Flite Golf & Entertainment
At Flite Golf, my responsibilities involved owning everything related to the Unity Game Engine. The applications built in Unity were our core user experience that communicated with the backend to create/load user data, offer direct payment options, requested assistance, etc. from one of the hundred bays at the venue. Each bay's computer (located in an onsite server room) also had to establish a private network connection with the tablet located at its bay to give the User a way to interact with the application outside of hitting golf balls into the venue's range.
As the Director of Unity Development, I designed and implemented the core architecture of the software while continuing to interview and hire Unity Developers. I also designed and implemented our networking solutions, along with our white labeling approach. Other aspects of my role with the company included spending time mentoring others, conducting agile meetings, preparing clear and detailed technical documentation, and participating in upper management meetings with stakeholders.
Solana Digital Collectible Launchpad
I worked with NanoRes Studios to design and develop a first-of-its-kind WebGL Digital Collectible (NFT) Mint Launchpad using Unity and the Solana blockchain. I'm a big fan of Web3 and the shift to User Owned Digital Assets that enables a lot of new possibilities in the software industry.
https://nanores.fun/Daddy-Bonk-Voters-Edition
DimeTime: NFL VR Trainer
At Radd3, we utilized the HTC Vive to develop a suite of tools that allowed NFL players to take immersive mental reps within a Virtual Reality User Experience. Coaches could import plays from the offensive and defensive side of the ball, and then assign players to a series of matches up between the various plays. The professional football players that we worked with loved getting a chance to adjust to the crowd noises and distractions, while executing their plays without risk of injury and additional exhaustion. The coaches would receive data from each player's training session allowing them to pick up data points that they normally couldn't discover during normal practices. I played a major role in the core VR software as well as the Coaches Companion application, which mainly targeted the Windows Surface tablet. I completed the VR UI systems, along with the responsive UI systems for the Coaches Companion application. I also implemented the Wide Receiver animation blending for catching the ball at an adjusted point local to the WR, as well as the audio system and the client connection to the backend using Unity Web Requests.
During my time with Radd3, I also got the opportunity to solo develop another product of theirs called Matt Williams' VR Batting Practice. Within the HTC Vive, you would step up to home plate within a major league baseball stadium and complete a standard batting practice session. It felt a lot like a Home Run Derby VR application, except the pitcher could throw a handful of different pitches at the player, like sliders, curveballs, sinkers, knuckleballs, change-ups, and fastballs. At the end of your BP session, you would be presented with a vibrant UI system that provided information about each hit that would aid the user in adjusting/improving their baseball swing. Unfortunately, I don't have any videos or photos I can share that showcase this application. It was a ton of fun to develop and watch professional baseball players experience, much like the Football VR application.
One of my favorite career memories was during my time with Radd3 when Fox Sports gave us all tickets to go to Super Bowl LI in 2017. That was the game where the Patriots came back and won against the Falcons after being down by 21 going into the 4th quarter. During that day, I got to meet a number of celebrities and professional athletes behind the scenes at the Fox Sports Red Carpet show.
360° Live Broadcasting Software
Working with Immersive Media was a pivotal moment in my career, where I found myself going from casual game development to enterprise level software that would be experienced by users all over the world. We built a 360-degree, VR optional live broadcasting software with our first client being the major broadcasting networks of the 2016 Rio Olympics. USA and UK viewers were able to experience the Olympics in a way like never before that truly immersed them into the games.
I built the UI systems that Viewers would see, as well as the UI systems that the broadcasting team would use to control what the viewers could see and when they could see it. I also had to write a shader that allowed for transparency from the input feeds that were being delivered to certain windows in the broadcasting application, while also giving the control team a way to crop those playback windows. Immersive Media ended up selling the company soon after the Olympics ended that year.
Android 3D Action RPG Prototype
This is a prototype I've been working on with NanoRes Studios that lead to us completing a lot of the core features that they needed for their new mobile-friendly, 3D Action Role Playing Game that integrates the Solana based Digital Assets of the Daddy BONK community. I've implemented a number of optimized features, like worldspaces broken down into cells (spatial partitioning), distant cell renderering, combat (melee and range), branching dialogue system, quest system, trading system, looting system (containers, corpses, & world items), dynamic weather, day/night cycles, consumables with various effects, character creation with custom face builder, NPC AI behavior tree, item crafting system, faction system, and UI systems for interacting with all these features.
DraftCard
— DRAFTCARD (@DraftCardApp) January 15, 2020
This mobile application gave young athletes the ability to not only create real-time profiles of their athletic careers, but also to get them in contact with college scouts. DraftCard was something I enjoyed working on a lot due to the fact that I played a lot of sports growing up, including in high school. I’m sure my sports experience played a role in being contracted by DraftCard to lead their small Unity Development team. First, we had to clean up all the technical debt leftover by the previous development team. Afterwards, we expanded on the polished up framework to offer new functionality, along with a more responsive UI system.
The application was mainly targeted towards mobile devices, which meant cross-platform upload/take photo functionality, push notifications, etc. Finally, I was tasked with creating a framework for easily and securely calling on our backend to send and receive user data, along with authenticating user credentials and permissions. I then implemented that framework into the client application, while working with a backend team on the other side of the world, to bring it all together.
Roche: Enterprise VR Trainer
The CEO of AscentXR and I got along very well throughout the multiple times he contracted me to direct his company’s engineering efforts, while taking ownership over designing and implementing the foundational systems for quickly producing lesson plans for VR educational software. We worked with our clients to produce VR lesson plans for enterprises like Roche and startups like VR Learning Time. To ensure we could rapidly implement new lesson plans, I architected a decentralized group of systems that would have ScriptableObject data injected into them to give their uniqueness while leveraging the same core systems without needing to modify the code. If a new feature was added for one lesson plan, the feature would then be available to all the lesson plans we had already created and would create in the future.
Reusable systems that leverage ScriptableObjects in Unity are powerful components that give non-programmers on the team the ability to rapidly produce content in a safe and clean manner. The Virtual Reality software made it very easy for Roche to give their scientists and technicians the opportunity to train using the company’s equipment without needing to ship the expensive equipment across the country or fly them to their training locations.
disruptED
disruptED is a cross-platform educational application I developed as a contractor that involved both Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality features. The software was built to help Pre-K and 3rd graders learn in a more engaging and joyful way. This was very early on in the AR and VR days of Unity, so at the time combining both AR and VR technologies into a single application was a very interesting challenge for me. Being a father of young children, I also found the whole idea behind the product to be very beneficial for early learners.
I had a wonderful time implementing all the animations, the various responsive UI systems needed for the different modes, and fun interactions that the children found very engaging. The software ended up being a finalist in the Edtech Cool Tool Awards in 2021 under the “Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality Solution” category.
Rescan 360
As a contractor for Rescan 360, I was tasked with implementing the AR and VR user options within their application that allowed for viewing commercial real estate in a groundbreaking manner. I was also tasked with creating a mobile responsive UI system for both Android and iOS devices. The leader of the engineering team gave me a lot of great advice early in my career that I’ve kept with me and shared with many other engineers of the years.
The company’s hardware was very impressive in how a camera would be worn on the head of one of their technicians mapping out the geometry of a building they were walking around in. That data was then pulled into the client application I worked on based on the user’s permissions and loaded into the Unity scene for the user to explore. The hardware and application combo won the reddot award in 2021 within the “best of the best” category.
Hologress' AR Exercise Trainer
This Augmented Reality application that I built the core architecture for allowed users to see 3D models appear in the physical space they were currently in and then be taught how to properly do the exercise by the virtual characters. In the process of building out an optimal architecture for Hologress, I created a reusable system of code that utilized ScriptableObject data to add additional exercises to the application without changing any of the code. A designer could simply duplicate an existing exercise data object, fill in the new data (strings, prefabs, audio, etc.), and then drag the data into the category it fits in.
The responsive UI system would then also recognize the new exercise data that had been added and ensure new UI elements were created at runtime to give the user the option of learning/doing that new exercise. I ultimately worked myself out of a contract position with Hologress after completing these data-oriented systems that involved never needing to update the code to support any number of exercises.
Luminant Music
During my time at Cybernetic Entertainment, we focused mainly on Virtual Robots that could play music, draw art, and play board games. We also completed a creative and feature packed cross-platform music visualization application called Luminant Music. Though the music visualization software was released, the company was sadly unable to generate the additional funds needed for the team to continue on with the Virtual Robot software. This however was one of the biggest engineering teams I have ever been able to lead in my career with close to 30 contributors to the 4 different projects being worked on.
As the Lead Unity Developer, I was tasked with creating the core architectural systems that we could reuse for each of our projects, while also implementing cost-effective development workflow pipelines for rapid and organized multi-project development. The QA Lead and I leveraged Jenkins to ensure we had optimal Continuous Integration and Delivery integrated into our Git/Git Kraken workflow, while also leveraging Slack to communicate when a build passed or failed. I very much enjoyed mentoring the dozens of engineers I got to work with during my time with this company, and in the process I also learned a lot from many different people there including the Studio Director.
Craft Karts
Craft Karts is a free-to-play WebGL game I developed for NanoRes Studios in their efforts to be the first company to utilize Sloyd’s runtime AI Mesh Generation software. The game allows a player to craft their own Go-Kart using a UI system that calls on the Sloyd’s AI Mesh Generation to produce a mesh and import it into the project while the player is playing the game. This allowed me to offer well over 100 different meshes, along with their countless variations, to the player without needing to manage all of these meshes within the Unity Project.
The game itself is an adventure stunt racing game that tasks the player with completing a handful of objectives to unlock a hidden track that leads to a secret treasure. You can explore to complete the game, race around the track to get the fastest lap, and/or try to get the highest stunt score. In the future, NanoRes Studios hopes to expand on the game using the Solana blockchain to produce unique digital collectibles that save the user’s crafted go-kart data to where it can be traded and loaded into other’s game sessions.
Skewerz
Skewerz is a free-to-play Android and iOS game that the creator of the Annoying Orange contracted me to design and develop for his brand. I prototyped out various ideas and then had him choose the one he felt would work best for his audience. We ended up going with a Snake inspired gameplay that blended well with the humor of his brand/show.
A full monetization plan was designed and implemented by me and one other junior developer. It was a difficult game for casual gamers, but a challenging playthrough for the more advanced gamers. In hindsight, making it easier to playthrough would have made it more profitable; however, my client wanted to build something challenging and worthy of his brand which we did accomplish.
Let's Go Dig!
Let’s Go Dig! was an innovative cross-platform mobile game that introduced a few novel ideas that created an awesome social experience within the game. It was my first project as a Full Stack Developer, where I utilized Parse to create a backend solution for the features my client wanted to offer in the game. Not only could a user create and login to an account that saved all their game data, but it also allowed them to find treasure chests in the game that contained real prizes. These prizes could be claimed or reburied into a friend’s game. Players could also bury a message in a bottle for their friends to find in their game, which they could then read after discovering the bottle.
Another fun feature was replacing the destructible ground with an image that the user would take with their camera or select from the pictures within their device's photo gallery. This allowed them to personalize the gameplay and see their character dig through their image. Me and one artist had a lot of fun putting together visually appealing moments within the game, despite our limited budget. Unfortunately, something happened on the ownership level that led to the project never being released to the market. Even today, I still play the game every once and awhile on my old phone. It’s very sad the world never got to experience this fun and cute vertical scroller with engaging social features.
AirTime HD
AirTime HD was the first application that I had ever developed from scratch. It’s responsible for opening up all the doors that have led me to where I am now in my career. At the time I was working as a Sales Manager, and using my free time to self-teach myself programming and game development. The game was inspired by typical childhood memories of trying to keep a balloon from touching the ground. I ended up implementing a small monetization strategy, along with social network connections for sharing scores with friends. I also added bonus levels that involved different kinds of gameplay as a reward to the users who completed each of the levels in the four different worlds.
My father and brother helped me create a theme song for the game as well, which ended up being a great memory of ours and gave the game something really special that resonated with the audience. In hindsight, there were of course a lot of things I could have done differently to improve the game progression and monetization strategy; who doesn’t make these kinds of observations about their first project? However, I ended up getting over 350,000 downloads between Android and iOS users; this helped me land a spot in the HouseOGames incubator program in Seattle, Washington. A program that would ultimately change my life for the better.
Candy Blasters
Candy Blasters was a fun game jam project that I wanted to include, because (1) I created this game with my favorite mentor who helped me fully grasp Unity game development and (2) the game mechanic was a lot of fun especially within a cooperative couch game where each of the two players were responsible for one side of the candy blaster.
This took place during my time in the HouseOGames incubator program in Seattle, Washington when we as a house attended an Indie Game Jam hosted by Reactor. We had 36 hours to create a game from scratch that involved cooperative gameplay. As a two man team we managed to finish our core mechanic, our gameplay loop, our modeling using Blender, and a couple of dozen levels that challenged the players to work as a team. It was a wonderful experience being in downtown Seattle meeting a bunch of people who share the same passion as I do, while also getting to see what they could create within the small amount of time allocated to us all.
Welcome! I am a results-driven professional with a diverse skill set and a passion for creating cutting-edge, interactive software that brings joy into people's lives. With over 12 years of experience as a Software Architect, Project Manager, Team Leader, Game/UX/UI Designer, Full Stack Unity Software Engineer (including Augmented & Virtual Reality Development), and Agile Workflow Consultant, I bring a comprehensive understanding of the tech industry. My commitment to personal growth has driven me to continuously study all aspects of the field, fine-tuning my software development skills and adapting to emerging technologies, platforms, and methodologies. I excel in effective planning and executing projects within scope and budget while ensuring key metric goals are set for profitability.
Collaboration is central to my approach. I enjoy working directly with clients and team members, fostering open and thorough discussions to align expectations and ideas. By building optimal team dynamics and mentoring team members, I drive solid team performance and help establish positive development habits. My expertise extends to constructing Analytic Data Collecting Strategies, Retention Strategies, Monetization Strategies, Persona Targeted Marketing Strategies, and User Engagement Strategies. These skills ensure project success by meeting key performance metrics and achieving financial goals. In addition, I have a strong background in designing and developing client-to-server relationships using Microsoft's PlayFab and Google Firebase. This includes user account management, database operations, server-side functions, analytics, leaderboards, user transactions, and dynamic worlds.
Lastly, I have experience with minting Solana SPL Tokens, minting Solana NFT collections, writing Smart Contracts using Rust/Anchor/Alchemy, establishing token-gated communities using platforms like Discord, creating custom wallets, creating custom swap functionality, and other Web3 applications that connect to any existing Solana wallet. By combining my Unity frontend development skills with the Solana blockchain, I have been able to take my Full-Stack developer skills to the next cutting-edge level to design/construct unique products the world has yet to see before now.
I'm passionate about contributing to ambitious projects and collaborating with talented professionals. If you're seeking a positive-minded, proactive, and accomplished team player, let's connect and embark on an exciting journey together!
