John McFarlane

Personal

Name

John Stuart Alastair McFarlane, MSc

Date of Birth

2nd September 1973

Nationality

Work Status

Authorised to work in US and UK

Driver's Licence

Full, clean UK licence

Vocation

2007 - Present

Surreal Software, Seattle/Bothell/Kirkland, USA

3131 Elliott Ave., Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98121, USA

19801 N Creek Pkwy, Bothell, WA 98011, USA

12131 113th Avenue Northeast, Kirkland, WA 98034, USA

Senior Game Programmer

2006 - 2007

Kuju Entertainment, Brighton, UK

Kuju Brighton, Tower Point 44, North Road, Brighton, BN1 1YR, UK, hr@kuju.com

Senior Programmer

May '06 - January '07

TraXion

PSP, (unpublished)

Designed data-driven GUI library for PSP
Wrote front-end and all other out-of-game interfaces including mp3 catalog/playlist editor

2004 - 2006

Lionhead Studios, Guildford, UK

Black and White Studios, 3-7 Frederick Sanger Road, Surrey Research Park, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7YD, UK, hr@lionhead.com

Senior Programmer

June '04 - September '05

Black & White 2

PC, Electronic Arts

Working on maintaining all aspects of B&W Creature AI system whist adding new modules
ALife-inspired physiological system
Selection system to drive creature attention

October '05 - April '06

Battle of the Gods

B&W2 expansion pack, PC, Electronic Arts

Assumed full responsibility for creature code
Worked closely with art, script, design and tools developers on additions to the creature

2003 - 2004

Euro RSCG Interaction UK, London, UK

Cupola House, 15 Alfred Place, London, WC1E 7EB, UK

Technical Game Designer

December '03 & March '04

Intel IT Manager Game

Macromedia Flash, Promotional, Intel

Assisted web development team in designing their first major interactive title
Designed object oriented data model for ActionScript game code and formalised game-play rules

2002 - 2003

Computer Artworks, Brighton, UK

The Grain Store, 127 Gloucester Road, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 4AF, UK

Senior/Lead Programmer

Spring '02 - Spring '03

A Sound of Thunder

PC/PlayStation 2/Xbox, (unpublished)

Worked with CA's The Thing engine to add a variety of game-play features such inventory items, weapons and NPCs
Built on an existing AI system to introduce new character behaviours and strategies

Spring '03

Alone in the Dark 5

PC/Xbox, Atari (unpublished)

Applied in-game I.K. system to player character weapons aiming

Tidejackers

PlayStation 2, SCI (unpublished)

Programmed Halo-style assistive aim system for player character
Wrote a dynamical systems-inspired movement pattern for in-game fauna

Prototype Projects Team

PC/PlayStation 2/Xbox, Internal

Headed up programming on a small team dedicated to pitching new ideas at publishers
Rapidly converted existing projects into prototypes with unique content and game-play features

Summer '03 - Autumn '03

DJ: Decks & FX

(completed at off-shoot studio, Relentless Software), PlayStation 2, SCEE

Researched and coded a number of audio filters
Built a context-sensitive help system

1997 - 2002

The Creative Assembly, Southwater, UK

Weald House, Southwater Business Park, Southwater, Horsham, West Sussex, RH13 9JB, UK

Junior Programmer / Programmer

Winter '97 - Spring '00

Shogun: Total War

PC, Electronic Arts

Responsible for most of the battle-mode code including soldier/platoon-level AI (flocking, state system, combat system, navigation etc.), networking code (sockets), user interface (all menus, icons, buttons and mouse/keyboard control using DirectInput) and general game code (10,000+ character war engine)
Designed and wrote game-wide audio system (DirectSound)
Added substantial number of in-battle graphical features such as volumetric fog, snow, rain, sky-boxes, seas/rivers, and wild-life (Direct3D)
Created tools such as game launcher and built-in map editor (later to feature in Medieval: Total War)
Shogun: TW went on to win numerous awards and was nominated for the BAFTA for Best PC Game

