Background

Below are some highlights of my experiences with video games & technology in general. If you are looking for specific games I've worked on, please visit this page instead.

• 1979 - Began lurking around the local university campus to play Adventure, Trek and various other games available on VAX/VMS systems. Around this time I started playing Dungeons & Dragons which lasted for several years and had a deep impact on my future in that I became aware of the mechanics of complex gaming. This was also the year my parents bought a TRS-80 which immediately became my favorite way to spend free time. I began making my own text adventure games and various strategy games derived from the paper games my friends & I came up with. I bought as many ..cassettes.. of videogames as I could afford. One of my favorites was Flight Simulator 1, which was amazing in it’s wireframe 128×48 pixel 3d goodness. 
• 1983 - Apple //e. Big scary purchase in those days but thankfully my parents saw my passion. The salesman asked me what I wanted to do with it, and naturally my answer was "Make games"! Picked up my first modem and did a lot of bulletin board stuff, even ran my own for a while. Continued programming too, of course. The most interesting thing I did on this platform was to write a context switcher that used a special memory card with an extra 48k to let me switch between two running programs. This was also the year I was introduced to the IBM-PC architecture. 
• 1984 - Wrote a primitive wire frame renderer of a Millenium Falcon (from Star Wars) using information found in the book Microcomputer Displays, Graphics and Animation. This was my first 3D program which was very difficult because it was pretty much impossible to find anyone who could answer any questions about 3D math. Somehow managed to get an Atari 800xl that year also which I really enjoyed. 
• 1985 - Amiga 1000. Played many many games. Learned C and AREXX. Wrote my first GUI programs around this time. 
• 1986 - Graduated from high school, moved on to Western Washington University as a computer science major and marine biology minor where I studied for three years with a particular interest in computer languages, math and artificial intelligence systems. Had my first “real” jobs as a database programmer for a few small businesses and the university around this time before I decided to just do contract work. 
• 1987 - Started messing with the Internet. Wow things have changed. Discovered MUDs that year. They were so much cooler than the BBS pseudo-multiplayer games I had seen before and were the logical evolution of the text adventure games that had led me to programming in the first place, so naturally I was fascinated by them. Never really became a serious player though. 
• 1988 - Developed an interest in video production and began doing public access television work through university connections and the local cable company. Learned the ins and outs of low budget video work. Began training people who wanted to make their own public access video programs and started to realize my luck in that two great things did in fact go together: video & computers. Multimedia. I could tell big things were going to happen with technology at this point and this is when I started getting excited about my future. This was also the year I received my first professional recognition as a programmer by having some 3D utilities and a few articles published in Amiga+ magazine. 
• 1989 - Started doing a lot of video production work, mostly industrial safety and promotional videos intermixed with 3D animation jobs. I used the first several versions of Lightwave on the Video Toaster which encouraged me to write various tools that helped me make models since the modeling environment wasn’t what it is today that’s for sure. 
• 1990-1997 Continued on with the video production and contract programming work. This was a fun period, I thought for a while I’d found my calling. I had a couple of long term contracts where I was able to evolve some video editing software (pre-digital video) and general programming skills. I also had a collection of regular video production clients and I did some IT support work for a couple of audio studios in the area who were just starting to go digital. Towards the end of this period, however, I started realizing that what I really wanted to do was get serious about making video games because that was what I had always been most interested in since I was a kid. So I spent about 8 months working on a prototype game which I used as a resume piece to get myself in the door at a game company. 
• 1997 - Joined Westwood Studios as a programmer. Spent 3.5 years on Earth & Beyond; was the second programmer on the team and I played a large part in the architecture of that game and did a lot of R&D on terrain engines, core game systems, and all kinds of stuff. After that, I worked on Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat which was a great team with lots of talented people. I spent my last several months there working on the Command and Conquer III project which, sadly, was cancelled by Electronic Arts when they shut down Westwood Studios. 
• 2002 - Joined Sony Online Entertainment as a senior programmer on the Sovereign project (an MMO RTS), and shortly after moved on to the EverQuest Live team. Performed a lot of work related to NPC pathing, security, graphics and collision systems, to name a few. 
• 2003 - Promoted to Assistant Lead Programmer of EverQuest Live where I continued my previous work in addition to designing systems and helping other programmers implement them. 
• 2006 - Moved to a Playstation 3 team to help with Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom. Focused mostly on audio related systems. 
• 2007 - Began working at Rockstar San Diego on what was to become the AAA game of the year title, Red Dead Redemption where I worked primarily on physics and vehicles, but my background being what it is I found myself helping out on all kinds of things. 
• 2010 - Founded Bounding Box Games LLC, where I made XBox Live Indie and Windows Phone games. 
• 2014 - Joined KIXEYE as a Principal Engineer for the War Commander: Rogue Assault team. Indie dev is on the back burner, but not abandoned thanks to KIXEYE being a forward-thinking company that has a healthy attitude towards personal projects.