INTEL® VISUAL Adrenaline issue 3, 2009

Autodesk®: * TECHNOLOGY Wolfenstein ADVANCES AS Reborn: NEXT-GENERATION Better, Stronger, HARDWARE Faster—and True MELDS WITH to Its Roots CUSTOM-TUNED SOFTWARE A Peek into the Intel® Architecture Code-Named Larrabee

New Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers

Empire: Total War * Takes to the Waves with Real-Time 3D Naval Battles

©2009 Mythic Entertainment** t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s

2 Wolfenstein* is Reborn Seventeen years after the groundbreaking original, an all new Wolfenstein is true to its roots.

8 Take a Look at Larrabee  Tom Forsyth shares his thoughts on how it feels to be on the leading edge of the gaming graphics universe.

13 Victory for 2008 Indie Game Developers * Three winners, three games—how 28 Empire: Total War the win from Intel has helped these Takes to the Waves game developers. Featuring real-time 3D naval battles, Empire: Total War targets the revolution and rebellion of eighteenth-century England. 18 Autodesk® Fuels Triple-A Game Creations A trio of applications from Autodesk animates and energizes Triple-A game development.

24 Launch of Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers: Virtual Graphics Support 34 Cakewalk Software: Composing Audio for Your Game Studio for Video Games Realize full graphics performance potential The audio soundtrack of a video game can make with minimum effort. the experience an adrenaline-drenched adventure.

From the managing editor’s desk chryste sullivan

It’s been a doozy of a winter for those of us in I know some fret about excessive “screen time,” but I firmly Pacific Northwest. All I can tell you is that those of us in side with Steven Johnson, who sang the praises of our immersed Oregon may have an affinity for fleece and coffee, but we digital existence in his 2005 book Everything Bad is Good for are innocent in the ways of shoveling driveways, salting You. Johnson asserts that most youthful gamers today would roads, and plowing snow. Suffice it to say there’s been more likely score better on an IQ test than their parents at a similar hunkering down than usual. age, largely because of the problem-solving skills gleaned from blowing up opposing alien armies, captaining sports teams, Faced with similar situations when I was a kid, I had a very and the like. I’m glad about this because my own kids may narrow range of options for passing the time. Now a parent someday need these extra IQ points to develop new hardware myself, the sounds in my home come from a growing library or software of the sort described in this month’s issue. of video games that my kids play, and their banter as they play them. They are digital natives. Until next time, drive safely and happy gaming. At least spring is almost here!

**COVER: Image from Warhammer* Online courtesy of Mythic Entertainment.

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 1 Wolfenstein* : Rebuilt from the Ground Up for Today’s Hardware by Garret Romaine

B.J. is back. William Joseph “B.J.” Blazkowicz was the gung-ho hero who single-handedly conquered Castle Wolfenstein and the man who really won World War II. One of the longest lived and best-loved franchises in gaming history, Wolfenstein* is reborn, rebuilt from the ground up using state of the art development tools and ready for today’s advanced computer hardware.

First introduced by John Carmack and his friends as developers have brought to life a distinctive alternate a shareware legend in 1992 and later voted into the history for the WWII universe, with supernatural Nazis gaming Hall of Fame, Wolfenstein 3D* single-handedly wielding strange new weapons and inhabiting an started the first-person shooter (FPS) category of alternate dimension known as the Veil. Strange creatures computer games and was the predecessor to such inhabit this occult world in which space and time are venerable heroes of today as Gordon Freeman from distorted and special effects and story twists abound. Half Life* and Master Chief from Halo*. Now, 17 years after the groundbreaking original Wolfenstein 3D was Despite these updates, Wolfenstein remains true to its first released, comesWolfenstein —an all-new game from roots. Eric Biessman, creative director at Raven Software, one of the most recognized names in computer gaming. said that the Raven team never planned to simply crank out a rehash; they approached their project carefully. “I’m All-new dimensions with a nod to the past a huge fan of Wolfenstein 3D and Return to Castle Wolfenstein takes place this time not in a cramped Wolfenstein,” he explained. “We asked ourselves, ‘How can castle prison but in an expansive, intense city environment. we honor the history of the original Wolfenstein 3D and Within this sinister world players enjoy a rich story line yet still move forward?’ We still have treasures in the as our hero B.J. confronts his enemies with devastating game. Now there’s a whole new economy system. And weapons and mysterious new powers. Wolfenstein’s we’ve taken enemies from the previous games and

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 2 Visual impact in a dynamic way Raven developers used a variety of advanced tools and techniques to put a unique stamp on the new Wolfenstein. One of their goals was to showcase more interesting lighting that interacted with the environment. They saw the new Wolfenstein landscape as a dynamic world, requiring intense calculations for light interactions

Out of the dungeon and into the city, BJ is back!

modernized them. We kept telling ourselves, ‘Here’s the grandfather of all shooters, we can’t mess it up.’ We all came to this with a lot of love and respect for those early games, determined to honor what they were. We think we did that.”

The trick was to create advanced new capabilities in the game, while maintaining recognizable ties to the past titles that everyone loved. Wolfenstein 3D was a controlled game, with set linear levels. Return to Castle Wolfenstein felt more open, and more amenable to multi-player battles. For 2009, Both BJ and the supernatural Nazis wield weapons straight out of science fiction in the Veil. developers gave B.J. the opportunity to use new weapons and move the gameplay ahead, while keeping the multi-player and physics. The addition of the Veil, with its strange hooks. It is, and it isn’t, your father’s Wolfenstein. occult influences and other-worldly effects, put additional pressure on the game’s look and feel. The Raven team Biessman serves as the Wolfenstein project lead. ultimately decided on a deferred shading renderer. He believes Wolfenstein fills a niche that no other game fills. “You get the classic id first-person shooter, Deferred shading allows for scenes with hundreds of that quick-twitch arcade experience, plus you get dynamic lights, with almost no CPU impact. Previously that unique take on WWII, moving from the ordinary Raven used a forward shading technique that consumed to the extraordinary to the supernatural. You’re not a lot of processing performance while calculating what just fighting the Nazis; you’re going deep into their lights were interacting with what geometries. With lair and pulling up the worst parts of the Third Reich deferred shading, Raven can scale up the geometry right by the roots. You’re saving the world, period.” and the lights independently of each other, without that processing overhead. What this means to the end-user is that they will experience a scene that has more

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The new Wolfenstein* is a bit like . . . complicated geometries, and more lights and shadows—all dynamic so that the cost of moving these relative to each Checking out a reliable title to see what’s new and exciting other is small. This in turn allowed Raven to fill scenes with lots of breakables and numerous movable objects. Greeting a long lost friend you’re glad to The soft stencil shadows allowed them to render the see again highest quality shadowing and self-shadowing available, Running into that attractive in-law cousin you without the artifacts that can detract from a scene’s remember from your family reunion awhile back appeal, distracting the person playing the game. Having a great reason to upgrade your whole system Dwight Luetscher, Raven’s technical lead, explained All of the above! how they use deferred shading. “We render the unlit scene into textures: including the normals, the diffuse color, and the specular, then we use these textures to draw in light interactions into the frame buffer almost like geometries that we generate at runtime, and can it was post-process. We draw lots of lights in the scene independently light these without a concern for CPU but only pay the fragment shader cost for the pixels that overhead. We were going for rooms with hundreds of actually need the interaction. This allows us to have big, dynamically breakable objects under hundreds of lights, open, city scenes where the artists can have sunlight or something we just couldn’t afford to do with forward moonlight, window lights, bounce lights, fill lights, and shading.” However, Luetscher explained that there effect lights—all dynamic—and with very little CPU cost.” was a significant trade-off. “One down side to deferred shading is that anti-aliasing is a real challenge.” Luetscher added, “One of the benefits of deferred shading in a dynamically lit scene is that procedural Raven put a priority on aesthetics and decided that geometry does not have to concern itself with light soft stencil shadows gave the best look for character interaction. We can create all kinds of complicated self-shadowing. In Wolfenstein the stencil shadows are

The use of stencil shadows in Wolfenstein* PC provides depth and realism.

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Havok Physics*— used not just for characters but for all the buildings and objects in the world. This effect gives every object a very clean and precise soft shadow from each Making things key light. The result is a dynamically lit scene, with all the shadows calculated act real on the fly. The team used their new lighting and shading features to bring the game’s Wolfenstein* is a great example new occult ties to life with a signature addition: the Veil. Players can step into of a game in development taking the Veil, see their enemies better, and get a dimensional speed burst, along with advantage of new tools to give other strange powers. There is some heavy post-processing going on, with players an entirely new experience thousands of particles flying through the air. The particle systems dress things that remains true to the original up, then a detailed texturing makes the alternate dimension look decayed and title. Raven engineers said they cracked. There is no mistaking when inside the Veil that you are inside a very didn’t plan on incorporating unique environment. multi-threading when they first scoped out the project. But once Breaking with the past, carefully they started pushing the buttons Biessman said that upgrading to new tools was a recurring theme on the Havok Physics* engine, as they developed the game. “We had to replace pieces of the older they grasped the opportunities technology to meet the requirements of modern standards. It was like immediately. starting from scratch, but not quite. We used new techniques and have all Raven’s Dwight Luetscher, these advanced features found in all modern engines. But at the heart, technical lead for the project, it’s still that game you played long ago. That was tricky, that balance.” explained that heavy physics calculations led them to the Still, Luetscher believes players will quickly note the changes and approve. Havok tool. “We initially “Our effects system is very advanced. We are lofting geometry along spline encountered a lot of demand for curves. We use a particle system based on GPU particles. We can push large physics in this project,” he said. numbers of particles, for effects like a precipitation system. There are games “We wanted it to be very full; we that have done lots of light, but not dynamic light that interacts properly with the wanted good things to happen as rest of the dynamic objects in the rest of the world. In our case, we’re painting you interact within the world. We the world with hundreds of lights, and they’re interacting with each dynamic chose to use Havok Physics object. The devil’s in the details, because it’s hard to get it all to be as efficient as because of the multi-threading it needs to be. There’s been a lot of optimization done, mostly on the GPU side.” capabilities, first and foremost. We know that’s the future. We’ve Threading efficiency is key definitely taken advantage of Rebuilding the game for 2009 meant dividing the processing chores into that with Wolfenstein.” multiple threads, to take advantage of the number of cores a particular user’s system employs. Raven reports that Wolfenstein is running with six software Raven’s creative director Eric threads, and is built to efficiently take advantage of multiple hardware cores. Biessman agreed. “Havok Physics Here’s the thread breakdown: actually opened a lot of new doors for us. It allowed us to populate an • F-mod mixer thread entire world with physical objects, • Havok* thread breakable and susceptible to • Havok thread damage. We can have grenades go • A streaming management thread off and show a stack of crates • Save thread blowing up. We’ve been able to do • Game engine—main thread a lot more than in the past. We even use Havok Physics for the The more cores a PC user brings to bear on Wolfenstein, the better the vehicles driven by AI characters in performance. Luetscher explains why: “We found we had a lot of streaming the game.” work and a lot of physics work consuming the CPU. We felt that processing

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that. While the renderer is doing its BJ passes through job, we don’t feel the computational the Veil where his pain of the physics at all. We use fight continues in an physics pretty heavily in this game, alternate dimension. and it comes free to the end user on a multi-core, multi-threaded CPU such as the Intel® Core™ i7 processor. Low-cost physics took a little getting used to,” he admitted.

