Marcin's Resume and Projects Page

Resume:
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Projects

Programming:
Rocket Coaster
Moview
Target Arena
ToonBall

Design:
Challenge vs. Frustration
Stalingrad

3D Productions:
"Don't Slam the Door!"
Robotank

Marcin's Resume and Projects Page

Update: On Thursday, June 27, 2002, I accepted a programming position with Ensemble Studios, makers of the Age of Empires series of games. Needless to say, I am incredibly excited and consider myself quite fortunate for getting the chance to work with such a great team of people. Ensemble's next big game is Age of Mythology, which is coming out later this year. I would like to thank everyone who contacted me and all the people who provided me with encouragement while I was trying to find a job in the game industry.

I will leave my projects and demos here along with brief descriptions and download links where available. This is mainly to preserve a bit of history. I doubt that I will update this page much, so don't worry about not checking back often :). Thanks for stopping by!

Welcome to my page! Here, you can find links to my resume in various formats. More importantly, you can find descriptions and other information about projects I've been involved with. If you'd like to contact me, please write me at: marcin @ cs.wisc.edu.

About Me

I am very much into video games. I play them on all systems -- PC, Gamecube, Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Gameboy Advance. I analyze them to death, and talk about them all the time. This translates into a love of making games as well. Although I've been too busy to spend a lot of time on games of my own, I've had a great time making games for school obligations (Target Arena and ToonBall). I also take the design and architecture of games very seriously, which has led me to read through a fair number of books on this and related topics (I have read through both Game Programming Gems books, along with Game Architecture and Design, Swords and Circuitry, Secrets of the Sages, Effective C++, and Code Complete, among others). I also regularly read Game Developer magazine and articles on several websites (Gamasutra, FlipCode, GameDev.net, etc).

Recently, I've also come to know the joys of 3D movie-making through UW Madison's graduate-level Computer Animation course (taught by Mike Gleicher). It was a great experience for me to work with a team and put together a finished product. I got comfortable with Alias|Wavefront's Maya, which, in spite of its pitfalls, I really enjoyed using.

In general, I want to make a solid contribution to the entertainment industry, whether it is in video games or CG special effects. I am a perfectionist at heart; when I have a vision for something I'm working on, I pursue that vision relentlessly. I don't settle for "second best". This is exemplified in practically every project I work on, whether programming, 3D modeling, or something else. I am looking forward to finding a place where I can work with a driven team to accomplish some truly amazing things.

I'm happy to be finally finishing up my second undergraduate degree. Second, you ask? I originally spent four years here at UW Madison getting a Genetics degree in preparation for medical school. Even though I'd always liked using computers, and taught myself C++ during high school, I thought I wanted to go into a career that would provide me with financial stability (i.e., I wanted to make a lot of money). I even went through an entire year of medical school, at which point I realized that medicine really wasn't right for me. So, I took a huge leap of faith and withdrew. I then applied for re-entry as a Computer Science undergraduate, was accepted, and the rest is history.

Resume

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Projects

Programming	Rocket Coaster This is one of my favorite projects, done for Computer Graphics. In three weeks, my partner (Andy Selle) and I spent over 100 hours each trying to make it as good as possible. It uses a number of advanced graphics techniques, and we also came up with our own algorithms to do particularly interesting things like arbitrary numbers of reflecting pools of water and properly oriented wheel trucks on the rails. Andy did a large amount of the math programming (e.g., spline math, arc length parameterization, conservation of energy). I did much of the UI and implemented many of the graphics routines (picking, shadows, reflections, terrain), with the notable exception of the particle system, which was designed by both of us but implemented by Andy. Note: Since the source code for this project is the solution to a class assignment, I cannot post it here. However, if you are an employer who would like to see the code, please e-mail me and I will send you an archive with the code and notes about which sections I was responsible for implementing.	more detail... download it!
	Moview I worked on this with Andy Selle again, although the project was for the graduate-level Computer Animation course. We spent a large amount of time working on the interface (making sure it was intuitive, responsive, and aesthetically pleasing), and we also implemented a bunch of "extra" features, not the least of which was linear-blend skinning. Andy focused on the path editing portion, while I put together the "glue" that would allow us to implement the other required features. I again focused on the UI and graphics routines, and split the task of implementing skinning with Andy. Note: As in the case of Rocket Coaster, if you are an employer who wishes to see the source code, just send me an e-mail.	more detail... download it!
	Target Arena This is a first-person target-shooting game I created using the LithTech Development System. It was developed for use in a new Computer Games Technology course taught here at UW Madison by Professor Stephen Chenney. I was assigned to study LithTech and Crystal Space and figure out which one to use for this new course. Ultimately, I decided that LithTech would serve as a better platform because it was more feature-complete and had a full-time support staff that I could call on in emergencies. I will post more detailed information, including some of the issues I encountered when using a professional 3D engine, as soon as I have time. In the meantime, you can download the demo and run it by using the "RunDebug.bat" batch file in the "Target Arena demo\bin" directory. It uses FPS controls (WASD for control, mouse-look, LMB fires a rocket, MMB jumps, 'M' opens the menu screen, 'R' restarts). The game requires DirectX 8.0a or higher. (Note: if the game appears jerky, hit '~' to open the console and type "maxfps 30" -- there is an issue with this version of the engine and high frame-rates).	more detail... download it!
	ToonBall After I finished working on materials for the Games course, Professor Chenney gave me a new task: implement a game to demonstrate his new cartoon physics simulator. ToonBall, a breakout clone, is the result. Soon, I will post more information, including a brief explanation of the algorithms used to simulate cartoon physics. I will also put up a link to a binary.	more detail...
Design	Article: "Increasing Challenge Without Frustrating Players" Last summer, I came across a call for contributors for a new game design book. At about the same time, I was playing several games that were very annoying because they confused challenge with frustration. I decided to submit an article to the book about this topic, because I feel it is a very important thing to keep in mind when making a game, and because it is possible to lose a player forever if one takes too many liberties with the player's good will. The book is called Game Design Perspectives (linked on the right), and will be published around the middle of May by Charles River Media.	more detail...
Design	Stalingrad Stalingrad is a modification for Quake 3 Arena. It is a collaboration between artists and directors in California and programmers and designers at UW Madison. My work on this was to restructure the original design document so that it would be more usable to the rest of the team. This meant reorganizing it and adding a number of new sections to flesh it out. It also meant I had to figure out exactly what the design vision for the mod was going to be, since we wanted to put it down on paper and avoid future misunderstandings. The link on the right points to the Stalingrad home page.	more detail...
3D Productions	Short Film: "Don't Slam the Door!" This was to be the second of three projects for the graduate Computer Animation course I took this semester. However, everybody's project got so big that Mike Gleicher decided to extend the deadline several times. This resulted in me and my group (Matt Anderson, Stephane Blardone, and Steven Wijaya) putting in over 1000 combined hours working on this project over the last few weeks of the semester. I personally spent a lot of time trying to add small details that would help sell the images, such as dirt overlays on the main building and small trim pieces on the demolition tank. In addition, I created several dozen scripts and expressions to help make the scenes come alive (the dirt being plowed by the tank in the beginning, the camera shake in various scenes, etc). Take a look at the movie by clicking the link on the right (the file is about 40MB, and requires Divx 5.0.1).	more detail... download it!
3D Productions	Very Short Film: "Robotank" To get used to the movie production pipeline in the Animation course, we were asked to do an art assignment. This was mine: a short clip of a robotic tank rolling into a room, seeing itself in a mirror, mistaking its reflection for an enemy, and destroying the mirror.	more detail... download it!