Jedi: Survivor

Title: Senior Technical Gameplay Designer
Genre: Action Adventure / Metroidvania
DEC 2019 - OCT 2023

My role on the Star Wars team expanded drastically from Fallen Order to Survivor. Early in the project my emphasis was on ideation and prototyping of various new mechanics and toys, several of which originated with me, including Force Dash, Phase Gates, Bomb Droids, Merrin’s Reconstruction Power (originally an advancement of Cal’s Psychometry ability), and some of which were pitched by other designers and handed to me in doc form during early pre-production, such as our new reactive platforming elements, the Grapple Gun, and Merrin’s Force Dash Conduits.

As the project moved forward I transitioned from a tech design generalist to more of a gameplay focus, working with our traversal experts and level designers on a lot of Cal’s new movement abilities. My primary responsibilities were ownership of the new Force Dash, Grapple Gun, Mounts (Glider, Nekko, and Spamel), and Reactive Platforming (collapsing, bouncy, and bendable platforms, rails, and ziplines) mechanics, and all their various associated mechanics and systems, like Phase Gates, specialized Grapple interactions, the Stable, etc. I also provided a lot of level design toys, tools, support, and one-offs; things like specialized Force-interactables, puzzle elements, and so forth. Most of these elements had very limited or no code support, and were engineered entirely in Blueprint.

Toward the end of the project, as my features reached completion, I transitioned into game-wide support mode and fixed bugs across basically every facet of the game, from shops to cinematics. I was one of about a dozen people who was permanently greenlisted right up until ship, and was allowed to review and approve changes from the rest of the team.

I’m particularly proud of my work on the Grapple Gun, which was created purely in Blueprint (albeit leveraging a couple existing code systems for animation-syncing), and ended up being one of the most fun additions to the sequel in my opinion. A lot of work went into making it feel fluid and effortless, and the ability to grapple between almost any two navigation states (ex: grappling off the back of a mount straight into a wall-run, or out of a tar-pit into a rail-hang), enabled our level designers to really go wild with both their standard levels and a lot of our special platforming challenges.

You can see the navigation mechanics I owned showcased in these videos (posted by players, not mine):

Jedi: Fallen Order

Title: Technical Designer
Genre: Action Adventure / Metroidvania
JUN 2019 - NOV 2019

I joined the Star Wars team about six months before Fallen Order shipped, and was primarily responsible for implementing cinematics, particularly intro/outro transitions for smooth blending between cinematic and gameplay. I also assisted level design with a lot of last-minute toys and interactables, things like doors and platforms that have unique interactions with the player’s force powers, destructibles, and puzzles, and general bug fixing across the entire project.

Red Dead Redemption II

Title: Multiplayer Technical Game Designer
Genre: Action Adventure / Open-World
DEC 2014 - FEB 2019

My first shipped title as a pro. During my four years with Rockstar I worked on a variety of systems for RDR2 Online, which changed drastically several times during development, but my primary responsibilities were the systems governing player-owned horses in multiplayer (customization, summoning, stabling, various gameplay interactions), script-side networking back-end for shops and inventory systems, and some of our instanced competitive game modes and content. I also provided a lot of general support and bug fixing help on singleplayer content leading up to ship.

ZeroLancer

Role: Solo Developer (Mostly)
Genre: Top-Down Shooter, Couch-Multiplayer (2-4 players)
DEC 2012 - MAY 2013

ZeroLancer was one of my college game projects, and probably the one I’m most proud of, largely because it was essentially a solo project, created in Digipen’s proprietary ZeroEngine. I handled design, scripting, VFX, audio design (using free libraries), UI, and most of the art, with some limited 3D modeling assistance from friend and fellow designer Aaron Johnson.

ZeroLancer was a chance for me to dig deep and explore asymmetrical combat design, which was a big challenge for a young designer, and a lot of fun. Each ship has a unique set of weapons and custom motion model, and approaches combat in a distinct way. Four ship types were included at completion, which the players select fighting-game style before a match, and three levels, each with various traps, hazards, and power-ups available.

Arc

Role: Level Designer
Genre: Racing, Couch-Multiplayer (2-4 players)
NOV 2013 - MAY 2014
Website: https://games.digipen.edu/games/arc

A college game project and my only stint so far as a level designer. Arc is a couch-multiplayer combat-racing game that uses linear world-spanning tracks to deliver implicit narrative during gameplay.