Experience

Phenix Real Time Solutions

• United States
• Software Development
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Senior Software Engineer

  • Aug 2021 - Present



Embedded Systems Technology and Software Solutions

• President

  • Feb 2007 - Present

  See Contracting entries below. See Contracting entries below.



People Can Fly Studio

• Poland
• Computer Games
• 400 - 500 Employee

• Principle Software Engineer

  • May 2021 - Jul 2021

  Phosphor Games Studio has merged with People Can Fly Studio (PCF) May 2021 -- to help work on an unannounced game with the New York and Montreal city studios. The people of PCF were a wonderful bunch of people to work with. And I wish them all the luck in the future. However, now that the kids (and grey beards) of Phosphor are in the good hands of PCF and with good resources -- I am moving on to another adventure! Again, thank you all at Phosphor and PCF for the wild and fun ride. Show less



Phosphor Studios

• United States
• Computer Games
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Principle Software Engineer

  • Jan 2015 - Apr 2021

  Video Game Programmer for the Heroes: Reborn project (concentration on Playstation 4 Technical Requirement Checklist), a number of internal (non-public) mobile projects, as well as support for a number of development systems the studio uses (UE4CrashReporter, FASTBuild, etc.). "Contractor" to Epic Games Unreal Engine 4.10 - 4.24 code base (concentration on HTML5 platform and help maintain a number of 3rd party libraries: zlib, openSSL, libCurl, libWebsockets, webRTC). The good work done by Mozilla, Google, Epic, and a number of other companies are making WebAssembly, WebGL, and emscripten possible. See Epic's ZenGarden demo here: ★https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwuIRcpeUWE Show less



WMS Gaming

• United States
• Gambling Facilities and Casinos
• 300 - 400 Employee

• Principal Engineer

  • Nov 2010 - Jan 2015

  Advanced Research and Development - Integrating new technologies of product and engineering into the (casino) gaming industry. I spearheaded a design choice to use HTML5, NodeJS and other non-proprietary systems especially when Flash still dominated the market. Our project became top priority when the mobile gaming platform needed a solution when iOS banned Flash on those devices. Successfully developed and brought to market (trial-capacity) the mobile tablet gaming project on Norwegian Cruise Line in spring 2014. See NCL's BetCloud Flyer here: ★ https://www.ncl.com/sites/default/files/BetCloudFlyerWeb.pdf Work began on BetCloud "next generation" -- looking into technologies such as: * Docker, AWS, Jenkins, etc. * LLVM, webGL/OpenGL * Grunt, Bower, Yeoman, swagger-api See the details, here: ★ https://gamingcontrolboard.pa.gov/files/meetings/Meeting_Presentation_Parx_BetCloud.pdf This was a pretty cool department and R&D facility where we played with all kinds of cool things. But, when Scientific Games bought out WMS, over the months - it became painfully obvious they wanted to shut down as many Chicago departments that were not producing products. Work was moving over seas. Surprising major projects sold off. This is when I decided to leave. When mutual competitor Bally's was also bought by SciGames, that's everyone else at WMS decided to jump ship. Show less



Luxoflux

• United States
• Computer Games
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Network and Gamplay Programming

  • Sep 2008 - May 2009

  Coding gameplay features and stability to networking mode for Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen for Xbox360 and Playstation3. System work included: * integrating Xbox Live communication/connectivity to multiplayer gamemodes (invites, friends, join in progress, and host migration). * integrating Playstation Network restrictions (parental controls and voice/chat settings). * network communications on both platforms (VoIP, packet/message crafting and out of order message handling) This was a one year project development cycle, so I knew there was going to be nothing but crunch work. I did not learn anything new when it came to software engineering, but I did learn more about how [ to / NOT to ] run a studio. Interesting to see how different studios/publishers do business. Valuable lessons learned. The studio has been closed by the publisher right after the project was completed when no new projects were lined up/available for the studio to take on. Show less



Radiant Vue

• Greater Chicago Area

• Contracting: System Architect

  • Aug 2007 - May 2008

  A networked system to deliver and track ad content to remote embedded display devices for the digital signage industry. This was primarily a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, & PHP) stack system. Video playback clients were put on Linux with a Gecko based web browser. Very simple and quick to deploy. A networked system to deliver and track ad content to remote embedded display devices for the digital signage industry. This was primarily a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, & PHP) stack system. Video playback clients were put on Linux with a Gecko based web browser. Very simple and quick to deploy.



