What follows is a list of the papers and articles that I have collected over the years on various topics relating to game development. This is by no means an exhaustive list but one that I hope will help you find an answer.

If you wish contribute to any papers or articles from your own collection, feel free to email me at [email protected] or drop in the IRC channel #gamedev on AfterNET.

Additional contributions by: Shawn Presser

Commercial Game Design Documents ¶

• Earth and Beyond Westwood Studios
• Diablo David Brevik, Condor, Inc.
• Grand Theft Auto Rockstar Games
• Planescape: Torment Black Isle Studios
• Claw Monolith Productions

World & Game Objects Programming ¶

• The Continuous World of Dungeon Siege Scott Bilas, Gas Powered Games, GDC 2003
• Data-Driven Game Object System Scott Bilas, Gas Powered Games, GDC 2002
• An Anatomy of Despair: Aggregation Over Inheritence GameArchitect
• The Guerrilla Guide to Game Code Jorrit Rouwé, Guerrilla Games, Gamasutra 2005

Level Design ¶

• The Art and Science of Level Design Cliff Bleszinski, Epic Games, GDC 2000
• Level Design (external website) David Johnston

Data-Oriented Programming ¶

• Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Programming Tony Albrecht
• Data-Oriented Design Now And In The Future (external website)
• Data-Oriented Design (Or Why You Might Be Shooting Yourself in The Foot With OOP) (external website)
• Practical Examples in Data-Oriented Design Niklas Frykholm, BitSquid
• Introduction to Data-Oriented Design Daniel Collin, DICE
• A Step Towards Data Orientation Johan Torp, DICE
• Typical C++ Bullshit (external website) Mike Acton, Insomniac Games
• Three Big Lies: Typical Design Failures in Game Programming Mike Acton, Insomniac Games
• Benefits of a Data-Driven Renderer Tobias Persson, BitSquid, GDC 2011
• What Every Programmer Needs to Know About Memory Ulrich Drepper, Red Hat Inc.

A.I. Programming ¶

• Efficient Triangulation-Based Pathfinding Douglas Jon Demyen
• Three States and a Plan: The A.I. of F.E.A.R. Jeff Orkin, Monolith Productions

File Formats Programming ¶

• MPQ File Format (external website)
• MDX - Warcraft 3 Models Magnus Ostberg
• The Definitive Guide to Exploring File Formats Mr.Mouse, WATTO

Memory Allocation Programming ¶

• Alternatives to malloc and new (external website) Steven Tovey
• Custom Memory Allocation in C++ (external website) BitSquid

Network Programming ¶

• It IS Rocket Science! The Physics of Rocket League Detailed (video) Jared Cone, Psyonix, GDC 2017
• Overwatch Gameplay Architecture and Netcode (Translated from here) Tim Ford, Blizzard Entertainment, GDC 2017
• 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond Paul Bettner, Mark Terrano, Ensemble Studios
• Tribes Networking Model Mark Frohnmayer, Tim Gift, Dynamix
• Latency Compensation Methods in Client/Server In-game Protocol Design and Optimization Yahn W. Bernier, Valve Software
• Binary Packet (external website) Sirisian
• Introduction to Sync Host Peter Kao, Insomniac Games
• Networking for Physics Programmers Glenn Fiedler, Sony Santa Monica
• Unreal Networking Architecture (external website)
• Source Multiplayer Networking (external website)
• I Shot You First: Networking the Gameplay of HALO: REACH (external website, video)David Aldridge, Bungie
• WarCraft III Replay Action Format Description blue, nagger
• Inside Blizzard: Battle.net Skywing
• Starcraft Game Network Protocol Part 1 (external website)
• Starcraft Game Network Protocol Part 2 (external website)
• Battle.net Protocol (external website)