The game still runs on high-end single-core machines, however. Testing teams have sorted out all the combinations and verified that single-core users won’t be short-changed on the exciting gameplay, while users of multi-core power could be put to better use by concentrating on systems will see the difference with better effects gameplay, AI code, and rendering. We had to write a and physics simulation as the core count increases. whole new asset loading path to make streaming happen asynchronously and with very little interaction by the Taking the time to do it right main thread. For physics, we turned to Havok Physics*, Gamers of course want to know when the new title to provide the threading support for the simulation. will arrive, but that’s still a bit down the road. Wolfenstein We also had to significantly modify the game code to will ship “when it’s done”, according to id Software’s handle running the physics simulation asynchronously. CEO, Todd Hollenshead. “The focus of every id title The biggest restriction we faced was making these is high quality first and foremost. We’re not shooting changes to an existing technology that other game for a back-to-school date, or end-of-the-year holidays, programmers were actively using and coding to.” or any particular time. It’s done when it’s done. We’re approaching the end stages, but we’re not there yet.” Streaming gets a big assist from efficient threading. The net effect is decreased load times, a key for platform-based games. As Biessman Upward of ninety lights interact with the geometry in this dynamic scene. explains, “We’re constantly streaming characters, textures, models, audio, everything. We stream all the content we can. The result is that we have a lot more content per level, if you want to call it a level. Because of the streaming architecture, there are more objects that you can actually see and interact with. So the world really comes alive, as a visual thing.”

Luetscher explained that the benefits of multi-core are dramatic in the new game. “The cost of physics used to be our dominant cost, and now it’s for free. Imagine

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As expected, the new game will support a strong whole development team is constantly peppered for community element. Hollenshead said that was information about beta testing, early demos, trailers, another key feature carried over from the old game and the like. There have been lots of questions and lots to the new. “From a strategy perspective, it’s more of media requests. “When I talk to people, the first thing fun to play as a team rather than just against each I hear is, ‘Oh, I remember Wolfenstein 3D, yeah, tell me other,” said Hollenshead. “Return to Castle Wolfenstein about it. Does it still have . . . ’ I assure them that it does had an amazing multi-player experience that still have all the good stuff. But it has more. We talk about ranks among the most popular online games being the Veil and all the things you can do in the new game. played today. We’re bringing back the multi-player We’ve been able to explore interesting areas and weapons, mayhem and building on it with things like the cool along with exciting combat. It’s a brand new experience new Veil powers to thwart your online foes.” within this historical universe. Even if you didn’t have the history, you’re going to find a lot of things to like in Activision’s Nikki Lewis, brand manager for the here. It will create a new standard. It’s Wolfenstein.” • Wolfenstein franchise, told Visual Adrenaline that the

Moore’s Law: At Play with the Wolfenstein* Franchise To see a real-world example of Moore’s Law, which states that technology improves exponentially, take a look at the recommended specifications table for the three main iterations of Wolfenstein*. Like a rising tide that lifts all boats, each release of the Wolfenstein franchise demands more speed, power, or size.

Wolfenstein 3D* Return to Castle Wolfenstein* Wolfenstein* (PC)1

year 1992 2001 2009

80386-DX Intel® Pentium® 2 processor Intel® Core™ i7 processor CPU 33 MHz 400 MHz 2.93 GHz

RAM 640 K 128 MB 3 GB

3D Accelerator PCI Express* 2.0 Multi-GPU Graphics Graphics 16-bit VGA 16 MB VRAM 512 MB or Greater VRAM

Media Floppy CD DVD

OS MS-DOS* Microsoft Windows* 95 Microsoft Windows Vista*

1 Based on anticipated recommended specifications forWolfenstein PC.

About the Author Garret Romaine is a long-time journalist and technical writer hailing from Portland, Oregon. He was a beta tester for Epic MegaGames in the 1990s, working on titles such as Unreal*, One Must Fall 2097*, and Jazz Jackrabbit II*. Garret wrote numerous game reviews and features for Computer Bits magazine, and has contributed to ESCMAG.com, specializing in RTS games such as Dune II* and Command & Conquer*.

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 7 Peek into the Intel® Architecture Code-Named Larrabee with Tom Forsyth

Tom Forsyth is Intel’s software and hardware architect for the Intel® architecture code-named Larrabee. Before arriving at Intel Tom worked on various games for Microprose, Mucky Foot, and SEGA, and also worked at 3DLABS writing Microsoft DirectX* drivers. More recently, he was one of the principals at RAD Game Tools in Seattle, Washington. Tom is known for his extensive work with DirectX and various gaming platforms, as well as for his work over the past four years on Larrabee. In January 2009, Tom took some time to answer a few questions and reveal more about this important project.

Q: Some have theorized that working on the Larrabee project must be “like being at the absolute center of the gaming universe.” Is that how you see it? Has it been exciting to be part of such a large, focused team? And do you interact with other experts both inside Intel and in other companies— can you talk about that a little? had an almost unique chance to decide whether a feature is built into the hardware of the chip, handled entirely by the I’d say it’s at the leading edge of the gaming graphics software, or whether it’s a hybrid of the two—creating a universe. We always have to bear in mind that while modified instruction to help accelerate a more general path. graphics are important, they’re not what a game is fundamentally about. Games are created and played We’ve worked very closely with a bunch of very smart because they’re fun, and graphics are only a part of that. people. In addition to the public ties we have with people, But it’s the part that gets the most attention and the such as Professor Pat Hanrahan at Stanford and Tim most research, and when you include all the art and Sweeney at Epic Games, lots of developers in games, animation staff, it’s where the majority of the effort and industry, and academia have helped us shape the direction development costs go. of the hardware and software. It’s been really fun working with them, seeing their reaction to early designs, iterating One of the most fascinating things I’ve faced being part on their ideas and wishes, and finally making a lump of of the Larrabee team has been reconciling the needs of smart rock that contains as many of those ideas as we could hardware design, software drivers, and the game cram in. And we’ve barely started discussing the details in developers who use the whole rendering stack. When public—once the covers come off, I’m looking forward to considering how to implement a graphics algorithm, we’ve seeing people do some awesome stuff with Larrabee.

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Q: Intel confirmed that Larrabee DirectX. We’re not the first to do this, So that’s the tightrope we’ve is not a pure special-purpose of course: multi-texturing, hardware been walking with Larrabee. The processor or a pure graphics transform and lighting, shaders, and feedback from developers so far is processor, but a product that then unified shaders were all first that we’ve made good choices. combines many functions. We’ve available outside of DirectX, either in seen that Larrabee will be fully other APIs or on different platforms, Q: Given the huge amount of compatible with Microsoft's but their adoption by DirectX made development that’s taken place DirectX engine. Can you describe them available to the majority of or is under way with OpenGL* in general terms your relationship games programmers. and DirectX, do you see both with Microsoft and what its standards supported going presence has meant? Q: There are reports that forward, along with a new Larrabee is capable of scaling model? Are open-3D format and I’ve worked with the DirectX team to several thousand cores. solid parallel programming tools for many years, starting as a games When will the actual number of enough to drive convergence programmer and then as part of cores supported by Larrabee be among graphics developers to their (large) graphics advisory group, revealed? Even without pinning build tools and applications that and now I’m on the other side of the that number down, can you other industries can repurpose? fence making hardware and drivers. explain why that many cores Microsoft has been enormously would interest game developers? On a basic level, there are two important in shaping the industry extremes of graphics programmers. and ensuring that a broad range of In the SIGGRAPH 2008 paper One extreme wants to make the hardware is easily accessible to as we show simulations up to 64 best graphics possible, and they are many programmers as possible. cores, so we’re certainly looking happy to pick a single platform and at some pretty big numbers, but I API in pursuit of that goal. These That’s a tough juggling act—every think anyone quoting “thousands” programmers will aggressively use bit of graphics hardware is different, is counting something differently all the coolest new features and and each has its strengths and in relation to what most people jump through any necessary hoops weaknesses. The DirectX team has mean by a “core.” The large number to get the very best graphics they managed to hide the rather of cores is an admission that we’re can. They push the limits of graphics unimportant differences, while letting hitting some physical barriers. on the high-end PC cards and on the the really big differentiating factors Intel has been making single single-platform console games. If show through for developers to use. cores faster for many years by a graphics card exposes a feature, increasing both the clock speed and even through a custom one-off Although Larrabee can do some the amount of work done in each API, they will use it. We love these really cool stuff that no other clock. That process certainly hasn’t people, and they will make Larrabee graphics card can do, we’re acutely stopped, but it’s getting harder. do astonishing, outrageous things, aware that the majority of game but sadly there aren’t many of them. programmers don’t have the time Larrabee gets its performance or budget to fully exploit those by going the other way—making The other extreme wants to features unless there is broader, each core simpler, smaller, and more make the best possible game for the cross-platform support. Full, compliant, efficient, and then sticking down greatest number of people. Their and efficient DirectX support is lots of them. But not too small and game must ship on as many different enormously important to the project. simple—you have to strike the right graphics cards and platforms as balance between simpler hardware possible. These programmers need At the same time, we see Larrabee and ease of programming because it’s to pick a set of features that they as a powerful tool for prototyping no use having great theoretical peak can support on that wide range of future functionality that we hope speed if programmers can’t get at it. platforms, and to do that they may other hardware vendors will pick up, need to ignore some of the unique which can then be incorporated into features of each platform. To me this

