On Thursday I attended a great number of different talks. The Artificial Intelligence Summit has been, probably, the set of sessions where I have learned and enjoyed the most. I firmly recommend Steve Ravin’s talk and its JPS+ improved technique for the pathfinding problem. You can find his work at www.gameaipro.com.
Other good sessions that I could suggest are: Chillingo’s «60 Publishing Secrets in 60 Minutes», the «WebGL Cookbook» presented by Unity Technologies, and the funny «Designing with Physics» by Bennett Foddy.
Wednesday started with Flash Forward, an awesome fast pitch demonstration of the next sessions at GDC.
After a few talks I had the pleasure to meet again, two years later, with David Crane. I invited him to come to Barcelona as the opening speaker for final project presentation of our students of Master course in Videogames. Then I took him to taste some Catalonian food. Now he took me to eat burgers like a good American :)
In the afternoon I attended the Game Developers Choice Awards and the IGF Awards, an awesome and purely American audiovisual show. The quality of the projects were brilliant. The most awarded game was Monument Valley with three prizes. Have you tried yet? You must! I suggest you take a look at www.gamechoiceawards.com and www.igf.com.
Finally I went with Samuel @fukuy to have dinner and to share our impressions about GDC. And you can definitely eat more than burgers at USA. Look at this last day dish, delicious! :)
Jesús Alonso Alonso 