Iron Man 2

Senior Missions Designer - Sega San Francisco

March 2009 - April 2010

I worked on 5 of the 11 missions in Iron Man 2. Besides my mission design duties, I championed a new scripting tool for the designers. I had noticed that the tools programmers were writing a toolset for the cinematics team to more easily script up these scenes. I looked at the tools and asked if it could be expanded into a visual scripting tool for the designers. A month later and after constantly testing the tool and providing feedback to the programmers, we got a tool that the design team could use and it saved us a ton of time.

Duties

• Responsible for designing and implementing 5 of the 11 missions.

• Worked closely with the tools programmers in designing “Kismet” style scripting tools.

• Worked closely with 3D environment artist for mission layouts.

I'm particularly proud of the mission in the video above. Originally, this mission was going to use a "limited" flight "Suitcase Suit" as seen in the movie Iron Man 2. The design failed after many prototyping attempts at trying to create a fun and engaging gameplay experience. 

With a little over a month left before code-lock, the leads were ready to scrap the level. But I insisted that I could give them a finished mission using the new scripting tool we created and with a suit that had special powers not seen anywhere else in the game. Essentially, I turned the suit into the fastest flying Iron Man suit in Stark's arsenal. However, it had limited armaments and weak armor (striped down for speed). So he relied on his seldom used hacking power to turn the attacking bots against themselves. 

A month later, I had a finished level that was up to snuff with the rest of the missions and then some!

But without the help of the new scripting tool, I would never have finished the mission in time!