# CppCon 2014: Mike Acton "Data-Oriented Design and C++"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc

[00:00] I want to introduce... uh... someone who's going to introduce our keynote speaker.
[00:04] I want to bring up Alex Rosenberg.
[00:04] He's the manager of Platform Architecture for Sony Playstation.
[00:12] [ applause ]
[00:21] so... uh...
[00:22] I got asked...
[00:22] "Who from the games industry should come talk to this crowd?"
[00:25] uh... you know...
[00:26] the games industry's largely... well, the console gaming industry is largely C++-based
[00:31] so really there's only one name for me
[00:33] and that's... uh... who we're going to see today
[00:34] Mike Acton, who is engine director at Insomniac Games.
[00:39] umm... I don't know if you know their titles but they've done some like... "Resistance" and "Ratchet & Clank"
[00:44] and umm... "Fuse"... and uhh... "Sunset Overdrive" is their new one.
[00:51] Umm...
[00:51] They pretty reliably put out two console games a year
[00:55] which if you have no frame of reference is a herculean effort
[00:58] ummm... you know hundreds of people are involved in these things and uh...
[01:01] Getting it all to happen on schedule is very challenging.
[01:04] And um... that's a core part of what Mike does there.
[01:08] He's also been responsible for uhh... quite a bit of technology sharing in the games industry.
[01:13] Umm, first thing that I have in my head is Cell performance website.
[01:17] Which was for people working on the Cell chips that we used in the Playstation 3.
[01:22] As well as researchers who were using them.
[01:24] And then... uh... more recently Mike did AltDevBlogADay.
[01:28] Where he encouraged people from the games industry to write a single blog entry each day.
[01:34] On a common shared website so there was always something to read.
[01:39] And uhh, as well on Insomniacs page there's ... uh... papers on various research they've done and things they've had success with.
[01:46] Uhh... it's all been fascinating reading.
[01:48] And... uh... with that... it's my pleasure to introduce Mike Acton.
[01:51] [ applause ]
[01:57] Thanks.
[02:06] Hello, everybody.
[02:07] Ummm...
[02:08] Thanks, Alex.
[02:10] Uhh...
[02:10] So... yes, I'm Mike Acton.
[02:10] I'm Engine Director at Insomniac Games.
[02:14] Umm...
[02:15] How many people here are game developers?
[02:19] OK.
[02:19] So...
[02:20] Umm...
[02:21] That's a relatively small minority of you.
[02:23] Ummm...
[02:23] So I want to give a little bit of background.
[02:26] Anticipating that...
[02:28] Umm...
[02:29] On what... what I do, what... what our team does in the context of... umm... making games.
[02:36] Umm...
[02:37] So we as a team generally build the runtime systems... the...
[02:42] Especially the systems that umm... require the most.
[02:46] Uh... performance...
[02:47] Um... are the most used in.. in.. a game as far the... the amount of data that's... that's been transformed.
[02:54] Umm...
[02:54] So the examples are the rendering system.
[02:58] Um... animation and gestures, streaming, cinematics, visual fx, post fx, navigation, localization, basically all the big kind of...
[03:04] Systems that are not specifically... umm... the game itself.
[03:09] We also do all the development tools.
[03:11] Um... so the tools that we used inside the studio... as the studios to make the games.
[03:16] So the level creation tools, the lighting tools, the material editing tools.
[03:21] Umm... visual effects creation tools, animation/state machine tools for animators.
[03:25] Visual scripting, scene painting, cinematics... tons, tons of tools... hundreds of tools.