Professional Work

Frontier Developments

Since January 2009 I've been working at Frontier Developments as a graphics programmer, and for most of that I've been working on Kinectimals. It was an interesting project, stressful given the time constraints and uncertainty of being a launch title for a new piece of hardware, but the focus on high-quality graphics meant I really got an opportunity to learn and experiment with new techniques.

Features I had a primary role in creating include the grass system (and its compilation tool) which uses a depth-and-direction texture to allow arbitrary objects to squash it down and have it slowly spring back up. I also worked on the sand/mud footprints, which came with the interesting requirement of creating decal footprints without having access to the scene geometry. Besides that I worked on the analytical antialiasing method we used to render whiskers, the cursor trail effect and most of the bodily fluids that end up on the camera.

Besides that I was also involved in profiling and optimising problem scenes that were taking us below the framerate goal, liasing with artists and animators to make necessary variants and to troubleshoot content problems, and generally making a nuisance of myself all over the office.

 

Barcrest Games

From October 2007 to October 2008 I worked as a software engineer for Barcrest Games. My main responsibilities were programming state machine based game interfaces including their resource management and display, and constructing independent logic classes based on spreadsheets and overall gameplay documents. Secondary aspects of the work included updating older games to current standards, prototyping new feature types or payout behaviours, and setting up logging for legal purposes. While there I learned a lot about large-scale engine design and the benefits of maintaining a well-tested library of common code. I was also introduced to version control, automated build servers and the values of robust error logging.

Games in which I was primarily involved were: