Role on Project: Senior Combat Designer

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• Enemy Combat Design

  • The only AI designer on the project, owning AI design for AAA Action RPG combat gameplay.

  • Paper design of the majority of NPC factions, creatures, and droids in the game.

  • Mocap direction, keyframe direction, prototype, and final implementation of combat abilities, hit reactions, and AI behaviors for a handful of NPC factions (humanoids, creatures, and droids).

  • Collaboration with and review of internal and outsource animators for NPC combat animations and hit reaction animations, as well as oversight and review of outsource gameplay design teams implementing NPC combat factions.

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• Gameplay Programming

  • Recognized as a stand-in AI programmer, holding complete ownership of the design and implementation of all behavior trees and supplementary AI systems, providing technical direction to gameplay programmers on specific AI sub-features.

  • Developed a modular universal behavior tree that could be employed by both enemies and player characters in combat, using a data-driven philosophy to implement unique combat behaviors within a unified framework.

  • Created a modular scripted AI action system, providing hooks to level scripters to easily give standardized commands to NPC characters.

  • Wrote C++ gameplay programming for AI behavior tree systems, including action selection systems, AI-controlled player character systems, navigation systems, modular behavior systems, and gameplay ability execution systems.

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• Technical Design​

  • Technical design oversight on a proprietary expansion of the Unreal Gameplay Ability System as well as a large number of core combat design tools.

  • Wrote in-depth technical specs for animation-driven combat systems made for the montage animation editor in Unreal, with a focus on accessible interfaces for all layers of content development (design, VFX, audio, etc).

  • Collaborated with gameplay engineers to craft an easy-to-use data-driven ability system that supported prototyping and fully implementing action RPG combat with incredible speed and efficiency for both player characters and NPCs.

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• Production Support

  • Provided managerial and production support for the gameplay department, including managing the team's feature backlog and playing a key role in roadmap and milestone planning.