Luc Shelton

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition Gears of War: Ultimate Edition
The Coalition Microsoft Studios Splash Damage
The Coalition Microsoft Studios Splash Damage

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition

Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is a recreation and port of the original Gears of War title brought to Windows 10 and Xbox One by Splash Damage and The Coalition.

The title features higher resolution textures, high-dynamic range rendering, more detailed and complex geometry, and recreated cinematics and cutscenes.

Responsibilities

My role on this project largely consisted of developing scalable and automated functional testing systems, which comprised of a web application for data visualisation, engine-related functionality, and tooling that was responsible for remotely controlling and orchestrating the state of a game on remote Xbox One (Durango) targets using the Xbox Tools Framework (XTF).

Localisation Tooling

  • Commandlets and small pieces of software for integrating Chinese locale (traditional).

Automated Functional and Performance Testing

  • Functional testing systems for remotely orchestrating tests, and collecting historical data for further analysis through our web application.
  • Automated systems for testing gameplay features in various parts of in-game levels.
  • Web application for visualising historical captured performance data.
  • Tools for launching and managing performance test runs on remote targets.
  • Engine module for exposing functionality through remote procedure calls (hooks) in the debug build of the game.

Build Systems and Continuous Integration

  • Build systems powered by TeamCity.
  • Automation achieved through auxiliary MSBuild projects.
    • Powered our automated functional testing systems.
    • Enabled our build configurations to work on build agents (workers) and developer machines.
  • Build pipelines for nightly binary and content configurations.
    • Including build configurations for testing new changes in the depot ("validation" or CI build).

Bug Fixing

  • Miscellaneous core-tech related bug fixing tasks towards the end of the development cycle.
  • Fixing tricky network desynchronisation bugs in co-operative campaign game modes.
The credits screen for the title. I was extremely fortunate enough to be listed under "Tools Programmer" at Splash Damage. The credits screen for the title. I was extremely fortunate enough to be listed under "Tools Programmer" at Splash Damage.
A picture of the physical copy of the game once it went gold! A copy of the game was given to everyone on the team as a token of appreciation for all the hard work. A picture of the physical copy of the game once it went gold! A copy of the game was given to everyone on the team as a token of appreciation for all the hard work.
One of the pieces of cover art that was used for Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. Featured on the Microsoft Store. One of the pieces of cover art that was used for Gears of War: Ultimate Edition. Featured on the Microsoft Store.
An in-game screenshot of Marcus, Cole, Dom, and Baird at the end of one of the chapters. An in-game screenshot of Marcus, Cole, Dom, and Baird at the end of one of the chapters.
The four main characters in the game. From left to right they are Baird, Dom, Cole, and Marcus. The four main characters in the game. From left to right they are Baird, Dom, Cole, and Marcus.
Windows Store
The Windows Store page for Gears of War: Ultimate Edition.

Technologies:

Unreal Engine 3 .NET Framework AngularJS TeamCity MSBuild WPF XAML Flask Apache jQuery Bootstrap Perforce

Languages:

C++ C# JavaScript UnrealScript

Platforms:

Xbox One Microsoft Store Xbox