STEPHEN H. CLARKE-WILLSON, Ph.D.

21916 NE 20th Way, Sammamish, WA 98074

Phone:  (425) 281-2696

E-mail:  Stephen@above-the-garage.com

 

 

OBJECTIVE

 

Technology Development, primarily C/C++

 

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

 

ArenaNet,  Bellevue, WASammamish                                                                                                    9/2005 – Present

Server Programmer

  • Develop restartable, dynamically updatable, multi-threaded, asynchronous, near-real-time, continuously running, error free highly optimized support servers for Guild Wars.

 

Above the Garage Productions, Sammamish, WASammamish                                                     5/2004 – 9/2005

Game Technology Developer

  • Thread-safe multiprocessor execution profile tool for Gas Powered Games
  • Downloadable music system (payment system, database, file server, embedded C++ DRM player, etc.) using Microsoft DRM technology.  Online and selling music now at http://www.directsong.com.

 

Amaze Entertainment -  Adrenium Games Studio, Kirkland, WA                                                   1/2000 – 5/2004

Vice President and Executive Studio Director

  • Developed Adrenium Games as a new studio within Amaze Entertainment focused on console development (PS2, Xbox, GC)
  • Responsible for hiring and reviewing 70+ full-time staff across Adrenium and Black Ship studios
  • Responsible for managing core technology group, which developed a fully general, cross-platform game engine (no middleware), which Activision rated in the top 5% of engines they had seen
  • Responsible for game development process across design, art, programming and sound/music. 
  • Developed Azurik:  Rise of Perathia for Xbox launch (Microsoft); Samurai Jack for PS2, GC (Sega); Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events for PS2, GC, Xbox (Activision). 

  

Amaze Entertainment - Black Ship Games, Kirkland, WA                                                                5/2003 – 5/2004

Head of R&D

Digimon Rumble Arena 2 (PS2, Xbox, GC)

  • Responsible for product development within Black Ship Games, an Amaze studio that focused on console development for Asian publishers

 

Cavedog Entertainment, Bothell, WA                                                                                                        3/1998 – 12/1999              

Sr. Lead Client Programmer

Total Annihilation, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, Amen:  The Awakening (PC)

  • Interface programming and project management for ‘Boneyards’ online matchmaking system for Total Annihilation and Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
  • Lead Developer for Kingdoms 2.0 upgrade which resulted in 2x-7x performance improvement over version 1.0 (and the entire project only took five weeks!)
  • Compatibility programming for Amen: The Awakening graphics (ported DX6 implementation to about 20 different video cards)

 

Above the Garage Productions, Sammamish, WASammamish                                                      4/1994 – 2/1998 

Game Technology Developer (Consulting)

  • Developed new 32-bit game engine (SuperSet™) for Windows
  • Programmed all low-level game services using Microsoft Direct3D, DirectSound, DirectInput; complete collision and motion system; scripting language; integrated game layout editor
  • Developed multiple applications using the SuperSet engine for multiple clients
  • 3D Hardware Analysis:  in-house experience with all major 3D accelerators (some that never shipped) including 3Dfx Voodoo 1/2, Rendition V1000 and V2100, Oak Technology Warp 5, PowerVR 1&2; ATI Rage I/II/Pro; S3 Virge (VX/DX/GX/GX2), Nvidia Riva 128, TNT, TNT2, and others (basically everything through DX6)
  • Consulting: Intervista Software - Direct3D and S3 graphics implementation (complete conversion from D3D Retained Mode / Immediate Mode in six months to S3 hardware) for VRML 2.0 Browser (millions of copies distributed by Microsoft with Internet Explorer 4.0)
  • Other clients included Virgin Sound and Vision, DreamCatcher Interactive, Extreme Audio Reality, Cavedog Entertainment

 

Virgin Interactive Entertainment Inc., Irvine, CA                                                                         1990 – 1994   

Vice President, Worldwide Product Development

  • Expanded product development staff from four producers, three programmers, and one artist (total eight staff) to180 staff worldwide in three locations (Irvine, Las Vegas, and London)
  • Additionally supervised $10M in external product development worldwide
  • Three-quarters of the company reported to me
  • Gross (wholesale) sales increased from approx. $30M to $180M in 3 1/2 years
  • Key products produced by the internal studios included Disney’s Aladdin for Sega Genesis (4.0M units), Disney’s Jungle Book for SNES and Genesis, and Demolition Man for 3DO, a groundbreaking product incorporating specially shot, live footage of Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes
  • The internal studios in Irvine, which I supervised, accounted for about half of all revenue generated, worldwide
  • Instrumental in the acquisition of Westwood Studios
  • Supervised budgets at Westwood Studios

Producer 

  • Products produced or executive produced included "Global Gladiators" [Product of the Year award from Sega], "The Seventh Guest" [1.5M unit CD-ROM virtual reality game], "Cool Spot" [one of the five highest rated games ever according to Sega's own rating system, approximately 1M units worldwide]; "Double Dragon" [a defect-free product (no A, B, or C class bugs) according to Sega's own testing]; "Monopoly Deluxe" for Windows and DOS [several hundred thousand units]; and many others

                               

PDA Engineering (Patran Division), Costa Mesa, CA                                                                                  1988 – 1989 

Software Architect

  • Software architect for Patran-3 MCAE (Mechanical Computer Aided Engineering) software system
  • Designed all high level module interfaces for 3-D MCAE system portable across five workstation vendors (SGI, Dec, Sun, HP/Apollo), including vendor-specific accelerated graphics processing, and interface to SQL database system
  • Also project manager for "Core" (portable I/O, Graphics, GUI and Database) subsystems.  (Total system size:  2M lines of code)

 

Northrop Research and Technology Center, Hawthorne, CA                                                                  1986 – 1988 

Research Scientist

  • 3-D modeling and image processing for Advanced Technology Bomber ("Stealth") target acquisition on SGI equipment
  • Served on Corporate Software Practices Committee reporting to the president of Northrop Corporation, which surveyed software development practices over all seven Northrop divisions

 

Contract Programming   (while pursuing Ph.D.)                                                                                            1981 – 1986

  • Free-format editor for DayFlo free-form database system (C/PC); tiny Basic interpreter written in Tiny C (plus assembly language) for Z80; Ada Library manager for Irvine Compiler Corp.

 

Lab Manager, UC Irvine                                                                                                                                       1977 – 1981

  • Maintain mini-computer lab for Department of Information and Computer Science, UC Irvine, and implement various projects for the department, including:  Port of UCSD Pascal P-System from PDP-11 to Lockheed SUE computer (completely in binary – no source changes); maintain Varian 620 hardware; Lockheed Sue hardware; Distributed Computer Operating System (DCOS) link hardware; various Unix systems; port of “F” editor from MLisp to C (which became basis of DayFlo database editor); Lisp programming; Pascal programming support for various classes; Ada parser in Lisp; Dec-10 programming…

 

                               

EDUCATION

 

University of California, Irvine

Ph.D. in Computer Science; specializing in Software Engineering

M.S. in Computer Science

B.S. in Computer Science (cum laude)

                         

OTHER

 

Juror, Milia d’Or Multimedia Awards, Cannes, France                                                                                      1996