Midway Games

• Computer Games
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Senior Programmer

  • Jan 2001 - Oct 2007

  Started out as Systems Engineer for the Touchmaster "bartop" arcade product. * Wrote a new display system that is truly platform independent. * Device driver work on legacy systems. * Rewrote the build environment for higher reliability and easy maintenance. * Operating systems used in this project were Linux and FreeBSD. Moved to Video Game Programmer for the Mortal Kombat project. Titles include: Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (5), Mortal Kombat: Deception (6) and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (7). Responsibilities included: * Systems and Gameplay Engineer * Graphics support (shadows, reflection, particle effects and "fatality" mechanisms and functions, display processing and lighting control system) * Coded mini-game modes: Puzzle Kombat and Motor Kombat * Network systems including packet size and network traffic optimizations Platforms included: Playstation 2 and 3, Xbox and Xbox 360, GameCube Game Engines included: Renderware and Unreal Engine 3 This was a dream job. But alas, all good things must come to an end. The primary reason I left Midway Games was part office politics and part corporate shenanigans. Long story short, the video game industry is notoriously known for having "crunch". But the company decided to short change the bonus and even reneged on them. This burned up/out a lot of people, good people. Midway Game has since gone bankrupt, went out of business and sold off in bit and pieces. A lot of the team is still together and doing much better with a larger company behind them. I continue to be in contact with some of them from time to time. So for now, I bid them continued success and good fortune. Show less



White Rabbit Group

• United States
• Business Consulting and Services
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Contracting: Systems Engineer

  • 2007 - 2007

  White Rabbit Games Studios (now acquired by TouchTunes Music Corporation). ★ https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20071001005591/en/TouchTunes-Premieres-TouchTunes-PlayPorTT----Revolutionary-New Tasks included developing the diagnostic frontend interface and the reporting (audit) system used on the (now named) PlayPorTT. ★ http://productwarranty.touchtunes.com/display/TD/PlayPorTT+and+Other+Games+Systems White Rabbit Games Studios (now acquired by TouchTunes Music Corporation). ★ https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20071001005591/en/TouchTunes-Premieres-TouchTunes-PlayPorTT----Revolutionary-New Tasks included developing the diagnostic frontend interface and the reporting (audit) system used on the (now named) PlayPorTT. ★ http://productwarranty.touchtunes.com/display/TD/PlayPorTT+and+Other+Games+Systems



Motorola Mobility (a Lenovo Company)

• United States
• Computers and Electronics Manufacturing
• 700 & Above Employee

• Software Engineer

  • May 1998 - Dec 2000

  Telecommunication Software Engineer - High Availability Platform (HAP) Development. A system for the next generation cellular base station controller using commodity components (as to custom ones) while maintaining the flexibility to host the different radio/cellular transceivers the telco providers specifically requires. Wrote device drivers on new proprietary hardware with real time operating systems (RTOS) on Motorola's PowerPC boards running WindRiver's VxWorks, Lynx's LynxOS, and Sun's ChorusOS. Created a new development environment and process for our developers to use (over 200 people locally and another 100 at remote sites). Also created the network infrastructure for development (which includes providing a secure method of holding third party licensed source codes). Designed and held training session on the new procedures and technologies. I once suggested that we use the existing BSD or one of the many Linux derivatives for the basic router-like design the project was heading towards; and to also use de-centralized servers for providing redundant database services. But, this is were I learned how/why large old corporations move very slow. I understand that providing "familiar systems" has its place. But, it seemed that the company wanted a "hot line" to "pass the buck" to instead of taking the reigns and leading the charge to innovated solutions. Show less



Digital Equipment Corporation (USA)

• United States
• Computer Hardware Manufacturing
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Software Engineer

  • Jan 1997 - Dec 1997

  Internship at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) working on a Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesis technology product called DECtalk. Experience included developing build processes, designing new features, creating automated development tools for tuning and testing quality control systems and working through a product release cycle. Core development work included: * Researching near natural sounding voice speech * Highly intelligible voice production * Multi-language support * Multi-platform support * Automatic testing application tools * Automatic speech quality adjustment tools * Proprietary applications My most memorable moment, a utility I wrote from scratch, the automatic speech quality adjustment tool, was considered as a release candidate for a stand alone application. The skills and experience I have learned from that internship was worth more to me then all of my computer science programming classes I had taken in college combined. I would highly recommend anyone who is in college to take an internship or a CO-OP position whenever possible. It is definitely worth the extra semesters. Now a days, I would even recommend anyone to drop out of college and "go for it" -- I know too many people (from UIUC) who have started (or been a part of) very famous companies. You can always learn (more) on the job. Show less



Jaleco USA

• Northbrook, IL

• Consultant, Warehouse Manager

  • Aug 1990 - May 1994

  Through out my high school years, I got my foot in the video game world with Jaleco USA. Here, I have been given opportunities ranging from running the warehouse department as manager, working as an assistant coin-op electrical technician, and even got the chance to be part of marketing for their consumer electronic video game product line. This was mostly arcade and Nintendo (NES) systems. Through out my high school years, I got my foot in the video game world with Jaleco USA. Here, I have been given opportunities ranging from running the warehouse department as manager, working as an assistant coin-op electrical technician, and even got the chance to be part of marketing for their consumer electronic video game product line. This was mostly arcade and Nintendo (NES) systems.