Indie Tech Talk 01 : Scott Anderson

Scott Anderson, creator of Shadow Physics, spoke about using technology for gameplay innovations, specifically signed distance fields.

Indie Tech Talk 02 : Kaho Abe

Kaho Abe is currently the Artist in Residence at the Game Innovation Lab at NYU Poly, where she researches and builds games that utilize technology to bring people together face to face.

Indie Tech Talk 03 : Kevin Cancienne - Punks Not Thre3D: A Pragmatic Approach to Indie Technology 

Kevin talks about his work, why he thinks it might be time for a 3D revolution in the indie scene, and the benefits of being a mediocre programmer.

Indie Tech Talk 04 : Ivan Safrin – Engines, Frameworks and the means of Production

Ivan Safrin takes a look at the motivation behind writing a cross-platform development framework from scratch, discusses why open source tools are key to the future of independent game development and attempts to answer once and for all if it's a really good or a really terrible idea to spend years reinventing the wheel.

Indie Tech Talk 05 : Cindy Poremba 

Cindy Poremba is a digital media researcher, artist and curator, exploring the intersection of documentary, videogames and interactive art. She is interested in the intersection between creation practices and technology– specifically how meaning is read through digital technologies. Her research explores documentary in videogames and digital media, art and independent videogames (particularly the new arcade movement), emerging artistic/cultural practice related to photography, videogames and robotic technologies, and research-creation methodology in interactive art and design. 

Indie Tech Talk 06 was cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy

Indie Tech Talk 07 : Noah Sasso – Building Barabariball and Beyond

Brooklyn-based game developer and musician Noah Sasso discusses the interesting challenges that come with building and tuning a competitive multiplayer fighting game, as compared to the other types of games he has worked on. He also demonstrates the effects of tuning by modifying the source code live, and discusses how his musical background has influenced his approach to game development.

Indie Tech Talk 08 : Zach Gage – Conceptual Art as Technical Practice

Zach Gage is a game designer, programmer, educator, and conceptual artist from New York City. His work often explores the power of systems, both those created by social interaction in digital spaces, and those that can be created for others, through the framing of games.

Indie Tech Talk 09 : Dona Bailey – Centipede +30

Game developer and educator Dona Bailey discusses how she created the classic arcade game Centipede at Atari in the early 80's, how she came to leave the company afterwards, and how these experiences have informed her thoughts on education and technology.

Indie Tech Talk 10:  Don Miller

Don Miller discusses the 6502, the 8-bit microprocessor responsible for your fondest childhood memories: the Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and Apple IIe. More than just a tech talk, he will covers the beauty of Assembly Language programming and why having a low-level understanding of hardware is awesome.

About the speaker:

DON MILLER is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. He performs live visuals in real time under the alias NO CARRIER. Miller works with nearly obsolete repurposed electronics to create psychedelic low resolution video art. Part of the 8bitpeoples artist collective, he performs, exhibits, and lectures worldwide. He is a graduate of NYU's ITP program and works as a Learning Designer at the Institute of Play.

Indie Ted Talk 10 with Don Miller from Vici Shaweddy on Vimeo.

"Industry veteran Dona Bailey paid a visit to NYU-Poly's Game Innovation Lab recently to talk about her experience in Atari's coin-op division in the early 1980s, where she co-developed Centipede along with Ed Logg in 1981."

Click here to read the full article.

Don Miller will discuss the 6502, the 8-bit microprocessor responsible for your fondest childhood memories: the Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and Apple IIe. More than just a tech talk, he will cover the beauty of Assembly Language programming and why having a low-level understanding of hardware is awesome.

DON MILLER is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. He performs live visuals in real time under the alias NO CARRIER. Miller works with nearly obsolete repurposed electronics to create psychedelic low resolution video art. Part of the 8bitpeoples artist collective, he performs, exhibits, and lectures worldwide. He is a graduate of NYU's ITP program and works as a Learning Designer at the Institute of Play.   View the recorded tech talk here:

 

Bailey was modest about her days at Atari, as one of only a few hundred assembly language programmers in the US, and recalled her introduction, at a local bar, to the first arcade cabinet she got her hands on, an experience which would influence her career move into game programming. As the only women on her team by the time she left Atari a couple years later, Bailey had already established herself as an important figure in early video game design history, pioneering the use of a rollerball controller as an alternative to the joystick (typical at the time) due to her own preferences as a designer and tester of the games she worked on. 

