Mario_Zechner

Mario Zechner

Everything
at
libGDX, Spine

Mario has been doing stuff with computers for 20 years. He worked in R&D, pushed papers around as a manager, did the startup dance in gaming, did the startup dance in compilers and mobile development tools, wrote a book, wrote a blog, wrote a big OSS game development framework, and is ranting on Twitter a lot. He's currently helping out with Esoteric Software's Spine and other projects. Mario has seen some shit. 0xa000 was the place to be in the 90ies, free of the shackles of an oppressive operating system, with almost full control of the machine. Then came the HAL, hardware accelerated 3D graphics, and Windows 95. Until a smart person realized browsers are operating systems, and games would work "just fine", sending millions of people farming virtual goods. Oh, and a little rectangle called the iPhone entered the stage, quickly followed by a different set of rectangles featuring a green robot. Who'd have guessed that in 2018, we'd put phone displays in headsets and stare at them through Fresnel lenses at 2cm distance? Not this guy. Join me in staring into the abyss of 20 years of indie and hobbyist game development. Relieve the joy of yellow on green terminal IDEs, poking at memory addresses, immediate mode 3D graphics APIs, broken multi-touch screens and VR nausea.

Sessions

A brief history of game development

Mario Zechner

Mario has been doing stuff with computers for 20 years. He worked in R&D, pushed papers around as a manager, did the startup dance in gaming, did the startup dance in compilers and mobile development tools, wrote a book, wrote a blog, wrote a big OSS game development framework, and is ranting on Twitter a lot. He’s currently helping out with Esoteric Software’s Spine and other projects. Mario has seen some shit. 0xa000 was the place to be in the 90ies, free of the shackles of an oppressive operating system, with almost full control of the machine. Then came the HAL, hardware accelerated 3D graphics, and Windows 95. Until a smart person realized browsers are operating systems, and games would work “just fine”, sending millions of people farming virtual goods. Oh, and a little rectangle called the iPhone entered the stage, quickly followed by a different set of rectangles featuring a green robot. Who’d have guessed that in 2018, we’d put phone displays in headsets and stare at them through Fresnel lenses at 2cm distance? Not this guy. Join me in staring into the abyss of 20 years of indie and hobbyist game development. Relieve the joy of yellow on green terminal IDEs, poking at memory addresses, immediate mode 3D graphics APIs, broken multi-touch screens and VR nausea.