Using Mathematica to Close the Technical Development Loop

Eric Parker

Pixelux Entertainment

Abstract

The computer games industry is driven by new user experiences. Technological innovation is often a major component of these experiences. The ability to quickly understand, prototype, and evaluate the effectiveness of new algorithms and techniques before committing development resources is of great importance. Mathematica can be an effective tool during this process. However, the algorithms and know-how must be moved into production code once the decision to go ahead is made. This task can be error-prone and difficult, potentially limiting the usefulness of the Mathematica results. Based on code generation techniques, we have developed some tools to help automate the translation and verification of our Mathematica findings into C++ or other target programming languages. In this talk we will discuss these tools and some of our thoughts on the technical development process.