Bosco Barber
Hi! My name is Bosco and I am very happy to have contributed my grain of sand as a programmer to the development of Dune: Special Spice Ops at Chamfer Studios. From the beginning of the game development degree, I have always wanted to take part of a team and develop a real project. This is what we have done with Chamfer Studios and I'm so proud of it. It has helped me a lot in my personal development since I haven't only learned new programming stuff, but I have also realized how a company is structured and how it works in the background apart from, as an individual, working as a teammate.
Background
About Me
I am passionate about software development, especially video games. I am here to contribute my grain of sand to achieve better experiences for users, and to improve technologies that already make it possible, and that will make it even better in the future.
I have always loved digital entertainment, and video games have been my passion since I was a kid. Anyway, at first I wasn't sure whether to follow a more artistic or technical path, and because of that I entered this degree. Now that I have a global vision about different fields and how it all works in the industry, I know that I want to be a programmer.
I consider myself a curious and restless person that always wants to know what happens behind the scenes. We are surrounded by a huge amount of things that we all know what they are used for, but we don't know how they work, and I think this is beautiful, since there's always something left to learn.
First, solve the problem. Then, write the code.
– John Johnson
Hard Skills
- Programming Languages: C/C++, C#, Dart, etc.
- Frameworks: Flutter
- Tools: Git, GitHub, Unity, Unreal Engine, Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, 3Ds Max, Maya, etc.
- Backends: Firebase
Soft Skills
- Commitment
- Eager to learn
- Open mindset
Experience
Contribution
Project Overview
For the project, I had the role of Programmer. My job was to implement different features of the game, together with bug fixing and helping other teammates when needed.
Main Tasks
Base Engine
We started the project with Ko-Fi Engine as the base which was developed by Álex Ávila and I. The base provided the essential features plus the shader module.
Animation Module
I've spent most of the development time developing the animations module and all that this entails together with Andrés Sanchez. Starting from an FBX, with the Assimp library we managed to take the bones structure and from here we developed the rest of the system that allows us to modify the meshes in real time. Since it's not trivial, we needed to do several refactorings, reestructuring the code and fixing errors when new features were added. Finally, we managed to reach a solid animation module, completely integrated with the rest of the code, specially with the components system and the resource manager.
In order to manage that in the engine, we also implemented an animator component, from which clips can be created, edited and deleted; and other properties can such as the animation loop can be modified.
Runtime
I managed to have a proper time management when playing, pausing or stopping the game both in the engine or in the game itself.
This is important since most of the game elements depend on game time, and it needs function properly before, during and after the game is played.
Secondary Tasks
Engine Improvements & Help
I was in charge of looking for and solving many bugs that emerged as problems with merges, transform propagation, object reparenting or errors with the animations themselves. I also helped developing some characters, enemies or fixing bugs on them.
Custom File Formats
I managed to have and keep up to date the mesh and the animation custom file format (.sugar and .cake respectively).
Projects
These are some of the projects I developed together with other classmates. You can check more out on my GitHub!
Wasabi Warriors
Wasabi Warriors is a Role-Playing Game with a theme-based on an urban Japanese environment and a story about power and corruption. It is mainly played in top-down perspective combined with combat scenes and has different locations and areas to explore. The project aims to be a 30 minutes gameplay experience with a catching narrative to make the player experience a different journey.
U.N. Squadron
This project is a tribute to U.N. Squadron (1989), developed and released by Capcom.
U.N. Squadron is an arcade shoot’em up single-player game (horizontal scrolling shooter game). Initially it was developed for the arcade of the same company, but two years later, in 1991, it was launched for the SNES (the version we are working on). This game was known in Japan as Area 88 since the game was based on the manga Area 88 created by Karou Shintani. It has a sequel game named Carrier Air Wing (U.S. Navy in Japan) which was released in 1990 for the CP system arcade.
Apollo Mission
it's a spaceship video game developed using our own physics engine.
The game is about launching our spaceship from Earth, landing safely on the Moon and returning safely to Earth; dodging the different asteroids and achieving the landing conditions.
