John Laurence Murray

Date of Birth: 29 / 02 / 80

Address: West Midlands, UK

E-Mail: JOHNLMURRAY@GMAIL.COM

Website: http://john.HiddenNetwork.co.uk

Educational Details

Name of School: St. Anselm's College Dates Attended: September ‘91 - June ’98

‘A’ Levels

Computers C

A/S Mathematics C

General Studies C

G.C.S.E Level

English Language A

English Literature A

Mathematics B

R.S. B

Geography B

German C

Physics C

Chemistry D

Art E

Biology E

Computer\Coding Experience

Languages: 9+ years C\C++ (small amount of Objective-C)

2 years Wii programming (comfortable with NintendoWare)

2 years PS2/GC/Original Xbox (+Xbox:Live) programming (mostly network specific)

1 year iPhone/iPod programming (personal)

OpenGL API

Maya/MEL (plug-in and script system)

Flexible knowledge of various open source libraries (detailed on my website)

Win32/MFC/Winsock, OSX Carbon

Knowledge of LUA scripting

Comfortable with Perforce, SVN and SourceSafe

MS Visual Studio C++ compiler/IDE

GCC Compiler (+makefiles)

OSX XCode IDE

Codewarrior compiler/IDE

Good knowledge of Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX and Linux

5+ titles released professionally as a programmer (+many more as a tester)

2 personal iPhone/iPod touch releases as a programmer

Work Experience Details

Name of Employer: Full Fat Date: August 2007 – Sept 2009

Duties: Technical/Senior programmer – During my initial time at Full Fat I worked on an internal library that was to be used for their Wii titles. In Feb 2008 to Aug 2008 Full Fat were asked to work on Littlest Pet Shop (LPS) with EA. We created 12 out of the 16 minigames on Wii/PC and were in charge of the PC build. Upon completion of LPS, work started on Jambo Safari! Wii for SEGA, using some of the internal library stated previously. On Jambo I was involved in most of the core systems such as the video interface, initial sound code, scripting (missions plus script-to-game code and the PC-side mission editor), memory management, some gameplay mechanics, controller/gesture code, DVD/Home Menu/Controller TRC compliance and the PC-to-Wii networked tools.

Independent Work Date: Jan 2004 – August 2007

Duties: Working as an independent developer. The main drive of the work was to fill various holes in my knowledge of game development and the tool pipelines seen in most top end development companies. This covered a wide range of topics such as graphics, animation, scripting, sound and physics. I feel this made me a much rounder individual and was a much needed learning experience after being involved in only network related work previously. For more information visit http://john.HiddenNetwork.co.uk

Name of Contractor: THQ (UK office) / GameOps Date: 3 month contract in 2004

Duties: This was some contract work I did after being contacted by an agency owned by a co-worker when I was at Empire. Essentially the brief was that THQ Europe offices were going to set up a new budget range to re-release many of their PC games. They wanted a custom menu to pop up to help customers install the title check out any patches/FAQs/PDF Manuals/Websites for that game and also to advertise any new games releases or anything along the lines of PR/promotion. For this I created a custom menu executable along with a hard coded script syntax, that was placed into a root level text file, which allowed them to create the menus, buttons and their actions/link themselves. Initially I created about 8 menus for the games they sent me, which gave them the examples they needed to create any others on their own without my help.

Name of Employer: Blitz Games Date: Jan 2002 – Sept 2003

Duties: Network Programmer - I was hired to start work on a networked version of the already released Xbox launch game - Fusion Frenzy. It was to be given out as a single level demo when Xbox:Live launched. This was also going to be the basis for the network code in the in-development, unannounced, Fusion Frenzy 2. Unfortunately after 2 months both projects were canned by Microsoft, so work began on other project for primary release on all 4 platforms (PS2/GC/Xbox/PC) again with network support. This title was in development for about 6 months, and was to be published by Midway, sadly this title was also canned.

After this, I moved up to the in-house Engine/Tools team to start properly building the cross-platform network library for use on all platforms which would be utilised by the in-house development teams, within the engine named 'Babel'.

Name of Employer: Midas Interactive \ IEL Date: Start of April 2001 – December 2001

Duties: Junior Programmer - I was assigned to updating and adding an online menu system for Castrol Honda. I wrote a complete menu system, that had control for many features seen in typical Windows programs (push buttons, scroll bars, mouse over help etc). I used this system to then gather information about servers, the players and groups online using the various DirectPlay protocols (IPX, TCP/IP) and display them in a menu and enable the user to connect, update and set various game controls. After this I worked on PS1 English conversions for 3 Japanese games.

Name of Employer: Empire Interactive Date: July 1999 - End of March 2001

Duties: Lead Tester - I was lead tester on Pro Pinball: Fantastic Journey (PC\PSX), The Longest Journey (PC), Battle of Britain (PC), SpeedBall 2100 (PSX) and Pro Pinball: Trilogy for the Dreamcast. I have also worked as a tester on many other games; International Cricket Captain 2, MiG Alley, Sega Rally 2, Ford Racing(PSX\PC), Wargamer, Comanche vs Hokum, International Cricket Captain 2000, Spin Jam(PSX), PipeMania 3D (PSX), Sheep(PC\PSX) and Victorious Boxers (PS2). My jobs included writing test plans for games that were about to come into testing, keeping in constant touch with developers, making sure what versions were on the way, and having meetings about the current bugs that were open. Checking what parts of the games that needed to be tested and by what tester, and managed up to five other testers at any one time.