Aaron Hunter
Verified Expert in Engineering
UDP Developer
Aaron has been programming computer games for over fifteen years. In that time, he has worked for many different companies, including Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and Aspyr. Specific projects Aaron has worked on include "The Sims 2 Life Stories" and the MMO "Starport: Galactic Empires." In 2019, he created the golf simulation "Georgia Golf" now available for Android on the Play Store.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
Unity
The most amazing...
...thing I've coded was a grass fins system to simulate thousands of blades of grass swaying in the wind and bending under rolling golf balls.
Work Experience
Lead Developer
Playtechtonics, Inc.
- Wrote and maintained the MMO game Starport: Galactic Empires featuring real-time action combat over the internet and empire-building.
- Developed a payment processing system for online transactions.
- Coded a server back-end for managing user security and game fairness.
- Hired artists and imported large amounts of graphics into the application.
- Created a networked game engine using TCP/IP and UDP Sockets on a Linux back-end.
Senior C++ Software Engineer
Vectra
- Rewrote an O(n2) algorithm to O(n log n), reducing the time it took to run from 5 minutes to 10 seconds. This was an algorithm to traverse CIDR's.
- Created a utility to follow the output of a log file. analyze, modify, and convert it into useful metadata entries, and write those to a database. This was a Linux tool giving similar functionality to the "tail" command.
- Solved a major performance problem that was happening with Vectra's fleet of machines in the field by removing a "locked thread traffic jam" and replacing it with fewer and less frequent shared buffer accesses.
Senior C++ Software Engineer
EyeLock LLC
- Wrote a real time feedback system to guide users of a camera into the right head position without having to look away from the camera.
- Fixed poorly organized code into manageable C++ classes, greatly improving code manageability and improvability.
- Synchronized a 5-megapixel image processing algorithm to run in parallel with a user interface thread in real-time at 15 frames per second, utilizing locking shared memory buffers.
Contract Programmer (Unity)
Armor Games
- Created the Unity API for their other game developers to use, which allowed Unity apps to communicate with the Armor Games RESTful web servers.
- Implemented Web REST and Unity Web communications.
- Worked in Unity 5.0 and Unity 5.0 GUI System.
- Contributed JavaScript to Unity communication.
Senior Software Engineer
Aspyr Media
- Optimized a large game engine made by EA.
- Participated in the hiring process of junior developers.
- Created a storefront application for purchasing downloadable game content from the internet.
- Built a new version of The Sims for EA called The Sims Life Stories.
- Worked with designers to make use of game development tools, such as GUI editors and story scripting flow chart editors.
Priogrammer
VR-1 Entertainment
- Worked on an action platform jumper for Xbox.
- Wrote a camera controlling code for moving and orientating a 3D camera.
- Contributed to the physics simulation in a game world to move objects in the wind and as a result of pressure from other colliding objects.
- Worked on a COM-interface style game engine for a tycoon style PC game.
- Developed new game concepts with the rest of the team.
Game Programmer
Acclaim
- Worked on the camera object translation and orientation for a 3D mountain biking game.
- Developed the boss enemy artificial intelligence for a platform jumping game for Xbox consoles.
- Contributed to a 3D world generation tool for baking game world data in a pre-process.
- Built a 3D orientation code to control objects in a 3D world.
- Worked on visual effects including particle effects, translucency, lightning, and weather effects.
Programmer
Digital Anvil
- Developed a graphical user interface code for an XBox game called Brute Force.
- Worked on a strategic artificial intelligence code to run the computer-controlled sides of a real-time strategy game called Conquest.
- Developed the unit level artificial intelligence for a real-time strategy game.
- Wrote an expert system to solve strategy problems in games.
- Produced proposals for internet-based MMO games.
Programmer
Illusion Machines, Inc.
- Developed image compression algorithms for a sprite drawing system.
- Coded the unit level artificial intelligence for controlling soldiers in a real-time strategy game.
- Wrote strategic artificial intelligence to handle enemy units in a real-time strategy game.
- Worked on creating a 3D game engine.
- Contributed to the GUI code for a Windows game.
Experience
Starport: Galactic Empires
http://www.starportgame.comGeorgia Golf
http://store.steampowered.com/app/374970/Programmatically-generated meshes were used for special effects and other objects.
The Sims
Skills
Languages
C++, C#, Python 3
Frameworks
Unity, Unity3D, PhysX
Libraries/APIs
Sockets, DirectX, Buffer
Paradigms
Object-oriented Programming (OOP)
Other
UDP, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Networking, Software Architecture, Mathematics, Data Structures, Optimization Algorithms, Multithreading, Image Processing, Algorithms, Streaming Data
Tools
Adobe Photoshop, Direct3D, CMake
Platforms
Windows, Linux, Xbox
Storage
MongoDB
Education
Bachelor's (Unfinished) Degree in Computer Science and History
University of Texas at Austin - Austin, Texas
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