Richard Dalziel

Junior Programmer
http://richarddalziel.wordpress.com/
richard.dalziel1987@gmail.com
Tel: 07590846464

I am an enthusiastic and dedicated programmer, keen to work on game development in any genre.
When playing computer games I tend to enjoy the more competitive and collaborative aspects
within each game. This attitude has also transferred over to my work on creating different games at
university; I have consistently preferred to create these games as a team and to work as
collaboratively as possible on creating the best game possible.

Skills

 C++ : I have 5 years experience with C++ and have a good understanding of creating object
oriented systems and am used to working with 3rd party APIs, having used a variety. I have
extensive experience in working with Visual Studio, however I have no problem adapting to
other development environments.
 Java : I have 4 years experience with Java, I have used Java to created small 2d web based
games and have experience in developing with Eclipse and Neatbeans development
environments.
 OpenGL : I have around 4 years experience with OpenGL, during which time I used OpenGL
to create a variety of 3D games and technology demos.
 Cg : I have 2 years experience using Cg to implement advanced graphic techniques into
games which I have worked on. These techniques include areas such as shadowing,
advanced lighting, bump mapping, environment mapping, projective texturing. I have no
problem applying this experience to other high level shading languages such as HLSL/GLSL.

Education
2004-2009
BSc Computer Games Technology, University of the West of Scotland
Upper Second-Class Honours (2:1)

Through the course of university I completed a large number of projects which involved using
different programming languages and exploring different areas of game development – some key
projects are listed below:

Honours Project: Damage Effects in Interactive Environments using Decals: I looked at advanced
decal systems to show the effect of damage on environments. The demo was created using OGRE
and Cg.
Havok Unleashed (Digital Futures best game in show award winner): During my 3rd year I
worked with two other students to create a go kart racing game utilising OGRE rendering engine,
ODE physics Engine, OpenAL for audio and Cg shaders. The development process took place over
a 12 week period. During the development of the game we started off with a basic concept and
this concept then evolved into the full game once we had explored further into OGRE ‘s features.
My key contributions were implementing the Physics system for the game, adding AI for the
single player option and working on game logic with the other team members.
 Spaceship 3D Technical Demo: I worked with 2 other students on a technical demo which
covered techniques such as bump mapping, environment mapping, shadowing, and motion blur,
per-fragment lighting frustum culling and physics.. Whilst creating the demo, we decided to add
some fun by adding some game elements. My main contributions in this project were
environment mapping, per-fragment lighting, frustum culling and adding some game logic. From
this project I learned how advanced techniques may be implemented into a game environment
and how the code may be structured to facilitate these techniques.

Other Projects:
I have worked on optimising an application using the PS3, PS2 and PC's hardware. This application
was created to run on all three systems using the same C++ files. This taught me a lot about
memory management for optimisation effects in computer games.
With the help of 3 other students I created a small patch for Second Life which was published on
their Jira(Project/Bug Tracking Tool). From this project I learned a lot about working with
extremely large open source systems and applying necessary changes to the system.
I have worked on a multi-threaded java application which involved creating a lift system which
allowed for all lifts to run concurrently. I learned from this project the delicacies of working with
multi-threaded applications and how to avoid problems such as deadlock.
Whilst in my 2nd year at university I created a 2D snooker application which involved
implementing the physics for snooker ball collisions from scratch. From this I learned how
collisions are implemented and how apply collision systems to game environments.

1999-2004
Clydebank High School
1 Advanced Higher, 5 Highers

Awards
Digital Futures

Obtained first prize for “Best Game” at Digital Futures 2008.

Hobbies
I play Badminton twice a week at a local club which allows me to keep my fitness up, whilst also
playing a sport which I enjoy and socialising whilst I do it. I have been playing games online for
several years now in my free-time, I enjoy the competitive aspect of playing FPS Games in leagues
and creating tactics on how to beat better squads. Perfecting my skills on the racing track to
compete with the best scores online and creating structured tactics on how to kill the latest boss in
an MMO with teams of up to 40 people communicating these strategies via voice communication
programs.