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skill is no less amazing—to be able to target platforms as pipelines. But there’s also a bunch of exciting near-term diverse as 20 different PC cards, the Microsoft Xbox 360*, features that extend the current rasterization pipeline: the Sony PlayStation* 3, and the Nintendo Wii*, each with its own little quirks, and to achieve such consistency is • Render-target read. This allows the truly impressive. Though I guess you have to have tried developer to write a pixel shader that can read as well it and done it to realize just how tricky it is. These people as write the current target. All sorts of custom-blend absolutely need every bit of help to make their life simpler, operators are possible, not just the small range of and the OpenGL and DirectX standards are crucial for fixed-function ones we have today. This sounds this. If a feature is not exposed through those standards, like a simple feature, but it’s surprisingly difficult to they honestly don’t have time to use it. Larrabee must implement in a conventional architecture, and it has have the very best OpenGL and DirectX support possible, some fascinating knock-on effects on shader writing because that is what the majority of titles use. that we’ve only scratched the surface of so far.

Then there’s the middle ground: programmers who • Demand-page texturing. We have a full mainly use the existing APIs, but have a bit of freedom to virtual-memory system in Larrabee, which includes play with a few novel features—here and there. Maybe every bit of hardware including the texture units. That they have a neat lens-flare effect on one card and not means that you can read from a texture when not all another. Maybe high dynamic range is implemented of it actually exists in memory. Other parts (that you’re a different way on one card. Or maybe particles are not currently using) might currently exist on the host rendered slightly better on one platform than on system or even on the hard drive. Or they might not another. Included in this category is middleware (both exist in a true “texture” format at all—maybe it’s a JPEG, public and internal to studios)—when you’re making a multi-layered Photoshop* file, a Perlin-noise-style a graphics engine that will be used on multiple titles, procedural description, a PowerPoint slide*, or a text file. adding a few bits of special code targeting specific cards is a reasonable investment of time and effort. So these This feature is great not only because it compresses far people need the standard APIs, but they can also explore better than normal texture data, but also because it’s easy a bit around the edges and play with some of the new for the game to change on-the-fly. One interesting features as long as these features aren’t too crazy. example is newspaper headlines that change according to the player’s actions in the past. While technically possible We’re supporting all three types of programmers: those now, they’re somewhat complex to integrate into an who need rock-solid Direct3D and OpenGL support, existing game engine. extended features for those that want to dip their toes in the future, and “bare metal” programming in C++ and even • Order-independent translucency (OIT). assembly language for those that want to run headlong Translucent objects are annoyingly tricky to get right in into the new-but-old world of software rendering. game engines because unlike normal opaque surfaces, the game has to do the depth sorting for the graphics Q: As stated at SIGGRAPH 2008, the customizable card. Often you can’t have many of them, they don’t software graphics rendering pipeline for this get shadowed or lit properly, or there are restrictions architecture uses binning in order to reduce required on the type of surfaces you can put them onto. So memory bandwidth, minimize lock contention, and they are used sparingly in current pipelines, and they’re increase opportunities for parallelism relative to generally treated as a bunch of special cases. standard GPUs. Can you give us a brief introduction to the new types of graphics algorithms that will be OIT makes translucency a first-class citizen—you possible with this new software rendering pipeline? render it just like any other sort of surface, and OIT takes care of the sorting for you. Developers have This is a huge area of very exciting research. A lot been asking for this for years, but it’s very difficult of people are talking about some longer-term goals, for traditional hardware to implement. Because of such as Reyes, ray tracing, splatting, and volumetric the flexibility of Larrabee’s all-software pipeline, rendering, which all require new content and new we can enable this without any extra hardware.

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Q: There was some confusion earlier about whether more “traditional” Z-buffer scheme, which renders the Larrabee would be rendering graphics using characters. Each method is more efficient than the other rasterization or ray tracing. You announced on your at those particular items of work. It’s nice to have that sort blog last April that Larrabee was absolutely committed of flexibility back in rendering algorithms and to give that to supporting the conventional rasterization pipeline. power back to developers to see what they do with it. Yet ray-tracing would still be enabled for what you described as “wacky tech” projects. What did you Q: You’ve been right in the middle between mean by that? Is ray tracing still too far out of the the hardware and software engineers mainstream to be considered for cost-justified projects? bringing Larrabee to market. What has been the biggest challenge so far? Ray tracing and rasterization are two very different rendering methods, each with its own strengths The biggest challenge is keeping people aware of that and weaknesses. Games programmers have been balance between hardware and software. People tend using rasterization almost exclusively for well over to be polarized; they’re either hardware or software, a decade, and the art techniques and pipelines are and they speak different languages. We always need to tuned to rasterization’s strengths and away from its keep that dialog going between the two camps. That’s weaknesses. This also shapes what sort of games my main role through the design phase. Software design people make—where they set them and what they can happen much later, so you don’t have to decide allow you to do. If rasterization doesn’t do a certain everything up front. Some things can change after the thing well, people won’t tend to make games like that. chip is designed. The amazing thing is that people still ask about changing stuff in Larrabee. Are you kidding Ray tracing requires some significantly different me? The architecture has been locked down for a year. styles of artwork and content to make it shine, and it will allow and encourage different styles of game. And Q: What is Larrabee’s biggest benefit to indeed I expect some of those to be very wacky (in a game developers? good way!). But that’s going to take awhile, and there needs to be broad hardware support before many teams The primary focus used to be making more realistic can experiment with these new types of content. graphics. Now as we get there, we see that realism is somewhat overrated. Films don’t have real lighting—it’s I don’t believe ray tracing is inherently “better” than faked like crazy. Real physics aren’t that fun—if I fall 12 rasterization—it’s just different. But one of the real feet, I break my leg. Real AI will headshot you every time. joys of Larrabee is being able to have this discussion at So you want the game to look intelligent and realistic while all! We finally have a bit of hardware that can run both still having fun beating it. We need to enable as much algorithms on an even playing field. We soon will have realism as the developers want, then allow them the fine the smartest people in the world writing renderers control to step sideways. An example of that in graphics using their own techniques, and we’ll be able to do is colorizing and brightening, such as in the TV show exact apples-to-apples comparisons and find out. Pushing Daisies, where scenes are filled with pastels, or have huge contrast, or their hue changes to emphasize a And better yet, you won’t actually have to declare mood. The colors are completely unrealistic and yet we not a “winner” at all—you’ll be able to have both. Hybrid only accept them, they tell us things without conscious schemes are already being played with and discussed: input. And it all relies on exquisitely fine control over the Use rasterization for part of your scene and ray tracing rendering. That is what Larrabee will provide to developers: for another. It’s peanut butter and chocolate. new techniques for enhancing the visceral feel of a game. •

Of course there’s nothing new under the sun. Michael Tom’s blog is found at: Abrash likes to remind me that the original Quake* engine www.eelpi.gotdns.org/blog.wiki.html has two fairly different rendering schemes in it. One is the span-buffer method of occlusion, which is used for the level geometry, and then over the top of that is a

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 11 Tools for mortals to achieve the divine When crafting epic battles of the nearly divine, a developer’s weapon of choice must have both power and precision, optimizing performance and engaging the senses in real time. The Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers Suite opens new doors in game performance and expands the horizon to new customers.

“PC developers have never had such a reliable, flexible, and extensive tool set for identifying and resolving complex graphics performance issues.” — Bartosz Kijanka, Gas Powered Games

Get more information on Intel Graphics Performance Analyzers: www.intel.com/software/gpa To get the latest on software development for visual computing, visit: www.intel.com/software/visualadrenaline

Copyright 2009 Gas Powered Games Corp. All rights reserved. Gas Powered Games is the exclusive trademark of Gas Powered Games Corp. Indie Game Demo Developers Speak Out on Their Victories

All three winners of Intel’s 2008 Game Demo Contest agree: The credibility and honor of winning a compe- tition sponsored by Intel might just be the best part of all. Not that anyone is lining up to turn in their prizes, but each of them realizes the benefit of having a win from Intel under their belts. The contest, a worldwide competition designed for aspiring developers, students, and hobbyists, boasted 329 entries from 42 countries this year and honored winners in three categories—Best Game on the Go, Best Game on Intel® Graphics, and Best Threaded Game. Visual Adrenaline tracked down the three 2008 victors, and one from 2007, to find out what it took to win and how winning has affected each of their lives.

Diverse Backgrounds Create MagicWorlds

• Artem Shabarshin Dobryak are programmers, and Dmitry Zamuruev is a • Dmitry Dobryak senior artist and painter. • Dmitry Zamuruev • Best Game on the Go: MagicWorlds With diverse backgrounds—Zamuruev has taught fine arts and took part in exhibitions of art and graphics, From their home in Russia, Artem Shabarshin began developing computer games in his Shabarshin, Dmitry Dobryak, and Dmitry early teens, and Dobryak is a post-graduate student Zamuruev worked together to develop with interests in artificial intelligence and face MagicWorlds, the winning entry for Best recognition technology—each of their unique talents Game Demo on the Go. Artem and Dimtry helped contribute to the success of MagicWorlds.

In spite of their hard work the team was surprised by their success. “I couldn’t believe it when we received the letter from Intel announcing our win,” said Dobryak. “I reread the letter and then even translated it via electronic translator to make sure,” he said.