Summer '00 - Summer '01

The Mongol Invasion/Warlord Edition

Shogun: Total War expansion pack/special edition, PC, Electronic Arts

Continued the work done on the first Total War title by adding new unit types, maps and other content
Improved overall performance and reliability of the Shogun engine, releasing patches and a combined Shogun/Mongol Invasion SKU which won Creative Assembly its first BAFTA (for best music)

Summer '01 - Spring '02

Medieval: Total War

PC, Activision

Added game-side support for many extra factions and unit types
Created system to handle many new permutations of weather conditions and terrain types
Rewrote core networking system to reduce bandwidth

1994 - 1997

Intelligent Research Ltd., London, UK

89 Constantine Road, London, NW3 2LP, UK

Degree Placement / Contracted Programmer

Spent undergraduate degree placement year working for I.R. from home (see below), then continued on with the company for a couple of years
Wrote automated spell-checker module as part of Converse, an NLP project which won the 1997 Loebner Prize Contest
Authored a number of AI projects related to word and number games

1990

AVP, Chepstow, UK

School Hill Centre, Chepstow, Monmouthshire, NP16 5PH, UK

Programmer / Helpline support

Entailed converting educational packages written in BBC BASIC from the BBC Micro to the RM Nimbus platform.

1986 - 1987

BEEBUG, St Albans, UK

BBC Micro user's club and magazine

Contributor

Roller Rally / Roller Coaster

Top-down scrolling Marble Madness clone

Egg Head

Boulder-dash/Repton clone

Extra Curriculum

January - June 2004

Magpie Recycling Cooperative Limited, Brighton, UK

Saunders Park Depot, Saunders Park, Brighton, East Sussex, BN2 4AY, UK

Recycling Collector

Kerbside collection and sorting of household recyclables
Office collection from commercial premises and local university sites
Various on-site responsibilities such as unloading vehicles and bottle baling

April - June 2004

EBITS - East Brighton IT Support, Brighton, UK

Wellsbourne Centre, Whitehawk, Brighton, BN2 5FL, UK

Volunteer

Diagnosing and fixing hardware and software issues on computers brought in by local residents
Assembling parts from old, donated systems into cheap, working computers for people on low incomes
Giving free IT advice in person and over the phone

Education

1996 - 1997

University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

School of Cognitive and Computing Science (COGS)

MSc in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems

1992 - 1996

Middlesex University, Enfield, UK

AI Department, School of Psychology

BSc. (Hons) Artificial Intelligence with Psychology, 2:1

Neural Networks, Artificial Life, Logic and Prologue, Knowledge Engineering, Lisp, POP11; AI Techniques; Recursive Search; Natural Language Processing

Psychology

A selection of AI-related topics including: Language and Thought; Visual Perception and Consciousness of Mind

Technology

Languages

Assembler (6502, 80286/7), BASIC (BBC B, Borland Turbo, Amstrad PCW), C/C++ (Borland Turbo, GCC, Intel, MS-VC++), C#, Cg, HTML/XHTML/CSS, Java, JavaScript, Lisp, Lua, PHP4/5, POP11, Prolog, Python, Shell script (Bash, DOS), SVG, XML/XSLT

IDEs/Source Control

Borland Turbo (Basic, C), Eclipse (Java, CDT), KDevelop (C++), Metrowerks (PS2 C++), MS-VC++ v1.0 - 2010, Perforce, SourceSafe, Subversion, VTune, Xcode (C++)

Operating Systems

Android, BBC Micro^†, CPM^†, FreeBSD 5/6, GNU/Linux (Gentoo, Mandrake, Red Hat, Ubuntu)^†, HP-UX^†, MS-DOS v3 to 7^†, MS-Windows v2.1 to Vista^†, OS X^†, Palm OS, Solaris^†, Symbian, VAX/VMS^†

(^† used as a development platform)

Recreation

With some help, I become a parent a few years ago. Since then I have stopped having interests. Instead, I work in the day and make silly faces by night. Back when I had a life, some of the following is some of what interested me:

Curriculum Vitae

John McFarlane, MSc

Contact

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