The annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) is fast approaching. The ARM team is in the midst of finalizing preparations to try and make this GDC our best one yet – it will definitely be our biggest! We have some great activities planned for the week and will be joined by a host of ARM partners at both the ARM booth (#1616) and the speaking sessions in West Hall Room 3014, many of whom have announcements which we can’t wait to share!
Joining us on the ARM Booth...
There is a wealth of variety in the tools, game engines and middleware available to developers who are looking to expand into the mobile gaming market. These can help ease the effort of development, improve the performance of your app or even add differentiating features. GDC is a great opportunity for developers to discover these and at the ARM booth this year we will be joined by an array of Ecosystem partners who offer such solutions, all of which have been optimized for ARM-based devices. We are especially excited to be joined by several Chinese partners (Tencent, Sohu, Perfect World and Chukong/Cocos2d-x) who will display their latest gaming technology and demonstrate the huge opportunities that are emerging in the Chinese mobile gaming market. Between these partners there are some exciting developments which it is worth checking out: Sohu has recently released an open source version of their Genesis-3d engine; Chukong/Cocos2d-x have launched their new Cocos3d-x engine; the most popular Chinese 3D mobile games will be demonstrated by Tencent and Perfect World will be there with their ECHO-es engine which powers their famous 3D adventure and fantasy MMORPG.
Also on the ARM booth will be PlayCanvas and Goo Technologies who are showcasing their HTML5 solutions, optimized for mobile, which can enable you to make rich and engaging browser-based games (which could be fantastic for the DTV market, for example). GeomericsEnlighten™ technology, which has already been revolutionizing the console gaming experience and is set to rapidly accelerate the transition to photo realistic graphics in mobile, will also be on hand to explain to developers how you can get access to their solution. TheMarmalade staff will detail the benefits of their SDK, which allows developers to code once and distribute cross platform, across any mobile device, as well as Marmalade Quick, Web Marmalade and Marmalade Juice which all build on top of the SDK, providing alternatives for developers using Lua, HTML or Objective-C® software. You can also learn how to boost you code’s performance at Umbra’s pod where they will show their smart culling technology. The Havok™ Anarchy™ engine will be on a pod and at Simplygon’s pod developers can discover how to optimize their content for ARM-based, mobile platforms to deliver the AAA game which you aimed for. Finally, the Samsung Developers pod will host the Samsung Chord SDK which is designed to help developers who have no knowledge of networking develop local information-sharing applications and apply them to games, like Asphalt 8 by Gameloft.
Screenshot from Project Anarchy
Find out more about ARM technology
ARM will be presenting five times at GDC (all in West Hall Room 3014!), covering key subjects of the moment for mobile gamers. We will discuss ARM’s recent game middleware technology acquisition (the Enlighten solution by Geomerics) and how this solution is developing, along with how to efficiently use and develop for a deferred rendering architecture (the architecture mainly used for battery constrained mobile devices). Gameloft will join us for another talk to go through the different methods which you could use to optimize AAA games for mobile. The next talk will cover OpenGL® ES 3.0 and beyond, with a good sideline on ASTC Full Profile and how its flexibility and quality can make the world of difference to your games. Covered in our fourth talk will be how you can best maximize the performance of the ARM Cortex® CPU, the IP within over 95% of mobile devices, by using ARM NEON™ technology and/or multithreading. Finally our last (but not least) talk of the show covers the proven tools ARM offers to game developers and, together with our partner, EA, we will show attendees how best to use these tools to create fantastic, high-performing games.
The full talk abstracts and schedule can be found here.
Discuss the latest techniques with industry experts
For those who want to learn a little more about the solutions on the ARM booth or who can’t make our talks above, ARM engineers and our partners are going to be presenting at the ARM Lecture Theatre within our booth. They will be joined by other ARM partners such as Testin and their cloud testing platform, Autodesk live-drawing professional quality digital art using their SketchBook® Pro software optimized for Android devices and Guild Software with their renowned Vendetta Online. The schedule is packed with items of interest to mobile developers, so please check the schedule and topics here to discover what might interest you.
In the link you will also find several other talks from the ARM Developer Education team, covering best practices of developing games for mobile, optimizing your WebGL™ application for mobile, using the ARM tools for game development and the different content preview of the five ARM GDC sponsored sessions.
Show off your skills in the ARM Game Challenge!
Game developers can chill out in ARM’s Gaming Zone where hit apps which have been optimized to deliver great visual effects using the ARM tools will be available– these include such titles as VW Sports Car Challenge, Real Racing 3, and Asphalt 8. If you’re feeling lucky, take part in the Sports Car Challenge 2 for your chance to win a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition– prove yourself to be the fastest gamer of the show by getting the fastest lap time and claim your prize at the end of the day!
Discover a new way to create digital art in the ARM Artist Competition
ARM, together with Autodesk and Samsung Developers, will be highlighting the digital art capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy tablets. The Samsung Galaxy NotePRO 12.2 is a well-recognized tool for developers which enables them to design on the go, freeing themselves from their desk – and the SketchBook Pro software by Autodesk is great for this task too. Test the devices on the ARM booth to discover their potential - and if you draw the best picture of the day you will be in with a chance of winning a Samsung Galaxy Note 8!
For more information on the Artist Competition, check out Akshay’s blog, coming here soon.
For information on the ARM demos on show at GDC, check out Phill Smith’s blog Expanding the Mobile Gaming Experience at GDC 2014
Meanwhile, I need to get back to my GDC preparation – I look forward to meeting everyone next week at GDC, please drop by the ARM booth and say hello!