This is the first year that the contest has offered separate language portals. Both Russian and Chinese entries were accepted in their native languages.

The Russian team, while pleased with their win, was quick to point out the less tangible benefits. “We believe that the main prize of this competition is not money, but a good start for our game development studio. This win has given us a powerful boost and motivation for future development,” said Dobryak. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Screenshot from MagicWorlds; Artem Shabarshin; Dmitry Dobryak; and Dmitry Zamuruev

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 13 indie g a m e d e m o d e v e l o p e r s s p e a k o u t o n t h e i r victories Developing in Tandem CLOCKWISE FROM RIGHT: Aaron Murray; Screenshot from • Aaron Murray Pixel and Vega in Crunch Time!; • Jon Wofford Jon Wofford; Screenshot from • Best Game on Intel Graphics: Pixel Pixel and Vega in Crunch Time! and Vega in Crunch Time!

Tandem Games is an independent startup based in Austin, Texas, founded by Aaron Murray and Jon Wofford in 2007. Their game Pixel and Vega in Crunch Time! won first place for Best Game on Intel Graphics.

The idea of bringing games to everyone runs deep at Tandem Games. Aaron sums it up, saying, “We want our games to be playable by anyone, and we found in alpha testing that Crunch Time really needed a discrete graphics card to run. It just didn’t make sense to release a game that many of our own friends and family couldn’t play.” From a business perspective, they determined that it was a strategic imperative to support Intel Graphics, in Aaron is the programmer order to reach the largest possible audience. and technical director while Jon is the creative director and Crunch Time features characters Pixel and Vega in a artist. “We used a Torque Game game that recruits players to help find and eliminate Builder, which is basically a 3D engine corrupt data and bugs from a fictional multiplayer online beneath the 2D overlay,” said Jon. game. Crunch Time is a freely downloadable game. Crunch Time spent six weeks in development The Tandem team faced a few challenges during from start to finish. The limited time to get the development: game up and running was a challenge for Aaron • During the optimization process they discovered and Jon. To anyone thinking about entering next some of the texture of the game was missing year’s contest, Aaron recommends: “Get your when the game was played using Intel Graphics. game up and running early so you have time for By changing the texture size from 2048 x 2048 fine tuning.” to 512 x 512, and by cutting up the textures and tiling them together, the problem was solved. When it comes to teamwork, Jon recommends good communication with the programmer and • Next, they noticed that in many places gameplay “working to expand your knowledge of the technical was slowed down by the use of overlapping side of things. If you can actually experiment in textures, including some that displayed at less than programming it will help all of your other duties.” Jon full size. Both of these issues were remedied by a also cautions against the challenge of losing combination of merging multiple textures and scaling motivation. “Artists are more creative and less logical back source images to save on video memory. so completing paintings in the order needed and keeping up with demand can be hard,” he says. • Finally, the load on video resources was significant. To eliminate the need for 3D rendering at “Winning the contest was surreal. I hadn’t won runtime, the team pre-rendered some of the 3D any major contests before and didn’t think it was a graphics, simulating them using 2D images. possibility,” said Aaron.

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Pushing the Limits Although the game is based on a simple idea, the mechanics involved in its development are anything but • Tommy Refenes simple. “It’s a pretty complex game,” says Tommy. His main • Best Threaded Game: Goo! challenge was in getting the frame rate he wanted and finding a threading model that worked for the game and Tommy Refenes was born in what he calls a achieved the performance he wanted. “The engine does its “technology-deprived town” in North Carolina. At own thread load balancing where it takes the physics and the age of 11 his parents bought him a “laptop” the collisions, and the system internally determines how that weighed about 30 lbs. In spite of many threads it can split the work over.” This model works its bulk, Tommy pushed the limits out to 150 fps. of the machine and developed his interest in programming— “Goo! is a pretty heavily threaded game. It runs and ultimately pursued a between 15 and 20 threads depending on the machine,” said Tommy.

Tommy used Intel® V-Tune™ Performance Analyzer to help in the development. “It comes in handy,” says Tommy.

(LEFT): Screenshot Tommy considers his success in the contest validation from Goo!; (TOP): for all the efforts he put into the engine for Goo! “I put two Tommy Refenes years of work into this,” he says “and it’s nice to be recognized for my efforts.” career in software development. “It’s a cool thing to have a contest that focuses on the Tommy’s quest has actual technical stuff. A lot of contests focus on the art, taken him from dot-com but not too many look at the technical details,” he said. companies to the Netherlands, where he worked as an Xbox* 360 engine programmer. Today Just as when he was 11, Tommy plans to push the limits Tommy runs a one-man shop in North Carolina of technology. “The small independent games that I plan to called PillowFort. develop will continue to push the current generation of hardware to the limits,” said Tommy. Tommy’s game Goo! was the winning entry for Best Threaded Game Demo. Goo! features a blob of amorphous liquid that tries to break up and surround paint goo. It’s a fast-paced strategy game focused “It’s a cool thing to have a on fluid dynamics. Each color of goo features a different behavior, contest that focuses on the actual and when the colors combine, technical stuff. A lot of contests they form new AIs and the player must adjust strategies to focus on the art, but not too many accommodate these changes. Another mode of the game look at the technical details.” features a “capture the flag” TOMMY REFENES, GOO! DEVELOPER variation where players are forced to think strategically about the amount of goo they capture.

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Gaining Momentum with Steam

From indie game developer to 2007 Intel Game Demo risk to a failed project. Lack of self-confidence contest winner, Christophe Canon of Frogames says that can also put a project at risk according to winning opened the door to his success. “It’s not easy Christophe. being an indie game developer, but the work that went into developing Penguins Arena and entering Intel’s On the more lucrative side of things contest was definitely worth the effort,” said Christophe. Christophe not only received prize money, a PC, and several software licenses, but he also Frogames, a small company in France, develops games won the benefit of credibility in the industry. and provides licensable technical resources. Christophe’s “Winning the Intel Game Demo Contest allows winning entry, Penguins Arena, won first place for Best Frogames to align its image with one of the Game on the Go. most important companies in the world!”

While the prize itself was exciting, much of what came “The credibility with this prize is important from the award for Christophe was less tangible. “It was for future contacts,” Christophe said. For great for my self-confidence,” he Frogames it meant a publishing contract with says. For an indie developer a Meridian4 and being picked up by Steam, lack of money isn’t the only a leading platform for digital content with more than 10-million registered users.

This is great news for Christophe. “Now I have more means, (ABOVE, RIGHT): Screenshots more self-confidence, from Penguins Arena and I can keep working to develop more games,” he said. •

TAKE YOUR GAME CONCEPTS TO THE NEXT LEVEL! Submissions to the 2009 Intel® Visual Adrenaline Game Demo Challenge will be accepted beginning March 23, 2009. Official rules and full details are available at: www.intel.com/software/levelup2009

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 16

Game Developers Gravitate to Autodesk® as Characters Are Born, Characters Die

In the drive to entertain and thrill gamers Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk® Maya®, or Autodesk® in new ways, game developers sometime leave the Softimage®. These three applications—and a host of cutting edge behind, going beyond even the bleeding edge supporting tools from Autodesk—continue to streamline to the uncharted territory of unborn technologies productions and electrify audiences. Peel back the skin cloaked in code names. When the conditions are right, of any scaled and ornery creature that emerged from next-generation hardware melds with custom-tuned these evolutionary tides, and you can begin to identify software yielding wondrous results. the muscles, veins, and sinews linked to long-term collaboration with Intel and the effects of many years In the quixotic and competitive race to help developers of collaborative multi-threading and optimization work. exploit the newest technologies, Autodesk® sets the pace with a bright collection of applications that Applications that have survived the test of time tend have fueled an astonishing number of Triple-A game to develop their own personalities and loyal user base as creations. Many of those characters racing across your the years go by. 3ds Max, now in its eleventh iteration with computer screen, sometimes meeting flamboyant deaths the release of the 2009 version, has gained a devoted in mock battles, ten-story falls, or misguided warrior following in the game development world. It’s not that quests, originated in a vast digital pool, spawned by its effects and animation capabilities don’t find their way

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into broadcast television, films, and middleware, have been added to video works (territories where Maya the slate of Autodesk solutions, and Softimage exert a steady and rounding out the possibilities and irresistible gravity on storytelling helping meet the full range of professionals)—they do. But the game developer requirements. game development community, with many of its members originally schooled on the virtues of Autodesk® 3D Studio® and Discreet® 3ds Max, has enthusiastically “It is only one who is thoroughly adopted this 3D acquainted with the evils of war application and educated successive generations that can thoroughly understand the of game developers profitable way of carrying it on.” in its uses. A healthy third-party ecosystem of —Sun Tzu, plug-ins, many of them The Art of War tailored to the unique requirements of visualizing and populating 3D worlds, expands the strength With the advent of multi-core of the community and adds realism The move toward a unified, highly processors and affordable and variety to atmospherics, hair, interoperable animation pipeline is industrial-strength workstations, cloth, fluids, character movements, also one giant step closer with the game development has increased and other animation tasks. acceptance of COLLADA (a in complexity and processing royalty-free XML schema) to facilitate demands to a level not that distant Other applications that bolster asset sharing among applications. from commercial moviemaking. The game development, such as Already, Maya and 3ds Max have staffs and timetables, as well as Autodesk® Kynapse® for handling been engineered to more freely the production pipeline similarities artificial intelligence interactions share assets, a definite boon to between movie production and game and Autodesk® HumanIK® animation digital artists and animators who development, share many affinities may be more skilled in one 3D and draw on many of the same tools. package than another. Autodesk It is only natural that practitioners Softimage software adds additional in the game development arena flexibility to the mix with advanced are drawn toward the tools and customization tools that cater to platforms that support their work, the needs of many digital content contribute to the efficiency of creators to produce very specific, workflow, and provide consistent, unique types of effects. Through reliable performance day after day. ICE, a newly refined interface (fabricated for Softimage XSI* The Art of WAR (with before the Autodesk acquisition) Apologies to Sun Tzu) and open architecture, creators The work on Warhammer® Online: can generate and preview an Age of Reckoning® (WAR) began in extensive range of special May 2005 when Mark Jacobs, Mythic effects more easily Entertainment CEO, acquired the than ever before. Warhammer license. The prolonged

