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Session Name:

Census: The Systemic Backbone Behind Play As Anyone in 'Watch Dogs: Legion'

Overview:

Watch Dogs: Legion's highly systemic "Play as Anyone" feature allows players to recruit any character and make them the star of the game. This talk is a technical deep-dive into Census, the backbone procedural system which generates characters, simulates their lives, and inserts them into gameplay.nnCensus generates highly realized individuals with detailed demographics and social profiles. These profiles form the basis of dynamically-generated schedules that span the entire open world, including meetings with friends, relations, and adversaries. With this strong foundation, it becomes possible to add functionality such as character memories and recasting, along with the highly systemic recruitment process found in Watch Dogs: Legion.nnHighlighted topics will include how consistency was maintained with assets such as character models, optimizing the runtime performance of the relational database, core generation algorithms, and the challenges of large-scale tagging and data integration across content teams.

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  • Game Developers Conference 2021
  • Christopher Dragert, Ph.D.
  • Ubisoft Toronto
  • free content
  • Programming
  • Programming