Gears Of War: E-Day
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The Game
Gears Of War: E-Day is the origin story of one of gaming's most acclaimed sagas, where players experience the brutal horror of Emergence Day through the eyes of Marcus Fenix. Gears Of War: E-Day is a third person cover shooter.
The game is scheduled to be out 2026. |
My Role
I was the senior technical gameplay designer on the project.
I was one of the earliest hires for the new sandbox (CCC) team, to help build the gameplay tech design department. We grew to a team of 4 by the end.
1. I was responsible for setting tech design processes and standards for the project on the sandbox side, working closely with the technical designers on the Level Design side. I helped with hiring and growing the team, and mentoring other technical as well as non-technical designers.
2. I took over maintaining the state machine and actor hierarchies for players and enemy units, which used custom tech inside Unreal Engine. I worked to untangle the existing hierarchies, planned and pitched to make the systems modular, and implemented the results modularly.
3. I planned to have the AI setup be modular as well, and implemented accordingly - followed by the other gameplay designers. I broke down the state machine logic into modular, reuseable behaviors ("short cover", "fast chase" etc.) and created these working alongside other designers.
4. I was the product owner of some of the enemy variations (sniper), their individual AI logic - which I used to set up the modular structure previously discussed as the testbed. I was responsible for pitching, planning and pushing through with those enemies.
5. I wrote the AI designer tool in python to set up the correct base classes, behaviors - to speed up initial setup and grunt work, so designers could focus more on just building the behavior.
6. I worked with a senior gameplay designer and an engineer to design and build the ability system. I prototyped abilities to advocate for the system, and wrote modular reusable bits for it. I also wrote the designer tool to create abilities quickly in python, to automate the initial creation process.
7. I worked with the junior tech designers to maintain the weapon systems and files - and wrote a lot of the automation to generate files, and automate a lot of the creation and cleanup process for weapons. These were written in python.
I was one of the earliest hires for the new sandbox (CCC) team, to help build the gameplay tech design department. We grew to a team of 4 by the end.
1. I was responsible for setting tech design processes and standards for the project on the sandbox side, working closely with the technical designers on the Level Design side. I helped with hiring and growing the team, and mentoring other technical as well as non-technical designers.
2. I took over maintaining the state machine and actor hierarchies for players and enemy units, which used custom tech inside Unreal Engine. I worked to untangle the existing hierarchies, planned and pitched to make the systems modular, and implemented the results modularly.
3. I planned to have the AI setup be modular as well, and implemented accordingly - followed by the other gameplay designers. I broke down the state machine logic into modular, reuseable behaviors ("short cover", "fast chase" etc.) and created these working alongside other designers.
4. I was the product owner of some of the enemy variations (sniper), their individual AI logic - which I used to set up the modular structure previously discussed as the testbed. I was responsible for pitching, planning and pushing through with those enemies.
5. I wrote the AI designer tool in python to set up the correct base classes, behaviors - to speed up initial setup and grunt work, so designers could focus more on just building the behavior.
6. I worked with a senior gameplay designer and an engineer to design and build the ability system. I prototyped abilities to advocate for the system, and wrote modular reusable bits for it. I also wrote the designer tool to create abilities quickly in python, to automate the initial creation process.
7. I worked with the junior tech designers to maintain the weapon systems and files - and wrote a lot of the automation to generate files, and automate a lot of the creation and cleanup process for weapons. These were written in python.