NVIDIA PersonaPlex 🤖, Unreal Fest 2026 🏙️
🧠Advanced Game Tech & Languages
Inside Jonathan Blow’s New Game and Language: Tools, Metaprogramming, and the Future
Jonathan Blow returns for a dense, technical tour of Order of the Sinking Star’s decade-long development and the custom engine built entirely in his Jai language. He demos the in-house editor, shows how compile-time plugins can rewrite hundreds of thousands of lines of code safely, and explains Jai’s “build-as-code” philosophy that replaces Make and CMake. Blow also outlines post-release plans to open-source the engine, distribute Jai more widely, and move on to several non‑puzzle game prototypes.
Build Truly Conversational NPCs: Inside NVIDIA’s PersonaPlex Voice AI
NVIDIA’s PersonaPlex is a new full‑duplex conversational AI that listens and speaks simultaneously, enabling natural interruptions, backchannels, and human‑like dialogue flow. Unlike earlier real‑time models locked to one voice, it lets you define rich roles via text prompts and pair them with diverse voices using audio samples. Built on the Moshi and Helium stack, it blends real conversations with synthetic task dialogues for both realism and controllability. Benchmarks show it outperforming other open and commercial agents on conversational dynamics, latency, and task adherence.
🎮 Building & Shipping Modern Games
Inside PICKABOOM: Shipping a Weekly-Updated Multiplayer VR Game in Unity 6
In this case study, PIGIAMA KASAMA breaks down how they built PICKABOOM, a next‑gen social VR game packed with disasters, physics chaos, and 10‑player co-op. The team relied on Unity 6’s faster builds, URP and Shader Graph upgrades, Unity Physics/Audio improvements, and Addressables to power rapid iteration and live updates. Custom shaders, GPU instancing, and a lightweight cave editor let them hit 60+ fps on Quest 3 while streaming in new content weekly. Their lessons on profiling, simplifying multiplayer, and modular content offer a practical blueprint for aspiring VR live‑ops teams.
Unreal Fest Chicago 2026: Dates, Tickets, and What to Expect
Unreal Fest Chicago 2026 lands at McCormick Place, June 16–18, with three days of Unreal Engine sessions, demos, and community events. The show will once again host the State of Unreal keynote, revealing what’s next for Unreal Engine and the wider Epic ecosystem. Attendees can explore an expo packed with Epic tools and partner tech, get one-on-one help in the Dev Hub, and relax in a gaming lounge. Super-early bird, early bird, and student discounts are available for a limited time.