Patrick McKenna

R&D Programmer at La Forge @UbisoftToronto
AI Programmer on Watch Dogs: Legion

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

Tune in Monday at 9:40 PDT for my first ever GDC presentation! 🤩

Branching Out: Watch Dogs Legion‘s Architecture for Group AI Behaviours

We'll be online for a live Q&A after the talk

#GDC21 #UbiGDC

[Ubisoft Toronto @UbisoftToronto]

Next week at #UbiGDC: Christopher Dragert and Patrick McKenna shed light on the modular #AI architecture used to develop the rich, open-world experience of Watch Dogs: Legion.

[Devolver Digital @devolverdigital]

What are y’all playing this weekend?

jk we don’t care we’re a company.

Buy our games.

[Grant Slatton @GrantSlatton]

The junior dev asked the senior dev “why are you pushing this code with no abstraction? What if you want to change it in the future?”

The senior dev responded “then I will change it in the future”

In that moment the junior dev was enlightened

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@FreyaHolmer Impostor! 😉

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@soychotic BehaviourTree arborist 🌳

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@boris_brave This blog post details Planetary Anihilation’s engine design that really leans into it. https://t.co/8TqEdA47iA

Spoiler: everything is a curve 🤯

[Bucky | Palworld @Bucky_cm]

Tim Bender, CEO of Hooded Horse, with a fantastic response to someone saying “Manor Lords is a pretty interesting case-study in the pitfalls of Early Access”.

I didn’t think Hooded Horse could get any cooler but here we are 👑

[Nathalie Vincent @awlilnatty]

The only perspective on AI that matters

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@cmuratori I was eying keychron, but worried about the missing pause/break button they swapped for backlight control.

[pikuma.com @pikuma]

To celebrate the launch of our PlayStation Programming course at https://t.co/UOBQ3XLr0T, we are *GIVING AWAY* a PlayStation miniature from @Retroldtech.

To put a number in the bag, simply retweet this post! 🙂

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@stevesaylor Example of option 2. How do you type like this?

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@stevesaylor Ergonomics. I love a numpad, but I love my body more. With a full size keyboard either my keyboard is centred and my right arm is hyper-extended to mouse, or the mouse is in a neutral position and I have to shift my whole body to the left to type. TKL moves both towards centre.

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@falconerd For asset importing I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the amusingly named assimp library: https://t.co/8vP2tMQRPY

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@MIT_CSAIL Can’t decide between ‘compilers’ w @_rsuvorov or ‘semantics of programming languages’ w @johyphenel. It’s been a hot second, but fond memories

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@lisyarus @manalokos You could do a similar simplification for the resolution part: just repel overlapping points away from the cell’s centroid.

The expensive version would be closest-point-on-line-segment to the nearest outside edge.

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@lisyarus @manalokos Yeah, in my case I know which constrains form the hull by construction, but I suppose if you’re evolving morphologies that might not always be true. But if you’ve got meta-data about “cells” anyway perhaps you could lean on that? It sounds like you already are with the spheres

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@RobertDaleSmith Totally did that at my HS! Boot screen too 😆
Thanks for the happy memories!

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@manalokos @lisyarus Might be too expensive tho? Sounds like n-squared now that I write it down, but if n is small it might still work. More AABBs!

[Patrick McKenna @coastwise]

@manalokos @lisyarus I’d try an AABB coarse pass collision detection then the winding number algorithm for point-polygon intersection tests. Add a constraint to push any points that overlap another object.

[BadRobo82 @BRobo82]

Just look at it and tell me, isn't it really worth giving Dreams another chance?
#playdreams