Resume' for Gregg A. Tavares
1999-01-01
What I'm looking for
I'm looking for a position to make fantastically great games. Nobody likes to make mediocre games. They are too much work to make to have them come out mediocre. To make great games requires commitment at all levels of the company from management on down and requires that the team members all be talented individuals. My goal is to find a company that is committed to making great games, has the knowledge, experience and resources to do so and to contribute my talents to that endeavor.
My dream position would be what I call a Game Director. Similar to a movie director a game director carries the vision of the game. He takes input from the various team members and proceeds to lead the team to make a AAA title though his leadership, vision, knowledge and attention to detail.
Short of that position a leadership / management position where I can use my 19 years of game making experience to bring about the best in all titles I have influence over.
Skills and Experience
VP of Product Development
From 1995 to 1998 I was VP of Product Development at Big Grub Inc. As VP of Product Development I oversaw the development of the entire project including hiring, leading the design, pitching to prospective publishers, evaluating, selecting, purchasing all equipment and services including both employee equipment, (computers, software, furniture) and also office equipment/services (printers, server, networking, ISPs, phone systems, etc).
Technical Director
From 1995 to 1998 I was Technical Director at Big Grub. As Technical Director I was responsible for all the technical details of a 16 person project for both Playstation and Windows platforms. I created the technical design spec including detailing all risks and workarounds. I managed the other programmers on the team and made all technical decisions regarding the project. I was also responsible for setting up and maintaining all employees' computers (both Mac and PC) as well as company network servers (both NT and Linux), e-mail servers, internet connection, backup systems, Mac integration for the music department etc.)
Lead Designer
From 1995 to 1998 I was also Lead Designer at Big Grub. Using my design experience from previous games, especially M.C Kids where I was a co-designer and also Gex, I wrote the design documents, laid out the world maps, assigned and placed all themes, monsters, bosses, items, events, and puzzles and organized the design around both a best case and worse case schedule so that even if all the stages could not be created there would be a coherent game ready to ship by the deadline.
Lead Programmer
I've been the lead programmer on 5 products. I've lead teams of up to 25 people through all things technical. I've created entire game engines including 2D and 3D. I've designed and created level layout tools both for 2D and 3D. My 2D tools (tUME) were used industry wide by as many as 60 different companies all over the world. Unlike most programmers I actually have at least some artistic talent. This ability has let me interface well with artists and therefore find ways to make their jobs easier and more efficient than most programmers. Where most programmers will say "No", I have always strived to find ways to achieve the effects and high levels of graphic realism the artists desire to create.
Programmer
As a programmer I have extensive experience in C and C++ as well as a variety of software and technologies. I've written plugins and/or tools for most of the major 3D packages including 3D Studio Max, Softimage, Alias PowerAnimator and Lightwave. I've programmed with various APIs including DirectX, MFC, Quicktime, and many others. A comment I've often heard is that my code is, unlike many programmers, easy to read, easy to use, easy to integrate, and well written and I know when to keep it simple. I'm also familiar with Flash, Photoshop, Actionscript, Perl, Lisp, Scheme, HTML, CSS, and many other technologies, languages and applications. You can see some of my work in perl based on my website (
www.greggman.com) which is entirely perl based to be automated, template driven, and updateable from anywhere.
More Information
I can of course provide references etc. Other achievements: I have given talks at the Game Developers Conference. Although I am not in any way an open source fanatic I do have a couple of open source projects online. One is tUME (
http://members.aol.com/opentume/) The other is a set of libraries (
http://elibs.sourceforge.net). I have also contributed to a few including JWPce (a Japanese word processor for Windows CE) and Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar (an infinitely more useful tool than the google bar). I have one shareware product which I maintain and support (
http://greggman.com/thumbs/). And I have a couple of freeware products (
http://greggman.com/nostalgic/) and (
http://greggman.com/shorts/). I am also one of the 2 sys admins and a contributor to Tokyopia.com, a site about games and life in Tokyo
If you are interested in my personal website you will find it at greggman.com. You will find that it is quite large for a personal website. I have over 1400 articles on various topics including many on what it takes to make games, design games and also my personal history. I often get e-mail from kids and adults alike about making games and the game industry and I always make time to answer them to the best of my ability. A few of the many pages that are relevant to my job experience are:
* Games-O-The-Greggman
(
http://www.greggman.com/pages/gameso.htm)
* M.C. Kids
(
http://www.greggman.com/games/mckids.htm)
* Questions and Answers of the Greggman
(
http://www.greggman.com/pages/qanda.htm)
* tUME - The Universal Map Editor
(
http://www.greggman.com/pages/tume.htm)
* Making Games
(
http://www.greggman.com/pages/making.htm)
* Greggman.com Forum
(
http://www.greggman.com/forum.htm)
Work History
05/02-......
Wow Entertainment, Sega of Japan, Tokyo, Japan
* Programmed 3D game tools, engine and previewer to create levels and 3D real time cutscenes.
