• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Steam Dev Days vids are up

Thanks for Zeknurn and Lunaniem for bringing it to my attention.

We've made videos of 28 Steam Dev Days sessions available below, covering a wide range of game development topics available. These session recordings are also available as a playlist on the new Steamworks Development YouTube channel.

http://steamdevdays.com/ ( you can find .pdf and .pptx here)

Enjoy!

here's a list for those who don't want to switch tabs (phew, hope I got them all right)

Welcome Address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOCl8-_mSUA
Gabe Newell

Steam Machines in 2014 – Opening up the Living Room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caH_JLC_8fY
Mike Burrows (Intel), Greg Coomer (Valve), Marc Diana (Alienware), Anna Sweet (Valve)

Valve and Steam Machine OEMs will jointly present on what to expect during 2014, including schedules and product release plans. We’ll discuss what we’ve learned so far from our public beta testing, including a rundown on how people are actually using Steam Machines. We’ll cover best practices in preparing your upcoming games for use in the living room.

The Steam Controller – Production, Programming, and What’s Next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfN5WK7OzU8
Eric Hope (Valve), John McCaskey (Valve)

The Steam Controller is going to be used by many Steam gamers to play your games. During this hour we'll discuss the rollout plans for the controller, how to get the most out of the Steam controller for your customers, we'll demonstrate how to integrate the Controller API into your games, and we'll share what we've learned so far from the public beta testing.

In-Game Economies in Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHC-uGDbu7s
Kyle Davis (Valve)

A look at the multi-year history and development of the in-game economies and microtransaction systems in Team Fortress and Dota, including some of the surprises we encountered and some of the lessons we've learned that we think are applicable to a wide range of products.

Embracing User Generated Content
: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRyUpR4qOxU
Tom Bui (Valve)

Building your game with user generated content in mind can add significant ongoing value to your product and create a deeper engagement with customers. Learn from developers at Valve and other partners about integrating with the Steam Workshop and supporting user generated content.

Getting Started with Linux Game Development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8ie5R4CVE
Ryan Gordon (Icculus)

This talk is targeted at Windows Steam developers that are interested in preparing their games to run on Linux. It will cover available tools, the basic porting flowchart, and common problems and their solutions.

Marketing Your Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=477rvRSjE5U
Alexander Bruce (Antichamber), Alfonso Cubias (Digital Extremes), Cliff Harris (Positech Games), Henrique Olifiers (Bossa Studios)

Making your game is not enough. To be a successful developer you need to get the word out about your game. This panel is composed of a group of indie developers who have used a wide variety of methods to successfully market their games. Topics will cover some of the strategies they have used, when you should start marketing, and lessons learned.

Music in Valve Games and Media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B_1iqTMaeY
Mike Morasky (Valve)

Taking a look at the many ways Valve has used the medium of music in its games and media, what we’ve learned and some ways we hope to evolve going forward. Providing a historical overview, there will be a discussion on the development environment surrounding the ideas explored, the technologies developed to implement them, some of the lessons learned and where we may be going from here.

Moving Your Games to OpenGL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45O7WTc6k2Y
Rich Geldreich (Valve), Dan Ginsburg (Valve), Peter Lohrmann (Valve), Jason Mitchell (Valve)

Stop treating OpenGL as that other 3D graphics API that you use on non-Windows platforms. Just move to OpenGL across the board! OpenGL is everywhere: from WebGL to OpenGL ES on mobile platforms to full-fledged OpenGL on SteamOS, Linux, OS X and Windows. We’ll discuss the current OpenGL API landscape and the issues involved in really shipping on OpenGL. We’ll show you how to use new debugging and performance analysis tools and teach you about our shader validation toolchain.

Community and Communication in Games-As-Services
: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwv1G3WFSfI
Robin Walker (Valve)

Although there has been a robust discussion in our industry about how the transition to games-as-services affects the way we build products, we feel there hasn’t been enough focus on how that shift changes the ways we all should interact with customers. This talk will cover the methods, reasoning, and philosophy behind Valve’s communication and customer interaction. Areas of development we’ll be examining will be everything from feature design to community management to marketing. Recommended for anyone working on living / iterating products (which we think is pretty close to everyone in attendance at Steam Dev Days).

United We Win: Lessons Learned from Collaboration and Co-working Around the World
: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cjfpIpy6ZM
Ichiro Lambe (Dejobaan Games)

What secrets do the Boston, Chicago, Copenhagen, LA, London, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Toronto, Utrecht, Vancouver (and other!) communities have to learn from each other? This talk surveys successful indie groups and collaborative spaces around the world, outlining the top 5 things that make them successful; the top 5 things they warn against; and what resources they can provide you.

