Robot Wants It All (PC Windows and Linux, 2018)
Robot Wants It All is a compilation of a series of games that were originally written in Flash. In order to turn them into a complete game and add new content, it was necessary for me to write an engine from scratch that replicated the behavior of Flash. I also wrote an extensive GUI system that allowed very detailed, animated user interfaces.
Linux and Android Ports (2012-2014)
My duties at Aspyr Media involved porting some fantastic triple-A titles from PC to Linux and Android. I worked on Civilization V, Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Civilization: Beyond Earth, Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Farenheit: Indigo Prophecy.
Elemental: War of Magic (PC Windows, 2010)
Elemental: War of Magic is a turn-based strategy game, similar to the classic Master of Magic. My initial responsibilities involved coding the city-building system, but I eventually branched out and did work in almost every subsystem of the game.
CrazyBump (Mac OS X, 2009)
CrazyBump is a very popular tool for artists to quickly make bumpmaps out of their other artwork. The original author wrote it C# using .NET, and when requests came in for a Mac OS X version, I was contracted to perform the conversion. I used the Qt 4.5 GUI platform because of its cross-platform nature.
The Sims Castaway Stories (PC Windows, 2008)
The “Stories” series was an attempt to add more story and structure to games based on the Sims 2 engine. As a result, the game plays a lot more like a traditional point-and-click adventure game, although the classic Sims elements still exist.
The designers found both the size of the lots and the camera controls of the original Sims 2 engine too limiting. I was able to expand the lot size, allowing for huge buildings and set pieces. I also created a scriptable camera system with three different tracks – a camera movement track and two “effect” tracks that ran simultaneously.
futureU (PC Windows, 2008)
futureU is a SAT preparation game based on the Scaleform engine. This allowed the designers to create their minigames using Adobe Flash and import them directly to the game.
The designers also wanted a toon-shaded, 3D animated character that the player could customize. Since Scaleform provides no 3D capabilities, I wrote a Direct3D-based renderer from scratch and incorporated it into the Scaleform engine.
Hit & Myth (Gizmondo, 2005)
The Gizmondo was a Windows CE-based handheld device that featured an nVidia GoForce 4500 graphics processor, so it was capable of 3D graphics most devices of its type was not. Hit & Myth was a fully 3D fast action shoot-em-up game presented from an overhead perspective.
I was responsible for the GUI, the font renderer, the cinematic system, saving and loading, and the conversation system (which I created an editor for, see below), the AI system, the minimap, and the spellcasting system. I was also responsible for providing programming support for localization of the game into five languages.
ConvEx (PC Windows, 2005)
ConvEx was a conversation editor I wrote for the Hit & Myth project. Initially conversations were created using simple text files, but I firmly believe that the better the tools the designers have, the better the resulting game is. I used C# in order to complete the project quickly.
The editor allows the designers to create text nodes that they link together in a visual manner to create conversations. It also allows designers to do things like play sound files or cast spells when certain conversation nodes are hit.
The conversation editor really came into its own when we were doing localization.
