Greetings. My name is Michael Schoonmaker, and this is my personal website. You can peruse my resume or just contact me with questions, concerns, quips, qualms, or other queries, yet like Inigo Montoya, "Let me 'splain. ... No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

I've been developing computer games independently for about 3 years as a Bucknellian, and even created a game engine focused around rapid prototyping to help me. Now a graduate with a newly-minted BA in Computer Science and Music, I'd like to think I'm off to a great start in joining the professional game development community. In fact, I'm also a graduate of the Jedi Academy at Lucasfilm in San Francisco, CA. Now it's onto a career as a Software Engineer for 38 Studios, a gaming start-up in Maynard, MA. I love the video games industry.

I'm a habital networker and I adore public speaking - I even competed back in high school. For now, these two hobbies have surfaced in the form of my attendance of Postmortems and a GDC in San Francisco, as well as teaching college students ways they can get involved in game development before they leave the classroom behind. I met my fiancée at Bucknell, I remain closely tied to Academia, and I look forward to the ways in which I can help students in the future.

While I haven't decided on the best forum, I have a few projects in the works to be released to the public in the future. For one, I expect the engine I created in college might be of use to others, so even if it lacks documentation - it'll be worth sharing. I also may or may not be working on some corporate-grade file sharing solutions in the line of NeoModus Direct Connect...

For those of you interested, here's my LinkedIn profile.

Cheers,

Michael R. Schoonmaker
Michael R. Schoonmaker

1440 Moosic Drive, Chambersburg, PA

Email: schoon@theschoon.com

Phone: (717)360-0797

Website: http://theschoon.com

Education

BA in Computer Science and Music2004 - 2008

Bucknell University — Lewisburg, PA

Industry Experience

Software EngineerOct 2008 — Present

38 Studios — Maynard, MA

  • Working with a team of engineers to construct a world-class MMO
  • Collaborating to architect gameplay systems

Core Engineering InternJune 2008 — Aug 2008

LucasArts — San Francisco, CA

  • Worked with other engineers to optimize builds via explicit template instantiation and removing unnecessary includes
  • Built tools in C# to aid in the build optimization process
  • Analyzed the benefits of XAudio's xWMA compression format as an alternative to XMA2
  • Designed an audio subsystem to interface with Havok for triggering sound cues
  • Attended speaker series of upper management from Lucasfilm, Ltd. and its subsidiaries as a member of the Jedi Academy

Quality Assurance InternMay 2007 — Aug 2007

Destineer — Minneapolis, MN

  • Evaluated bugs in games under development
  • Met with producers, designers, and developers to maintain the integrity of games' designs throughout the development process
  • Studied organizational structure and publishing time lines

Personal Projects

"Digitizing Fun"Independent, Feb 2008

A presentation series on developing games in college oriented toward CS students

SpaghettiNodes4-person team, Oct 2007 — Mar 2008

Designed, led the team, and currently hold copyrights to the code for POC file-sharing software focused on security, privacy, and community-based authentication

theSchoon.comIndependent, June 2007 — Present

XHTML 1.0 Transitional standards-compliant website built with PHP, MySQL, and CSS

SLEngineIndependent, May 2007 – May 2008

Cross-platform game engine intended for use in rapid prototyping built in C++ on top of the Simple DirectMedia Layer and OpenGL

Proficiencies

Languages and SDKs

C++: 3 yearsMay 2005 — Present

OpenGL: 3 yearsMay 2005 — Present

Windows SDK: 1 yearJan 2007 — Present

C#: 3 monthsJun 2008 — Present

Java: 4 yearsSept 2004 — May 2008

Simple DirectMedia Layer: 1 yearMay 2007 — May 2008

Lua: 1 monthMay 2008

Python: 1 monthMay 2008

Smalltalk: 8 monthsSept 2007 — April 2008

C: 4 monthsSept 2007 — Dec 2007

Haskell: 4 monthsSept 2005 — Dec 2005

Web Development

XHTML: 1.5 yearsMay 2007 — Present

CSS: 1.5 yearsMay 2007 — Present

PHP: 1 yearSept 2007 — Present

Wordpress CMS: 1 yearSept 2007 — Present

Seaside: 8 monthsSept 2007 — April 2008

Operating Systems

DOS: 14 years off and on1996 — Present

Windows 3.1+: 13 years1997 — Present

Mac OSX: 4 yearsJan 2004 — Present

Debian Linux: 2 yearsSept 2006 — Present

Arch Linux: 1 yearMay 2007 — May 2008

Mac OS 9: 4 monthsJan 2004 — May 2004

Projects

This is a running list of all my various projects. I apologize at the sparcity, but most of my work has either been in research (which is hard to present), or put towards commercial products. I refuse to link up commercial products as "projects" because they were built with very talented teams — it would be wrong to take more than the miniscule morsel of credit that I may actually deserve.

Contact

Feel free to drop me a line. I tend to be really good about responding, so type away!