Features
o Designers and Artists can generate levels or cutscenes with little to no programmer intervention including camera, lights, effects and game and non-game objects.
o Cross platform, will generate data for any platform. PS2, Gamecube, XBox etc.
o Cross tool compatible. Can use data from 3D Studio Max, Maya, Softimage and mix and match
o Data is used directly from source 3D files (.3ds, .max, .mb, .hrc). No need for artist to export the data which usually leads to the problem of the artist forgetting which file the exported data came from.
o Startable from web brower to make it extremely easy for designers and artists to use.
o Conversion errors (missing textures, concave polygons, etc) do not stop build process. Once level/scene is finished any object that had errors is tagged, displayed in red inside the game or previewer and the errors for that particular object are displayable including going as far as marking particular polygons to show artists exactly what they need to fix.
o Designed to allow editing on target console. Load up the game and edit inside the game.
o Data format is directly readable as one large file providing shortest possible load times and possible spooling during game
These tools are considered Wow's Revolution. Before I created them Wow did everything by hand.
03/99-06/00 Naughty Dog, Inc., Santa Monica, California
* Programmed CTR: Crash Team Racing for Sony Playstation. Sold 2.5+ million units world wide.
o Designed and programmed A.I for NPCs
o Designed and programmed all glue/option screens
o Programmed all memory card functions which were entirely asynchronous
o Programmed ghost car recording and playback.
* Programmed Jak and Daxter on Sony Playstation 2.
o Designed and programmed effect system
o Designed and programmed enemy A.I system
06/98-03/99 Sega of Japan, Tokyo, Japan
* Programmed Zombie Revenge for Naomi Arcade System
* Programmed 3D export tools for 3D Studio Max, Alias PowerAnimator and Lightwave.
02/98-05/98 Shiny Entertainment, Laguna Beach, California
* Programmed Wild9 for Sony Playstation
02/95-01/98
Big Grub, Irvine, California
* Technical Director and VP of Product Development
* Created action adventure game for MGM for the Win95, Sony Playstation
05/95-01/96
Seven, Irvine, California
* Technical Director and VP of Product Development
* Lead Programmer on Disruptor. 2 million polygons per level at 30hz on the Panasonic M2
06/93-04/95
Crystal Dynamics, Palo Alto, California
* Lead Programmer on GEX, the first 32-bit platform game. Direct competition for Mario, Sonic
* Designed 2D game and animation tool. Most powerful and flexible tool of its type in the industry
* Wrote Full Motion Video routines for Crash N Burn for 3DO platform
* Designed code libraries for product portability across 3DO, Sony PSX and Sega Saturn
01/92-06/93
Echidna, Costa Mesa, California (Partner)
* Sold and updated tUME as a game development tool used throughout the industry
* Lead Programmer on Robocop VS. Terminator for the NES
* Lead Programmer on MY Paint for the Sega-CD
05/90-01/92
Virgin Games, Irvine, California
* Co-Designed and was lead programmer of M.C. Kids for the NES. Written in 8 months.
* Setup and maintained Local Area Network for Product Development
* Wrote computer logic for Spot IBM.
* Wrote Bolderdash type game for GameBoy in two weeks with no prior GameBoy or Z80 knowledge.
11/89-05/90
L.I.V.E. Studios, San Juan Capistrano, California
* Co-Programmed and helped design various "simple" games to be sold together as a package "Future Classics".
* Co-Created IBM/Amiga development system for all types of products. (Arcade, RPG, Tools, Productivity.)
09/88-03/89
Cinemaware Corp., Westlake Village, California
* Worked on IBM "TV Sports Football".
* Co-created "Lords of the Rising Sun" for the Amiga. Winner of many awards and listed in CGW's top ten games.
11/85-01/88 MicroProse Software, Hunt Valley, Maryland
* Created cassette versions of "Decision in the Desert" and "Crusade in Europe."
* Created data compression tools for "Conflict in Vietnam."
* Co-programmed and designed "Gunship" for C64. Partially programmed "Gunship" for IBM, Atari ST & Amiga. "Gunship" is one of the most successful simulations of all time. It is listed in CGW's Hall of Fame as one of the most highly rated games of all time.
* Created animation system and tools for IBM "Pirates!" along with compression utilities to make it all fit on one disk. "Pirates!" is also listed in the CGW Hall of Fame.
* Created animation system and tools for C64 "Red Storm Rising." Also listed in CGW top ten games.
01/85-07/85 M.U.S.E., Baltimore, Maryland
* Co-designed and programmed children's learning game "Leaps and Bounds."
06/83-06/84 Designer Software, Anaheim, California
* Converted "Centipede" from Atari 800 to C64 in six weeks with no prior C64 experience.
* Created "Mario-Bros" for the C64 for Atarisoft.
Honors:
* First Place in Santa Ana College Computer competition 1981
* Third Place in Anaheim High School District Computer competition 1983
* Award of achievement in the field of computer programming from Bank of America
Personal:
* single, male, 37, play video games, study Japanese, collect music, children's books, watches, stuffed animals.
