In the last 6 months I've had the opportunity to talk to game developers from all over the world about Level Up, the Intel® Visual Adrenaline Game Demo Challenge.   I've enjoyed hearing about the ideas for these great new games.  The excitement is contagious and I can't wait to see some of these ideas come to life.    Luckily for me, Level Up 2010 launches this week at GDC!

For those that have not participated in the game demo challenge in the past 4 years, Level Up is a worldwide competition providing developers greater exposure to the gaming community and a chance to win exciting prizes.  This year's challenge brings more opportunities to win prizes and to show game ideas and demo versions of your applications to the wider gaming community, the renowned judges, and the Intel® Visual Adrenaline experts.

I'm putting out the call to all game developers  - join us at Intel® Software Network and tell us about your game idea.  It is just that easy - describe your idea that you know will be an incredible game.  Some of you may already be working on your game idea and have screen shots or videos of your idea, include them with your idea to help our judges see your vision. 

We'll be accepting game ideas through June 21st.  If your idea is selected as a finalist, you could win an all-expense paid trip to the Tokyo Game Show, cash prizes, the latest hardware systems,  the newest software packages, or agency engagement packages to help you develop, market and promote your game. 

All it takes is ONE minute - 60 quick seconds to submit your idea.  Enter now to be eligible for these amazing prizes and join the elite ranks of Level Up winners!

Stay tuned to this blog to learn about the special track for students, how you can pre-qualify as a finalist, and how Intel® Software Network can make your games better.

Watch and hear Quentin Froemke a software engineer from Intel, talk about the tickertape game demo released today by Intel. This game demo shows a 3d particle system. By using multi threading and SIMD programming they have achieved good frame rates for this demo even though the calculations are fairly complex.

This demo has 2000 falling leaves and they have calculations built in to simulate air movement, drag, lift.

Well, I wont say more. you can watch the video below

StarCraft II

To be part of the beta group for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty™ all you need to do is know the secret password. During the next few days of GDC Intel will be passing along secret passwords in Twitter. If you find these daily passwords and can tell the StarCraft Demo team at the GDC Intel booth, you can get yourself a beta invite and be rocking the much anticipated StarCraft II

Here's the scoop.

• Intel will be giving out five (5) beta invites to StarCraft 2 each day at the Intel GDC booth. Promotion will run only during GDC expo hours (10 AM – 6 PM) from Thursday to Saturday (expo ends 3 PM).
• Look for tweets from @intelsoftware and @intelevents accounts to announce the promotion and the secret word.
• Go to Intel booth 1212 StarCraft 2 kiosk and tell them the secret word for the day to receive a beta copy of StarCraft 2
• Only The first five (5) people who go to the Starcraft 2 demo and mention the secret password to the staffer at that demo gets the prize/s for the day.

For more information on StarCraft II, read Blizzard’s feature article in the latest Intel Visual Adrenaline Magazine

Good luck!

Ticker Tape is a tech demo that encourages developers to implement more complex behavior in particle systems.
The demo uses a number of techniques to improve performance, including multithreading and optimizations for Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE). An overview of the article can be found here and the demo can be downloaded from there as well.

We have a new article that focuses on the performance gained in the Ticker Tape demo by the introduction of SSE instructions. This article will go over an introduction to SSE programming, how to lay out your data so that it is most conducive to SSE, and finally, walk through an example of calculating dot products using SSE.

Read the entire article --Benefits of SIMD programming

Love to hear your comments on the article!

In this article, we discuss our approach to simulating 3D particle behavior and the modular design we used that encourages reuse and experimentation. Additionally, we look into the performance gains achieved through threading and use of Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions (Intel® SSE).

You sneak down the hall and pause just outside the office door, where two enemy guards wait inside. You pull the pin on a grenade and toss it into the room. Blam! After the blast, you enter the office and find the guards dead, but something just isn’t right. The papers stacked on the desks survived the blast without any dire effects. Shouldn’t pieces of paper be swirling through the air? We certainly think so. So our team created Ticker Tape, a particle system with 3D orientation, air resistance, and wind effects.

Read the article here

An overview of the demo can be found here and the demo can be downloaded from there as well.

Love to hear your comments on the article!

You sneak down the hall and pause just outside the office door, where two enemy guards wait inside. You pull the pin on a grenade and toss it into the room. Blam! After the blast, you enter the office and find the guards dead, but something just isn’t right. The papers stacked on the desks survived the blast without any dire effects. Shouldn’t pieces of paper be swirling through the air? We certainly think so. So we created Ticker Tape, a particle system with 3D orientation, air resistance, and wind effects.