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development process—in which “So,” Shaw continued, “we do a One aspect of the pathing creative vision and innovation were whole bunch of scaling, everything provided by Kynapse engine is balanced against the anticipated from how much CPU performance is to keep characters from running capabilities of the target computer being taken by animation to how much through objects or each other. “In platforms—pushed developers texture is being used. We scale the order to path that,” Shaw said, and technologies in new directions number of textures and whether or “there are a whole series of tasks and inspired creative solutions. not we use the fancier lighting with we have to do with a whole bunch Released to a worldwide audience on them, based on distance and also of machines that actually path out September 18, 2008, the sweeping based on performance settings. We the zones. You shoot at a monster MMORPG (which stands for “massively have basically three main performance and you want him to run around multiplayer online role-playing levels: fastest frame rate, balanced, or the tree—not through the tree.” game”) fantasy world, inhabited by highest quality. Each level is composed an incongruous cast of characters, of probably 15 or 20 different factors; Pathing operations are strongly mixes eternal warfare and dark we group them for ease of use, processor driven, so Mythic uses humor in keeping with the storied but let people individually tune.” threading extensively to perform tradition of this popular franchise. many of these operations in parallel. The Pathing Challenge “It’s a tremendous amount of The Mythic development team Mythic Entertainment had been processing,” Shaw said. “We do a successfully opened the 45-square using the Kynapse artificial whole bunch of pre-processing to path miles of game terrain to exploration intelligence engine even before out the zones and then in real time by a wide audience, adapting the Autodesk acquired the parent you take that pre-processed data and application to accommodate Intel® 4 company. Mythic managed to push the have to do the pathing with that.” Series Graphics Media Accelerator technology in ways that it had never features so that mobile users and been used before in implementing the “Scalability is the biggest thing in gamers with basic home computers pathing approach in WAR. The MMOs,” Shaw stated. “It’s not (as opposed to tricked-out, complexity, largely because of the just the client. There’s a overclocked game machines) could multiplayer element, was daunting. tremendous amount of also join in the excitement. scalability on the As Shaw explained: “There are two Managing Data components to our game: our client To accommodate the wide and our servers (and we've got lots range of machines able to run WAR, and lots of them). Every server consists intelligent data management is of a cluster of five machines that are essential. Matt Shaw, chief technical powered by dual-processor, quad-core officer at Mythic, commented, “We Intel® Xeon® processors. We can control really can't predict how much data that environment; however, with the we're going to be using at any users there's a tremendous variance time because at any given point in what they have available in the world we don't know how performance-wise. On a given many people are going to be in one server cluster, we might have location. Each of those people may 15,000 entities pathing around, have pets, which are full figures in because it's running instances their own right. Both people and and everything else for pets can fire a multitude of special everybody in there. So effects. So, we have a whole series we pushed the Kynapse of performance-scaling tasks that software running we do both on the user’s machine under Linux* harder and on the game server. All of our than they had ever servers are Intel-based, of course.” really seen it pushed.”

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servers, especially in our game where the game is all about Clues to the Popularity large-scale battles.” The Warhammer fantasy world, having evolved over some 25 years, has a loyal audience, many of whom have Realism in WAR spent countless hours playing the original tabletop version. The expectations of gamers rise with each new WAR released in September 2008 to critical acclaim and generation of MMORPGs, so the degree of realism and accolades from fans, but the success of the games release, detail present enormous challenges for the art Greg Grimsby believes, comes from something more department, which must generate thousands of models fundamental. “The immersion factor is part of the reason within a fully interactive environment. Unlike a feature for the popularity, but immersion means different things film, in which a building that appears in a scene might be to different people. Immersion to one person might be the nothing more than a facade propped up by timbers, 3D kind of realism of a first-person shooter where there are games must be designed so that every object can be bombs going off and texturing is approached from any direction. as realistic as possible. But I think WAR is immersive Greg Grimsby, the art director at Mythic Entertainment, primarily because elaborated, “On a Hollywood set, you can walk right behind it's fun and that building, and then you would see the two-by-fours engaging. I don't and the non-painted flats. We can't afford that because mean to say that we have a truly interactive environment and that forces in a flippant way, “All warfare is based us to resolve detail in places where in a film—in a linear, but the design on deception.” non-interactive story—you wouldn’t need to invest that taps into the effort. This compounds the complexity and the difficulty, kinds of activities —Sun Tzu, and also has ramifications on testing. It's part of what that people The Art of War makes WAR so complex and big. Comparing making a film expect of the genre to making a 3D game is a little like an apples-to-oranges and adds exciting comparison, because of that interactive versus not fully 3D new elements that world where you can maneuver around inside buildings and make our game stand out.” around the sides of mountains. It's so open-ended that it just causes a lot of artistic and architectural challenges.” “When the game was designed,” Grimsby continued, “we made a strong effort to eliminate things that were “I don't think I could make a man-power or man-hour not fun parts of the genre and then tried to innovate and kind of investment versus films,” Grimsby said, “with any bring new things to the table—to add more joy and focus kind of reasonable accuracy, other than the fact that in on the core aspects of what was fun about a fantasy we've had about 100 art resources (including in-house game that was online. It is one Realm of players on a side and freelancers and outsourcers), 100 artists on the against another Realm of players on an opposing side, project for about three years. You can do that math and fighting it out. And that kind of conflict creates a great deal come up with a lot of man-years of art. It's a big effort.” of what we call Realm pride and enthusiasm for your side.”

For the animations and character design in WAR, Mythic For more about WAR, the characters that inhabit the relied entirely on 3ds Max, using a third-party application, fantasy world, and the full background story, visit: EMotion Effects* from Mystic Game Development, as www.warhammeronline.com. an animation exporter and runtime tool. “3ds Max,” Grimsby said, “is our primary asset authoring tool, The Art of Satisfying Game Developers other than—as you might expect—Adobe Photoshop*. Given the nature of technology and speed at which it Otherwise, we use internally developed tools. Our advances, game development continues to present challenges bread and butter, though, is 3ds Max and Photoshop.” and obstacles to those involved in constructing games that can simultaneously stimulate, engage, and entertain users. Mary Beth Haggerty, senior industry manager, Games, Autodesk, sees better tools as an enabling force to contend

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with the complexities of animation and production. “Autodesk (ADN) Sparks program draws talent and interest in believes in the creative visionary,” Haggerty said, “and our building and refining production pipelines optimized for company is focused on giving them—regardless of the unique needs. Acting as a clearinghouse for innovative discipline—the best tools, software, and middleware out technologies, this program equips users and developers there. Preserving a vision can be tough in production where with the practical tools to realize their individual visions. there are many disciplines and people working—but maybe not communicating—with each other. How do we help the The ADN supports commercial software development visionary? Content teams use 3ds Max, Maya, and Softimage firms and individual software developers, offering to create beautiful worlds, effects, and characters. We also software support, training, and business expertise to have two specialized tools: Mudbox® (for high-poly modeling) help developers achieve their vision with Autodesk and MotionBuilder® (real-time animation software).” solutions. For more information, visit http://usa.autodesk. com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=723353. “We opened a new Games Technology Group,” Haggerty continued, “with the Kynogon acquisition in May The Crowning Touch 2008 to focus on middleware. Our first products were No production pipeline is complete without a hardware Kynapse and HumanIK. Autodesk is continually looking to platform, and that is where Intel’s and Autodesk’s the future where creatives are no longer bound by engineering collaboration has aggressively wrung out expensive pipelines and do not have to recreate the same the bottlenecks and code inefficiencies that drag down high tech for each game. We love game developers and performance, employing parallel processing and want to give them the freedom to focus on what makes multi-threaded routines to bring out the best in their game fun and unique.” next-generation hardware platforms. Tuned and optimized for workstations powered by the Intel® Xeon® Development Ignited by Sparks processor 5500 and 3500 series, 3ds Max, Maya, and Initially created as an incubator for tools and plug-ins Softimage realize their finest potential for professionals.• compatible with 3ds Max, the Autodesk Developer Network

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 22 Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. | Copyright ©2009. Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Launch of Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers: Virtual Graphics Support for Your Game Studio

You have an hour to kill before your next class. What to do? Study for your physics test? Nah, you whip out your lightweight laptop and continue the cool new game you were playing last night!

The shift from desktop PCs to laptops is creating new opportunities for game companies to expand their customer base. Gaming on the go—anytime, anywhere—is becoming commonplace. Game developers who once made games that were considered exclusively “high end” are now reaching a broader audience by making their games scale better across platforms. In 2008 mobile integrated chipset sales outsold discrete desktop graphics card sales for the first time in history. By 2013 mobile chipsets are expected to outsell discrete graphics cards by more than three to one.1 As these numbers continue to grow, developers need tools to help them quickly optimize gameplay to reach this broader market.

New tools, such as the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA), are helping developers optimize game code for integrated graphics, so they can hit the performance targets needed while still delivering the great visuals their customers want.

One of the characters Unlike some other tools on the market that were really from Gas Powered Games intended for internal use and don’t fit the needs of customers, new game Demigod*. Intel worked with a number of game companies to identify the features game developers needed most, and designed the tools specifically to fulfill those needs. “This is just the start,” said Dave Shinsel, Intel GPA engineering manager. “We have a bunch of cool features we’ll be implementing. We continue to listen to our customers; they tell us the features that are most important, and we build those first.”

Mark Randel, president and chief technology officer of Terminal Reality, said his team used Intel GPA extensively on their upcoming title Ghostbusters*: The Video Game (image right). Based on the smash hit motion picture franchise, the new game reunites the

1 McCarron, Dean, 2008, for Mercury Research. PC Graphics 2008; Updated Edition 4Q2008 Report. Available at www.mercuryresearch.com.

