Gregory, Jason (Naughty Dog Inc.)

Thema: "Multiprocessor Game Loops: Lessons from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves"

Jason Gregory has worked as a software engineer in the games industry since March 1999 and as a professional software engineer since 1994.

He got his start in game programming at Midway Home Entertainment in San Diego. He also wrote the Playstation 2/Xbox animation system for Freaky Flyers and Crank the Weasel. In 2003, Jason moved to Electronic Arts Los Angeles, where he worked on engine and game play technology for Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault and served as a lead engineer on the Medal of Honor: Airborne project.

Jason is currently a Lead Programmer at Naughty Dog Inc., where he developed engine and gameplay software for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Jason also teaches courses in game technology at the University of Southern California.

Summary of presentation:

This talk will address the problem of how to update a dynamic agent-based simulation on multiprocessor game hardware such as the Xbox 360 or the PLAYSTATION 3. The interactions between a game's dynamic object model simulation and the other major components of a 3D game engine will be outlined, along with typical interactions between the game objects themselves. Various common methods of parallelizing the game loop will be explored, culminating in a detailed description of the approach used by Naughty Dog on their most-recent game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.