Software Engineer (Unreal Engine 5) @ Vigilante/Ruckus

Previous Roles: Software Engineer (Unity) @ Integration Innovation, Inc. (i3)

Bachelors of Game Programming @ Academy of Art University (AAU)

Raised in the hot state of Arizona, living in Huntsville, AL. I'm the father of a wonderful little guy named Tomasi, the beautiful late Losemana, the chubby infant Matiu, and husband to my wonderful wife Rosemarie. I am a massive motorsports fan, and the only other career I would pursue outside of programming is probably driving for a Formula 1 team. Since I have yet to be recognised for my driving ability, I sooth that urge by building and driving a gocart around the yard with my son. When I'm not doing that I'm either camping, catching up on my gaming backlog, or playing boardgames with my wife. Finaly, I spend most other small amounts of free time I can manage on my personal project, a continuation of the Game Engine I started in college (builds can be made available upon request, source unavailable at this time).

Currently working as a Software Engineer at Vigilante. I'm honored to work on many projects, each one requiring me to assume various roles on the team, from integrator to tool and plugin engineer, to DevOps and R&D. At Vigilante we push the boundaries as far as what the Military Training "Serious" games should be and how they should look and feel.

I previously had the opportunity to hold the role of Entry Level Unity Developer at i3, there I got the incredible opportunity to work on projects that directly support our great nations military. Our team wored on many broad-ranging applications, and push the limits of all the devices and platforms we supported (which isn't hard if you're familiar with military hardware! wink), including mobile, AR, and VR! We very frequently were pushing Unity to it's limits and finding new and creative ways to solve problems.

I had been blessed with the opporunity to teach internally within i3 advanced C# and Game Development topics. It was both an extremely challenging and rewarding experience, and considering how much I learned and had grown since starting the class; I hope I can continue to teach in some capacity throughout my career, as I seem to have found a passion for sharing the wonderful knowledge I had gained while in school.

During Summer of 2021 I had the awesome opportunity to work with one of my instructors and mentors, David "Rez" Graham, at his game studio Bleach Kitty Games on a project as a Gameplay Engineer. I spent a majority of my time working with the designers to create a series of quests, but I also spent a large portion of my time refactoring the inventory system in the game to reduce bugs and provide more clarity when using the system. Done in a custom engine, my code was written entirely in Lua during this internship.

• Exelius - The C++ Game Engine - This is the (closed source) continuation of the engine project I made during college. Since I graduated I've spent what free time I can manage on this project, and continue to grow in my enthusiasm for engines every time I work on it! Currently I am working on a Virual Filesystem and Resource Manager that I am designing similar to how Unreal Engine handles it's assets. Currently, it looks the same as the school project available below, with a lot more polish on the aspects you can't see, such as the build system, rendering functionality (now more 3D capable, but not utilized YET!), more use of threading, improved architecture, and so on.

• Exelius - The 2D C++ Game Engine - A simple 2D game engine. This is my absolute favorite project. It was a 3 semester long project, and I knew absolutely nothing about game engines prior to starting on this, so it's not a surprise to say I learned a lot!
• NoiseMap - The Perlin Noise Map Generator - A close second to my above project as far as favoritism goes, this is a perlin noise map generator that has a small minigame attached to it. There are some other forms of procedural content as well, check out the readme for more info.
• Loot Table Editor - Unity 3D Data Driven Custom Editor - A Unity project with the goal of creating a Loot Table Editor that allows designers to create item drop tables quickly and easily, in a way that allows changes to be pushed to a CDN and not require costly game updates through an app store.
• MallSim - Unreal Engine 4 Utility Theory AI - My first in depth attempt at familiarizing myself with Unreal Engine 4. An ambitious little project that aimed to replicate something like the Sims, though, now that I've got a bit more experience, I'll probably go back and add some polish to it soon.
• Unreal F.E.A.R. - Unreal Engine 4 Behavior Tree AI - Another project in Unreal Engine 4. Not the most polished, again, as a student project. I ended up really liking the resulting AI and with a little more polish, I could totally envision it being in a late-90's FPS game.
• STEM Trivia - The Arduino Trivia Game - This was my very first programming project, from before I was even in a programming degree. It's the project that sparked my love for programming, so it's very special to me in that respect. It's also terrible, so go easy on it. I'd love to try and recreate it again with the knowledge I have now.

If you wish to reach me, please do so through my LinkedIn profile. It has my other forms of contact available there as well.