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original cast members not only Taking advantage of the The Intel GPA consists of two with voice work, but also within opportunity to sell games into tools: the Frame Analyzer and the the story line. The game uses the mobile chipset space makes System Analyzer. Both tools sit on a graphics to enhance both humor sense only if the effort doesn’t network-based architecture, making and fright and is meant to appeal substantially increase development data collection less intrusive and more to all key market segments. time. Randel reported that his suited to remote analysis than similar team was pleasantly surprised analyzers on the market. Because Early on, Randel knew he wanted when Intel GPA helped make Intel GPA performs the calculations on to support more than just the high-end this a reality. “The Intel Graphics a different machine than on the one desktop space. “Intel GPA is a great Performance Analyzers helped us running the game, developers don’t first step into optimizing games for mainly by reducing development have to worry about tool overhead.

The Frame Analyzer (Figure 1) allows developers to inspect and adjust graphics API-level interactions on a frame-by-frame basis. This capture- and playback-based tool shows detailed frame performance, with draw calls visualized on a GPU duration graph. Using the scene-overview feature, which gives a spreadsheet view of the same GPU information, developers can drill down from the full frame to single draw calls. Full-render state overrides, shader Figure 1. User interface of the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers’ Frame Analyzer tool. overrides, and other high-level experiments are supported with real-time integrated graphics,” he said. “With time, since the tool provides a focus feedback. For example a developer the client/server approach, you on specific problem areas. It also can modify a shader directly in the can measure the system in real allowed our game to support the tool and immediately see if that time with minimal overhead to the widest possible audience, by being change affected the frame time, target application. For example, able to run on Intel® Graphics. The region time, or draw-call time. you can launch your app, move to a benefit is mainly cost savings; the Similarly, the developer can modify problem area, and see where your tool helps the engineer focus on the the DX state or run a high-level time is going from buffer locks to problem areas versus trial and error experiment, such as a simple pixel state changes, and even down to experiments. You can locate problem shader, and immediately see if that the chip level if that is what you areas quicker than just turning change affected the frame time, need to get it running faster.” visuals in the game on and off.” region time, or draw-call time.

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The SEGA development team working on Empire*: Total War used the Frame Analyzer extensively. Chris Southall, technical director at SEGA, said, “We have mainly used the frame level of Intel GPA. We have made changes to the level of detail in the game, made some art changes, optimized some shaders, changed draw order, and reduced overdraw. Using the system-level debugger, we have found a few bottlenecks with the way we were filling vertex buffers, which have also been fixed.”

The System Analyzer (Figure 2) is a high-level, real-time performance tool with game pause-and-resume capabilities that provides a Figure 2. User interface of the Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers’ system-level footprint of game System Analyzer tool. performance as well as a single-frame-capture button that the PC, according to Kijanka. “Many problems are costly transitions to the Frame Analyzer. Developers can to repair because they are very time consuming to experiment with Microsoft DirectX* state overrides, as well diagnose,” he explained. “They are time-consuming as customizable drag-and-drop metrics. because they often require creation of project-specific instrumentation or project-specific tools. Spending less Bartosz Kijanka, vice president of engineering for Gas time on such tools allows us to spend more time on Powered Games, said his team relied on the Intel GPA actually making the games, which is something every tools for the company’s forthcoming title: Demigod*. A game developer wants to do.” fast-paced, real-time strategy game, Demigod blends role-playing elements with tactical combat. Players can The System Analyzer allows developers to run choose from a variety of wildly customizable demigods, experiments that pinpoint common problems. The simple who fight in ancient battle arenas for the right to ascend pixel-shader-override mode replaces every pixel shader into the pantheon of gods. with one that writes a constant color to the render target. A large increase in the frame rate after enabling this mode Kijanka was intent on supporting integrated graphics means that the game is spending a large proportion of chipsets from the start, so the Intel GPA tool was time in either pixel shader compute or stall conditions. invaluable. “The System Analyzer helped us identify bottlenecks in the graphics pipeline through a few simple The 1x1 scissor-override mode causes all pixels and easy-to-understand graphs,” said Kijanka. “The Frame to be discarded after the pixel shader has run, before Analyzer is an amazing tool for drilling down deep into the pixel values are written to the render target. A our engine’s render pipeline and identifying individual significant increase in the frame rate after enabling pieces of work that may be disproportionately expensive. this mode means the pixel-fill rate may be a potential What is particularly impressive about this module is that bottleneck. Developers can then examine the operations, the Frame Analyzer allows us to test possible fixes and to such as stencil and alpha blending, in the graphics see the results immediately.” pipeline to determine optimization potential.

Using Intel GPA significantly reduced the cost of Potential performance bottlenecks in the use of identifying and fixing graphics performance problems on texture maps can be identified by using the 2x2

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 26 texture-override mode, in which all textures “PC developers have never had such a for a scene are replaced with a simple 2x2 reliable, flexible, and extensive tool set for pixel texture. If the override mode identifying and resolving complex graphics significantly improves the frame rate, the GPU performance issues,” said Kijanka. “Intel GPA may be bottlenecked on texture memory collects and presents a breadth and depth of reads. If the total texture size is high for a information about graphics performance that scene, developers may want to consider we have never previously seen for the PC reducing texture bandwidth in various ways. platform. Our games perform much better, across a wider range of hardware than ever The System Analyzer also collects various before, including many graphics parts with high CPU and GPU metrics while the application is market penetration that we have traditionally running. Developers can analyze the results not had the resources to optimize for. This and perform various “what if” scenarios to help means more customers can play our games and isolate performance bottlenecks. The metrics have a great, high-frame-rate experience, even data are stored in a local database and can be on older or lower-cost PCs, and we definitely displayed in chart form for interactive analysis. benefit from that.” Developers can pause the application and perform on-the-fly modifications without For more details, go to: changing the application code. www.intel.com/software/gpa •

Intel’s software team worked hard to create an intuitive interface for the tools. For example, the Frame Analyzer displays all DX data in visual form when possible. This includes the render targets, draw-call highlighting for the draw-call selection set, textures, and so on. The visual element of the tool suite allows any game developer to pick up the tool and use it effectively immediately.

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 27 The fleet of the USS Constitution prepares to meet the enemy on the high seas.

Empire: Total War* Takes to the Waves The PC strategy game fight back starts here

At the start of the eighteenth century, Portsmouth, England’s harbor was the global hub of the world’s most powerful fighting force, the Royal Navy. Bristling with forts and gun emplacements, it contained squadrons of ships-of-the-line ready to sail into the Atlantic to defend the empire and in pursuit of treasure and adventure. It’s somehow appropriate then that war games developer The Creative Assembly is located a mere 40 miles up the road.

Not that the 70-strong team has had much time for Strategy on land and sea days off in recent months. Empire: Total War*, the fifth “Empire: Total War is a revolutionary step for the game in its massively successful and critically acclaimed series, both in terms of technology and gameplay. It’s PC strategy franchise, has only just been released. Moving our biggest and most ambitious title by some margin,” the action on from previously examined battlefields, stated SEGA’s creative director Mike Simpson. such as feudal Japan, medieval Europe, and the Roman republic, Empire: Total War targets that period of Such confidence is demonstrated by the headline revolution and rebellion, the 1700s. From the rumblings feature: real-time 3D naval battles. In previous games, of the French Revolution to the American Revolutionary such conflicts were automatically worked out by the War, the wheels of modern history were set in motion artificial intelligence (AI) as part of the game’s turn-based thanks to a combination of hard-nosed diplomacy, yards strategy gameplay, and hence didn’t provide players with of billowing sail cloth, and the flash of gunpowder. You the opportunity to bring their own tactics into play. The get the impression the Total War team had been waiting importance of naval power in terms of the wars in the for years to sink its creative teeth into that era. Americas and Europe, climaxing with the Napoleonic Wars and the Battle of Trafalgar, meant it was necessary to

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include in Empire: Total War a real-time mechanic similar to the massive land which introduces a new set of battles that characterized the hands-on action element of the previous Total challenges especially for the AI.” War games. One example is the importance of “After a number of years developing Total War on land, this has certainly properly modeling the weather and been a breath of fresh air, but there’s been a lot of things to consider,” Simpson sea conditions: high wind conditions revealed. “At first, the sea seems a simpler environment, but as you dig down create a choppy sea, which affects you notice complexities. The ships have a different movement and damage everything from how a ship can move mechanic from what we’ve done before. Everything is continually in motion, to the accuracy of the gunfire.

“In the game, the sea is a complex surface, combining several Incoming rockets threaten the USS Constitution during a night battle. components to generate the animated heights,” said Simpson. “This feeds into the motion of the ships, which use a flotation model, to move realistically up and down with the waves. In turn, this affects the damage results from cannon hits and so on. It’s an approach more weighted to simulation than crafted gameplay.”

When it came to allocating system resources, graphical elements, such as shading techniques, reflections, refraction, and a pass to handle the particle effects, also had to be bundled up. “It’s a sizeable load for the CPU,” Simpson said. “It took some time to optimize, especially to get the sea surface right. However compared to A pirate ship is fired on from up close. the land battles, we’ve found that the less complex pathfinding and not having to render the vegetation frees up sufficient CPU budget for it not to be too much of a problem.”

