PROJECTS
"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it."
- Kurt Vonnegut -
Personal Project
A 2-6 player abstract strategy and exploration board game about bees. The game is both fun and educational in support of the Save the Bees initiative and awareness of the dangers of Colony Collapse Disorder.
I began this board game as my first project under my own game studio, Blue Fairy Games. I have designed the game mechanics and a large majority of the graphic design. Working on this game and my own company, I have learned valuable lessons in product marketing, player engagement, physical prototyping and manufacturing, and business management.
Over two years, in my free time, I took the initial prototype and through various iterations and designs based on the playtesting feedback I received from over 100 plays with players across the United States and Europe.
While the game is complete, it remains unpublished due to a lack of funding.
Employer: Wibbu
I worked on this language-learning video game for a year and a half, collaborating with artists, language content and educational team members, and some contractors.
My role on the project included gameplay work in the Unity game engine as well as database admin and maintenance (both SQL & MongoDB), backend services (NodeJS), and web dev (NodeJS, React, GatsbyJS) all supporting the game and its users.
Additionally, I gained experience in data integrity, analytics, and privacy issues throughout various reviews of current data sets based on months of game usage by our users.
In conjunction with the project, I implemented various DevOps-related services including a CI/CD pipeline for the game and its supporting services. In the same vein, I was responsible for setting up and maintaining nearly all of the company's IT solutions such as project and task management, documentation, file management, and access control tools.
Mobile Game Exploration
As a larger majority of my game development experience to date had been for desktop or proprietary hardware, I wanted to dedicate some time to educating myself about more of the concepts and challenges that come with development for mobile games.
To help me accomplish this, I enrolled in Jonathan Weinberger's Ultimate Guide to 2D Mobile Game Development in Unity course on Udemy. In this course, Jonathan covered various mobile-specific concepts such as monetization with Unity Ads, performance profiling, and publishing the game to Google Play. He also covered some other 2D topics that I had not yet worked with such as tilemaps and palettes.
Upon completion of the course, I took the demo game project a bit further than was covered by adding game audio and other small elements such as a gem spawning system upon an enemy's death.
WIPS
Employer: Wood-Mode
WIPS was the proprietary warehousing system used by Wood-Mode for its various cabinet manufacturing needs. Such needs ran the gamut, a small portion of which included inventory management for all of the cabinet parts and wood and other building materials, shipping systems such as truck management and scheduling, and customer management, maintenance, and invoicing.
As one of the software developers on this project, I was responsible for maintaining current as well as implementing new features of these systems. The system was built primarily on the .NET framework, for which I had previous and continued to gain more experience throughout the project. The database technology for the different sub-systems was SQL using MS SQL Server and these relied heavily on SQL functions, stored procedures, and views that would feed into the .NET system and API.
Along with the continued experience in .NET development, I learned a good deal about the cabinet manufacturing process and many details of the ins and outs of customer billing and inventory control.
Employer: Everi Holdings
A 5-reel, 40 line, 300 credit video slot machine game featuring the proprietary Jackpot Jump bonus, a unique pinata breaking bonus, and a free spin bonus.
This was a very fun and unique project in which I was able to stretch my programming and design muscles by creating the pinata bonus. This bonus is faux-skill, which means that the prize is predetermined but the game must make the player feel like the speed at which they are hitting the pinata has an effect on what they are winning. This was a very interesting programming challenge that required a lot of gameplay expertise as well as mathematical planning and timing of awards.
Employer: Everi Holdings
A 5-reel, 40 line, 300 credit video slot machine game with a respin bonus, symbol multipliers, and an exciting pick bonus.
On this project, in addition to my role as the sole gameplay programmer, I was very involved in the design of the pick bonus behavior and aesthetic. I worked closely with the game artist to optimize art usage and programmatic movement to ensure the game is performant.
Employer: Everi Holdings
A video slot machine game featuring a Winter theme with a free spin bonus, symbol-triggered progressives, and a mystery progressive feature.
I was the sole developer on this, my fourth game with Everi (formerly Multimedia Games). I was responsible for the technical design of all of the gameplay mechanics. I worked directly with an artist, sound designer, producer, and QA analyst to take the game through its development lifecycle and ensure the highest quality possible. I also worked with a development team lead to review my implementation designs.
Employer: Everi Holdings
A video slot machine game featuring a fire theme with a free spin bonus and a symbol-triggered pick bonus that awards a guaranteed progressive with the trademarked Jackpot Jump feature.
For this, my fifth game with Everi (formerly Multimedia Games), I successfully met the demands of an expedited development cycle for this high-profile game. I was responsible for the technical design of all of the gameplay mechanics. I collaborated with three other developers to design and a modular implementation of the Jackpot Jump bonus so that it could be incorporated into four different games simultaneously.
I worked directly with an artist, sound designer, producer, and QA analyst to take the game through its development life-cycle and ensure the highest quality possible. I also worked with a development team lead to review my implementation designs.
Employer: Multimedia Games
A video slot machine game featuring a Russian Winter theme with free spin, pick, and mystery wild bonuses.
On my third game title with Multimedia Games I worked together with another developer during the pre-QA life-cycle of this game. I was responsible for the base game and the free spin and mystery wild bonuses. I also worked directly with an artist, sound designer, and a development lead.
Employer: Multimedia Games
A video slot machine game featuring a Dia de los Muertos theme with a free spin, multi-level pick bonus, and symbol upgrade bonus.
On my second project with Multimedia Games, I was originally scheduled to assist with only the symbol upgrade bonus of this game. However, as the schedules of other programmers slotted for the project were tight with other projects, I ended up taking on the full development of the project. I was able to quickly learn the skills that I needed to accomplish this and ended up bringing the project in ahead of schedule.
Working on this project, I gained valuable experience in iterative development and software design patterns. I worked directly with an artist and sound designer, QA analyst, and a development lead as necessary.
Employer: Multimedia Games
A video slot machine game featuring arctic theme and a free spin bonus with a sixth reel multiplier.
As my first project with Multimedia Games, I worked on this game with another peer and a lead software developer, a QA analyst, and also interfaced with an artist and sound designer via my producer.
During this project I reinforced my knowledge of programming languages and gained experience working with a proprietary game engine and other software, as well as with various software principles.
