Augernaut js

In the next 60 minutes

•  Who we are (1) •  Challenges (5)

•  Co+Pilot (10)

•  Live demo (30)

•  Q&A (15)

who we are

who we are

Myron @myronm Partner at Cymbal Interactive •  Designed, produced, and

contributed to 40+ mobile titles across 3 major mobile platforms (iOS, Android, and Hiptop)

David @goldbuick

Lead UX at Promethean, Inc. •  GDC Austin Speaker •  Creator of Reflexion (iOS) •  World of Goo (iOS port consultant) •  Snapshot (OSX Port)

augernaut

At augernaut we develop a suite of tools designed from the ground up to empower Javascript game developers with an easier way to collaborate, continuously create, and distribute fun cross-platform games more quickly. Augernaut Co+Pilot is the application framework that allows this magic to happen.

challenges

Original photo by: Navaneeth KN http://www.flickr.com/photos/navaneethkn/

Challenges

•  Cross-Platform Development •  Collaboration •  Time to fun •  Flow

Challenge: Cross-Platform Development

•  Challenging to make cross-platform games •  Asset creation for multiple platforms is

time-consuming and costly •  Programming languages and frameworks are

generally not optimized specifically for game development

Challenge: Cross-Platform Development

Construct, Stencyl and MMF2 all use visual coding that gets very hard to debug and read as the project grows.

And using Unity to make a 2D game is like trimming a bonsai tree with a chainsaw.

Tom Grochowiak:

Cinders, Magi, Co-Op

Challenge: Collaboration

•  How do you capture a Game Jam? •  Different contributing roles are locked in silos •  The best talent may not be local

–  But working with remote people is difficult

Challenge: Time to fun

•  Long time to market from prototype to production •  Difficult to know if/when a game is fun, and when

to cut investment

Challenge: Time to fun

“Man a faster iteration time on touch screens would be super great.”

Adam “Atomic” Saltsman

Canabalt, Wurdle,Gravity Hook

Challenge: Time to fun

•  Interruptions and dependencies that interrupt flow and being in the “zone”

•  Frustrating and time-consuming Change, Compile, Deploy, Run, Test, Repeat… cycle

Problem: Flow

“Making games for me is all about just feeling the FLOW on what to work on…”

Kyle Pulver

Offspring Fling, Snapshot, Bonesaw, Verge

co+pilot

Original photo by: Jeremy Seitz http://www.flickr.com/photos/somebox/

co+pilot

Augernaut Co+Pilot is the application framework that allows us to magically solve these issues.

PubSubDub

•  What: A real-time syncing publish and subscribe database

•  Why: It is the heart of Co+Pilot; enables and makes it easy to write real-time multi-user applications

•  How: It manages the network connectivity, manages messaging in the data structure

Javascript

•  What: Uses Javascript and JQuery syntax •  Why: Allows developers to use a commonly known

and easy to learn language and programming paradigm regardless of target platform or game type

•  How: Native game engine has hooks from Javascript to native device calls

Cross-platform support

•  What: Deploy to th most popular platforms (currently – Mac/PC, iOS, Android; soon – HTML 5)

•  Why: Fragmented market and app stores require developers to create for multi-platforms in order to reach most users

•  How: Co+Pilot engine is written in portable C++

Asset Flexibility

•  What: Scalable design to deal with multiple screen shapes and resolution

•  Why: Helps to future proof games, extend targets, and reduce redesign and asset optimization time and special device edge-case code

•  How: Use of global world units/smart asset resizing and optimization/typography management/ responsive design paradigms/ and tools to create multi-resolution assets

More people into the process, more quickly

•  What: Reduces dependencies and bottlenecks, and allows more creators into the process more quickly

•  Why: Development has artificial gates and dependencies; –  it is very linear and require tasks to be complete before

handoff. –  This limits collaboration and increases down time for

creators in different roles

Role-based tools

•  What: Tools designed for different roles in the game creation process (developers, producers, designers, artists, testers, musicians, level editors, animators, etc.)

•  Why: It is easy to target for people to work in small targeted tools .

•  Allows for simplicity and elegance •  How: Allow users to focus on talents and tasks

while still collaborating

World/Room/Layer/Object

•  What: Rather than mixing many different kinds of things into the same container, you group objects of like functionality into common layers

•  Why: To streamline the process, and to abstract out common game tasks to specialized layers

…and all the game stuff

•  Physics •  Sprites •  Animation •  Sound •  Interactions •  Tile maps •  GUI •  Multiplayer •  Hooks for monetization and other goodies

let’s play!

Q & A

Thank You!