I'm an avid videogamer and hobby programmer. In total, I've been programming for ten years now, 4 of those professionally. I frequent sites like Gamasutra, Tigsource and Indie Games to keep in touch with what's new in independent videogames and their development.
If you're an employer, then I've got some great news if you're at all interested in what I can do for your company!
Because I'm currently unemployed and on EI, I qualify for the Targeted Wage Subsidy program. I'm currently registered through Future Works who manage the program for high-tech and science related jobs.
What does this mean for you?
If you like my skillset and you think I'll be a good fit with
your company, but I'm lacking some skills or will require some
training in order to get up to speed, then the Targeted Wage
Subsidy program will subsidize my income for up to 24 weeks
(depending on the amount of training required) and up to
60% of my monthly income.
You pay me, then the government pays you!
Website Work
I worked at Gossamer Threads from October 2007 to June 2009. I learned a lot there, coming from a background in C/C++ game development with only a little bit of previous Perl experience. While there I learned about the LAMP stack and the methodology for building a database-driven, dynamic website.
Gossamer Threads has several proprietary technologies written in Perl which they use to run client sites. The three I'm most familiar with are Gossamer Links, Gossamer Forum and Gossamer Community.
For any websites listed below, the nature of the work generally involves writing custom plugins in Perl to extend the functionality of any of the above products.
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Rockclimbing.com,
Dropzone.com and
Basejumper.com
The point-of-contact for these sites wrote up several long-term plans in terms of improving usability and adding new features. After those goals were solidified and broken down, I worked with the POC to iterate on each feature. Generally, a feature would be developed primarily on Rockclimbing.com, then pushed to Dropzone and Basejumper. Features would typically be written as plugins and would be highly modular out of necessity.
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Divetime.com
Working closely with the owner, I wrote custom Perl scripts to import large quantities of data into several installations of Gossamer Thread's proprietary GLinks backend. I also updated several GLinks plugins to work with the new configuration - notably the plugin linking merchandise with specific goegraphic locations.
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Gossamer Forum 2.0
I contributed to the currently unreleased GForum 2.0. Much of this work involved rewriting templates using Gossamer Threads' internal templating language (similar in ways to Template Toolkit) and developing AJAX features through the use of jQuery.
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Request Tracker
Gossamer Threads hosts RT for a great number of clients. I was responsible for customizing RT in terms of both interface and functionality.
Videogame Vocation
Prior to working with Gossamer Threads, I was employed at Electronic Arts from June 2005 through September 2007.
This was a huge experience for me. My life's dream was to be a game developer, and here I was smack in the middle of it! I got to experience roles from maintaining and designing asset pipelines to porting and upgrading an audio system for a new platform; from doing builds to implementing the front-end user interface.
Here is a list of games I've contributed to, in reverse chronological order of when I've contributed.
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NHL '08 (PS3, Xbox 360)
I was a front-end programmer for NHL '08. Working closely with artists, a producer, a manager a game team (backend) programmer and other front end programmers, I contributed to the improved Dynasty mode and where possible, to helping fix online bugs.
I was on NHL '08 from part-way through production, right through to shipping.
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Facebreaker (PS3, Xbox 360)
At the start of the project, I was the tools and pipeline programmer for Facebreaker. I worked with the in-house lead programmer and the tools and framework team from Tiburon to setup the initial build and pipeline system.
My favourite aspect of this job was talking with artists and subsequently documenting the artist -> art build -> render engine pipeline and sharing this for with the team. I also opened a dialog with another in-house team to start discussion their pipeline tools and how we could implement them for our game.
I was only on Facebreaker for part of pre-production before moving to NHL '08.
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Fight Night 3 (PS3 port)
As the audio programmer on Fight Night 3, I was responsible for porting over the entire audio system from the Xbox 360 version. The tools and technology were in flux, so I wound up working directly with central tech audio point-of-contact to get a lot of things working. Much of this project involved debugging corrupt data and updating the pipelines accordingly.
Because I was the only audio programmer, I worked directly with the audio designer; programming cheats into the game so he could test more easily and updating the asset pipeline to match his workflow.
I had the opportunity to contribute in part to the rendering engine for Fight Night 3. In moving from the Xbox 360 to the PS3, we attempted to move several systems to job-based systems where it made sense. Skinning was an obvious candidate, and I got to write the skeleton code (ie., first-pass) to make it happen.
I was on this project from late pre-production through shipping.
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Cancelled Project
As production on the next NBA Street started to get underway, development on "current-gen" (ie., Xbox and PS2) games was also underway. I was working on a sequel to a current-gen game as a pipeline programmer, continuing along the lines of my work on NBA Homecourt. I was in charge of getting the environment pipeline back online - a system consisting of Perl and Maya. Documentation was lost, so I worked very closely with the previous maintainer - the CG supervisor mentioned below.
Unfortunately, EA encountered lower than projected financials for the previous quarter, so massive layoffs and restructuring ensued. The current-gen game was cancelled, the NBA Homecourt team was tightened up, and I got moved onto a central build team.
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NBA Street Homecourt (PS3, Xbox 360)
After Marvel Nemesis finished, pre-production began on the next NBA Street game. I worked with a systems engineer and a CG supervisor to develop a library for streaming arbitrary assets as data arrays. Simultaneously I was working on creating a C++ Maya plugin to communicate with our proprietary C# database. I did some crash-course learning of COM+ to make it work, so that we could remotely stream assets from our database using the streaming library mentioned just prior.
I was working on this project in tandem with the cancelled project, listed above.
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Marvel Nemesis (Gamecube, PS2, Xbox)
Right out of university, this was my first professional programming job. I got onto the project somewhere before shipping, in the last two months of development. As a result, I mostly contributed to bug fixing in the front-end and online, although I was able to contribute to minor front-end features.
Language Lore
- NHL '08 user interface
- Moderately at Gossamer Threads
- Pipeline tools on Facebreaker
- Extensively at EA on game teams
- Extensively at Gossamer Threads
- This website is written in python
Tantalizing Technology
- Minor experience configuring at Gossamer Threads; this website
- Writing a custom C# database/Maya communication plugin for NBA Street
- Used extensively for styling templates at Gossamer Threads
- Versioning control used for internal projects at Gossamer Threads
- Front-end work on NHL '08
- Pipeline tools for Facebreaker and NBA Street
- Used extensively at Gossamer Threads
- Used extensively at EA on all projects
- Ported audio from Fight Night 3 Xbox 360 version
- Development on PS3 for Fight Night 3, Facebreaker and NHL '08
- Versioning control used for some projects at Gossamer Threads
- Development for NBA Street, Facebreaker and NHL '08
- All Xbox/Xbox 360 development
Emancipating Education
I received a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Calgary in the spring of 2005 with a concentration in Computer Game Design. The University of Calgary was the first post-secondary school in Canada with an accredited program in Computer Game Design. A hallmark of this program was a 4-month course directed by veterans of Radical Entertainment in which we had to create a 3D racing game.
Terrific Training
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Occupational First Aid Level 3 (Certification)
Received on February 1st, 2010. This demonstrates the ability to manage a scene, direct bystanders and properly apply first aid knowledge.
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CASI Level 1 (Certification)
Received on January 17th, 2010. This demonstrates that I have the appropriate snowboarding skill and the ability to direct a class and effectively disseminate knowledge.
- PADI Open Water Diver (Certification)
