Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games. Part I Natalya Tatarchuk Bungie.
Building Your Plane While Flying Production @ Bungie Allen Murray.
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Transcript of Building Your Plane While Flying Production @ Bungie Allen Murray.
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Building Your Plane While FlyingProduction @ Bungie
Allen Murray
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What is the point of this talk?• To show how we were able to
evolve mature production practices in the middle of a very successful, creative and sometimes chaotic environment while maintaining the culture of the studio.
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Production History
• Halo 1 and Halo 2 were created with minimal Production staff
• The role of Producer on Halo 1 and 2 was very different than it is today
• On Halo 1 and 2, project management was sometimes handled by discipline leads
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Why Invest In Production?
• Halo 2 experience…• Extremely long crunch– 12-14 hour days, 7 days
a week for over 8 months
• Personal sacrifice and pain
• The team was looking for a new solution
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How did we do this? (Agenda)• By focusing on Quality First
• By focusing on People First
• By being extremely Adaptable
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QUALITY FIRST
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Quality First
• Flexible approach to scheduling
• Non-negotiable Polish
• “Planned Crunch”
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Flexible Approach to Scheduling
• We will rip apart the schedule *late* to:
• Accommodate ideas that make the game better
• Rigorously rework a feature if there is concern the quality isn’t high enough
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Example: FORGE
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Example: FORGE
• First version of Forge did not come online until 6 months prior to ship
• The idea was intriguing enough that we were willing to risk other features to achieve it
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Quality First: Other Modifiers
• How will this decision for quality affect:–Morale– Employee development– Schedules & Budgets– The people who play the game
• Example: Saved Films– Nearly cut if not for the passion of the
designers and engineers who worked on it
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Non-negotiable Polish
• It is a non-moving component of the schedule
• Approximately 2-4 weeks per person
• It is not a contingency plan
• It is all iteration time• No new content!
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Planned Crunch
• Crunch is a tool that can unite or divide the team
• How you communicate a crunch is vital to its success– Communicated in advance– Scope defined and understood– Definitive end
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Negative Crunch
• Crunch is bad when:• It is prolonged• No goal• No visible evidence of progress
• Bad Crunch = Producer’s fault
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Positive Crunch
• Crunch is positive when:• It is used sparingly to focus work
effort• Is preplanned and has an end that is
understood
• Good crunch = Team Achievement
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PEOPLE FIRST
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Bungie is Our People
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Supporting Role
• As Producers at Bungie, our focus is on creating the conditions in which the team can do their best work
• Also, Producers at Bungie don’t design
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Supporting Context
• There is natural tension in the creative process
• Production assists with this conflict resolution
• As we evolved our processes in Halo 3, it became apparent there was little accountability for cross-discipline issues
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Supporting Methodology
• Listen First
• Gather the data
• Make the data honest and the process transparent
• Present recommendations
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Soft Skills
Soft Skills are as important as Hard Skills
Understanding context is key
Most people can be taught the Hard Skills of project management. It’s the innate ability to act smartly, not the rules you follow that is hard to teach
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ADAPTABILITY
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Adaptive Project Management
• Putting Quality and People First means:
• We invest in processes adapted to the people
• We adapt to unfolding views of the game experience
• We bring clarity with a range of different methodologies
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Start with a Framework
• Concept Phase: What is the game? Inspiring others
• Preproduction: Prove the concepts, find the fun• Production: Building the game, iteration,
iteration• Polish: This dial goes to 11• Release: Get it shipped• Sustain Planning:
– DLC, Expansions, Bungie.Net, Community outreach
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Constantly Shifting Responsibilities
• As the project cycle shifts, so do our responsibilities
• We need to be able to jump in and work with any team
• We rely on our fellow Producers for context
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A Pragmatic Approach
• Each team is approached differently
• Each person on the team is approached differently
• Producers adapt methods for the appropriate audience
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Mission Design
Environment Art vs. Mission Design
Mass Out Architecting Finishing Polish
Environment Art
Paper Design
PrototypeRevie
wPrototype
Review
IterationIteration Iteration Iteration Iteration Iteration
Review
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3D Art
Concept Art vs. 3D Art
Concept Art
Polish 1
Graybox 2 Hi Res 2
Concept 2
Concept 1
Detail 1 Detail 2Other Img
Hi Res 1Graybox 1
…Other Img
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Engineering
Systems Design vs. Engineering
Systems Design
Tasks for 1
Design Doc 1
Design Doc 2
Tasks for 2
Prototype 1
Tasks for 1
Prototype 2
Tasks for 2
Walkup
Bug Fixing
Prototype 1
Specific Tasks
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Combining the Approaches
Mass Out Architecting Finishing Polish
Environment Art
Iteration
Mission DesignIteration Iteration Iteration Iteration Iteration
Concept ArtConcept generation Concept generation
3D ArtObject Object Object Object Object Object Object Object Polish
Systems DesignIteration Iteration Iteration Testing / Iteration
EngineeringFeature
WorkFeature
WorkFeature
WorkBug fixing Polish
Feature Work
First Playable Milestone
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Meaningful Milestones
• Milestones are feature driven, not date driven
• Milestones have a definition that is understood by the team doing the work
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Everyone Has a Schedule
• We believe that all creative tasks can be quantified.