An overview of the game demo can be found at here and the demo can be downloaded from there as well. You can also read a related articles:

Benefits of SIMD programming

Overview of Ticker Tape

Here is the video of the demo.

Love to hear your comments on the article and video.

Most of my coding career at Intel was been spend using C#, but with the mesh project, we needed to build the background peer-to-peer agent as small and as portable as possible and coding it in C made sense. Well, anything you code in raw C code, there are plenty of opportunities for problems. I have noticed that the mesh agent was not always stable and twice in the last month I saw it cause a segmentation fault. On Windows, the mesh agent runs as a service and the service manager is setup so it can restart the agent if anything goes wrong, but that only mask the problem.

Last week, I started looking at Valgrind more aggressively. Valgrind is an open source code checking tool. You just compile the code leaving in all of the debugging symbols and run "valgrind x" when x is your executable. In my case I run:

valgrind --tool=memcheck --leak-check=yes --show-reachable=yes --num-callers=20 --track-fds=yes --track-origins=yes x

Where the last x is the executable. It runs the code with additional instrumentation and prints out problems as they happen. For example: If you start using a pointer that is not valid at the given time, or try jumping on an un-initialized value, etc. A quick look at the error logs revealed that I had indeed some problems. Two small ones and a really big one that likely caused my segmentation fault. An hour later and my code was running without causing valgrind to show any errors. So far, the code is running flawlessly. I am still running the mesh agent in Valgrind on my Linux machine in case something happens. My guess is, I am going to take the habit of always using Valgrind on some of my machines when running the mesh agent.

All in all, after running Visual Studio Static Code Analysts, Klocworks and Valgrind, I am feeling pretty happy about this code. I would not have gotten it this stable without all of these tools.

Ylian
opentools.homeip.net

On a family boating trip, our engine was overheating.  The warning system kicked in and actually cut engine power into a limp along mode until we could anchor safely.  While the kids swam I was able to use my MID to get online and do some searching to figure out what the problem was!

Out boat engine is a Volvo Penta engine that uses lake water to run the cooling system.  As it turned out the impeller that pulls the water into the system had come apart and thus the engine was running dry and would quickly overheat.  The irony of sitting in millions of gallons of water and yet overheating due to not enough water in critical places was funny to ponder!  Nicely an internet connection gave me the ability to diagnose the problem and determine a course of action before we ever got off the lake.

Knowing the problem was relatively minor gave me the peace of mind to enjoy the day and not worry about hurrying off the lake which enabled my kids to swim and enjoy their time too.  It’s nice to have a connection and a MID when you need it.

I have to admit, I've gotten a wee bit jaded over time. I've seen a lot of  Academy Award-winners give lots of speeches. I don't fault the folks for the "me" moment it usually becomes - sooo much work goes into every aspect of film-making, and so much of it requires a commitment so far beyond the making of the film itself, that it would be cruel not to let winners take a moment to crow a bit.

But every now and then, an Award Winner sends a message that goes beyond them - one meant to help others be successful, and when they do that it needs to be called out.  Michael Giacchino sent a personal message to every kid looking through the music shop window, or picking up a crayon to draw with for the first time.

"Get out there and do it. Its not a waste of time."

This week at the Game Developers Conference I'll have the pleasure of  interviewing two amazing composers for Digital Arts, Justin Lassen, whose musical compositions not only bring out the best in the visuals that inspire him, but take you to places beyond this world, and Carmen Rizzo, whose compositions somehow bring the best musical elements from the furthest reaches of this planet together in harmony.

If you are creative - you have a pretty good idea of the roadblocks out there for a kid with a dream.  Justin and Carmen are two extremely  successful "grown-up creative kids." I'll be challenging them not only to talk about how technology has helped them achieve their dreams - but how they found the strength to push on and follow-through on their childhood dreams of living as creative beings.

All of us - at whatever age - still face those hurdles.  Thank you, Michael Giacchino, for your message to all of us. And thank you also to Michael's parents, teachers, and colleagues for sending the right message too. He really couldn't have done this without you.

Below is the full text of Academy Award Winner Michael Giacchino's acceptance speech. Original Score for the animated feature, UP.

