For those who are interested, there will be a number of Halo 5-related presentations at next week’s Game Developers Conference.
Additionally, the gentleman who designed the ranking system (no longer working at 343) is scheduled to give a talk that might prove thought-provoking.
> Making Moves: Designing Spartan Abilities for ‘Halo 5: Guardians’
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> Ryan Darcey | Senior Systems Designer, 343 Industries
> Location: Room 135, North Hall
> Date: Thursday, March 17
> Time: 10:00am - 11:00am
> Format: Session
> Track: Design
> Pass Type: All Access Pass, Main Conference Pass - Get your pass now!
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> Halo has a long legacy of delivering highly balanced, competitive FPS gameplay where concepts like “30 seconds of fun” and “golden triangle” lay the foundation for the player experience. After releasing six successful FPS titles spanning the course of 14 years, how do you advance the IP while maintaining the fundamental model & philosophy? How much do you risk alienating the community that helped us arrive to this point? What’s going to make Halo feel fresh again?
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> Spartan Abilities are just some of the features 343 delivered in Halo 5: Guardians as an answer these questions. During this talk, you will gain insight into the process of taking the new Spartan Charge and Ground Pound actions from concept to final release. More specifically, this talk will focus on:
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> 1) Choosing where to innovate.
> 2) Mapping actions to controls.
> 3) Tuning for balance.
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> Takeaway
> Attendees of this talk will walk away with a detailed understanding of how to approach designing new features for an established franchise, how to weigh control scheme options and a methodology for tuning highly balanced, competitive games.
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> Intended Audience
> Some basic experience with FPS games is the only prerequisite. Designers looking to learn more about where to focus their time, energy & resources when developing new features are the target audience, though all disciplines may benefit from understanding the fundamental ideas expressed here.
> Managing Audio Performance: Lessons Learned from the Production of ‘Halo 5: Guardians’
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> Chase Thompson | Senior Audio Implementer, Microsoft 343 Industries
> Location: Room 3006, West Hall
> Date: Thursday, March 17
> Time: 3:00pm - 3:30pm
> Format: Session
> Track: Audio
> Pass Type: All Access Pass, Audio Track Pass, Main Conference Pass - Get your pass now!
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> A strategic approach to audio performance, CPU usage, and memory allocation is critical for achieving high quality game audio. This session will highlight some of the lessons learned by the Halo 5 audio team throughout the production of Halo 5: Guardians. There were many challenges surrounding the performance, including shipping on a new platform, managing audio middleware and how it interacts with our game engine, and approach to content design and asset management. This presentation will include a look at how the team handled CPU usage, memory footprint, streaming bandwidth, on disk footprint etc, and what was learned from this experience.
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> Takeaway
> Audio performance, CPU usage, and memory allocation directly impacts the ability to create a compelling best in class audio experience. Attendees will get a look at how the team approached audio performance for Halo 5: Guardians, the challenges faced, and the things learned during the course of production on this project. Attendees will walk away with a new understanding of audio performance and how it affects the overall sound of the game, as well as gain some new insight and tools for approaching this subject.
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> Intended Audience
> Anyone working (or hoping to work) in the game audio field: Sound Designers, Audio Implementers, Audio Programmers, etc.
> Making “Big Data” Work for ‘Halo’: A Case Study
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> Tom Mathews | Sr. Software Engineer, Microsoft, 343 Industries
> Location: Room 2020, West Hall
> Date: Thursday, March 17
> Time: 4:00pm - 5:00pm
> Format: Session
> Track: Production, Programming
> Pass Type: All Access Pass, Main Conference Pass - Get your pass now!
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> In 2012, 343 decided to embark on creating a completely new telemetry infrastructure, overhauling its data gathering capabilities. The studio went from end-of-game snapshot data to a hybrid model which adds real-time telemetry transmission that feeds into streaming analytics in the cloud. This is their story: of the challenges that were faced, and the treasures that were won.
> We all want to make our games better, and gathering information is naturally the first step to understanding player’s experiences. With the advent of “Big Data,” we face a daunting challenge in identifying the most useful information in a sea of facts, as well as gathering large volumes of data without impacting the game itself. Tom Mathews would like to share with you how they approached this problem space, and provide a few pointers for those that follow in their footsteps. See you there!
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> Takeaway
> Attendees will leave with an understanding of the cost/benefit of real-time analytics, streaming analytics, and incorporating big-data philosophies to telemetry generation/gathering, as well as an overview of the tools leveraged by 343 to accomplish their goals. Tom also hopes to impart enthusiasm for the emerging world of streaming analytics. 
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> Intended Audience
> He will be spending the first few slides ramping people up: Anyone from producers to developers are welcome. Business Intelligence Analysts will probably glean the least from this talk (but the game-industry perspective may be fresh). Some slides will be targeted to developers to promote high-level techniques that ease telemetry authoring.
> Skill, Matchmaking, and Ranking Systems Design
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> Josh Menke | Senior Systems Designer, Activision Publishing
> Location: Room 2002, West Hall
> Date: Thursday, March 17
> Time: 4:00pm - 5:00pm
> Format: Session
> Track: Design, Programming
> Pass Type: All Access Pass, Main Conference Pass - Get your pass now!
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> With the establishment of professional online gaming, high quality matchmaking and ranking systems have become expected components of competitive multiplayer games. This talk will cover the following: skill determination, matchmaking, ranking, how they relate, and direction for the future. It will cover what can be expected out of the latest state-of-the-art skill determination systems. It will discuss how skill can be properly used for matchmaking and how good matchmaking can free gameplay designers to design with depth. It will suggest best practices for ranking systems, and discuss how ranking interacts with matchmaking, pointing out pitfalls to watch out for in their design. It will draw from industry experience working on competitive systems in the World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2, and Call of Duty franchises.
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> Takeaway
> Attendees will better understand what players expect in state-of-the-art skill determination and matchmaking. They will also understand best practices in designing ranking systems that properly fit their audiences, and interact correctly with matchmaking. Gameplay designers will gain understanding about the trade-off between skill depth and matchmaking.
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> Intended Audience
> The content will interest developers of multiplayer online games. The only prerequisite is an understanding of the concepts of matchmaking and ranking as they relate to competitive multiplayer games.