Testing available AI to help you with your work? Prompting Midjourney with a game script to make artwork? Or are you using a Creative Commons licence? Do these carry risks? How do you minimise them? Does it jeopardise your work – the game, the code? A lawyer will never answer all your questions, but they can help you make an informed decision.

Programming is black magic to most mere mortals. People write some spell and suddenly something happens in the computer. With games, there is the need for constant communication and the ability to put out fires which is very different from business programming . …and makes it more interesting. I will try to give an overview of what gameplay programmers actually do and what it takes to join the ‘Mage Guild’.

“Go straight a few steps, throw in a right turn, a left turn, add an idle, a couple of blends iii…. that’s it! Well. Then who’s going to get on with it at their leisure?”. Do you know this scenario? If you’re not already familiar with it, there’s a good chance that sooner or later you’ll find yourself at the centre of such events when it comes to setting the game’s main character in motion. Creating locomotion is deceptively light, especially when you pick up a title you love from this angle. In practice, it’s a multi-iteration task that often annoys others along the way; especially looking at the seemingly ‘perpetually crooked’ transitions (blends) between poses, despite a fair amount of fixes thrown in. At the same time, it’s one of my favourite adventures, providing room for interesting experimentation and laced with dozens of fun bugs. As part of the presentation, I will suggest how to approach the design and implementation of locomotion in order to anticipate bug-blends at the earliest possible stage and to win friends among animators (recommended!).