Roguelikes existed before Rogue. How can that be? You see, all inventions are just manifestations of ideas that are already in the room. Rogue was the culmination of a lot of previous ideas in the shape of a digital artefact. This talk takes you on a worldwide journey back in time to ancient forms of procedurally generation, tracing some roots of the games we play nowadays.

There's a famous wtf moment in Quake 3 Arena's source code, involving the use of "evil floating point bit level hacking"... but what is that? Hidden inside computer math are a secret set of tools that can help your game run much faster, if you learn the magic behind all of those magic numbers. This talk will be a theme park ride through some of the most impressive optimization techniques I've found or created myself, so math enthusiasts at any level can learn something new. Whether it's using only 1 bit of save data per collectible in huge, randomly generated maps, or using x&-x to instantly find pixel gaps for things like fluid simulations, the hidden math of computers lets you accomplish much more than you probably think!