Articles


EGSR 2022 Presentation – Generalized Decoupled Shading

We present a generalized decoupled and object space shading system. This system includes a new layer material system, a dynamic hierarchical sparse shade space allocation system, a GPU shade work dispatcher, and a multi-frame shade work distribution system.


Stop the Music!

A few years back a very prolific friend of mine told me that when he was on deadline, he would play Who Let the Dogs Out? by the Baha Men on a continuous loop until he completed the assignment. He also drank more Diet Coke than any human being I’ve ever met, which I guess […]


Dude, Where’s My Genre?

This blog was written by guest author and Oxide game designer Meghan Straus.   Over the many years that video games have been in development, genres have seen rises and falls in popularity. From the surge of MMOs in the mid-2000s to the uprising of battle royales for literally every shooter in the last decade, there’s no telling what might grab people’s attention next. […]


Be Very Quiet…

This blog was written by Emily Turner, Designer at Oxide. Before quarantine, work was the thing I did for approximately 40 hours a week that I couldn’t talk about. If I were asked how my day was by someone outside of the company, I could bark back a simple “Good.” or “Bad” or “Ok”. At […]


We’re Totally Judging You

A lot of games allow you to play evil characters. In fact, some insist upon it. I remember years back when playing Grand Theft Auto, I was cursing loudly at the PC. My wife asked me what was up. I told her I was failing repeatedly at this mission. She asked what the mission was. […]


Games Will Kill You

For the record: successful game companies try to avoid killing their players. For one thing, it cuts down on the customer base for sequels, and that’s where the big dough is. For another, it makes hiring QA employees difficult. But you wouldn’t know that from watching TV.  During the 90s there were a series of […]


Born to Lose

I don’t like to lose. It’s not so bad in multiplayer games like Sid Meier’s Civilization, Super Mario Karts, Fortnite, or Covid-19 injection scheduling web sites (too soon?). If I’m beaten by superior gameplay or better luck or whatever, that’s okay. Somebody won. What I really hate is losing a single-player game. Say I’m playing […]


Welcome to the Crab Triangle

We’ve been hiring up here at Oxide, I’m sworn to secrecy as to why (hint, we’re a computer game company). At the end of job interviews, I like to tell prospective employees why they should want to live in the Baltimore-Hunt Valley area. There are the obvious reasons – the Baltimore Ravens, crabcakes, brewpubs and […]


Games People Play

Like most everybody else, we’ve been stranded at home for the past year. While some of us have taken the opportunity to learn cool new skills – baking, carpentry, interpretive dance, and the like – we’ve been doing a ton of gaming as well. I recently demanded to know what everybody at the company was […]