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The Skylanders SWAP Force Depth-of-Field Shader
Our depth of field effect in the game.Mike Bukowski, Padraic Hennessy, Brian Osman, and Morgan McGuire (that's me) published in GPU Pro4 an early version of a depth of field shader that we developed...
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JavaScript Desiderata
Why JavaScript?I teach the the programming portion of Williams CS107:Creating Games using codeheart.js, which is a minimal game framework for JavaScript. I use JavaScript because it has several...
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Some Interesting New Game Art Styles
Little Big Planet 2Expressive, also known as "non-photorealistic," computer graphics seek conscious stylization over mimesis. The world of animated films has long embraced non-mimetic styles, however...
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An Introduction to JavaScript for Sophisticated Programmers
IntroductionJavaScript (which is defined by the ECMAScript specification) is a just-in-time-compiled, memory-managed (garbage collected), dynamically-typed, functional programming language. Its...
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Weighted, Blended Order-Independent Transparency
I'm leaving this up for historical reasons, but I recommend my more recent post on blended order-independent transparency for implementors.Glass, smoke, water, and alpha-cutouts like foliage are...
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Fast Terrain Rendering with Continuous Detail on a Modern GPU
Terrain rendering is challenging. It requires both high detail close to the camera and a large extent. There must be less detail per square meter in the distance to render this efficiently (and...
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A Computer Science Book Reading List
This is a list of good books on computer science. Most are accessible to anyone with programming experience equivalent to an introduction to computer science course. Of course, everyone in the field...
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Favorite Short Films from Annecy 2014
The 2014 Annecy International Film Festival screened 500 new films in the beautiful resort town of Annecy, France. Since 1960, the best animated films have been shown here, with emphasis on...
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The Joy of Modern Board Games
Depiction of the ancient Egyptian game of SenetBoard games have been enjoyed for thousands of years. This category includes card and dice games, as well as table-top games with proper boards. In the...
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McGuire House Rules for Carcassonne
Carcassonne is a family-friendly Eurogame (modern board game) that, with appropriate expansions and modifications, scales well from two to six players and admits serious competition at any age from...
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McGuire House Rules for Settlers of Catan
The Settlers of Catan is perhaps the most widely-played modern board game, easy to learn, deep enough to be interesting for everyone, and playable by anyone old enough to add small numbers. The game...
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Screen Space Ray Tracing
Pretty good reflections computed by ourscreen space ray tracer in ripply waterThis post describes a screen space ray tracing implementation that I wrote with Mike Mara for use in our indie games and...
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Game Design as a Science for Public Policy
Screen shot of the action role-playing game Titan Questby Iron Lore Entertainment © (THQ Inc., 2006)This is the first in a series of posts defining and motivating a game design research agenda.What do...
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Posts by Topic
I'm Morgan McGuire. I teach technical elements of films and games at Williams College, create them both independently and for clients like Activision and NVIDIA through my company Casual Effects, and...
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McGuire House Rules for 2-Player Uno
Uno is a card game for "2 to 10" players that is currently owned by Mattel. Like other games that appeal to small children, the challenge is in learning to follow rules and recognize appropriate play...
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You Can Play Video Games
JourneyThere are video games that you'll enjoy and be good at playing. They address your gender, sexual, religious, and ethnic identity. They have worlds where you'll feel comfortable and engaged. You...
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9 Years Later
The minimalist 9 title cardAt the time of its premiere in 2005, Shane Acker's 9 (11 min, USA. dir: Shane Acker) was one of the the greatest student animated films yet produced. Student films and other...
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3ds Max for Graphics Programmers
This post is a draft of new content for The Graphics Codex app. Please e-mail suggestions and corrections to morgan@casual-effects.com. I'll update this article in response to that feedback.Graphics...
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Adapting a Camera Entity for Virtual Reality
Classic rendering systems have a virtual "camera" that is active in the scene during rendering. These systems produce the image seen from that camera.But head-mounted displays like the Oculus Rift,...
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Learning to Create Games
Why should you learn about game development? How and where should you learn? Most important, what do you need to learn? This article captures my current thoughts for those hoping to enter the industry,...
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