Meeting Report -

Video: Halo 3 Environment/Level Pipeline

Here's the complete video recording of Bungie's May 2008 presentation on Halo3's environment/level art pipeline with Vic DeLeon (Senior Environment Artist) and Mike Zak (Lead Environment Artist). Big thanks to Cybercap for pulling the video together (sorry for losing it, and getting it up so late).

Posted by della on July 2, 2009 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

Meeting Report -

Summer Fun: Social + E3 Demos

The finale of the IGDA-Montreal 2008-09 "season" was a mostly casual affair. With a heavy dose of free drinks, fun door prizes and a handful of E3 demos from local studios.

First up, A2M showed off trailers for MySims Racing, Indiana Jones Wii and Wet. BioWare wowed with their Mass Effect 2 trailer. EA Montreal gave live demos of Need for Speed Nitro Wii and Spore Hero. And, Ubisoft closed off with demos of Shawn White Snowboarding on the balance board, and Splinter Cell Conviction.

Did I mention there was lots of drinking...

A few photos from the evening:

NFS in action.

Matt showing off Spore Hero.

Shawn White shredding the slopes.

Marie-Jo Leroux (Ubisoft) and Lesley Phord-Toy (A2M) enjoying the free drinks.

Clint Hocking (Ubisoft) and Vander Caballero (EA), also enjoying the free drinks - especially Vander ;)

Phil Fish (Polytron) and Johnny Dankoff (Ubisoft) pull off Thriller dance moves in tribute to MJ's passing earlier that day.

A bar shot.

Conviction's Max Beland and Alexandre Parizeau in need of a few drinks...

Chapter Sponsors

Posted by della on June 29, 2009 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

Meeting Announcement -

Summer Break

FYI, IGDA-Montreal is now officially on summer break. There will be no chapter events/meetings during July and August.

The next chapter action is set for September 22nd at the SAT. Meanwhile, catch up on the past year with videos, reports and photos from prior events.

Enjoy the (mostly) nice weather!

Posted by della on June 29, 2009 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

Meeting Report -

Feeling the Awesome in Mass Effect 2

By Stephen Wark

(Check out a full video of the presentation here!)

The last presentation of the 2008-2009 IGDA Montreal season featured a peek into the new iterative level design process for Mass Effect 2. Project Manager Corey Andruko and Lead Level Designer Dusty Everman from BioWare described to us the level design process for the first Mass Effect and then explained how an iterative approach changed the entire design and production process for the sequel.

Isabelle Marazzani introduces the speakers to the large crowd.

For the first Mass Effect, the level design teams consisted of writers, level artists, cinematic animators, cinematic designers and technical designers, each focusing on their discipline, but the not on what the finished product will be when all the pieces come together. This silo approach assumes that the separate elements would all come together at the end, but doesn't take into account how changes in one area affected all other areas. They said that the levels were rarely playable until near the end of the production schedule, which made it difficult for the leads to evaluate new game mechanics or creative elements until it was almost too late. Content was cut, often when it was nearly complete, because the levels required too much work to fix. In the end, the overall performance of other levels, such as the infamous elevators, left much to be desired.

The iterative approach adopted for Mass Effect 2 divided level production into six distinct phases, which allowed them to review and redo the work if necessary. To ensure that the development costs didn't spiral out of control, the level designers implemented three basic premises and one mantra.

The premises were: A level is always playable, always a foundation, and always at performance. These premises ensured that there were no unpleasant surprises at the end of production. There are no "test levels" in Mass Effect 2 – everything was designed to be game-ready.

Corey Andruko and Dusty Everman talk about their production process for Mass Effect 2.

The mantra was: "Only do the work that answers the right questions in the right order." Each phase of level production had its own question to answer and goal to achieve before the team moved on to the next stage. This was intended to reduce the risks of wasted iterations. The questions themselves strike at the heart of good games. In the early stages, the questions are "Can you see the fun?" In the final stage, the question becomes "Can you feel the awesome?"
To illustrate their point, the presenters ran a pair of video clips that showed how one level started as a crude-but-playable boxy geometry with narrative summaries to a polished level with voice acting, full collisions, AI enemies and cinematics. Unfortunately, the clips didn't include shots from the finished game, and the audience's disappointment was audible. They wanted to "feel the awesome."

The changes in design philosophy in Mass Effect 2 were matched with changes in production. The design teams borrowed from the Lean manufacturing philosophy that focuses on the elimination of waste and the transfer of best practices. Regular level reviews and department mindshare meetings helped raise the bar for everything else in production, though once a level passed a given phase, the teams never rolled back the clock and reworked something needlessly.

Members mingle after the presentation.

Meeting Sponsor

Chapter Sponsors

Posted by RaynaAnderson on June 25, 2009 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

Meeting Announcement -

June 25: Summer Social + E3 Redux

Event Details

When: Thursday, June 25th @ 7:00pm
What: Summer Social + E3 Redux
Where: The SAT, 1195 St.Laurent
Why: Drink, schmooze and check out cool games
Who: All game developers, and those related to the game industry
Entry: free for IGDA members; $5 for non-members

Summer Social

This is the final IGDA-Montreal event for the 08-09 "season". Come hang out and schmooze, and help us run through our stock of free drink tickets. At least 3x free drinks will be given to every person there!

E3 Redux

Since many Montreal studios were just at E3 showing off their upcoming games, we'll have several games to show off on the big screens (eg, EA Montreal's Army of Two 40th Day, A2M's Wet, Mass Effect 2 from BioWare, etc).