Halo Wars Central

This is a record of the original interview, which can be found at HaloWars.com.

Lance Hoke is the Art Producer here at Ensemble Studios and a long time employee. Like the rest of the team he's currently putting in extra hours on Halo Wars, but he took some time out to answer a few questions about his job and where the art is going with this game.

Can you tell us a little about yourself, how you ended up in the games industry and at Ensemble Studios? What exactly is it that you do?

I grew up here in the Dallas area (Garland) and after high school, I attended Texas Tech University where I graduated with a degree in MIS and Management in 1992. I came back to Dallas to work for Texas Instruments as a COBOL programmer. Not a very good one mind you, but I did well enough to get a job at a little consulting firm called Ensemble Corporation in 1997 as an .asp programmer.

As far as gaming goes, I grew up playing board games, pen and paper RPG's, and some of the early console games. I was always a big fan of the Warcraft and C&C games before joining Ensemble Corp. Once I started, I found out that there was a spin-off of Ensemble Corp called Ensemble Studios working on their own RTS called Age of Empires in the same building. I was able to get a Beta disk of AOE (which I still have) to review and provide feedback. I wrote up a couple of pages and sent it back upstairs. I have no idea if they ever read it, but I'm sure it's what put the game over the top. As we all know, AOE was a huge success. Ensemble Studios moved down the street and Tony Goodman (ES Studio Manager) sold our part of the company off to USWeb. By 2001 we'd merged with several other companies and it was misery going to work every day. Luckily, I worked with Julie Ryan, the wife of ES Executive Producer Harter Ryan, and when she heard about an Associate Producer role opening up at ES, she gave me a call and I was able to procure an interview with the Producers. Unfortunately, this was right in the middle of the acquisition by Microsoft and my interviews went on for about 3 months. I did eventually get my foot in the door and started working as an Associate Producer on Age of Mythology in September 2001. I served as AP for about 2 weeks before being asked to "help out" with the Art Department. Eventually, I became the Art Producer and have been doing it for over 6 years now.

An Art Producer is basically the manager of the artists and is responsible for managing the artists, dealing with external contracts, the development and management of the art schedule, communicating with the other leads, and making sure the game is completed on time and at the desired quality level. ES has a great art staff and many have been with the company since AOE. I've learned a lot working with those guys over the years.

Last July everyone got their first look at the game. How has the look of the game changed from what we saw at E3 2007?

The E3 demo was one of our first real efforts to pull the art together for a presentation. It was a great effort and helped us figure out some of things we were doing right and point out areas that we could improve in. I'd say that the look of the game has improved in all areas since the E3 demo. We've adjusted the scale of the units, improved our map development process and look, and taken another pass (or two) on our unit models and textures. The game improves on a daily basis and we still have plenty of time to polish it even more.

What are some of the challenges of working on a console versus the PC as far as the art goes?

This is my first console game, but many of the same approaches to art development for RTS's on the PC still apply. It's much easier in some ways, such as knowing the exact platform that you're creating the art for and having a bigger poly and texture budget. I think that the biggest challenge is making the game look "next-gen". Luckily, we have an incredible engine and great group of programmers that help us take the art look to the next level. Whatever technical feature we ask for, we get. Of course they usually come up with more cool stuff than we do. We're like kids in a candy store.

What is the artistic vision for the game? What should players be expecting to see from a battle or a base in our game?

The artistic vision of the game is to keep it true to the Halo IP, but with enough of ES's approachable feel to help new RTS gamers feel relaxed when playing the game. Players should expect the bases in the game to look incredibly cool, but organized and easy to navigate. Battles are full of armored vehicles, explosions, physics, great animation, great sound and music, all pulled together in an easy to control battlefield. I'm not a big economy guy, so combat is where I spend most of my time.

What’s your favorite color?

UNSC Green

Trick answer to a non-trick question, good stuff! What is the process of creating a new unit or map? How many stages does it go through and how many people are involved?

New units are relatively easy. We get ideas and the unit requirements from design, work up several thumbnail designs, present a direction we like, take feedback, and then iterate until all parties are happy with the direction. The design then moves on to the modelers and animators to get it in the game. Maps on the other hand need hours upon hours of playtest on the basic layout before we even worry about how it's going to look. Once we have a map that plays great, we start working up ideas and designs to make it look cool. This goes through concept paintovers, terrains sculpting, terrain texturing, foliage and ambient life design and custom asset development before we have a completed map. It's a long and tough process, but worth it in the end.

Ensemble is very open to giving and taking feedback on various parts of the game. How do you deal with the chorus of subjective opinions on the art that goes into the game?

I really do enjoy hearing back from the people playing the game. Some are better about expressing their concerns than others, but it's part of my job to listen and try to interpret what their true issues are so that they can be addressed.

Fine, I won't use Pig Latin when giving art feedback anymore. What’s your favorite piece of art from the game so far and why?

I think that my favorite piece of art from the game is our Harvest map. We've spent a lot of time fine tuning the map style and I finally feel like it's turned into a great looking world. Most of the gameplay is around the polar region, which gave us an opportunity to do some great stuff with mountains, snow, and ice. I've always been proud of our environments and I think that the ones in Halo Wars will be our best ones yet.

Interview added on 02/27/08