Graphics Programming ¶

• Rendering Tech of Space Marine Pope Kim, Relic Entertainment
• Company of Heroes 2 Rendering Tech Daniel Barrero, Relic Entertainment
• Screen Space Decals in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Pope Kim, Relic Entertainment
• Relic FX System Daniel Barrero, Relic Entertainment
• Depixelizing Pixel Art (external website) Johannes Kopf, Dani Lischinski
• Real-Time Texture Quilting Hugh Malan, Jeff Cairns
• Pre-Integrated Skin Shading Eric Penner
• Halo Reach Effects Tech Chris Tchou
• Water Flow in Portal 2 Alex Vlachos, Valve Software
• Insomniac's Water Rendering System Mike Day, Insomniac
• Voxels in Little Big Planet 2 Alex Evans, Anton Kirczenow
• Fast Extraction of Viewing Frustum Planes from the World-View-Projection Matrix Gil Gribb, Klaus Hartmann
• Interactive Order-Independent Transparency Class Everitt
• Real-Time Order Independent Transparency and Indirect Illumination Using Direct3D 11 Jason Yang, Jay McKee
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky - A Showcase for Direct3D 10.0/1 Igor A. Lobanchikov, Holger Gruen, GDC 2009
• The A to Z of DX10 Performance Cem Cebenoyan, Nick Thibieroz, GDC 2009
• Crysis Next-Gen Effects Tiago Sousa
• Secrets of CryENGINE 3 Graphics Technology Nickolay Kasyan, Nicolas Schulz, Tiago Sousa, Crytek, SIGGRAPH 2011
• The Rendering Technologies of Crysis 3 Tiago Sousa, Carsten Wenzel, Chris Raine, Crytek, GDC 2013
• Effects, Techniques Used in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Marshall Robin, Naughty Dog, GDC 2012
• Rendering Techniques in Gears of War 2 Niklas Smedberg, Daniel Wright
• Inside the Gears of War 2 Character Modeling Pipeline Chris Wells, Epic Games
• Far Cry and DirectX Carsten Wenzel, CryTEK
• Porting Game Engines Direct3D 10: Crysis/CryEngine 2 Carsten Wenzel, CryTEK
• The Intersection of Game Engines & GPUs: Current & Future Johan Andersson, DICE
• Rendering in Battlefield 3 John White, Colin Barre-Brisebois, SIGGRAPH 2011
• A Comparative Study of Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion Methods Frederik P. Aalund, J. Andreas Bærentzen
• Mipmapping Normal Maps Michael Toksvig, NVIDIA

• Terrain Rendering

  • Halo Wars: Terrain of Next Gen Colt McAnlis, Bonfire Studios, GDC 2009
  • Global Terrain Technology for Flight Simulation Adam Szofran, Microsoft ACES Game Studio, GDC 2006
  • Terrain in Battlefield 3: A modern, complete and scalable system Mattias Widmark, DICE, GDC 2012
  • Real-Time Atmospheric Effects in Games Revisited Carsten Wenzel, Crytek, GDC 2007
  • Quadtree Displacement Mapping with Height Blending Michal Drobot, Reality Pump
  • Deferred Rendering of Planetary Terrains with Accurate Atmospheres Stefan Sperlhofer

• Animation and Skinning

  • A Beginners Guide to Dual-Quaternions Ben Kenwright
  • Skeletal Animation and Skinning Brandon Furtwangler
  • Skinning with Dual Quaternions Ladislav Kavan, Steven Collins, Jiri Zara, Carol O'Sullivan
  • Skinned Mesh Character Animation with DirectX 9.0c Frank Luna

