At GDC this year I gave a talk titled "Ambient Occlusion Fields and Decals in Infamous 2". Briefly, it's about a method of precomputing the occlusion an object casts onto the space around it, storing that in a texture, then applying it in real-time like a light in deferred shading. It's a supplement for things like baked vertex AO and SSAO. I've posted the slides and videos online here, in case anyone is interested.

I wrote a somewhat lengthy article about GPU texture compression formats. I explain how the BC1-7 formats work in detail, at the conceptual level (not all the way down to the bit-for-bit details), with an emphasis on how the trade-offs between the formats affect image quality, and what sorts of images each format is most effectively used for. If you're curious about how these formats work, read on!

Note that I'll also post this article here on DevMaster itself within the next week or so, but I'd like to get a comment thread going on the blog itself.

Sucker Punch, the company I work for, is hiring for several open positions, including a rendering programmer and senior designers.

Sucker Punch is a Sony-owned, 80-person AAA game studio in Bellevue, WA (near Seattle). Our last few games were the Infamous series on PS3. I've been there for a few years now and can attest that it's a great place to work. You'll be doing a lot of interesting and challenging work, often collaborating directly with all the different parts of the team - coders, artists, designers, producers.

If you're an experienced graphics programmer or designer and you think Sucker Punch might be the place for you, take a look at the listings!

I wrote an article about an algorithm that doesn't seem to be very widely known, but should be! It's called the "shunting-yard algorithm" and is used to parse arithmetic expressions in infix notation. Check out the article here: http://www.reedbeta....yard-algorithm/

Hi all, I wrote a blog post about GPU profiling, or how to measure timings on the GPU with Direct3D 11. It includes some sample code that you can plug into your own apps if you so desire. Check it out here. :yes: