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Robert Christensen

Passionate C#, C++, and Java game programmer with 9+ years experience developing games/mods as a student/hobbyist. Primarily systems and modularity focused, with a broad comfort range including low-level engine work, tools, gameplay/UX, and AI. Always keeping teammates’ needs and quality of life in mind.

Skills

Strong in: C#, Unity, C++, Git, Java, Events/Hooks. Adept at breaking down features and futureproofing.
Some experience with: C, Python, GLSL, Winsock, UML, SVN, Jenkins

Education

Bachelor’s in Game Programming
Graduating May 2023 – Champlain College, Burlington, VT

Prototyped 12+ projects with small interdisciplinary teams, with development times ranging from 4 weeks to 2 semesters. Primarily used Unity or C++, with some SDL, Unreal, Java, and C.

Work Experience

Game History Archivist — Burlington, VT
Sep 2019-Current — Avg. 10 hours per week
Worked with and managed a team of 3-6 archivists, with the mission of restoring old game consoles, digitizing and emulating ROMs, and writing user guides for operating these historical artifacts. Worked with product owner to build backlogs and realistic timelines. Developed and streamlined archival pipelines. Wrote a testing tool to automate verifying the status of emulation setups and ROMs.

SpudLiminal — Team of 12
Sept 2022-May 2023 (26 weeks) — Avg. 14 hours per week
Lead programmer for a physics-based puzzler with exploration elements. Built basic movement, camera system, ballistic arc visualizer. Created achievement and dialogue authoring tools, analytics tools, and build server. Collaborated with other programmers on squish and grab abilities.

Black White Red — Team of 8
Jun-Aug 2022 (10 weeks) — Avg. 10 hours per week
Network and UI programmer for a fast-paced PvP FPS. Built a rollback system from scratch to support player movement, projectile and raycast hit detection, visual smoothing, and host-authoritative anticheat. UI work included kill feed, match management, and goal scoring.

Pumpkin Pals — Team of 11
Mar-May 2022 (8 weeks) — Avg. 12 hours per week
Systems/UI programmer for a farming game with narrative elements. Created an item system, mission system, dialogue system with branching and looping support, and tooltip system. Also served as build engineer, source control manager, and testing liaison.

Lanternbound — Team of 5
Jan-Mar 2022 (2.5 weeks) — 55 hours total
Solo programmer for a survival horror tower defense prototype. Created a callback-based interaction system, grid-based building and pathfinding, combat system, and AI steering and targeting, all supported by a Guava-style event bus.

Adv. Seminar in Game AI — Individual Class Project
Jan-Feb 2022 (2 weeks) — Est. 25 hours total
Developed a component-based context map steering framework. Implemented wander, obstacle avoidance, and flocking algorithms. Created a system for fully-unsupervised tuning based on reinforcement learning principles.

Game Physics — Individual Class Project
Sep-Dec 2021 (15 weeks) — Avg. 8 hours per week
Developed a multithreaded data-oriented physics engine in Unity. Used ECS for rigid-body kinematics and Jobs for collision response.

General Purpose Character & Combat Framework — Independent Project
May-Nov 2021 (22 weeks) — Avg. 15 hours per week
Developed a pair of character controller frameworks: one animation-driven and suited for fighting games; and one script-driven suited for RPGs. Developed a related toolset that displays acceleration curves and can predict jump paths and timings, to reduce level design time. Developed a related event-based combat system.

Game Architecture — Individual Class Project
Jan-May 2021 (15 weeks) — Avg. 12 hours per week
Developed a game framework in C++ using SDL2/Allegro. Used RAII for dynamic module management, asset streaming, and dependency resolution. Created an input system posting both to callbacks and an event bus.

Imperium — Independent Project
Aug-Nov 2020 (9 weeks) — Avg. 8 hours per week
Developed a game framework for Bukkit (Java), based on Unity engine. Worked on core ticker and renderer, error handling, debugging tools, utilities, and networking.

Graphics Programming — Class Project
Nov-Dec 2020 (5 weeks) — 55 hours total
Explored rendering volumes using raymarching, or approximating density using additive-blended particles on a color ramp. Applied to clouds/exhaust, fire, and fractal noise fog.

Project Perception — Team of 11
Jan-Jul 2020 (20 weeks) — Avg. 6 hours per week
Collaborative development of a 2.5D game with combat focus. Worked on goal-oriented AI, dialogue system, tools, and event-driven combat system.

Independent Project in Game Development — Austin, TX
2016-2017 (16 weeks) — 2 hours per week
Using the Bukkit framework, created a modular magic system plugin using combo-style selection controls for Minecraft. Spells dynamically reassignable using reflection to enable user addition of custom spells.

Independent Project in Game Development — Austin, TX
2016 (15 weeks) — 40+ hours
Using the Bukkit framework, created a system in Minecraft to give items commands executed on various triggers, and durability when used in this way. Over 4000 downloads, peaking at about 350/month.