"Thank you, guys. When I was... I was nine and I asked my dad, "Can I have your movie camera? That old, wind-up 8 millimeter camera that was in your drawer?" And he goes, "Sure, take it." And I took it and I started making movies with it and I started being as creative as I could, and never once in my life did my parents ever say, "What you're doing is a waste of time." Never. And I grew up, I had teachers, I had colleagues, I had people that I worked with all through my life who always told me what you're doing is not a waste of time. So that was normal to me that it was OK to do that. I know there are kids out there that don't have that support system so if you're out there and you're listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It's not a waste of time. Do it. OK? Thank you. Thank you."  - Michael Giacchino

- Pitz

Today VMAX announced its commercial network availability of WiMAX 4G wireless broadband technology in Taipei, Taiwan. As part of the launch, major OEMs including Acer and Asus unveiled laptops featuring the multi-mode Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 solution, certified and ready to support the VMAX network. With embedded WiMAX solutions from Intel, consumers can now experience the next-generation of broadband connectivity covering an entire city, without being restricted to hotspots.

Something came across my inbox recently that I just had to share.  I just finished watching The Bucket List.  One of my favorite scenes was when Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson are racing around the track driving these classic muscle cars.  The need for speed is alive and well it seems.

We've been working with our friends at VMware and have some nice results to report.  The first paragraph of their blog post says it all:

We just published a SPECweb2005 benchmark score of 62,296 -- the highest result published to date on a virtual configuration. This result was obtained on an HP ProLiant DL380 G6 server running VMware vSphere 4 and featuring Intel Xeon 5500 series processors, and Intel 82598EB 10 Gigabit AF network interface cards.

To read more about these results, here are a few links.

• Achieving High Web Throughput with VMware vSphere 4 on Intel Xeon 5500 series (Nehalem) servers from VMware Performance Team's Vroom! Blog
• The story on VMware communities site, with some additional detail
• SPECweb2005 Result

Calling all developers working with media technologies! If you haven’t already, download and learn Intel’s Media SDK 1.5. Its easier then DXVA code and using it ensures you are forward compatible with future Intel hardware. Check it out.. Download it here.

Need a quick way to transcode a clip? Use the Media SDK’s DirectShow filters to build a solution using the Windows SDK tool GraphEdit. GraphEdit is a visual way to connect chains of DirectShow filters together to perform a media task. A series of connected filters comprises a “filter graph”.  This tool can be found in the "bin" directory of the Windows SDK - version 6 or 7.

The following filter graph transcodes a MP4 file that I had downloaded off the internet into a MPEG2 that I can burn on a DVD. The process of transcoding is described below.

The file “Marty_ear_Training.mp4” (a guitar lesson I am learning) is read off the disk by a file “source” filter, and then sent downstream to the next filter in the chain. At this point, both the video and audio data are mixed together. The next filter in the chain is the Intel® Media SDK MP4 splitter filter. It’s this filter’s job to separate the audio and video data, and pass each on its own path. This MP4 file was encoded with AAC audio, which needs to be decoded. The Intel Media SDK AAC decoder handles this job. When it’s completed, a wave formatted audio stream is the output. On the video side, the Intel Media SDK h2.64 decoder accepts an h.264 compressed video stream, and outputs an uncompressed video surface. At this point, my guitar lesson has been decoded and can be rendered on the screen.

But this blog is about transcoding, so the output of the decoding process needs to become the input of the encoding process. Fortunately, it’s just a matter of connecting the right filters to do the job. I want my resulting MPEG2 file to have a MP3 video stream, so I send the output of the AAC decode into the MP3 Encode. I also want the video to be MPEG2, so I send the output of the h264 decode right into the encoder for MP2. The encoders work their magic and I have two streams of data that need to be combined into a single file. So, I plug in the Intel Media SDK MPEG-2 Muxer to combine the streams. The final filter is just a file writer which puts my new MPEG2 movie on the disk.

There are many different applications to play back a MPEG2 file, but for the sake of completeness let’s look at the playback graph for our new transcoded file in GraphEdit.

Again, the file is read from the disk. Then the audio and video substreams are spilt and decoded. Finally, instead of doing a trancode we send the output to the screen and speakers. The Video Render and Direct Sound Device filters are used to playback the clip, they are provided by DirectShow.

I encourage you to check out the Intel Media SDK and the DirectShow samples! The source code for the Intel Media SDK H.264 Decode, and Intel Media SDK MPEG2 Encoder are provided with the SDK, and the remaining SDK filters are distributed “as is” with feedback welcomed. Becoming familiar with DirectShow, Filters, and graphs will set the stage to delve deeper into the inner workings of the Intel Media SDK.

In the next blog, we will dig deeper into those encode and decode filters, and I’ll start to go over how they use Intel’s graphics hardware to accelerate the job they do. Comments, and recommendations always welcome.

