Halo: The Master Chief Collection

“The Master Chief’s iconic journey includes six games, built for PC and collected in a single integrated experience. Whether you’re a long-time fan or meeting Spartan 117 for the first time, The Master Chief Collection is the definitive Halo gaming experience.”

Initial Release: December 2019

Studio: 343 Industries

Platforms: Xbox | PC

Genre: Multiplayer and Single Player First-Person Shooter

Engine(s): UE4, Scaleform, multiple proprietary engines

​Role(s) and Responsibilities: 

Game Design

• Worked with the Design Director on building features and systems.

• Designed and built the weapon placements, equipment, forge palettes, sound volumes, materials, and map variants for new multiplayer maps in Halo 3.

• Built out new features to improve the single player experience on legacy titles while ensuring the original experience players expected remained intact.

• Coordinated playtests to get feedback on various designs and features as well as give constructive feedback to other areas of the games.

• Built prototypes using UE4 and blueprints.

• Designed and configured the Seasons and Challenges features.

• Built Modding documentation for community use.

• Designed and automated weekly updates for a live service environment.

UI Design

• Designed Challenges and Season UI screen.

• Gave design direction on new frontend UI built in Unreal.

Art Support

• Worked with the Art Director to create assets to be used in and out of the game.

• Created Frontend UI and HUD assets as well as up-res legacy assets to support 4k.

• Created hi-res 3D Models for main menu videos and promotional artwork.

• Built scenes in Maya and the Unreal Engine for promotional artwork.

• Created various Steam assets (Emoticons, Trading Cards, Profile Backgrounds).

• Worked with outsourcing partners to develop 2D and 3D game assets.

• Created and edited videos using After Effects and Premiere for both marketing and in game use.

Research

• Researched various PC FPS titles to build design documentation that was used to ensure the PC versions of the game were built with the platform in mind instead of a standard port.

• Researched how various popular titles handle their challenges systems and wrote designs on how to utilize their successful systems in MCC.

​More Details: 

Halo 3 Multiplayer Maps

EDGE

My work done on the map:

• Weapon, Equipment, and Powerup placement

• Player Spawns

• Blocking and Kill volumes

• Built Forge palettes

• Built base game mode variants (Slayer, CTF, Oddball, Territories, and Assault)

• Custom map variants for SWAT, Snipers, and Infection game modes

• Art Support for the minimap painting, setting up shaders on the environment, VFX, and SFX volumes/emitters

This map had a lot of playtesting and iteration done on it due to it being originally designed with players having sprint. This led to needing to add more objects in the way to clean up sight lines in combat areas as well as gearing the map more towards long ranged engagements. Strong close-range weapons were added to the map as well to be used as tools in objective based games where having a shotgun or sword on defense would have a lot of utility.

Extra attention was put on ensuring the flow of the map felt good in gameplay with a risk/reward to getting the power weapons and equipment, spawns felt fair, and that there were no abusable paths the players could take that would ruin the flow of the map but still leaving room for skilled players to get creative in their movement. This map was also introduced at a time where I was able to utilize the new objects we had added to Halo 3 which resulted in this map featuring new weapons for the sandbox.

Icebox

My work done on the map:

• Weapon and Powerup placement

• Spawns

• Blocking and Kill volumes

• Built Forge palettes

• Built base game mode variants (Slayer, CTF, Oddball, Territories, and Assault)

• Custom map variants for SWAT, Snipers, and Infection game modes

• Art Support for the minimap painting, setting up shaders on the environment, VFX, and SFX volumes/emitters

This map was designed with keeping the spirit of the original Halo 2 map in mind. Weapon placements were similar while also updating the map with features that were introduced in Halo 3, such as equipment and new sandbox weapons. The map flow was set up intentionally to push players towards areas that they normally would have avoided in the original in order to give the map a new feel. This was done with where the new weapons and equipment was placed to create new choke holds or combat areas. The map was designed to use the re-skinned environment as well as part of the gameplay by having the snow piles on the ground slow grenades if they landed in them as well as have players leave footprints so you could see the pathways that other players had recently taken.

With the goal of keeping the spirit of the original in mind it was also important to me to add new objects to the forge palette to be used in the map. Achieving this allowed me to re-create the more iconic parts of the layout such as the barricades by the medical tent or the physics based door.

Waterfall

My work done on the map:

• Blocking and Kill volumes

• Built Forge palettes

• Custom map variants for SWAT, Snipers, and Infection game modes

• Art Support for the minimap painting and various bug fixes to the environment

My main focus of work on this map was coordinating playtests around weapon placements as well as the general flow of the map. Additionally there was a lot of iteration around the custom map variant for Infection as the map gave a new set of visuals compared to a lot of other maps so it was a great opportunity to make a unique experience for the game mode.

Edge was a map originally developed for the cancelled project Halo Online. The map is a symmetrical map with bases on opposite sides and power weapons located on the outer edges of the circle. One side is a waterfall vista and the other is a forerunner power bank.

Icebox was a map originally developed for the cancelled project Halo Online. The map is a remake of the Halo 2 map, Turf with a reskin to a snow aesthetic. It is an asymmetric map with key areas of the map in each of the corners and multiple paths through the center from the various streets.

Waterfall was a map originally developed for the cancelled project Halo Online. The map is a multi-level asymmetrical map. It has a top level that is out in the glacial area with opposing bases in an L-shape, and interior sections of each side that house different layouts for combat encounters as well as different weapons. The center of the map has a gravity lift where players can get to the different levels faster as well as reach choke points that contain power weapons. There are man-cannons positioned around the help the player traverse quickly as well.