About Me
Game Design and System Development
Hi! I'm Josh and I am currently a Game Design and Development student at RIT graduating in December 2024. I have been programming and working with game engines in both an educational and personal setting for over 8 years, and have many experiences leading teams through developing games. I have excelled at my classes here at RIT where, instead of simply being content with the skills I had, I constantly challenge myself to go above and beyond.
My introduction to programming was during 2015 through making mods for games such as Minecraft and Terraria, and I was able to teach myself the basics of languages such as Java and C++. Since then I have learned even more languages such as C#, HTML, JavaScript, and GLSL. I have also become very proficient with the Unity and Unreal engines as well as a plethora of other tools. If you have any questions or want to get to know me better feel free to contact me!
My Projects and Experience
Risk of Rain: Thalassophobia
Shattered Seasons is a professional level proof of concept/game demo. It was completed for the Magic Maker program at RIT. Myself along with three other students were hired to manage and make a game of our own design using industry methods like Agile. It was an incredible learning experience and we were able to make something both us and the shareholders in the project were proud of.
For this project I was the lead programmer focusing on mechanics and underlying systems within the game. These includes systems such as obtaining items and weapons, enemy spawning, enemy behaviors, weapon behaviors, player movement, player stats, level transitions, and level up behavior. I also created the interfaces that allowed my teammates to efficiently design levels and waves of enemies.
Shattered Seasons
Thalassophobia is an expansive content mod for the popular game Risk of Rain 2. This is a passion project and the biggest mod for any game I have ever created. All versions of Thalassophobia have had over 100,000 downloads, and the experience has been incredible for learning and practice with my coding skills
I am in charge of the entire project. I have friends that help brainstorm ideas and do some flavor text writing, but all programming and design is done by me. This has given me lots of experience with professional level code and I was able to master the game's mechanics and systems.
Into My World
Into My World is a game developed by Dedalus Software House designed to help diagnose and treat symptoms of autism by allowing doctors to monitor the player's actions and choices. For my internship with Dedalus, I lived in Italy for two months while developing games for them. This was an incredible experience for me as I got to work with medical professionals and software developers to create something that would be able to help a lot of people.
During my stay in Italy, I worked as a lead on a team of other interns from RIT. Together we designed, developed, and implemented a new level into the game. This mainly consisted of writing scripts for new mechanics, making the level look appealing, and creating new user interface elements. The other interns were far less experienced than me concerning game development, so in addition to managing tasks and communicating with our superiors as a lead, I also taught the other interns advanced concepts in Unity and C#.
Changeling
Changeling is a virtual reality narrative mystery game developed by RIT in the Unreal Engine where the main character explores dreamscapes and solves puzzles. The website for the game can be found at changelingvr.com.
As the lead backend developer my tasks included developing new mechanics, optimizing the game, working with the tech art team to implement effects, and fixing bugs for other teams on the project. I also managed the tasks of my team and assisted other team members whenever possible. Because of the nature of the game being in virtual reality and exploring surreal areas there were many challenges in development for us. However we were able to overcome these obstacles and create a game that was well optimized, bug free, and looked great in virtual reality.
My Skills and Experience
Please contact me if you would like any code samples or more info
My skills and areas of expertise include:
C#
C++
Java
Unity
Unreal
Shaders
GLSL
Graphics Pipelines
DX11 / DX12
If have countless hours of experience both at a level above school and personally working with and creating many different kinds of games, systems, and mechanics. Some of these include:
Rendering using DX11
FPS mechanics and movement
2D camera positioning and scaling across multiple resolutions
Physics based collision and interactions
3D camera positioning and movement
Responsive and intuitive UI
Procedural generation
Tooling
Creating custom editors in Unity
Animation effected by gameplay
While these lists are not exhaustive I feel they help highlight some of what I can do.
Contact Me
267-245-2180
joshtclark7@gmail.com
Feel free to call or email me at the below number and address. I'll try to respond as quick as I can!