Other new features that had to be handled included the use of buildings as cover for troops during land battles. Empire: Total War is the first game in the series to enable you to concentrate your men in and around buildings, such as farm houses, earthworks, and portable barriers. Adding in the knock-on effect for pathfinding results in deeper AI options that

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 29 megabytes a frame, which is quite reasonable for current architectures,” Simpson said. “In general, we have to worry more about pathfinding and the battle and campaign The Creative Assembly logic, which can be very CPU intensive. Thankfully though, there are powerful multi-core processors out there, and Formed in 1987, The Creative Assembly originally multi-threading will continue to help with this issue.” worked on the conversion of games for UK publishers, such as Psygnosis, before signing up As he also explained, getting the correct balance with Electronic Arts (EA) to produce the first PC between a PC’s CPU and GPU is a tricky process, especially version of FIFA, a series of football video games. considering the range of systems from low-end laptops to This relationship continued with the company monster, water-cooled gaming rigs that must be supported. successfully making rugby, cricket, and “On its highest graphics setting, Empire: Total War can Australian-ruled games for EA. The Creative be made GPU-bound because of effects such as high Assembly’s breakthrough occurred in 1999 dynamic range imaging, depth of field, and multi-sample with the release of Shogun: Total War. This was anti-aliasing, but the load is varied by using level-of-detail followed up in 2002 with Medieval: Total War and settings which allow the game to scale,” said Simpson. Rome: Total War in 2004. SEGA purchased The Creative Assembly in March 2005. Using Intel’s development tools was a major part of ensuring would-be world conquerors will get the best experience their PCs can offer. The Creative Assembly used the Intel® VTune™ Performance Analyzer (Intel® VTune™) and Intel® Thread Profiler, as well as the Intel® deal with counter-moves, such as how generals use Graphics Performance Analyzers (Intel® GPA). their artillery. Other subtleties include the effects of bad weather on the performance of troops using “Intel VTune was very helpful on many levels, gunpowder, while the game’s animation system has starting from providing a high-level overview, such as been completely overhauled to ensure that cavalrymen showing how much time is spent in the drivers, in the lower their lances in the charge and riflemen use their game, or in the D3D runtime, to finding and analyzing bayonets correctly. Such attention to detail is one of the specific bottlenecks in the code,” Simpson said. “We reasons the Total War games have such a loyal fan base. used Intel VTune to speed up game loading process,

A well-balanced system Such demands means the An admiral watches as an Total War’s engine undergoes enemy ship sinks. continuous redesign as part of the game development process to make the most efficient use of new multi-threaded, multi-core CPUs, such as the Intel® Core™ i7 processor family.

“Our engine is architected in such a way that the bandwidth between the CPU and the GPU shouldn’t be a limiting factor because we only send data to the GPU through dynamic vertex and index buffers, perhaps a few

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pathfinding, the user interface, the graphics—almost graphics. “The platform is definitely more limited—it’s very every area of Empire: Total War benefited from using noticeable when you’re trying to squeeze the rendering Intel VTune. The Thread Profiler meanwhile was utilized engine into a graphics chip which does 2,100 MTexels as to verify the multi-threaded behavior in the game.” opposed to one which does 26,400 MTexels—but these are the challenges of PC game development. We feel the result Although Intel VTune is a well-known development tool, has been a very playable and enjoyable game on those Empire: Total War was the first game from The Creative platforms,” Simpson said of the process, which involved Assembly to gain advantage from time spent with the new close cooperation with Intel’s developer support team. Intel GPA. “We first investigated Empire: Total War using a “One of our key ongoing strategies is to design pre-beta version of Intel GPA to look for GPU hotspots SEGA titles to play really well on a wide range of PCs, in the frame,” said Steve Hughes, Intel applications including laptops,” explained Simpson. “Our customers engineer. “The game uses some pretty special shader can expect to see a reversal in the normal trend where technology to render its realistic terrain, and Intel GPA titles require ever more demanding hardware and start to showed that the simpler shader path that was supposed see our games running better on lower-end machines.” to be implemented for integrated graphics wasn’t being enabled at low-detail settings. Fixing this took us from This is one area where use of the Intel GPA really 11 frames per second (fps) to about 15 fps.” Hughes helped, as the game’s engineers invested a lot of time in continued, “Although the title is still in development, optimizations both for laptops and machines with integrated SEGA now has the frame rate well above 20 fps.”

During a naval battle, smoke billows after the cannons are fired, and the hull of the enemy ship shatters.

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The battlefields of Empire: Total War In total, around 10 different factions will be playable in Empire: Total War, ranging from old foes, such as the British, French, Spanish, and Prussians, to the Swedes, the Ottoman Empire, and the Poland-Lithuania empire. Each will have its own units, strengths, and special skills. In the main story mode, players will colonize the new world of America, then fight as the British against the French and Native Indians, before directing the American Continental Army against the British. Other areas of conflict will include continental Europe and India.

The result of all this hard labor is that the game’s Of course, space aside, the other attributes a successful minimum specifications are a reasonable 2.4 GHz player of Empire: Total War needs are confidence and single-core CPU with 1 GB RAM for Microsoft Windows* ambition, which will be particularly relevant for those XP (Service Pack 2) or 2 GB RAM for Microsoft Vista* who want to display their tactical nous to the world using and a 256 MB DirectX* 9.0c-compatible video card that the all-improved online multiplayer modes that use Valve supports Shader Model 2.0. Indeed, the requirement for Software’s Steam* technology. Wannabe Napoleons, the 15 GB of uncompressed hard drive space might be more road to a new set of worlds to conquer starts right here. • of a burden for some people’s overstocked systems.

About the Author Jon Jordan started writing about game technology and the development process back during the last century at UK magazine Edge. Since then his work has appeared in publications including Official PlayStation, 3D World, and the Financial Times, as well as Web sites such as Gamasutra and Pocket Gamer.

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 32 The $1 Million Intel Make Something Unreal Contest—the ultimate modification competition brought to you by Intel and Epic Games.

Phase I and Phase II of the competition are complete. Thanks to everyone who submitted entries! Check out the winners, play the winning mods, and submit your entry for the next phase of the Make Something Unreal Contest at: http://makesomethingunreal.com

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Epic, Epic Games, the Epic Games logo, Unreal, Unreal technology, the Unreal Technology logo, Unreal Tournament, and the Unreal Tournament logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games in the United States and elsewhere. Intel does not make any representations or warranties whatsoever regarding quality, reliability, functionality, or compatibility of third-party vendors and their devices. All products, dates, and plans are based on current expectations and subject to change without notice. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Composing Audio for By Lee Purcell Video Games | Art—Enabled by Science and Cakewalk Software

Though it is often underrated in the The attention to the concerns and ambitions of grand scheme of all things gaming, real-world musicians resonates throughout their product the audio soundtrack of a video game can make the designs. As a result, Cakewalk SONAR 8 is a popular choice difference between a lackluster experience and an of professional composers who produce music for video adrenaline-drenched adventure. If you’re in doubt, try games, as well as film, television, and albums. Some of turning down the audio volume the next time you’re them, including film, TV, and game composer Tim Wynn, playing Red Alert* 3 or The Unreal Tournament* sequel have been working with SONAR 8 and its predecessors and see how flat the experience feels. Well-crafted music for many years. Another composer and long-time SONAR and sound effects are an integral part of any effective user, Rob King, shares his views in a Q&A session in which video game and inseparable from the overall experience. he discusses creating game music and composing digitally.

Music for video games drives the tone, mood, and action; sound effects provide orientation and context; and albums based on game music have become increasingly popular as an entertainment product. The features and capabilities of Cakewalk SONAR* 8 and other Cakewalk products have proven consistently popular with composers of game music and audio effects specialists. Cakewalk has worked closely with Intel for more than a decade, optimizing SONAR software to produce exceptional application performance that scales well for complex multi-track compositions.

The production of modern video games today rivals the expense and complexity of producing full-length cinematic works. The production tools used can make an enormous difference in the efficiency of the workflow and, ultimately, the return on investment (ROI) of a project. Cakewalk software engineers exploit the latest platform advances, including the latest Intel® Core™ i7 processor advances, to gain optimal multi-core application Figure 1. Carl Jacobson and Rob King confer in Rob’s studio. performance and to efficiently take advantage of native 64-bit processing in the audio engine. Q&A with Rob King Rob King has enjoyed a colorful career in music, Cakewalk is a company largely composed of musicians filling roles as audio director, music composer, senior building tools for other musicians, and, as such, it is sound designer, voice-over casting and directing, audio uniquely positioned to design interfaces, features, and editor, and recording and mix engineer. His credits could processes that complement the creativity of musicians at easily span the length of this article—in 2008 alone he the top of their game. composed the main theme for Never Winter Nights 2*:

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A complex Cakewalk SONAR* project becomes manageable with track folders.

I understand you’ve been working on your latest game project since 2005? Yes. It’s a massive online fantasy game, in the vein of World of Warcraft*. The game developers have really pushed with the technology, and it’s pretty mind blowing when you see what they have done with the game.

Have you worked closely with the game developers throughout this project? The Storm of Zehir, served as dialogue director for the James Bond: Quantum Yeah, I started really early in the of Solace* game, served as audio director for Silent Hill*: Homecoming, and is development with the game and the currently working on a breakthrough massively multiplayer online role-playing design of the game. I think we spent game (as yet unnamed) that uses sound in some very imaginative ways. about 10 months throwing ideas back and forth on how we wanted to do Do you remember the first time you used a computer application to certain things. produce music? When I first started into it, I was using an Atari* 1040 with a program called The developers were really open Master Tracks*—yeah, that’s just old. I was synching that with a half-inch to just going for something new. I 8-track. I listen to some of those early recordings, and it’s like, wow, these remember one of the first things we actually sound pretty good—considering. started on was the footstep sounds.

“One of my favorite features of SONAR is track folders. My projects often involve more than 100 tracks and trying to keep everything organized is difficult. Track folders allows me to easily listen to different sections of the orchestra or sections of instruments, with a click of the mouse.”

