Presentation Skills

Simon Guest

“Your slides have really nice colors, Simon”

Beyond This Semester

  • Pitching a VC for funding
  • Speaking at a conference
  • Teaching at DigiPen!

What We Will Cover Today

  • The importance of Storytelling
  • Constructing Slides
  • Nailing the Demos
  • Being prepared On The Day
  • Your Presentation Takeaways

The Importance of Storytelling

  • Many presentations get into the what and how, but miss the why
  • Stories help frame the why
  • Especially if that story has a personal connection

The Importance of Storytelling

  • Why did you choose this project?
  • What problem are you trying to solve for people?
  • How much impact could this have?

Every Story Needs An Audience

Who Is Your Audience?

  • Do you have personas for your audience?
    • 100 level? 400 level?
    • Internal? External?
  • What does success look like for them?
  • How much are you costing your audience?

Presentation Flow

Presentation Flow

  • Don’t start by opening PowerPoint!
  • Create the flow of the presentation
  • Mind mapping can be a great tool

Presentation Flow

Presentation Flow

  • Mind map will help you:
    • Bring balance to your presentation (10/85/5)
    • Help you categorize (power of 3, 5, 7, and 10)
    • Enable you to rehearse before you have any slides!

Your Slides

Your Slides

  • Text in slides should be supportive “cues”
  • Trigger memory
  • They avoid you having to read from your speaker notes
    • Or worse, your phone!

Brain’s “Y Switch”

  • Listening to you vs. Reading your slide
  • Few, if any, can do both
  • (Even if they think they can)

Our Game Engine Architecture

Our custom game engine is built on a multi-layered architecture that separates concerns across rendering, physics, audio, and input systems. The rendering pipeline uses OpenGL 4.6 with a deferred shading model, supporting up to 512 dynamic lights per scene through a clustered lighting approach. The physics engine integrates a rigid body solver with support for convex hull collision detection using the GJK algorithm, with a broadphase BVH tree for spatial partitioning. We implemented a custom entity-component system (ECS) using a sparse set architecture to maximize cache coherency, with archetypes stored in contiguous memory pools.

The audio system leverages OpenAL Soft with a custom DSP chain for reverb, occlusion, and distance attenuation. Input is handled through a buffered event queue that abstracts platform-specific APIs (Win32, SDL2) behind a unified interface. Our asset pipeline runs as a separate tool that compiles raw assets (FBX, PNG, WAV) into a custom binary format for fast runtime loading. The scripting layer exposes engine functionality to Lua via a hand-written binding layer, allowing designers to author gameplay logic without recompiling. Networking uses a lockstep model with deterministic simulation and delta-compressed snapshots sent at 20Hz, with client-side prediction and server reconciliation to mask latency. Memory management is handled through a hierarchy of allocators: a stack allocator for per-frame data, a pool allocator for fixed-size objects, and a general-purpose heap for everything else.

Brain’s “Y Switch”

  • If you have a lot of text…
    • Delete (and delete again)
    • Compress (and compress again)
    • Introduce new information “on click”

Brain’s “Y Switch”

Your Demo

  • Get to your demo as soon as you can
  • “10 min presentation with 9 mins of slides and a 1 min rushed demo”
  • Tipping Point: “I get it. Now show me the demo.”

Live Demos

  • Live demos are scary
  • But they beat videos or screenshots every time
  • Live demos provide authenticity

Demo Gods

  • “It worked just before class…”
    • Can’t share my display on the projector
    • WiFi magically disappears or runs slow
    • That Windows update you’ve been postponing…

Demo Script

  • Things that need to be reset/running
  • The steps of your demo
    • Tip: Write large if you are typing code live
  • Settings to make your demo viewable
    • Font sizes for the back of the room
    • Ability to zoom-in on demand

Demo Script

Demo Backup

  • What’s your backup plan?
    • An emergency pre-recorded video
    • Backup screenshots in appendix
    • Know when to move on…

On The Day

Location

  • New room?
    • Can you test/rehearse beforehand?
  • Size of the room?
  • Audio Visual (AV) needs?
    • Especially if you are playing audio

Nerves

  • They never go away
    • My “PDC Demo” story
  • Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse
  • Slow down and breathe!
    • Tip: “Go slower!” Post it note

More Nerves

  • Do you have water?
    • Is it open? But not too much!
  • Eye contact with the audience
    • Figure of 8
  • Energy from the prior presentation
    • “I can do better!”
    • “I can’t let the audience down after that!”

Timing

  • Accurate timing can be difficult
    • Default is to run too long
    • “Squeezed presentations” add to your nerves
  • Rehearsals really help
  • Demo timing checkpoints with clock

Taking Questions

  • During? Or wait until the end?
    • Redirect if running out of time
  • Ack; Answer; Confirm
  • It’s OK not to know the answer
    • “I’m not sure on that, but I’ll follow up with you”

Humor

  • Don’t force-fit humor or jokes
    • Be yourself
  • If you have jokes, rehearse the timing
    • And never mention politics or religion
  • Try not to laugh at your own jokes

Enjoy It!

How To End

  • Endings can be abrupt
  • Short conclusion of what you covered
  • Takeaways for your audience

Presentation Takeaways

  • CTAs (Calls To Action)
    • Download my game!
    • Check out my GitHub Repo!
    • Complete my survey!
  • Are you going to share your slides?
  • How to contact you

To Conclude

  • The importance of Storytelling
  • Constructing Slides
  • Nailing the Demos
  • Being prepared On The Day
  • Your Presentation Takeaways

To Conclude

Questions?

Slides: https://simonguest.github.io/CSP/

simon.guest@digipen.edu

Thank you!