Medal of Honor

Publisher: Electronic Arts (EA)
Developer: Danger Close (Formerly EA-LA)
Release Date: October 12, 2010
Platforms: XBOX 360, PS3, PC

Duration on project: May 2010 - Novemeber 2010
Title: Asset Integrator

"Operating directly under the National Command Authority, a relatively unknown entity of handpicked warriors are called on when the mission must not fail. They are the Tier 1 Operators.

Over 2 million Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines wear the uniform. Of those, approximately 50 thousand fall under the direct control of the Special Operations Command. The Tier 1 Operator functions on a plane of existence above and beyond even the most highly trained Special Operations Forces. Their exact numbers, while classified, hover in the low hundreds. They are living, breathing, precision instruments of war. They are experts in the application of violence. The new Medal of Honor is inspired by and has been developed with Tier 1 Operators from this elite community. Players will step into the boots of these warriors and apply their unique skill sets to a new enemy in the most unforgiving and hostile battlefield conditions of present day Afghanistan.

There is a new enemy. There is a new war. There is a new warrior. He is Tier 1."
~Official Medal of Honor website

At the time I joined the team at Danger Close, they still went by the name of EA-LA. It was fun to be there during that transitional period and an honor to work at the studio who was most known for (and initially established) the genre of the army shooter.

I was on the team for a period of 6 months, during which I was chosen and sent to assist our EA Partner, People Can Fly (PCF), with their project Bulletstorm! PCF is a studio under Epic Games and to be flown on site in Warsaw Poland to work with them was truely a once in a lifetime experience.

My main duties were as follows:

• Modeled, textured, and created shaders for architecture and props based on concept; primarily in
  Bagram control tower.
• Worked on set dressing and polish passes on various areas throughout single player enriching the
  gaming environment.
• Assisted the lighting team by correcting baked lighting errors and improper light map layouts. Also,
  created assets and shader instances for window parallax and light source emissive to be used in
  Gardez.
• Identified performance issues on a per level basis in terms of draw, GPU, and frame rate.
• Performed multiple optimization passes based on identified performance issues to improve overall
  game stability and reach desired frames per second (FPS).
• Assisted EA Partner, People Can Fly (PCF), with their project: Bulletstorm. Identified and fixed
  performance issues to improve stability. Assisted with set dressing to improve the player experience.
• Collaborated with producers, visual effects (VFX), lighting, optimization, animation, environment, and
  design at both Danger Close and People Can Fly teams.

• Blocked out initial play space for Bagram tower according to design and gameplay specs.
• Modeled and textured control panels, walls, floor, cieling, windows, and broken glass.
• Assisted in populating the space with existing assets to achieve desired look and feel.
• Set up assets in area with appropriate lighting flags, and placed them particularly so this area could be lit in the best way possible in terms of interest and focial points.

• Asset maintainance. Checked and fixed assets so that they were optimized in terms of shaders, geometry, drawcalls, and LOD distance. Created LOD's for assets that did not have them.
• Applied collision tags to appropriate assets.
• Applied appropriate "hits and bangs" to assets and guns. Example, M16 sounds like an M16. When shooting metal, tag surfaces so that metal sounds like metal, and produces sparks. Same goes for wood, grass, snow, etc.
• Assisted in populating the space with existing assets to achieve desired look and feel.
• Created shadow proxies for large expensive assets game wide.
• Set up assets in area with appropriate lighting flags, and placed them particularly so this area could be lit in the best way possible in terms of interest and focial points.

Launch Trailer

Live Action Linkin Park Trailer