After talking a bit about her turn to gaming from the automotive industry, she demonstrated the simple plotting method used to create the spiders that appeared in perhaps her most famous Atari title "Centipede." Drafted from simple colored squares placed on graph paper, Bailey noted that her real passion was in the visual side of game creation and described the pleasure of seeing her work comes to life on the screen, a passion she continues to persue today as an academic and filmmaker. 

Speaker: 

Dona Bailey was the software engineer on the Atari design team that made the arcade game Centipede in 1981.  After leaving Atari in 1982, Bailey worked briefly for Videa, a game design company later known as Sente, and for Activision.  In 1985, Bailey left the video game industry to work in other areas of computer programming and academic research.

Today, Dona Bailey teaches on the faculty of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she teaches writing for new media and pursues a goal of creating documentary videos. 

Zach Gage is a game designer, programmer, educator, and conceptual artist from New York City.

His work often explores the power of systems, both those created by social interaction in digital spaces, and those that can be created for others, through the framing of games.

An Eyebeam Alumni, he has exhibited internationally at venues like the Venice Biennale, the New York MoMA, FutureEverything in Manchester, and the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw.

His work has been featured in several online and printed publications, including The New York Times Magazine, EDGE Magazine, Rhizome.org, Neural Magazine, New York Magazine, and Das Spiel und seine Grenzen (Springer Press).

When: Wednesday Feb 27th, 7pm

Where: NYU-Poly's Game Innovation Lab,5 Metrotech Center, Brooklyn, NY

Babycastles & The Game Innovation Lab at NYU-Poly present a lecture series spotlightingdevelopers and game designers with insights on games and technology. The series is hosted by Andy Nealen, but Katherine Isbister is moderating the next talk.

CINDY POREMBA (http://shinyspinning.com/) is a digital media researcher, artist and curator, exploring the intersection of documentary, videogames and interactive art. She is interested in the intersection between creation practices and technology– specifically how meaning is read through digital technologies. Her research explores documentary in videogames and digital media, art and independent videogames (particularly the new arcade movement), emerging artistic/cultural practice related to photography, videogames and robotic technologies, and research-creation methodology in interactive art and design. 

BabyCastles and the Game Innovation Lab are proud to present the third installment of their Indie Tech Talks Series, Punks Not Thre3D: A Pragmatic Approach to Indie Technology with Kevin Cancienne and hosted by Andy Nealen.

As a newly-minted Indie, Kevin Cancienne spent a lot of time thinking about how best to express and explore his
newfound freedom. When he told friends he'd decided his first indie project would be a 3D game, and that he planned
to do it all himself, he encountered some surprised reactions. In this short talk, Kevin talks about his work, why he
thinks it might be time for a 3D revolution in the indie scene, and the benefits of being a mediocre programmer.

UPDATE:  Check out a recording of the event here:

We are also happy to share the recordings of our previous two Indie Tech Talks here.

In the first of ten Indie tech talks, Scott Anderson, creator of Shadow Physics, spoke about using technology for gameplay innovations, specifically signed distance fields. His three inspirations: Demo Scene, Creative Coding, and Molecular Gastronomy.  Besides making stunning real-time visualizations, 2D signed distance fields have been used in games like PixelJunk Shooter, however so far there are no games using 3D.  Check Matt Swoboda's blog (http://directtovideo.wordpress.com/) for more information regarding signed distance fields. Linked sources of topics in the talk are here:

• 2D Signed distance fields Pixel junk shooter talk
• 8SSDET
• Valve font rendering
• 3D Signed Distance fields Raycasting signed distance fields (GPU gems)
• Ignio Quilez rendering the world with 2 triangles, implicit distance functions
• Generating meshes from signed distance fields and signed distance fields from meshes Direct to video procedural mesh generation with DX11
• Marching cubes and dual contouring
• Signed distance field collision