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View, browse and sort the ever-growing list of sessions by day, time, pass type, topic, and format. With this Session Viewer, you can view session and speaker details for Game Developers Conference 2024.

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ECS in Practice: The Case Board of 'Alan Wake 2'

Alexander Balakshin  (Senior Gameplay Programmer, Remedy Entertainment)

Location: Room 2016, West Hall

Date: Thursday, March 21

Time: 10:00 am - 11:00 am

Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass - Get your pass now!

Topic: Programming

Format: Session

Vault Recording: Video

Audience Level: Intermediate

For Alan Wake 2, Remedy Entertainment is using a new data-oriented ECS gameplay framework instead of the previous object-oriented one. As a result, we have performance gains such as cache coherency and multithreading out of the box. Also, being implemented using some of the latest C++ features, the new framework changes the way gameplay programmers write their code by providing them some extra convenience and productivity.

We will present how this framework is used for implementing one of the game's features – the Case Board. We will cover how we describe the Case Board objects with components, how we register their systems, and how we interact with other modules (camera, cursor, etc.). Finally, we'll show how the interaction between C++ code and Lua scripts is organized.

Takeaway

A practical example of the ECS framework application in a real project and a demonstration of how a gameplay engineer's mindset is changed while working with a data-oriented approach. Also, this could be an inspiration for engine developers who are working on their own gameplay frameworks.

Intended Audience

Gameplay programmers and engine programmers working on their own gameplay frameworks. To be able to fully enjoy this presentation, intermediate technical expertise is expected.



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