• Shadows and Lighting

  • Real Shading in Unreal Engine 4 Brian Karis, Epic Games
  • "A bit more Deferred" - CryEngine 3 Martin Mittring, CryTEK
  • Adaptive Volumetric Shadow Maps Marco Salvi, Kiril Vidimce, Andrew Lauritzen, Aaron Lefohn, Intel Corporation, SIGGRAPH 2010
  • Advanced Soft Shadow-Mapping Techniques Louis Bavoil, NVIDIA, GDC 2008
  • Deferred Shading Tutorial Fabio Policarpo, Francisco Fonseca, CheckMate Games
  • Detailed Shape Representation with Parallax Mapping Tomomichi Kaneko,Toshiyuki Takahei,Masahiko Inami, Naoki Kawakami, Yasuyuki Yanagida, Taro Maeda, Susumu Tachi
  • Dynamic Lights in God of War 3 SIGGRAPH 2011
  • Light Propagation Volumes in CryEngine 3 Anton Kaplayan, SIGGRAPH 2009
  • Physically-Based Lighting in Call of Duty: Black Ops Dimitar Lazarov, Treyarch, SIGGRAPH 2011
  • Practical Dynamic Parallax Occlusion MappingNatalya Tatarchuk, SIGGRAPH 2005
  • Realistic, Hardware-accelerated Shading and Lighting Wolfgang Heidrich, Hans-Peter Seidel
  • Real-time Atmospheric Effects in GamesCarsten Wenzel, CryTEK, SIGGRAPH 2006
  • Rectilinear Texture Warping for Fast Adaptive Shadow MappingPaul Rosen
  • 2D Visibility (external website) Amit Patel, Red Blob Games
  • A Real Time Radiosity Architecture for Video Games Sam Martin, Per Einarsson, Geometrics, EA DICE, SIGGRAPH 2010
  • Practical Clustered Shading Emil Persson, Avalanche Studios
  • Efficient Shadows From Many Lights Ola Olsson, Chalmers University of Technology
  • Physically-Based Reflectance for Games Dan Baker, Naty Hoffman, SIGGRAPH 2006

• Managing Polygon Counts

  • Don't Throw it all Away: Efficient Buffer Management John McDonald, NVIDIA
  • Culling the Battlefield: Battlefield 3 Daniel Collin, DICE
  • Everything About Particle Effects Lutz Latta, EA L.A., GDC 2007
  • Firaxis LORE
  • Game Worlds from Polygon Soup Hao Chen, Ari Silvennoinen, Natalya Tatarchuk, SIGGRAPH 2011
  • Flexible Rendering for Multiple Platforms Tobias Persson, Bit Squid,GDC 2012

Physics Programming ¶

• Speculative Contacts – a continuous collision engine approach (External)
• Fast and Simple Physics using Sequential Impulses Erin Catto, Crystal Dynamics, GDC 2006
• Iterative Dynamics with Temporal Coherence Erin Catto, Crystal Dynamics, 2005
• Iterative Dynamics with Temporal Coherence Slides Erin Catto, Crystal Dynamics, GDC 2005
• Anatomy of a Physics Engine Erwin Coumans, Sony Computer Entertainment, GDC 2009
• Numerical Robustness (for Geometric Calculations) Christer Ericson
• Geometric Primitives & Proximity Detection Marq Singer
• Numerical Integration Erin Catto, Blizzard Entertainment
• Continuous Collision Detection and Physics Erwin Coumans, Sony Computer Entertainment

Mathematics Programming ¶

• Vectors and Matrices Marq Singer
• Interpolation and Splines Squirrel Eiserloh, TrueThought LLC, GDC 2009
• Affine Transformations Jim Van Verth, NVIDIA, GDC 2009
• Orientation Representation Jim Van Verth, NVIDIA, GDC 2009
• Understanding Quaternions Jim Van Verth, NVIDIA, GDC 2013
• From Quaternion to Matrix and Back J.M.P. van Waveren, id Software

Other Game Related Programming ¶

• AAA Automated Testing for AAA Games Francesco Carucci
• Valve's Design Process for Creating Half-Life 2 David Speyrer, Brian Jacobson, Valve Software, GDC 2006
• The Next Mainstream Programming Language: A Game Developer's Perspective Tim Sweeney, Epic Games