Getting Started Debugging on Linux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTmAknUbpB0
Bruce Dawson (Valve)

Debugging on Linux can be initially intimidating for a developer accustomed to Visual Studio on Windows. This talk explains how to get comfortable debugging on Linux, including which debuggers Valve has found useful, how to get symbols and source code to show up, and how to confidently investigate typical bugs. In addition to C++ debugging some other Linux tools that are commonly needed by developers will be demonstrated.

Optimizing Linux games for AMD Graphics using GPU PerfStudio2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biUffE9BB0I
Tony Hosier (AMD), Gordon Selley (AMD)

GPU PerfStudio2 is AMD's optimization and debugging tool for AMD Radeon GPUs. This presentation will demonstrate the latest version of the tool focusing on support for Steam Linux Games.

Data to Drive Decision-Making
: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQwL6zh7AgA
Mike Ambinder (Valve)

This presentation will cover Valve’s approach to the acquisition, collection, and interpretation of data across our products and services. We will go over the infrastructure required to implement a data-driven approach to decision-making as well as common problems, useful analyses, and lessons learned as we’ve built up our capacities in this area.

Is Early Access Right for You?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRDwA3cQmlc
Justin Bailey (Double Fine), Bob Berry (Uber Entertainment), Jamie Cheng (Klei Entertainment), Mark Morris (Introversion)

Early Access is a tool to develop your game with the community by giving them access to your title before it is officially released. The panelists will share what they have learned from being on Early Access; how it affected their development, their sales, and when does Early Access make sense?

Performance Tuning Applications for Intel GEN Graphics for Linux and SteamOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ebAKa4zfiU
Ian Romanick (Intel)

The Intel Open Source 3D Graphics Driver has been included in all major desktop Linux distributions for over 7 years, as well as all Intel Architecture based Chromebooks. We will discuss the history and architecture of the driver, and how we have utilized open source practices to harness the talents of the community to deliver a commercially successful driver. We will also explain how the attendees can participate in the community to improve the performance of their games on the Intel driver.

Steam Business Update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcrmTXb92DE
Nathaniel Blue (Valve), DJ Powers (Valve)

Join Nathaniel Blue and DJ Powers for a presentation on the business of Steam. Nathaniel and DJ will discuss the ways Steam has grown in recent years, particularly among Indie developers, along with an update on many of the new features on Steam. The goal of this presentation is to provide developers with information and best practices to allow you to take advantage of all the Steam platform has to offer.

Portal 2 and Team Fortress 2 Alternate Reality Games Q&A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIAkqYCw6aY
Jeep Barnett (Valve), Kyle Davis (Valve), Adam Foster (Valve)

Adam and Jeep have run several promotional ARGs that span various styles and scope. They’ll be sharing best practices, anecdotes, and anything else you’d like to know about planning and operating your own ARGs.

The Evolution of Gaming Hardware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpGpxqv_mSk
Marc Diana (Alienware)

Alienware will be discussing the past, present and future of gaming hardware.

Steamworks Features – A Technical Overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7rZzkubh6o
Chris Boyd (Valve)

This talk is designed for partners that are new to Steamworks features and those who would like to discover what new features are available. It will cover an overview of the full feature list, from Lobbies & Matchmaking to Steam Trading Cards and Micro-Transaction integration.

Beyond Porting: How Modern OpenGL can Radically Reduce Driver Overhead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bCeNzgiJ8I
Cass Everitt (NVIDIA), John McDonald (NVIDIA)

In this session, Cass Everitt and John McDonald from NVIDIA will talk about some newer extensions to OpenGL and how they can reduce (or even eliminate) driver overhead. We'll discuss where performance goes, how to effectively profile GL, as well as specific extensions such as bindless rendering and MultiDraw commands.

100% Steam: How Dovetail Games Steam-only Policy has Built the Foundation for a New Type of Videogame Business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivjEh6k2sEY
Paul Jackson (Dovetail Games)

Steam technology allows us to change the ‘fire-and-forget’ business model that drives the release of new games. Gamers have a diverse set of interest which means that there is no 'one size fits all' product that will appeal to them. This session will focus on using Steam to create a homogenous platform that allows gamers to customize their experience through the selection of high quality DLC.

Leveraging the Power of Unity and its Developers Community to Create High-Quality Multi-Platform Games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jot4lJwUCek
Carl Callewaert (Unity), Pete Moss (Unity)

Game Development with SDL 2.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeMPCSqQ-34
Ryan Gordon (Icculus)

This talk will offer a high-level overview of Simple Directmedia Layer 2.0. It will cover the features of the library and how it can make your game easier to build, port, improve and maintain.

