Sony Interactive Entertainment Bend Studio uses some weird names, that’s for sure.

This year’s Game Developers Conference, GDC 2018, will feature SIE Bend as well, where Darren Chisum, the AI lead, as well as Tobias Karlsson, a senior staff programmer, will talk about how units spawn into the world, and how they interact with each other, forming squads. The description follows:

„This talk looks at the AI and gameplay components used to create the dynamic and interactive open world of Days Gone. We will cover some of the different AI units, and how they interact with one another in the Freak-O-System. We will also describe some of the methods used to spawn units and content into the world in a way that improves the player’s experience. Also, we will go into detail on how the human AI units form squads, and calculate a Front Line to help define the combat area, and choose tactical locations. Our squads are themselves a type of AI entity, and can identify situations, based on unit and squad Confidence, and assign Roles to each unit.”

A programmer session will have SIE Bend‘s lead programmer, Graham Alridge, who will reveal how he can maximalize the details of the shadows with screen space shadows. „This talk will introduce an algorithm to generate the high quality; high-performance screen space shadows developed for PlayStation 4 title ‘Days Gone.’ The talk will cover the numerous iterations and revisions that occurred developing the technique, which uses a compute shader ray marching scheme that aggressively shares sample data. Other applications for this ray marching method will also be discussed, such as cloud rendering and volumetric fog. Additionally, a simple technique for leveraging screen space shadows to add dramatic depth to in-game materials will be introduced.”

We don’t understand much of that, but both events seem to be detailed. Game Developers Conference will be held between March 19 and 23 in Moscone Conference Center, San Francisco.

Source: WCCFTech