| Session Name: | Scriptable Core Dump Debugging and Memory Stomp Tracking |
| Speaker(s): | Artem Kovalovs |
| Company Name(s): | Naughty Dog, LLC |
| Track / Format: | Programming |
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| Overview: | This session describes new executable/core dump debugging tools developed at Naughty Dog and most recently used during production of The Last of Us Part II. These tools are built on top of Microsoft Visual Studio debugger and allow for a scriptable interface to process memory and debugging. Game engines are extremely complicated executables with many threads/jobs running in parallel, racing data accesses, passing pointers around, iterating through many collections of complex data, etc. Each crash or erroneous condition is a digital forensic mystery for the programmer. nnThis talk will describe the development and use of the debugging tools that make it easier for programmers to solve some of these mysteries. The tools allow us to script game specific conditions, analyze variables, parse memory, etc. with interactive and iterative python scripting. Case studies will be shown on where and how these tools were used to track down complex errors and memory stomps in crash dumps. |
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