I led the development of an 18-week UX Design course, including 6 weeks of foundational UX Design training, then 6 weeks of practical Unreal UX/UI projects with heavy Blueprint code, including gameplay, materials, sounds, animation and VFX.

A portion of one of my gigs, mentoring Game Design for CG Spectrum, includes developing new courses and revising existing ones. Epic Games has hired CGS to develop a training course for UX Design that is Fortnite-specific. The goal is a course that progresses through the technical development of UI while always referring to best practices of UX Design theory. Weaving a progression of assignments and challenges is much the same as gameplay progression we challenge players with as they learn the game.

I developed an enemy combat A.I. class structure for 20+ creatures, NPCs and bosses. I also engineered systems and overall architecture while teaching game design best practices during development of this ambitious retro-looking 2D action game.

NYFA Students in my game design and game studio courses build a game from scratch to polish in 15 weeks. This was a first-semester group of talented young designers, and I got to pick my favorite area to work on: enemy A.I. and bosses.

I created a sophisticated FPS combat A.I. in the vein of Resistance: Fall of Man's Chimera Hybrids, including cover behavior and a custom pathing system (not A*). I needed to add to my portfolio, and on the very good advice from AAA studio friends, I took this A.I. and put together a large story-based stealth action adventure.

When I say "scratch-made", I mean it: all systems, all enemy classes, an original puzzle hacking system, and all the chunky white/grey box levels. VFX and SFX added because I couldn't help it.

I made these three games from scratch in C++.

I have a lot of experience making games from scratch in various languages, and since mastering C#, and hearing of Epic's Unreal Engine change from UnrealScript to C++, learning C++ became my mission. I worked with engineering friends who encouraged me and pointed me in the right direction.

I made Zombie Cruise, an old idea for a story-based dynamic game (fire on the boat!), in a game jam style: 32-bytes and 32 hours. I made Pixel Man, a straightforward 2D shooter, with zombies. And then made an ambitious top-down tank battle game with a custom particle system and procedural endless terrain (with four 'seasons'). I did it!

I built level design portions, coordinated this team's level design work, developed all the level and player mechanics, and taught best design practices at the same time. The most interesting system I developed is the procedurally disintegrating environment that keeps the player moving forward, and rewinds to accommodate checkpoint respawns.

The New York Film Academy, Game Design department offers summer courses for curious high school students. This 4-week course, we made a 2D game in a week, and this 3D action platformer (Portal2-like) in 3 weeks, with a team of eight.

I built all player mechanics, puzzle systems, cinematics, level lighting, visual effects and sound designs.

At NYFA, students are grouped together to make a game in 15 weeks, each semester. This first semester I taught this course, we had only one student. I was happy to partner with the concept he brought up, and we cranked out a large detailed puzzle platformer.

I designed 4 large detailed levels with episodic NPC interactions, developed a full prototype toolkit (later sold on Unity Asset Store as The Adventure Toolkit), and led the overall design for teams who put this large project together.

USC ICT partnered with U.S. Marines to develop a trainer for combat-level stress resilience. To do this, we had to develop a highly immersive game experience plus cinematics, with characters in your squad you got to know, intense stress-inducing sequences, and realistic environments, right down to the specific bird song of Afghanistan. Early builds were in Unreal with C++, we switched to Unity and C#.

I designed VR interactions and UX for the clinician controls in this system, as well as supportive Art Direction, Level Design and Systems Design.

USC Institute for Creative Technologies partnered with U.S. Marines, and other branches to develop this immersive open-world game system for clinicians to lead veterans suffering PTSD through exposure therapy. To do this, our simulation had to seem real to those who served in Iraq & Afghanistan. Early builds were in Unreal with C++, we switched to Unity and C#.

I led a team of third-party developers on two action launch titles in my very first professional Game Designer role. I designed all combat, controls, levels, level dynamics, A.I. and economies.

We worked with Sega and LucasArts to stay faithful to cannon for their IP while launching for this handheld console, the Leapfrog Didj. The result was the Editor's Choice Award (2008) in Children's Technology Review for Star Wars.

I designed multiple single-player and multiplayer 3D FPS levels in Unreal, before I became a professional game designer (still working as an animator at AAA studios), and I developed a highly-rated game mod Old Skool Monsta Toolz (9.5 on ModDB).

I wrote all code in OSMT, which changes this multiplayer game into story-based adventures with puzzles, traps and monsters. OSMT includes 20+ drag-and-drop enemies with custom A.I. using the original Unreal game monster models and animations.