Daniel Flower, Software Developer in Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Daniel Flower

Software Developer in Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Member since September 8, 2018
Dan is a seasoned software engineer with more than two decades of industry experience and almost three decades of total experience spanning numerous devices, platforms, and technologies. He specializes in Windows desktop applications, full-stack web development, cloud infrastructure, mobile devices, and much more. He's comfortable running development teams large or small and has worked for years in service-oriented businesses.
Daniel is now available for hire

Portfolio

Experience

Location

Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Node.js, LAMP, iOS, Android, Windows

The most amazing...

...experience was working intimately with Square Enix to complete Final Fantasy XV for the PlayStation 4.

Employment

  • Founder

    2018 - PRESENT
    Quantified Intelligence
    • Founded the company and built a small development team building a custom and very unique AI-centric programming language of my own design. Performed all duties ranging from the actual coding to management, business development, sales, and so on.
    • Built the latest generation of my technology from the ground up in the latest versions of C++ for maximum performance and flexibility.
    • Guided my team as they build the visual AI editor in C++ using open source components such as ImGui for the UI, JsonCpp for storing code modules, and litehtml for the built-in help system.
    • Created integrations for common game engines (UE4, Unity3D) and APIs for general-purpose back-end software such as Node.js. The engine has an optional networking sub-system that implements Winsock2 for multi-client communications using a custom protocol and purpose-built high-performance data compression algorithm for real-time streaming, debugging, and editing of operational AIs.
    Technologies: JSON, C++
  • Chief Technology Officer, Director

    2012 - 2017
    Streamline Media Group, Streamline Studios, Streamframe
    • Interviewed, hired, trained, and managed several multi-discipline development teams and guided their career path development.
    • Performed in-person requirements capture with our clients and guided the product owners, business analysts, and development teams towards successful software implementations.
    • Supervised the technical direction and architecture of all software products and services as well as the underlying technologies deployed in the development and/or operation of the same.
    • Participated hands-on in the development of software products and services, especially when difficult features were required or challenging bugs were encountered. This included our web-based software like Streamframe, custom services for our clients in the games industry, and unique in-house tools that nobody else in the industry has.
    • Became a full-stack web developer with an emphasis on LAMP and AWS. I was highly proficient with PHP, MySQL, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap, REST APIs via AJAX/JSON, an assortment of AWS features, security best practices, and much more. I also integrated with third-party APIs including Stripe, ZenDesk, Google Analytics, and others including several proprietary systems.
    • Built Streamframe features and tools such as our first fully-featured Cordova-based mobile app, HTML5 Canvas-based whiteboard/image mark-up tool, a high-performance full-text search engine, a robust hierarchical permissions system integrated directly into our MVC framework to prevent access to privileged information, a database scrambler that replaced sensitive information with gibberish but preserved its structure so our devs could troubleshoot using real data without compromising confidentiality, custom tools for locating, authoring, and managing language-specific strings, created a custom font using FontForge so that we could have resolution-independent icons much like FontAwesome but unique to our needs, and much much more.
    • Contributed to the development and release of Axon Runners for iOS, which was built with Unity3D and C#. I built custom content authoring tools, wrote and polished game logic, added Facebook integrations, push notifications via a 3rd-party service called Urban Airship, audited code, managed the testing phase, deployed the app on the App Store, and ported the game to three other platforms. I was also responsible for building a custom theme for WordPress to serve as the official website for the game.
    • Worked extensively on the PS4 and proprietary engine technology from Square Enix for the release of Final Fantasy XV. On several other projects, I was fortunate enough to work with VR including the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PSVR.
    • Managed many aspects of the company (SMG) and its subsidiaries (SLS/SF) from day-to-day operations to long-term strategy development and execution.
    Technologies: CSS, Amazon Web Services (AWS), PhoneGap, Cordova, Unity3D, Unreal Engine 4, MySQL, HTML, jQuery, JavaScript, PHP, Objective-C, C#, C++
  • Independent Developer

    2002 - 2014
    Mythyn Interactive
    • Built a massive multi-player online role-playing game called LinkRealms. The game was open to the public for more than a decade and finally went offline in late 2017.
    • Wrote the entire graphics engine and visual effects systems with C++ and both DirectX 8 and 9. This included automatic geometry and texture batching schemes, dynamic light and shadow effects, programmable particle systems, dynamic texture filtering effects, custom rendering effects, etc.
    • Designed and built an innovative artificial intelligence engine to drive creature AI. Its main innovation was that it required no programming experience to use and our creatives made fantastic use of it to produce unique behaviors that surprised even me. The AI engine was written in C++ but the server and game-specific AI nodes that it used were written in Delphi, which I had to learn for this purpose.
    • Built several other systems in the game including a genetics-based pet breeding scheme, questing system, the combat arena, special events, small mathematical formulas like loot probability/distribution schemes, and actual content like creature AI and quests.
    Technologies: DirectX, Delphi, C++
  • Software Developer

