Paul Baker

Lead Programmer · GOATi Outsourcing

• Web

A browser-based creature-collection game — breed creatures, build a village, and compete in a set of arcade mini-games: a pinball table, a Galaga-style shooter, and a Breakout-style game with its own level editor, all in Unity WebGL. I joined as Lead Programmer to take the game client from prototype to production — bringing in an MVC architecture and unit testing, leading a backend programmer and mentoring a junior Unity programmer — and built the game modes, the mini-games and the FMOD audio.

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Gameplay Programmer · GOATi Entertainment

• PC
• Steam

An "RTS-racer" — realistic physics-based future racing crossed with real-time strategy: manage resources, retune your car mid-race, and fight team-vs-team for control of track sectors. Built on RevGen, GOATi's in-house C++/Lua engine. I owned gameplay and race modes, the GUI (hub, menus, HUD), tutorials and FMOD audio — and built the in-game 3D spline-based track editor, mid-race tuning and the race-rules editor.

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Gameplay Programmer · GOATi Entertainment

• PC

A serious driving simulator built to reduce road trauma — scenario-based training in road rules, vehicle control and hazard perception, driven with a real steering wheel and pedals and used across schools, TAFEs and government road-safety programs. I worked on the steering-wheel and pedal input and the interface.

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Lead Programmer · Three Phase Interactive

• PC
• Mac
• Linux
• Steam

Build a spaceship and fly a mission — then your crew mutinies and steals it, and you design a new ship to hunt down your old one. A 2D physics space game with a deep modular ship editor (Unity C#, FMOD). I was lead programmer, project manager and marketing/PR. Funding was a whole-team effort totalling A$208,088 — a A$43,088 Kickstarter from 941 backers, a A$60,000 Film Victoria grant and A$105,000 of Screen Australia production investment — and I was on point for the Kickstarter, Steam Greenlight and Film Victoria. The modular ship editor and the adaptive music are the parts I'm proudest of.

• Winner Overall Excellence — Unite Melbourne, 2015 ↗
• Nominee Innovation — Australian Game Developer Awards, 2016 ↗

Steam ↗

Sole Programmer & PM · Three Phase Interactive

• iOS
• Android
• Windows Phone

A physics-based stunt-jump game: you draw the ramp, then manage your speed and in-air balance to land the jump. You play a Hollywood stuntman reliving his career as it flashes before his eyes — 80-plus levels across three worlds, riding everything from bikes to monster trucks kitted out with nitrous, ejector seats and car parachutes. I was the sole programmer — Unity C# and FMOD — plus project manager and the studio contact for external marketing, audio and localisation, and ran support and social.

Trailer ↗

Principal Programmer, Combat · Blue Tongue Entertainment / THQ

• Wii

A co-op brawler spun off from the animated series, starring super-deformed versions of Iron Man, Hulk, Wolverine, Thor and the wider Marvel roster. Two heroes punch through waves of enemies with drop-in co-op and on-the-fly character swapping, and the same roster carries into a free-for-all versus mode. I ran the three-person combat sub-team and owned the brawler system — its technical design and the property / attack-combo editing tool that gave every hero its own moveset — and was acting lead for a period.

Senior Programmer · Blue Tongue Entertainment / THQ

• PS2

A 2D side-scrolling platformer based on Nickelodeon's cartoon: Manny Rivera hits his belt buckle to become El Tigre, a were-jaguar luchador, and runs, jumps and brawls through Miracle City for Macho Points — with time-trial stages where the clock only extends if you keep grabbing tacos, and bosses that chase you the length of a level. A nine-month project that passed Sony's PS2 certification first submission, with no bugs raised. I handled gameplay programming, bug-fixing and technical support for the content team.

Senior Programmer · Blue Tongue Entertainment / THQ

• PS2
• Wii

The third Nicktoons crossover, and the biggest roster — around a dozen of them against Professor Calamitous and his toy-robot army. You take most levels as a pair of heroes, swapping between them, and climb into a Jimmy Neutron-built mech suit for the rest, fighting through Bikini Bottom, Amity Park, Fairy World and the Toybot Factory itself. I built players, weapons and visual effects, integrated code from other internal teams, and ported a level to Xbox 360 including soft particles.

