Playing hard by working hard...
Hi there! I'm Nick, a full-stack programmer by day and aspiring game developer and streamer by night. Gaming's been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I've always wanted to give back to the industry that's given so much to me. After earning my degree in Game Design & Development at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the Spring of 2020 I landed a job at Lockheed Martin, and I'm currently there as a Software Engineer II.
At the moment I'm looking for a full-time position in game design/development, software engineering, or video editing/content management that I can take on in the Seattle Washington area. Below is a shortlist of projects that pertain to those aspirations, as well as some contact info. No matter how or why you ended up here, I hope you'll find something that piques your interest!
(HINT: click the project images to take you to the relevant project site)
Space Crab VS AI & Jukebox
In the beginning of 2023 I started working with a fellow RIT graduate on Rondovo Games' upcoming 2-player game, Space Crab VS. Our primary assignment was to implement functioning AI that worked with and against each of the varying crab types. Over the course of that Spring, we held weekly code sessions where we would collaborate on the logic that now automatically handles hit prediction and movement mechanics for the AI opponent, and playtested the AI's intelligence to determine appropriate difficulty levels.
I was brought back on early in 2024 to assist in the creation of the user interface for a "jukebox" menu that would allow players to listen to the various tunes Space Crab VS has, as well as set them to be played on other menu screens. With the lead developer's guidance I learned how to structure an entirely standalone screen from scratch within the AppGameKit scripting system and maintain consistency with the design patterns of the rest of the game. The menu was built to communicate with the backend song storage in order to fetch, play, and set songs for other screens via user interactions, and also accomodates both mobile and desktop displays.
Sleep Patrol Alpha Level Design
Early in 2021 I was asked by a friend to assist with creating some new content for their group's mobile platforming game. I collaborated with the team to figure out what would work best for a second level in their game and applied my level design know-how and feedback from them to iterate on layouts to produce a final product that is live on app stores now!
Halo Forge Projects
Learning how to use Halo's forge mode as a kid was one of the pivotal moments in my life that led me to pursue game design as a career, and with Halo Infinite's iteration fresh in my mind, I've had a burst of inspiration that I wanted to run with and record to help catalogue my processes and further showcase my passion for level design in a space that comes to me naturally. Current and future projects will be showcased in the linked playlist, so check out what's there and stay tuned for what's to come!
Streaming Events For Charity
After familiarizing myself with streaming on my personal twitch channel in early 2020, I began planning, organizing, and executing small scale donation drives for charitable organizations such as charity:water and the International Rescue Committee, raising thousands in the process. As an incentive to contribute, I would seek out ways to enable audience contributions to affect the content of the streams, including real life rewards forcing me to take on challenges after hitting certain milestones, as well as modifications to the games I would play in real time (enabled by the CrowdControl program). I created promotional materials and utilized my various social media platforms to spread the word ahead of time, and in my most recent event even brought on collaborators to further widen the audience of potential donors for good causes.
