Joel Staaf Hästö

Programmer, PlaygroundSquad 2008

Hey all!

I'm Joel. I applied to PSQ after getting out of college, having worked with customer support for a while. I can safely say it was the best decision I ever made.

Below follows some of the things I have been doing during my stay here at Playground Squad:

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Project 1 - Time Of Vengeance( Link at the bottom of the page ):

This project was made during four weeks when we were all pretty much green in regards to 3D programming.

Prominant features:
* AI/Patrol system with line of sight and hearing
* Entity vs entity collision
* Blended animations and subanimations as well as procedural animation to make the character turn her head towards clues in the surroundings.
* Both gamepad and keyboard support
* Particle system for blood effects and falling tree leaves

I was entirely responsible for all animations and decapitation effects, controls and camera, cutscenes, particle effects, damage/health system, HUD, puzzle system, enemy spawning, and also enemy and boss combat AI ( excluding pathfinding ).

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Project 2 - TwoDie( Link at the bottom of the page ):

Unlike the first project a lead programmer was elected, which turned out to be me. TwoDie is a 2vs2 multiplayer FPS with lots of focus on cooperation between a big and a small character.

Features:
* Multiplayer support, powered by RakNet. Use of interpolation for smoothing of object movements.
* Server only physics system( Nvidia PhysX )
* Two ranged weapons and five different melee weapons, which can be freely dropped, thrown or picked up around the level.
* Unique "mounting"-system, where the little character rides the big one and follows any and all of his movements.
* Resolution independent GUI/Menus

In this project I was responsible for:

* All networking
* Organizing the game structure and different game phases
* Controls and input
* GUI/Menus
* All animation
* Weapons and damage system
* "Mounting"-system

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Further technical knowledge details:

Shaders( HLSL ):
* Normal maps + Specular maps
* Ambient light, directional light, point lights, spotlights
* Hardware Instancing
* Splat map shader

Other:
* Stencil shadows
* RakNet, winsock
* Particle effects ( additive rendering, alpha sorting etc )
* LOD ( Level Of Detail )