Senior Programmer · Blue Tongue Entertainment / THQ

• PS2
• GameCube

The second crossover, stranding the Nicktoons on a volcanic island and widening the roster to their sidekicks — SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy, Danny Phantom and Sam, Timmy Turner. Each carries one ability nobody else has, so a ghostly barrier needs Danny's phantom form, a wide gap needs Timmy's fairy flight, a far-off switch needs SpongeBob's bubbles; you switch at will and a friend can take the heroes you're not using. I worked on players, weapons and pickups; visual effects and a material editor; an AI network editor; background autosaving; and Perforce support.

Senior Programmer · Blue Tongue Entertainment / THQ

• PS2
• GameCube

The first Nicktoons crossover: SpongeBob, Danny Phantom, Timmy Turner and Jimmy Neutron team up across each other's worlds. All four are on screen at once and you swap between them freely, the AI driving whoever you aren't — each hero's signature power opens a different obstacle, so progress is a puzzle of bringing the right one to it. Up to four can play. I rolled out Perforce and a branching workflow, and built entities, weapons, visual effects and a material editor, the save-game system, TRC compliance and technical documentation.

Software Engineer · Blue Tongue Entertainment / THQ

• PS2
• GameCube
• PC

An action-adventure tie-in to the Robert Zemeckis / Tom Hanks film, retracing the midnight train journey to the North Pole across six chapters of platforming, present-hunting, puzzles and vehicle set-pieces — with the film's bit-part Scrooge puppet promoted to villain, stealing the children's tickets to get them thrown off the train. I did early prototyping and solely owned three of the set-pieces: the runaway observation car, tilted on its brake wheel to dodge oncoming traffic downhill; the pneumatic tubes under the North Pole, switching gates on colour cues; and the zeppelin, flown over the city past bridges and balloons. I also added the GameCube build late on — the one Blue Tongue game built on RenderWare rather than the in-house engine.

Gameplay Programmer · GOATi Entertainment

• PC

GOATi's follow-up to 22, and a platform rather than a single game — pitched as a “Roblox of racing”, where the in-game creation tools that were one feature of 22 become the whole product. Track and race builders, licensed real-world manufacturers alongside fantasy ones, everything from cars and bikes to karts, drones and maglev, and modes running from sim through arcade to party. I built all of the in-game tools, reworked vehicle physics, input, sound and GUI, and added in-vehicle dashboard clusters, gear sticks, screens and HUDs.

GOATi ↗

Gameplay Programmer · GOATi Entertainment

• PC

A promotional experience for Honda Australia, built on the 22 codebase: Mount Panorama, the Civic Type R, and a fixed time window in which to set the fastest lap you could. I did all of the non-engine/rendering programming — vehicle physics, input, sound and GUI, tuned to suit a real car on a real circuit.

Lead Programmer · Blue Tongue Entertainment / THQ

• PS3
• Xbox 360
• Wii

A four-player platform fighter in the vein of Super Smash Bros. and Power Stone — caricatured WWE superstars battling in the destructible arenas of "Brawl City". Blue Tongue's final project; unveiled at WWE's 2011 partner summit but cancelled as THQ wound the studio down. I led the engineering team as it grew from eight to sixteen: hiring and performance management, technical design and review, roadmap ownership, and cross-studio technology sharing within THQ.

The story ↗

Software Engineer · OzXCorp

• Web
• Cloud
• Edge

I'm back on Ecosite — the off-grid site-facility telemetry platform — and this time I own it end to end, from the edge devices through the cloud services to the web front end.

Site ↗

Senior Software Engineer · OzX Corp

• Web
• Cloud

The software behind a fleet of off-grid, solar-powered site facilities — self-contained units hired out to construction and mining projects. Each reports home over IoT: solar yield, battery state of charge, and fresh, grey and waste water tank levels, so an operator can see across remote sites without driving to them. I worked under the project's software architect on requirements and planning, the web app and the cloud microservices behind it — with a heavy focus on automated testing.

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