    1998 - 2002
    P.D.C. Consulting, Virtual E Gold, Usertrust Network/Data Corp, AirSwitch
    • Worked for a number of small companies in my early years, most of which didn't last through the startup phase. I performed various development tasks dealing with proprietary back-end support tools such as card and coupon generators, account management software (akin to a modern CRM), and a tool to categorize received faxes and file them away in a MS SQL database.
    • Built software products and websites for clients of P.D.C. Consulting. I was regularly required to learn and utilize unfamiliar technologies. For instance, I had to reverse-engineer a binary file format so that the data could be extracted and stored in a CSV file. On another occasion, we had to produce 30 small quizzes using Adobe Director. Rather than do them one-by-one as my colleagues did, I built a framework completed all of my tasks in only two days.
    • Served as a network technician for AirSwitch (an ISP), not a programmer, but I used my skills to build a tool that helped my fellow technicians deduce the location of faults in our city-wide physical network. By plugging-in to different locations, the tool would quickly graph and grade the network nodes that it could reach. Testing two points was usually enough to identify the exact location of a fault. I was pleased to demonstrate the tool for the CEO, who himself was a network engineer.
    Technologies: Visual Basic, MySQL, ASP

Experience

  • Streamframe
    https://www.streamframe.com/

    Streamframe is a production management tool built primarily for the video games industry. I served as the CTO for the company and was instrumental in the design, development, launch, support, and management of the product and its development team. Streamframe was built on a traditional LAMP stack using a proprietary framework loosely derived from Laravel and operates on AWS where it makes heavy use of AWS's many features. To scale up further, we were transitioning away from the original monolithic architecture towards a service-oriented architecture. I designed the first micro-service to unload the heaviest task: the role-based fine-grained hierarchical permissions system.

  • Axon Runners
    http://www.axonrunners.com/

    Axon Runners was a mobile game built on Unity 3D for iOS. I built tools for the content creation pipeline, implemented and fine-tuned gameplay mechanics, integrated Facebook features, added push notifications via Urban Airship, and most critically, I resolved certain fatal bugs that endangered the release of the game. I also ported it to Android, Windows PCs, and even the Xbox 360, but these were never released. Finally, I took the graphic designer's PSD files and created a custom theme for WordPress that, to my great surprise, is still on display at the game's official website.

  • Final Fantasy XV
    https://finalfantasyxv.square-enix-games.com/

    While serving as CTO at Streamline Studios, I assembled a team of C++ developers on short notice to assist Square Enix with the imminent release of Final Fantasy XV, however, I'm prohibited by NDA from describing our contributions in detail. Still, we had a lot of fun and spent some late nights in the office pushing for perfection and earned our place in the game's credits.

  • LinkRealms
    https://www.mmorpg.com/linkrealms

    LinkRealms was a free-to-play MMORPG. It was developed independently with a small group of people mostly concentrated in my home state but had contributors from around the world. It was built in the style of Ultima Online and allowed players to own portions of the game world. I used Direct3D for graphics and my own custom Flow AI technology for creature behaviors, among other contributions. The game went offline in late 2017, but there are still some screenshots and whatnot at the link provided.

Skills

  • Languages

    PHP, JavaScript, C++, CSS, Assembler, HTML, C#, C, Delphi, VBScript, Visual Basic, SCSS, HLSL, Java, Objective-C, M
  • Libraries/APIs

    REST APIs, jQuery, React, Node.js, Reactstrap, DirectX
  • Tools

    Subversion (SVN), PhpMyAdmin, Microsoft Visual Studio, Sequelize, AWS ELB, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Apache, Excel 2013, Xcode, Perforce, Git, Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), Amazon EBS, Direct3D, MonoDevelop
  • Paradigms

    Asynchronous Programming, Scrum, Agile, Model View Controller (MVC)
  • Platforms

    Windows, LAMP, Amazon EC2, Oculus Rift, iOS, Android, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Xbox 360, Xbox, AWS Lambda, WordPress, Linux
  • Other

    Web Development, MVC Frameworks, 3D Games, FontAwesome, Video Games, Game AI, Multithreading, Concurrent Computing, APIs, Software Development, Freelancing, Cordova, WebSockets, VR Interfaces, PlayStation VR, PS4, Shaders, Web Server (IIS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Image Processing, Video Compression, Image Compression, GPU Computing, HTC Vive, Neural Networks, Audio Processing
  • Frameworks

    Unreal Engine 4, Unity3D, PhoneGap, ASP, Bootstrap
  • Storage

    MySQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), SQLite, JSON, Microsoft SQL Server, Redis

Education

  • Associate's Degree in Electrical Engineering and Robotics Technology
    2004 - 2006
    Utah Valley State College - Utah
  • Associate's Degree in Computer Science
    1996 - 1998
    Utah Valley State College - Orem, Utah

Certifications

  • Certified Novell Administrator
    JANUARY 1999 - PRESENT
    Advanced Technical Center, Utal
  • Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
    JANUARY 1999 - PRESENT
    Advanced Technical Center, Utah

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