Tim Wynn | Composer, Sonic Fuel

We used to synch everything using MIDI Time Code, do seven tracks of Everything is super dynamic—in audio, and then mix it live with the MIDI tracks to that. When the Atari died, I layers. I think for just the footsteps went to the PC. The first program I got was Cakewalk*, version 3, I believe. alone there are probably over 1,400 variables just walking around. If You’ve been active as a professional for over a decade and a half. you’re walking through grass, there Does any project stand out as a favorite? are maybe 32 grass footsteps All of the Heroes of Might & Magic* games have had really, really good and they’re also based on weight. scores, and I’ve always been proud of all the games in the series. They’re not The more stuff you can carry, the huge sellers, but they’ve done—over about 15 years—probably 7 million, 8 heavier you are, which creates a million units overall. deeper footstep sound. Let’s say

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you’re walking over brush: you’ll get the aspect of the changes. For instance, you can hear one piece of music, twig with the grass and the weight. If it starts raining, and you might not hear that piece again for hours, but you’ll get the watery slush with the twig and the grass. you’ll hear maybe 30 variances of it—small vignettes or parts of the melodies. It keeps the feel of the game, almost So the audio is used in a very dynamic way? as if we’re just doing a giant score. We’re trying not to I’ve never worked on a game where we’ve paid so much tie too much music down to zones, per se. If you’re in a attention to little details. I remember earlier when I did zone playing for six hours with your friends, you’ll get so sound for games, you’d get your list from the developer much variance in the cues in the music, it stays fresh. saying, “All right, this ogre needs an attack sound, the “The latest generation Intel chip How important are wind sound when he gets technology advances hit, and his death sound.” [Intel® Core™ i7 processor], and even to your work? recent-generation Intel chips, give you The technology every In this new project, one a tremendous amount of raw power. year just grows by leaps particular giant ogre has Programs like SONAR and our other and bounds, and we have over 80 sound effects tied applications take advantage of that enough processing power to his animation. He can with these wonderful new swing an axe, and you’ll power to fuel creativity. We give our Intel chips to do so many get the momentum of the customers lots of options, lots of ways different things. That much axe along with his physical to be creative, and I think one of the processing power gives you growl and his effort put reasons why many customers use our the ability to be more creative into the swing. Those when you have an application sounds have maybe five software is because we provide an like Cakewalk’s SONAR or six variables, so you can interface that makes it all manageable.” that can take advantage of get a different axe swing, the hardware. When I first Carl Jacobson | Vice President, as well as the impact and started, we were using Marketing, Cakewalk grunt all in one swing. audio engines that would He can keep swinging play—if we were lucky—16 at you, and every combination is completely dynamic to things at once. Now we have games that can have the previous one. Your ear never gets attached to the upwards of 1,000-voice polyphony in the sound design. same sound effect—it’s always a little bit different. During It’s just amazing what you can do on a technical level, one battle scene with three characters, there could be but the workload on any given job has also increased hundreds of sound effects triggering in the background, exponentially. To keep ahead of the curve, I chose SONAR creating this dynamic action. It’s pretty exciting actually. as my digital audio workstation. It gives me the creative tools I need, with a fast UI that helps me beat deadlines. Have you also used music dynamically in the game? We’ve done a lot with the score, too. Musically, we’ve A Natural for Creating Game Audio written these pieces, but then I’ve also broken down a ton The flexibility and multi-tracking capabilities of SONAR of sub-mixes and a lot of areas where you can play parts of 8 are particularly well suited to game audio development, the theme. As the game progresses, you get a little bit more with strong support for surround sound technology, here and a little bit more there. We’ve done a lot with sound precision control over timing, a full arsenal of high-quality design and the music together. For instance, triggered virtual instruments and audio effects out of the box, events could be based on the theme of the zone, in which the ability to handle hundreds of tracks with very low maybe a couple of little instruments will come in when you latency, and the exceptional sound quality derived from find something. its industry-leading 64-bit audio engine. Testimonials from top composers and sound-effect specialists amplify this So, the audio is especially responsive to the actual message and add substance to Cakewalk’s strong appeal gameplay? to top-notch professionals working with digital audio. • Yeah, everything has its own sound and everything

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Successful Professionals Using Cakewalk Software The features and capabilities of Cakewalk products, including SONAR 8, have attracted many professionals engaged in producing game music, cinema scores, and television themes. The following table lists a few of these artists and their accomplishments.

Doyle Donehoo | Composer and Sound Designer “My last project was composing the score for the video game Warhammer* 40,000: Dawn of War* 2. For this project I scored well over an hour’s worth of fairly complex orchestral music featuring mainly traditional instruments with a good helping of non-traditional instruments and mixed media. It was a really huge orchestral treatment, meant to be as vast and bombastic as possible to match the immensity of the Warhammer game world. Naturally, all this music was not only composed in SONAR, but recorded in SONAR, as well.” Check out other recent projects of Doyle’s at the Radar Music site: www.sierra-trails.com/radarmusic.html

Shawn Clement | Film, TV, and Game Composer Shawn is currently working on the score to Quantum Quest*, a high-profile, 3D sci-fi film, with the original score being recorded at the Skywalker Ranch. A recipient of ASCAP’s 2000 Film and Television Award for most played underscore, Shawn’s music can also be heard on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dawson’s Creek, The World’s Wildest Police Videos, and many other productions. His game credits include: Disney Interactive’s Tarzan*, and Batman Vengeance* from Ubisoft. View more of Shawn’s work on the Clemistry Music site: www.clemistry.com

Rob King | Remix Producer, Game Music Supervisor Rob’s recent credits include numerous Heroes of Might & Magic* releases, Never Winter Nights 2*: The Storm of Zehir, Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam*, and many others. “For me, it’s about functionality, and when I want to set something up, I want it to be fast because I’ve got a lot of things to do and a lot of ideas I want to work out. And you know for me, the interface, the layout down to the folder tracks and the way the mixer is laid out, things are just organized in a very logical way; you can work really fast. That’s why I’ve always been a fan of Cakewalk software.” For more on Rob’s activities visit Green Street Studios: www.greenstreetstudios.net

Justin Lassen | Composer and Remix Artist “Recently, I finished the video game soundtrack for Out of Hell*, a highly anticipated first-person shooter from the legendary Long Nguyen. In it, you kill and dodge zombies, explore creepy indoor and outdoor settings. The music and visuals are so symbiotically intertwined that the game is only complete when music and action are experienced simultaneously. Right now, I’m working on the score to Lord Retro*, a cutting-edge multiplayer game in development.” Justin’s speculative musings on the state of the industry can be followed on his blog: www.justinlassen.com

Timothy Michael Wynn | Film, TV, and Game Composer “I had a great time writing the score for the Electronic Arts game Command and Conquer* Red Alert 3 released in fall of 2008. The game happens on a global scale and in many different locations, so the music needed to reflect this. The Allied music is Punk Rock-based for combat and orchestral for less intense moments. The Soviet battle music is more metal-based with a darker orchestral feel using a male choir for the base-building stuff. I also recorded bouzouki for Mykonos, solo cello for Iceland, and hip hop music for New York. We ended recording the Symphony Orchestra and Choir at Skywalker Ranch last summer. The rock band was recorded at Sonic Fuel (my studio). Another game to look for at GDC is THQ’s Red Faction*: Guerilla. The game takes place on Mars so it tended to be more sci-fi and very thematic. I came back up at Skywalker Ranch to record the Symphony in the fall of 2008, and I am very happy how it turned out. The audio director at Volition, Dan Wentz, uses SONAR as well, so sending the final mix stems in Cakewalk bundle files was a snap!” More of Tim’s work can be previewed at www.sonicfuel.net

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Wolfenstein*: Rebuilt from the Ground Up for Composing Audio for Video Games: Art— Enabled by Today’s Hardware Science and Cakewalk Software To view the Wolfenstein* video, go to: For highlights of recent activities at Cakewalk and more artist www.gametrailers.com/game/9183.html stories, visit the Cakewalk Blog: http://blog.cakewalk.com For more about id’s Wolfenstein 3D* go to: For a guided tour through Cakewalk SONAR* 8, view the Webinar on www.activision.com/index.html#gamepage|en_US|gameId:Wolf3D& YouTube*: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_1dDUBry4 brandId:Wolfenstein To experience the capabilities of SONAR 8 Producer, download a For information about id’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein* go to: 30-day trial version from: www.activision.com/index.html#gamepage|en_US|gameId:ReturnTo www.cakewalk.com/support/kb/kb20081217.asp CastleWolf&brandId:Wolfenstein For more information about the history of multi-threading in To learn about Raven Software Games go to: Cakewalk applications, download the Cakewalk Technology White http://ravensoft.com/Portals/0/games.aspx Paper, Multiprocessing in SONAR 3.1: Havok tools can be found at: www.havok.com www.cakewalk.com/DevXchange/Multiprocessing_in_SONAR_3.pdf For more information on the advantages of 64-bit processing Indie Game Demo Developers Speak Out on in Cakewalk’s SONAR, download the Cakewalk Technology Their Victories White Paper The Benefits of Modern CPU Architectures for Digital Audio Applications: PillowFort: http://goo.pillowfortgames.com/ www.cakewalk.com/Press/Cakewalk_White%20Paper_Benefits_of_ Tandem Games: www.tandemgames.com/ Modern_CPU_Architectures_for_Digital_Audio_Applications.pdf Frogames: www.frogames.com/ For a video celebrating the 20-year history of Cakewalk, visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn7o3cpYzhY To download any of these winning game demos, go to: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/spotlight-on-the-2008- Benchmarks that show the CPU performance gains for typical tasks intel-game-demo-contest-winners/ running SONAR 8 (compared to previous versions) can be found at: www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR/English/benchmark.asp Empire: Total War* Takes to the Waves See the official Web site for Empire: Total War at: www.totalwar.com/empire Learn about The Creative Assembly at: www.creative-assembly.co.uk Learn more about SEGA at: www.sega.com/games/empire-total-war To purchase and download popular games, go to: http://store.steampowered.com/app/10500

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Stay current on the latest software developments in Visual Computing at: www.intel.com/software/visualadrenaline

Intel VISUAL adrenaline ISSUE NO. 3, 2009 38 Stay current on the latest software developments in Visual Computing at: www.intel.com/software/visualadrenaline For developer resources, visit: www.intel.com/software/graphics To learn more about becoming a member, visit: www.intel.com/software/partner/visualcomputing

Intel does not make any representations or warranties whatsoever regarding quality, reliability, functionality, or compatibility of third-party vendors and their devices. All products, dates, and plans are based on current expectations and subject to change without notice. Intel, Intel logo, Intel Core, VTune, and Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Copyright © 2009. Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. 03/09/SM/CS/PP/7.5k 320325-003US