Ragdoll physics have been popular in video games for years, mostly utilized for rewarding death and torture sequences in first person shooters and stair simulation adventure nova games. But what if you were to invert the premise of ragdolls as uncontrolled death? The player instead controls the individual limbs of the ragdoll to celebrate the nuance and frustration of living as a cephalopodic father masquerading as a human. Devon will go into the details of how this tentacled hero was constructed and controlled using abstract 3D primitives, soft body dynamics, constraints, and a pinch of insanity in a 30-minute presentation including a short video of the bizarre graphical horrors that erupt when dads go wrong.

Devon is a programmer and treasurer for Young Horses, a new game studio working on a commercial sequel to the popular free pc/mac game, Octodad. Octodad was one of the eight Student Showcase Winners for the 2011 Independent Games Festival and has been downloaded over 100,000 times. Devon has a Master’s of Science in Computer Game Development from DePaul University, where he worked on Octodad’s body physics.