Bernard Ensing

Resume

I am an experienced Game Developer, located in the Bay Area. Over the course of my career I have worked on several titles across PC, console, mobile, and VR platforms.

Employment History

Fantisserie, San Francisco, California (February 2016 to Present)
Mobile App Development,
Working on Fantisserie in Unity.

  • Game Design: Programmed minigames. Wrote dynamic skills system. Created and iterated on First Time User Experience Onboarding. Used Unity 5’s uGUI to create flexible views.

  • Game Development: Implemented AI freeplay behaviors, states and goals. Integrated 3rd party libraries (text-to-speech, HockeyApp crash reporting.) Implemented input filtering for accelerometer.

  • Need another thing here: Wrote unit tests for asset validation. Extended debug menu to display unified data from multiple sources making it cleaner for QA to use. Created initial Maya exporter.

Hackbright Academy, San Francisco, California (January 2017 to April 2017)
Lab Instructor, Intro to Programming (part-time),
I lectured, advised and assisted students in the 12-week Python programming class.

Insomniac Games, Burbank, California (May 2011 to October 2015)
Gameplay Programmer,
Came onboard during the final year of development and shipped Resistance 3 and 2 DLC packs. I went on to help ship Insomniac’s first cross platform title, Fuse. I then shipped Sunset Overdrive an exclusive for Xbox One title and RATCHET & CLANK PS4.

  • Gameplay: Prototyped hero gadget ideas. Worked closely with designers to architect and iterate to find the fun in the collectibles and progression (including skill trees, team perks and XP) systems. Integrated PlayStation®Move controls in Resistance 3.

  • AI: Worked with designers on behaviors for enemies and bosses using decider trees and creating scripting functionality.

  • Systems: Took ownership of Scaleform middleware integration now used as a shared project.

  • User Interface: Sole UI programmer for the HUD, lobby and pause menus. Worked with producers and artists to fix hundreds of must fix localization and TCR/TRC bugs.

Six Degrees Games, Marina Del Rey, California (July 2010 to May 2011)
Flash/Flex Developer,
I developed stand alone experiences and in world experiences as part of the MMO/virtual world Action AllStars. At this startup I worked on a variety of elements including network code, stand alone flash games, and optimizations.

  • Optimized the world to consume 20 to 80% less CPU usage and increased framerate by at least 10% on low end machines.

  • Helped create monthly seasonal content and missions. Including a Box2D physics game that had the highest subscriber conversion rate compared to other upsells.

  • Developed an engine and first mission for inventory, dialog and exploration based game series.

  • Created real time multiplayer tower defense style game.

  • Wrote SQL queries for logging and data entry.

  • Assisted 3rd party developers with debugging and integrating Unity games.

Big Fish Games, Seattle, Washington (May 2007 to July 2010)
Game Developer,
I developed social online casual games with a team of artists, designers, and testers per project as well as programmed any needed tools that were required.

  • Programmed and shipped three Java applet games, six Flash games, and one Java server; all of which stayed in the top 10 most played games for months after their launch. One of which (Unwell Mel) was ported to a successful download title.

  • Delivered projects ahead of schedule despite using new programming languages such as ActionScript3, Java, and Objective-C.

  • Assisted in programming and shipped Amazon: Hidden Expedition for the iPhone/iPad. This was a game featured by Apple for the iPad launch.

  • Assuming the responsibility of lead game developer for a team of five developers. I wrote general technical specifications describing how games would communicate with the back-end severs. During this process I uncovered several potential issues that would have cost the company hundreds of man-hours to resolve. This lead to assisting in integrating the engineering team’s Agile development process into the Game Design team’s work and communication flows helping improve communications between both groups, which had previously been disjointed.

  • Wrote and maintained a dev server environment and improved the team’s build process.

  • Assumed the responsibility of SDET and wrote testing code and QA tools; contributing to having one of the lowest bug counts on the team.

  • Lead the team in emphasizing data mining and wrote several scripts to parse SQL data and released patches based on these user actions that were met with positive customer feedback.

  • Maintained and updated code written by third party contractors.

  • Shipped the Facebook app Treasure Quest, which had over hundreds of thousands of users within its first month.

Education

DigiPen Institute of Technology, Redmond, Washington (2003 – 2007)
Bachelor of Science, Real Time Interactive Simulation (Computer Science)
Minor, Mathematics

Technical Experience

C/C++ (99,11,14), C#, ActionScript 2.0/ 3.0 and MXML (FLASH), Java, Objective-C, Python, Lua, JavaScript, Scaleform, Unreal, Unity, Source SDK, SVN, Perforce, Git, JIRA, DevTrack, Fogbugz, ElectroServer, SmartFox

Shipped Titles

  • Cozmo – Connected Toy – iOS/Android 2016

  • Ratchet And Clank – PS4 2016

  • Sunset Overdrive – Xbox One 2014

  • Fuse – PS3/Xbox 360 2013

  • Resistance 3 – PS3 2011

  • Action AllStars – Online Flash MMO 2010

  • Treasure Quest – Flash for facebook 2010

  • Amazon: Hidden Expedition – iPhone/iPad 2010

  • Team Bingo – Maintained – Flash game and java server for Big Fish Portal 2009

  • SnowGlobe Slots and Looking Glass Slots – Flash game for Big Fish Portal/facebook 2009

  • Diana Fortune and the Lost Temple of Gold – Java applet for Big Fish Portal 2009

  • L.O.B.E. – Java and Flash port game for Big Fish Portal/facebook 2008/2009

  • Unwell Mel – Java and Flash port for Big Fish Portal/facebook 2007/2009 – Download version available.

Independent Projects

  • Trendy Tech CEO – AIR published to iOS/Android/Fire 2015

  • SimpleChart – actionscript open source library for chart drawing available on GitHub 2013

  • Random Joke or Fact – Lua, World of Warcraft plug-in 2010

  • Bikerz Brawl – C# for Xbox 360/PC using XNA 2008

  • Super Squirrel 2 – C++ for PC 2007

Speaker

  • Cozmo: Animation Pipeline for a Physical Robot – GDC 2017

  • Localizing games for a worldwide audience – GaymerX 2015

  • Twine improv – BentCon 2014

  • Board Game Design Workshop – Girltopia for the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles 11/2013

  • Live Game Coding Session – Bent-Con 11/2013

  • Panelist,Being a Woman In Technology – init(together) conference 4/2013