Thanks

Intel is giving iPhone users the opportunity to bring postcards back from the days of gift shops and stamps with a digital twist. "Postcards From The Future" allows iPhone users to send fun and interactive digital postcards to their friends near and far via social media sites like Facebook and Twitter or by email. People can find this free iPhone application in the Apple iTunes App Store.

Member Browzwear Ltd. of Israel used Intel Software Development Tools to optimize some of its flagship products on Intel multi-core architecture. They are also participating in the Accelerate Innovation Program in cooperation with the Office of the Chief Scientist in Israel.  To Learn more about the Browzwear Ltd. Click Here .  To learn more about the Accelerate Innovation in Israel Click Here

Enroll in Intel Software Partner Program today and learn how the program can help you deliver innovative solutions to meet your users' demands. Learn More

Programmers see in C++0x standard an opportunity to use lambda-functions and other entities I do not quite understand :). But personally I see convenient means in it that allow us to get rid of many 64-bit errors.

Consider a function that returns "true" if at least one string contains the sequence "ABC".

typedef vector<string> ArrayOfStrings; bool Find_Incorrect(const ArrayOfStrings &arrStr) { ArrayOfStrings::const_iterator it; for (it = arrStr.begin(); it != arrStr.end(); ++it) { unsigned n = it->find("ABC"); if (n != string::npos) return true; } return false; };

This function is correct when compiling the Win32 version but fails when building the application in Win64. mode. Consider another example of using the function:

#ifdef IS_64 const char WinXX[] = "Win64"; #else const char WinXX[] = "Win32"; #endif int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[]) { ArrayOfStrings array; array.push_back(string("123456")); array.push_back(string("QWERTY")); if (Find_Incorrect(array)) printf("Find_Incorrect (%s): ERROR!\n", WinXX); else printf("Find_Incorrect (%s): OK!\n", WinXX); return 0; } Find_Incorrect (Win32): OK! Find_Incorrect (Win64): ERROR!

The error here is related to choosing the type "unsigned" for "n" variable although the function find() returns the value of string::size_type type. In the 32-bit program, the types string::size_type and unsigned coincide and we get the correct result.

In the 64-bit program, these types do not coincide. As the substring is not found, the function find() returns the value string::npos that equals 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFui64. This value gets cut to 0xFFFFFFFFu and is written into the 32-bit variable. As a result, the condition 0xFFFFFFFFu == 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFui64 is always false and we get the message "Find_Incorrect (Win64): ERROR!".

We may correct the code using the type string::size_type.

bool Find_Correct(const ArrayOfStrings &arrStr) { ArrayOfStrings::const_iterator it; for (it = arrStr.begin(); it != arrStr.end(); ++it) { string::size_type n = it->find("ABC"); if (n != string::npos) return true; } return false; };

Now the code works as it should though it is too long and not very nice to constantly add the type string::size_type. You may redefine it through typedef but still it looks somehow complicated. Using C++0x we can make the code much smarter and safer.

Let us use the key word "auto" to do that. Earlier, this word meant that the variable was created on the stack and it was implied if you had not specified something different, for example, register. Now the compiler identifies the type of a variable defined as "auto" on its own, relying on the function initializing this variable.

Note that an auto-variable cannot store values of different types during one instance of program execution. C++ remains a static typified language and "auto" only makes the compiler identify the type on its own: once the variable is initialized, its type cannot be changed.

Let us use the key word "auto" in our code. The project was created in Visual Studio 2005 while C++0x standard gets supported only beginning with Visual Studio 2010. So I chose Intel C++ compiler included into Intel Parallel Studio 11.1 and supporting C++0x standard to perform compilation. The option of enabling C++0x support is situated in the Language section and reads "Enable C++0x Support". As you may see in Figure 1, this option is Intel Specific.

Figure 1 - Support of C++0x standard

The modified code looks as follows:

bool Find_Cpp0X(const ArrayOfStrings &arrStr) { for (auto it = arrStr.begin(); it != arrStr.end(); ++it) { auto n = it->find("ABC"); if (n != string::npos) return true; } return false; };

Consider the way the variable "n" is defined now. Smart, isn't it? It also eliminates some errors including 64-bit ones. The variable "n" will have exactly the same type returned by the function find(), i.e. string::size_type. Note also that there is no string with the iterator definition:

ArrayOfStrings::const_iterator it;

It is not very smart to define the variable "it" inside the loop (for it is rather lengthy). So the definition was taken out of the loop. Now the code is short and accurate:

for (auto it = arrStr.begin(); ......)

