Cozy Grove (Unity C#)
Cozy Grove is a life sim game by Spry Fox where players bring color back to a haunted but cute island. The game was well received on Apple Arcade, Switch, Steam, Epic Games Store, Xbox One, and PS4 and was nominated for 2022 D.I.C.E. family game of the year.
In this small company I worked on a lot of miscellaneous tasks. Some highlights include:
- Clothing customization built on top of Spine animation skins.
- Input system allowing for dynamically switching between devices like touch, keyboard/mouse, and gamepad controls, all using Unity’s new input system, including fixing bugs later accepted into the Unity’s GitHub.
- Localization into over 15 locales, including support for right to left text with Arabic.
- In addition, I contributed to general gameplay, optimizations, and polish.
Cozmo (C++/C#/Python)
Cozmo, a gifted little guy with a mind of his own. He’s a real-life robot like you’ve only seen in movies, with a one-of-a-kind personality that evolves the more you hang out.
Cozmo combines robotics, gaming, and toys. I contributed to the basestation code that runs on a smartphone which connects to the robot firmware via WiFi.
One of the hottest toys of Christmas 2016, sold out in it’s initial run.
- Gameplay: Programmed “Memory Match” minigame. Wrote dynamic skills system. Created and iterated on First Time User Experience Onboarding. Used Unity 5’s uGUI to create flexible views.
- Engine: Implemented AI freeplay behaviors, states, and goals. Integrated 3rd party libraries (text-to-speech, HockeyApp crash reporting). Implemented input filtering for accelerometer.
- Tools: Wrote unit tests for asset validation. Extended debug menu to display unified data from multiple sources, making it cleaner for QA to use. Created initial Maya exporter (this became the subject of my GDC2017 talk).
Ratchet And Clank (C++)
A new Ratchet & Clank adventure game based on the movie (based on the 2002 PS2 game).
Nominated as one of the Best PS4 Game of the Year (2016).
- AI Programmer for most boss encounters including: Mrs. Zurkon, Snagglebeast, and Captain Qwark. The Snagglebeast was chosen to be the level for the E3 2015 gameplay demo.
- AI Programmer for several standard base enemy classes including Tanks, Automatic Turrets, Tentacles, Alien Snappers, and Alien Spitters.
Sunset Overdrive (C++)
Sunset Overdrive is an Xbox One Third Person Action Traversal Shooter.
- UI programmer for the HUD, lobby, popup, and pause menus. Upgraded Scaleform and optimized performance.
- Point person for communication with external contract developers.
- Worked with audio designers to have a graceful solution to crossfades and duck between gameplay and different gameplay states.
- Contributed to “amp” perk gameplay powers.
- Worked closely with localization for better global experiences with in-world FX text.
Fuse (C++, Flash for UI)
Fuse (formerly OverStrike) is an Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 Third Person Action Cover Shooter.
- Sole UI programmer for the HUD, lobby, and pause menus.
- Contributed to Origin (EA) integration into the lobby.
- Worked closely with designers to architect and iterate to find the fun in the collectibles and progression (including skill trees, team perks, and XP) systems.
- Worked with designers on behaviors for two special enemy types using decider trees and creating scripting functionality.
- Took ownership of Scaleform middleware integration now used as a shared project.
Resistance 3 (C++, Flash for UI)
Resistance 3 is a PlayStation 3 First Person Shooter.
- Worked in both ActionScript and C++ to quickly track down and fix Scaleform bugs and put in new UI features.
- Contributed to implementing and tweaked PlayStation®Move controls and ensured they adhered to TRCs.
- Worked with producers and artists to fix hundreds of must-fix localization bugs.
- Contributed towards multiple systems including: cheats, collectible syncing, player death hints, and multiplayer death camera.
Action AllStars (FLASH AS3/MXML)
Action AllStars was a kid’s sports-themed virtual world with deals with the NBA, MLB, and NFL Player Association.
- Optimized the world to consume 20 to 80% less CPU usage and increased framerate by at least 10% on low-end machines.
- Sole developer on client-side implementation of “pets,” an extremely popular feature.
- Helped create monthly seasonal content and missions, including a Box2D physics game that had the highest subscriber conversion rate.
- Developed an engine and first mission for inventory, dialog, and exploration-based single player adventure minigames.
- Created real-time multiplayer tower defense style game.
- Wrote SQL queries for logging and data entry.
- Evaluated new technologies and summarized the impact they would have if integrated into the client.
Unwell Mel (Flash AS3 and Java)
Unwell Mel is a match-3 game with a medical theme. It has greater complexity than other games in the genre: It includes special gems, power-ups, and uniquely themed board sizes.
Developed for Big Sea Games and Treasure Quest, the online community of Big Fish Games and Facebook portal.
- Wrote and shipped the flash version in under 5 weeks with only 2 weeks of test time. (Most games this size were taking 3 months dev time and a month test time)
- I wrote an easy-to-use level editor for this game so multiple team members could contribute to the 200+ levels.
- The download version is still available at Big Fish Games and Steam.
Amazon: Hidden Expedition (Objective-C)
In Amazon: Hidden Expedition, I worked in Objective-C for this universal iPad/iPhone app, learning to do everything in a native context. This game was featured by Apple during the launch of the original iPad.
Download it from the app store.
Diana Fortune in the Lost Temple of Gold (Java Applet)
A fun solitaire-like game requiring you to place tiles to create paths to various treasure. In addition to being the developer on this game I also designed and implemented the tutorial over a weekend, making the game more intuitive for our casual audience.
And More!
Other projects I’ve worked on can partially be seen on Moby Games.
Other credits include:
- XDefiant (preproduction for multiplatform Ubisoft San Francisco game, left before shipping)
- Marvel’s Spider-Man (preproduction for multiplatform Insomniac game, left before shipping)
- Treasure Quest (Facebook App)
- Unwell Mel (Java)
- LOBE (Java)
- Looking Glass Slots (Flash)
- SnowGlobe Slots (Flash)
- LOBE (Flash)
- Team Bingo client and server (Flash and Java)
