

--We have some new articles published on the site.
--Total War: The Return of Operation Flashpoint*: hptp://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/game-gallery/operation-flashpoint-dragon-rising.php#/featured-article
--Resident Evil* 5 Takes Full Advantage of Intel® Core™ i7 Processors: http://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/game-gallery/resident-evil-5.php#/featured-article
--Wolfenstein: Rebuilt From the Ground Up for Today’s Hardware: http://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/game-gallery/wolfenstein.php#/featured-article

--The Intel Partner Program has a new campaign called Succeed. Now through Dec 31st each project completion report is eligible to win. There is also a graphics category for our visual computing audience. Check out more details here

Questions :
1) Tell us about yourself and gamedev.net (you can touch upon your role and some background on gamedev.net)
2) You talk to a variety of game developers. What direction do you see game development heading in terms of genre, hardware, game engines, etc.?
3) Cross platform game development is becoming increasingly important as we move games to handhelds. We at Intel have a vested interest on higher end gaming platforms, what are your thoughts/view on the lower end platforms like Wii, iPhone, netbooks?
4) What are the biggest challenges that game developers have today?
5) How might Intel help solve any of those challenges with tools, sample code, trainings, etc.?
6) Intel runs an annual game contest like LevelUp 2009, are there any suggestions you have on changes to this contest or how it compares to other contests?
7) What drives/attracts today’s game developer?
8) On the Intel Visual computing community we are always striving to provide interesting game sample code or tools. Do you have any thoughts on what developers are looking for?
9) You run a successful game development portal. What has been the key areas that make it so attractive to game developers?

You can watch Visualize This! live alternate Tuesdays at 2:30PM Pacific on Intel Software Network TV, our new 24/7 interactive video channel. Come chat with us, or browse the On Demand section to see past episodes of our shows.

You can also automatically receive new show episodes as the become available. Subscribe to the Intel Software Network TV feed in your favorite aggregator (iTunes users, click here), or sign up to get an email when new episodes are posted.

Follow @isntv on Twitter to get notified when

Performance per Watt is pretty straight forward when you first look at it. Then you begin to sink in the quicksand you’ve blithely walked into. The panic sets in as you sink lower and lower. Eventually you decide to ignore the whole complicated mess and go back to saying to yourself how straight forward it is. Of course, deep within your heart of hearts, you know that it’s not.

For most of us, performance per Watt is nothing more than how much our computer can get done on a given battery charge.

Let’s dissect this a little further and try to get down to something a little more concrete. The real problem with the above very general description is that it makes intuitive sense but not engineering sense. We need to take it apart and put it in more engineering terms.

A Watt is how much energy you’re using per second. It’s the rate of energy consumption. Why is this important? Well, are we asking about how much our computer can get done given so much energy (Joules)? Or are we asking how much our computer can get done when fed energy at a certain rate (Watts)? What’s the difference? The first is easier to understand. Let’s say we’re using a laptop. Then the first asks how much can we get done for a certain battery size.

So what’s wrong with the second? It’s a rate. You might say that to get performance per Watt, all we have to do is to divide the number of cycles executed over the life of our battery with the energy in the battery. Even neglecting the fact that we haven’t quantified what “performance” is, we run into a problem. Rates are good when considering steady state situations, but typical client usage – servers are different – is anything but steady state. This means that performance per Watt is dependent upon a whole lot of factors. These are things like the type of user / application suite you typically run, the OS you use and its power policy, your processor architecture, the peripherals you have, etc. It gets messy fast.

And we haven’t even tried to figure out what “performance” means in the context of power.

So what’s the conclusion? Do we forget performance per rate of energy usage (Watt) and just go with how much we can get done given so much energy (e.g. how big of a battery you have)? Unfortunately not. If we can quantify the rate of energy consumption then we can theoretically calculate the energy consumed by a whole host of different users, e.g. business vs home users, nerd vs coffee shop users, etc.

Next: A high-level look at performance

This next series of articles is a case in point. I’m going to talk about performance per Watt. Why? Because I’m thinking about it. And I’m working on setting up some experiments. And I want to exploit…uh, I mean take advantage…of all you wonderful people out there to figure out what the heck I’m doing.

In this first article, I’m going to provide motivation on why performance per Watt, or something equivalent, is important. And I’m going to write it even if many (or most) of you think it’s obvious.

This brings up the flip side of blogging. A big advantage of being a blog reader is that you don’t have to listen to me repeat the apparently obvious or the boring.

So let’s have at it.

code used to hide the cursor

As you can see, I create a pointer to a Graphics Window object and I set the “useCursor” option to false. This hides the cursor so the user can focus on where the cannon is positioned, rather than the cursor. Another bit of code I added sets the starting position of the cursor to the middle of the screen. Because I start the application with a window that is 800x600, the beginning position is (400, 300). I originally set this position to (0,0) since when you are setting angles, the center point is (0,0). However, it turns out that this is not correct for setting this function. Here’s the line that sets the cursor:

code used to center the cursor

One thing I discovered is that you have to set this cursor position AFTER the window is realized, even though you hide the cursor previous to this.
Now that I have the cannon moving with the mouse and the camera following the cannon, I want to be able to move the cannon to the right and left as well as backwards and forwards. Although the cannon will move to the “right” or “left”, the actual movement I want to generate is a circular movement around the central object which is the castle. So the center of this circle is (0, 0, 0). The cannon is originally positioned at (2000, 9000, 180). At first I was thinking that the radius of the circle would be 9000. Remember, in OSG the ‘z’ axis is up, so the ‘y’ axis is the “distance” direction (for lack of a better description). The actual radius of my circle, then, is found by use of the Pythagorean Theory. The equation is below:

The radius then turns out to be approximately 9219.544. Using the radius as the distance from the Castle leaves me with the following code:

Moving the Cannon Right and Left

The change in location around the diameter of the circle with a radius of 9219.544 is determined by dividing 2PI by one less than an arbitrary number (g_scnNumCircleDivisions). The sin of this value is then multiplied by the radius found in the global “g_fDistanceFromCastle” . The height above ground is retained from the original position of the cannon. This vector is added to the circle center vector to obtain the correct position around the circle. I use “g_v3TerrainPos” as the center mark because it is centered on (0, 0, 0). To circle right, I add the delta amount to the total angle and to circle left I subtract it from the total.
The code for moving forward and backward is pretty much the same as above except that the changing value is the distance from the Castle (g_fDistanceFromCastle). This section also clamps the distance value so that the cannon cannot get too close or too far away from the castle. The code follows:

Code used to move the Cannon Forward and Back

For those of you who missed the previous blogs, here are some links:

Blog 1: "Threaded Graphics to MID: A New Journey"
Blog 2: "From DirectX to OpenGL - Wheels Up"
Blog 3: "OpenGL Graphic Formats and Conversion"
Blog 4: "Scene Graphs and Instancing"
Blog 5: "Load, Follow, or Get Out of the Way"

I have in the past paid for subscription services like Netflix and Blockbuster for movie rentals. This makes sense if you are an avid movie watcher and get the convenience of renting by mail, locally or watching streamed. The thought has often crossed my mind on why something like this is not available for games. The current model where you buy a console and then are limited to games for that console only seems too heavy and “unstreamlined”. And if you have a family with teenagers you can relate to having 3 current game consoles (I have a PS3, PS2, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Gamecube, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS and all previous versions of Nintendo consoles) you have to wonder why we can’t have a service that combines these so we don’t have so much hardware to store (except maybe handhelds where the usage model is different).

Also take into account that you buy a game for $40-$50 vs a subscription service that offers a multitude of games seems like a win win for the consumer. Now how about the game companies and publishers?

Granted that each publisher and console company wants their share but maybe by combining their games in a subscription pool there can be cost benefits by getting games to audiences that may have never played their game due to the cost of buying yet another new game. This should be an attractive option to smaller game publishers to get their games to a large audience without having them buy a lesser known game.

We are moving towards an era of consumer electronics that move away from the linear model to a multi streamed internet model with a wide variety of choices like internet, 3d gaming, social media to complement the TV. An online gaming subscription service seems to be where we will be in the future.

Your thoughts?

Our guest today is Robert Adams, a research engineer at Intel. Robert will talk to us about the research happening at Intel in the area of Virtual worlds.