What VR Could, Should, and Almost Certainly Will Be within Two Years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-2dQoeqVVo
Michael Abrash (Valve)

We’ve figured out what affordable VR hardware will be capable of within a couple of years, and assembled a prototype that reveals that that level of VR hardware is capable of stunning VR experiences. That hardware is almost certainly going to appear in that timeframe, and it will be worth starting to develop for it now. This talk will discuss what that hardware is, and what it makes possible. A few attendees will be randomly selected to try out the prototype after the talk.

Porting games to Virtual Reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YCBadIVro8
Palmer Luckey (Oculus VR)

The team at Oculus has spent time helping a variety developers bring their existing content to virtual reality across multiple platforms. This talk will cover many of the best practices, technical hurdles that VR developers should be aware of, and some of the counter-intuitive approaches we've seen work.

Wild West of VR - Discovering the Rules of Oculus Rift Development
: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqZZKi4UHuo
Devin Reimer (Owlchemy Labs), Alex Schwartz (Owlchemy Labs)

Through the development of Aaaaaculus!, one of the first commercially available Oculus Rift games, the team at Owlchemy Labs has come to the realization that 2013/2014 is truly the Wild West of VR development. Like the days of early consumer touchscreens, the best practices and rules of VR are still to be determined. We’ll cover the many key VR revelations we’ve had during development, such the importance of respecting the player's head direction, reduction of motion sickness, the complete reversal of UI and HUD paradigms, the introduction of developer fatigue, and realizations about subtle visual cues and the sensitivity of the inner ear.

Through trial, error, boatloads of testing, and caffeine, we arrived at a playable and immersive sky-diving experience for Oculus Rift. The methods employed will need to be explored heavily as we move forward into this new era of VR game design. We hope to begin the discussion on establishing standards, bit-by-bit, so that years from now we can look back on the early days and chortle at the seemingly “obvious” VR faux-pas made before the rules were clearly defined."

Virtual Reality and Steam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vqNpZqnl1o
Joe Ludwig

Come and hear what Valve is working on in Steam to support and promote Virtual Reality games. This includes discussion of the Steam Overlay in VR, Steam store changes for VR, and our VR plan for Steamworks.
 
So which video confirms Half-Life 3's in development?
I'm sorry

Seriously though should be an interesting watch
 

Shalarn

Neo Member
Awesome. I've been checking their youtube channel every day for like a month. Well, I no longer need to wait to be vain.
 

Shalarn

Neo Member
Is it weird that I'm excited by the way controller configs get voted up/down?

Oh, it's super cool. It won't work for every system... Dota guides might not make sense with that kind of implementation, since there isn't necessarily enough consistent use of a single character. But for this situation, it's extremely practical.
 

Slambot6

Neo Member
Thank you for the notice, OP. I'll need to take a look at some of these.

Game development looks incredibly intimidating, but I like to see some bits and pieces that make companies like Valve tick.
 
Is it weird that I'm excited by the way controller configs get voted up/down?
No I think that's great. Way too many people are too lazy to ever actually vote up or down so simply having it be actively used as an up vote seems really elegant to me.

I got excited about the controller api, as it was simple enough for even me to understand so hopefully enough devs will support simply because it took like a couple hours of work and not waste too much time for what they feel will be a little used feature.
 

Nabs

Member
No I think that's great. Way too many people are too lazy to ever actually vote up or down so simply having it be actively used as an up vote seems really elegant to me.

I got excited about the controller api, as it was simple enough for even me to understand so hopefully enough devs will support simply because it took like a couple hours of work and not waste too much time for what they feel will be a little used feature.

The Steam controller API sounds amazing. I'll definitely keep an eye out for games that properly support it.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Starting to get the impression they really shouldn't be calling it a gaming OS if they intend to be having lots more software and background multitasking built in
 

Saty

Member
So key ghosting now works with pressing one of the paddles as a modifier to make one of the touchpads cycle through commands\inventory that are projected on the TV\monitor? Isn't that 'wasting' one paddle?
 

Elitro

Member
Great! thanks for pointing it out, already watched Abrash's presentation, will watch Palmer's next... can't wait for VR!
 

Nzyme32

Member
So key ghosting now works with pressing one of the paddles as a modifier to make one of the touchpads cycle through commands\inventory that are projected on the TV\monitor? Isn't that 'wasting' one paddle?

