Here are the first two instalments of Jules Davis' GDC diaries. Jules is CTO of middleware developer, Geomerics and is showing off a next-gen lighting demo at the event.
Tuesday 21 "It's been a couple of years since I've made it to GDC but when we walked into the lobby of the Fairmont last night, inspite of 18 hours of travel, the familiar excitement returned. The place was packed out with half the movers and shakers in the games industry from top designers, artists and programmers to the execs of some of the biggest publishers in the world. For five days the Fairmont lobby is the social centre of games industry and where much of the real business takes place. This year with a second wet bar, a sushi stall and Natural Motion paying for drinks, by 7pm, it was packed.
"I spent the next few hours wandering the lobby renewing old friendships, catching up on gossip and getting introduced to a host of new faces. This year I had my own story to tell too, with my recent move to Geomerics.
"At this GDC, whether it's excitement about the new possibilities or arguing about which console is going to come out on top, the thing on everyone's minds is the new generation of games machines. Now that most of the big announcements have been made, there are still many questions to be answered and GDC is a great time to find them. It's also the first GDC where real experience of developing on nex-gen hardware is being discussed.
"It's going to be a great week."
Wednesday 22 "It's lunch-time and I've just attended Phil Harrison's keynote 'Playstation 3: Beyond the Box' the level of excitement was amazing as people queued round four sides of the theatre block to get in. Once in the last to arrive were standing four or more deep on the balcony round the highest point watching the slides and the demos on a 1080p high definition projector.
"Phil covered the comparative position of the various existing consoles focussing on the impressive statistics about the life cycle of Playsation and Playstation 2. Before moving on to the plans for PSP and PS3. PSP will have a camera and GPS add-ons soon as well as continuing enhancements to the online integration in the OS.
"Sony are now talking up the online side of both the new platforms with a strong push on downloadable content, e-commerce and building community. But the audience was there for the PS3 demos and the titbits of new information.
"We had some stunning looking demos from Insomniac, my favourite being a video from what looked like a section of a PS3 Ratchet and Clank game. The complexity of the ambient world and the visual and audio fidelity were stunning.
"We also saw some cool nice shots of the Ninja Theory engine doing physics on huge numbers of soldiers and a beautiful real-time demo of the upcoming Warhawk title.
"I gotta run now, the Tiga networking lunch beckons."