Let us examine one more key word "decltype". It allows you to define the type of a variable relying on the type of another variable. If we had to define all the variables in our code beforehand, we could write it in this way:

bool Find_Cpp0X_2(const ArrayOfStrings &arrStr) { decltype(arrStr.begin()) it; decltype(it->find("")) n; for (it = arrStr.begin(); it != arrStr.end(); ++it) { n = it->find("ABC"); if (n != string::npos) return true; } return false; };

Of course, it is senseless in our case but may be useful in some others.

Unfortunately (or fortunately for us :-), the new standard does not eliminate already existing defects in the code despite really simplifying the process of writing safe 64-bit code. To be able to fix an error with the help of memsize-тип or "auto" you must find this error at first. So, the tool Viva64 will not become less relevant with the appearance of standard C++0x.

P.S.

You may download the project with the code here.

Activision Publishing Announces 10 Minute Solution, An Upcoming Video Game For Wii(TM) Based On Anchor Bay Entertainment's Hit Fitness DVDs

Yesterday we released a new version of the mesh tools. Nothing earth shattering yet, but the main new feature I have been working on is connecting a mesh of computers to an external web site. Basically, you use the mesh to coordinate computers in such a way as to keep one of them connected to an external web site at all times. This scales because we don't all them computers connected to the site at once, just one or a few. You can then have the mesh send information about the local computers to the site and have the site send commands back to the mesh.

A few days ago I demonstrated waking up a computer from the web site. Just click a button on the external site and the command is sent down to one of the members of the mesh and causes a wake-on-lan packet to be sent on the local network. Pretty cool. We hope at some point to launch a "managing your computers as a service" trial sometime in the future.

Yesterday I also released a new version of the Developer Tools for UPnP Technologies with very minor fixes. Hope to get more fixes in soon.

Ylian
opentools.homeip.net

[Disclaimer] So bear with me because this post is intentionally aimed at being both whimsical and controversial at the same time. Not to mention point out some huge biases I have around gaming. Some… might even think I’m a purist or worse… a snob! Phooey.

Approximately twelve years ago, when some of today’s gamers were still in diapers, I was struggling with a game addiction. Perhaps I still do but I’m a fan of eating my own dog food. At any rate the game in question happened to be Quake II from Id/Activision. I loved this game! It was super fast, had awesome weapons which were arguably unbalanced in some cases. Best of all it had a robust modding and level design community. One could download all sorts of ‘skins’, ‘levels’, and so on that added more dimensions and flavor to the game.

This leads to my next key point. When I say this game was fast.. I mean it was fast! As fast as one could react to the game. To make it even faster I found myself overclocking, scrambling for more cooling, running a couple 3dfx Voodoo 2 cards in SLI mode, cranking everything I possibly could up. If memory serves I was able to get my frames per second (fps) up to ~70-80fps on my 21” CRT monitor. The game with that configuration was butter smooth. It enabled me to be more competitive and I was soon mastering things like the grappling hook, and rocket jumping.

So what happened? What is the state of my beloved 1st Person shooter genre game today? I’ve played Crysis, Quake 4, and even tried some of these games on an Xbox 360 such as Halo 1-3, Gears of War etc. However; they still just don’t hold that ‘magic’ for me like they used too.

Then it dawned on me. Most of these 1st Person shooter games, even though they can achieve much higher frame rates, have sort of blown it (IMHO) on two major fronts. First: this genre suffers from being slowed wayyyy down to accommodate the Console & Gamepad paradigms. Which might be ok for some game design but not all. Seriously when I play this genre now on a Console or PC I feel like I’m in a bad dream wading through a sea of molasses. In a few words that’s just plain lame. Second: Game balance. I think it’s ok to have a few weapons & tweaks in the game being a bit imbalanced. This is what getting your hands on the “BFG” was all about!!! The only other weapon I’ve seen to date that surpasses the BFG was to be found in the game Shogo: Mobile Armor Division from Monolith. It was the mini-nuke!!! Now THAT was what I call imbalanced! But it was sooo fun to use.

So how do we fix this predicament? Well Game Consumers we have to ask for it! First start by contacting the game publishers, then the developers and let them know what we want and desire. GDC 2010 is just next week and we can start there! Start demanding more! Let’s try to restore this genre to its rightful place! Personally I’d love to see more competitive game play come back to this genre. I’d love to also see a more robust level-modding type community than what we have today. (e.g. I’d like to see more companies like Valve get started!) Let’s toss those crutch-based-algorithm-aiming-enhanced-gamepads out the window and see the real skill of the players start to shine through again!

So there you have it. That is my personal opinion on one of my top 3 favorite game genres. I’d definitely love to hear everyone’s feedback.