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The Number One Educational Resource for the Game Industry

Session Name: The Asset pipeline for Just Cause 2: Lessons learned
Speaker(s): Mathias Westerdahl
Company Name(s): Avalanche Studios
Track / Format: Programming

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Overview: This session presents an overview of the asset conditioning pipeline used in Just Cause 2. We describe the journey of analyzing our pipeline requirements and designing a system that would remove the key bottlenecks, provide a robust environment and increase throughput. We discuss the process of identifying key underlying systems that will allow streamlining of the pipeline. Among these systems are a platform- and language- independent data management layer, an asset dependency resolver and compiler scripting framework using Python. We also discuss a system for handling deployment of new compilers in a controlled way.

We discuss the process of rebuilding the existing compiler pipeline based on this new foundation. We reveal the immediate benefits in terms of turn-around time but also mention a number of other positive side-effects of the pipeline work, including maintainability, robustness, improved levels of feedback and the ability to monitor pipeline statistics. Attendees should leave with a picture both of the resulting pipeline and insight into the decision and design process throughout the development.

GDC 2010

Mathias Westerdahl

Avalanche Studios

free content

Programming

Programming