• Make this viewable to everyone on the team– Increases communication– Gives visibility– Increases accuracy– Increases accountability– Increases efficiency
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Flexible Scheduling Technologies
• To be useful, the system must have:
• Multiple inputs
• Unified data source
• Single, target output and reporting
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Current Underlying Tech
• MS Project to HTML output• All tasks are eventually put into MS
Project• System converts Project files into
HTMLPaper
Excel
MSProje
ct
DataScrip
tWeb
Page
MSProje
ct
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Evolving Tech
• Future integration with our art and environment pipeline tools
• The core philosophy remains the same:– Put information in front of the
people– They are responsible for saying
when it is wrong and informing changes
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Production Coverage (H3 preproduction)
3D Art
Campaign Env Art
MP Env Art
Mission Design
MP Design
Engineering
Animation
Audio
Effects
UI
Cinematics
Concept Art
Producers: 3
Team Size:
75
Production
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Production Coverage(H3 Mid Production)
3D Art
Campaign Env Art
MP Env Art
Mission Design
MP Design
Engineering
Animation
Audio
Effects
UI
Cinematics
Concept Art
Producers: 6
Team Size:
110
Production
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Production Coverage (H3 End Production to Today)
3D Art
Campaign Env Art
MP Env Art
Mission Design
MP Design
Engineering
Animation
Audio
Effects
UI
Cinematics
Concept Art
Production
Producers: 11 + TBH
Team Size:
150+
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CASE STUDY: HALO 3 ENVIRONMENT ART
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Campaign Environment Art
• Listen First…• Some artists felt the schedule was ‘off’
– “I know I cannot make all of this in 9 months!”
• Some artists and designers felt they could just crunch through it– “We shipped Halo 2 – we can do anything!”
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New Approach to Mission Audits
• A systematic walkthrough and evaluation of the art and design in each level
• All tasks are quantified and scheduled
• This information was used by Creative Leadership and Production to make decisions
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After the Mission Audits
• We were overbooked
• Traditional levers to pull:– Add time?– Add staff?– Reduce scope?
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What Was Cut?
Entire Campaign Mission: Guardian Forest
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Additional Mission Adjustments
• 2 Smaller missions merged into Cortana
• Large sections of Tsavo Highway were removed
• Small section added to Citadel to account for the loss of Guardian Forest
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Sandbox cuts
New Character & Weapon: Guardians
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Lessons Learned
• Production added value by – Listening– Gathering data and applying rigor to the
audit process– Presenting recommendations– And working with the team to make final
decisions
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Lessons Learned, cont.
• Cuts were made – but it was a positive result because:– Decisions were made much earlier when
compared to Halo 1 and 2– It gave us a realistic schedule that everyone
believed in– Provided constraints that allowed us to focus
the creative effort– Began an empirical process of project
transparency that is now a part of our Studio culture
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RECAP
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Core Production Philosophy
• As a team, our focus is on creating the conditions in which designers, artists, animators and engineers can do their best work
• How we achieve that is as varied as the people themselves
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7 Principles of Production
1. We ensure that Bungie remains a creatively led studio but supporting the creative team
2. We put quality and people first3. We make ourselves as flexible and adaptable as
possible4. We pride ourselves on applying any methodology
as appropriate5. The schedule is a means to an end, not the end
itself6. We empower and enable the team to take
ownership of their schedule and their work7. We still set dates and ship on time
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Questions?
These slides will be available online:http://www.bungie.net/publications/
We’re Hiring!http://www.bungie.net/jobs/
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