I thought that was a temporary solution till they build another 3rd touchpad area where the 4 square buttons used to be now that they are moved to 2 diamond 4 button sections
 

Kadayi

Banned
The VR talk was great, but the technical requirements seem hella steep in terms of performance and probable cost at this stage of the game. Plus given it's an arena that requires a built from the bottom up approach to software there needs to be some real killer apps at launch to really build a viable market space in a very short amount of time. Still very interested to see how things shape up over the next year or so.
 

Dylan

Member
Mike Morasky, not the greatest speaker, but man what a great talk. His job sounds super interesting. I wish I had the talent to come up with musical themes under those ultra tight time constraints such as the TF2 theme music. It's crazy to think that such an iconic piece of game music was something he did as a 48 hour assignment.
 
The economics talks were super interesting especially as I am someone who is heavily invested... maybe invested is a bad word... heavily involved in them. I was amazed about how they thought about non paying costumers, about how they're still making money off them and yet those customers are both unaware and happy with that fact.

It really solidifies my thoughts about how almost every system they release is more or less a giant experiment for them to get feedback off of and reiterate. I have no doubt in my mind that some of the recent dota events will have some changes in the future when those ideas get revisited due to feedback.

The talk actually somehow made me excited about free to play and see how much space there is in it to really explore opportunities in it. So many companies and games are doing the bare minimum and really lowering the value of what the word free should actually mean.
 
That VR talked with Abrash was really cool. Makes me think that Sony isn't showing VR for a reason. We aren't there yet. Abrash says it's possible in 2015, but even then the specs are less than ideal.

VR will be advancing quickly until we hit that golden moment though, so I can't wait. Bring it on everyone.
 
The economics talks were super interesting especially as I am someone who is heavily invested... maybe invested is a bad word... heavily involved in them. I was amazed about how they thought about non paying costumers, about how they're still making money off them and yet those customers are both unaware and happy with that fact.

It really solidifies my thoughts about how almost every system they release is more or less a giant experiment for them to get feedback off of and reiterate. I have no doubt in my mind that some of the recent dota events will have some changes in the future when those ideas get revisited due to feedback.

The talk actually somehow made me excited about free to play and see how much space there is in it to really explore opportunities in it. So many companies and games are doing the bare minimum and really lowering the value of what the word free should actually mean.
I want to watch this one. Are you talking about this video?

In-Game Economies in Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHC-uGDbu7s
Kyle Davis (Valve)

And you mean involved occupationally, not financially right?
 
I want to watch this one. Are you talking about this video?

In-Game Economies in Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHC-uGDbu7s
Kyle Davis (Valve)

And you mean involved occupationally, not financially right?
Yes that's the talk.

I meant I just have lots of dota and tf2 items. I didn't want to say invested as that implies that I'm looking to make money or hoping they increase in relative value or something along those lines, when in reality I just like having lots of items and trade a decent amount.

One day I want to dabble in it as a hobby (creating items) just to try it out and hope to soon as life should slow down a bit for me here and I get free time to play around and teach myself some new things.
 

Shalarn

Neo Member
Shalarn said they won't be a 3rd touchpad. The center is going to be for system buttons presumably.

I thought that's what I'd heard. If the video contradicts me, go with the video. I'll watch it soon, but I'd thought they essentially said they didn't think the ghosting on a 3rd touchpad was worth the cost.

Complete speculation: they don't need to give up the third touchpad if they use a button to activate that 'ghosting' mode. This would only be a problem in a game that needs two touch pads, which is less likely with the new button layout, but you could use the back paddle to activate the ghosting version of the trackpad.
 
Yeah, I'm watching it now and got past that part. It was after they "added" 3rd touchpad, that they thought to themselves that 'hey, we already have two' and removed it.
 
VR talk was amazing, I wish they would just say how much their Prototype is, even if its just the materials, what do you guys think? $2k??
 
quoting from the steam thread:

So, during the previous steam dev days thread there was a tweet how Valve are experimenting with analog input and this made a couple of people sad, because it sounded like they might ditch the touchpads. Having just watched the presentation it's analog triggers they're experimenting with. Just wanted to point it out.
 

Nzyme32

Member
There seems to be a particular theme of "landmines" that they talk vaguely about as they don't want to answer them just yet. Linux desktop features was one. Biometrics was another they brought up and they suggest it isn't ideal at the hands on a controller but that they may have "another product for that".

I was definitely interested in biometrics and skin galvanic responses applied to games. Hope they do have a solution
 
Last year in the Verge(I think) during the mass coverage they hinted that it would be built in to a VR headset. They would measure at the earlobes.
 
Top Bottom