GDC 2016: Limbo devs share tips on coding games with striking art styles

It's a new year, and that means the 2016 Game Developers Conference is coming up fast. Today, organizers are excited to highlight a new talk for the March conference from the developers of the critically acclaimed Limbo.

In "Low Complexity, High Fidelity - Inside Rendering," Playdead graphics coder Mikkel Gjoel and visual effects artist Mikkel Svendsen will detail the techniques used to achieve high visual fidelity in the context of the strict simplistic aesthetic of Inside (pictured) -- Playdead's follow-up to the critically acclaimed Limbo.

The pair of Mikkels will describe a variety of effects used to achieve an atmospheric look, including local shadowed volumetrics and a robust water-rendering system.

To explore how a unique art style is created technically they'll also show you how they authored lighting as entirely separate diffuse, specular and bounce-light entities, while focusing on artist-approachable tools meant utilizing analytic primitive-based ambient occlusion and screenspace reflections.

It's a Programming talk first and foremost, and thus the pair will spend a lot of time focusing on the practical realities of coding and implementing the building blocks of a unique art style. Other great Programming track talks at GDC 2016 include Piotr Tomsinksi (CD Projekt Red) "Behind the Scenes of Cinematic Dialogues in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," Activision's Benhamin Goyette talking about about "Fighting Latency on Call of Duty: Black Ops III" and Derek Neal and Bruce Hayles from Iron Galaxy discussing "Designing AI for Competitive Games."

Plus, lots more sessions will be announced for GDC 2016 in the coming months. Stay tuned, and don't miss the opportunity to save money by registering for the conference early -- the deadline to register for passes at a discounted rate is Wednesday, February 3rd, 2016.

GDC 2016 itself will take place March 14-18th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2016, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

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