Video: Solving the challenges of porting Fez to PlayStation

If you enjoyed playing Polytron's Xbox Live Arcade game Fez on a PlayStation platform, you have Spanish port house Blitworks to thank -- the process of converting the game's codebase was the hardest job the company has yet tackled, and they pulled it off with remarkable success. Speaking at GDC Europe 2014, Blitworks cofounder Miguel Angel Horna explored the process of bringing Polytron's puzzle game to the Sony PlayStation platforms. Beginning with the conversion from the existing C# codebase to C++ native code, the talk digs into the nitty-gritty details of memory management without a garbage collector, tuned optimization techniques for each platform, rewriting the audio engine, and how Blitworks added special features to the PlayStation builds like cross-save and 3D support. It's a highly technical talk that's absolutely worth watching, especially by programmers and designers seeking to make their games as port-friendly as possible. The free video (embedded above) of 'The Challenge of Bringing Fez to PlayStation Platforms' is now available to watch here on the GDC Vault.

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