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Nathan Mates' Personal Info Pages

Nathan John Mates

Email: nathan.j.mates@gmail.com
Web home page: http://www.matesfamily.org/

LinkedIn page: here

[Resume last updated August 2009]

Objective:
To utilize experience gained as a generalist & firefighter programmer to bring titles to a shippable state and provide post-release support. Able to jump into existing systems and codebases, and safely engineer needed changes, including Xbox 360 TCRs & PS3 TRCs. Portability and security of code are emphasized, without sacrificing speed and memory use.

Programming experience:
Fluent in C/C++, Lua, Perl, 6502/65816 Assembly

Platforms/libraries programmed for:
Consoles: Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony Playstation 3, Sony Playstation 2, Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation, Sega Saturn. Microsoft Windows experience includes DirectX (DirectSound 8, Direct3D 5-9), Winsock, MFC & WTL, Win32, Gamespy libraries. Have used C++ calls to and from Scaleform libraries. Additional experience programming on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux.

Other tools/technology experience:
MS Visual Studio, ProDG, Perforce, Subversion (SVN), CVS

System administration experience:
Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux platforms

Work Experience: (extended detail below)

  • Total Immersion Software: Advanced Programmer, Dec 2009 - present.
  • Pandemic Studios: Programmer / Senior Programmer, 1998 - Nov 2009.
  • Adrenalin Entertainment: Software Engineer, 1996 - 1998
    • Brunswick Circuit Pro Bowling - Playstation 1 (1998), Windows (1998).
    • Ten Pin Alley - Playstation 1 (1996), Windows (1997) Sega Saturn (1997).
  • Scalable Programming Laboratory, Caltech: Staff Programmer, 1994 - 1996
  • SoftDisk Publishing, Inc.: Programming intern, summer 1993

Education:
Bachelor of Science in Engineering & Applied Science from California Institute of Technology, June 1996.

Activities and positions:
President, Caltech Anime Society 1994-1995.
Boy Scouts 1986-1992. Earned Eagle Scout (highest Boy Scout) rank, May 1990.

Brief summary of my major contributions to published projects, most recent first:

Pandemic Studios projects:

  • The Saboteur: Handled TRC/TCRs for PS3 & Xbox 360 versions, including save/load, signouts, and downloadable content. Worked on worldbuilding tools to optimize speed and disk usage.
  • Mercenaries 2: Added many features to world & sound editing tools, including search, memory optimizations, and image processing. Tracked down and fixed crashes in those tools. Handled TRC/TCRs for PS3 & Xbox 360 versions, including save/load, signouts, and more.
  • Star Wars: Battlefront II: handled TRC/TCRs for PS2 & Xbox versions. Built and maintained an overnight automatic build system, including high-level functional tests of every level, generating graphs of framerate/memory usage.
  • Star Wars: Battlefront, wrote cross platform menu system, Xbox Live user interface and parts of the Gamespy user interface.
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: headed PS2 conversion from GameCube. Also worked on the Xbox version, handling Xbox Live session creation/management and user interface.
  • Triple Play 2002: Headed PS2 to Xbox conversion. Updated other low-level code.
  • Fifa online: Took standalone PC SKU, and adapted it to run in a web browser for EA.com (ActiveX/Netscape plugin). Reduced PC SKU to a 4MB download with a custom installer.
  • Battlezone 2: Implemented networking code and other code. Tracked down post-shipping crashes, and coordinated collecting bug reports, code/asset changes, and managed releases of 1.2 and 1.3 patches. Worked on 1.3 on my own time since 2001, adding DirectSound 3D support, rewrote rendering engine in DirectX 9, lots of features features, crash fixes, Vista compatibility, patch installer, and much more.

Adrenalin Interactive projects:

  • Brunswick Tournament of Champions Bowling: Implemented 3D art and animation translation and playback programs from AGFLI (3DS:Max Plugin) format to Playstation HMD and D3D formats. Also worked on other art tools, cross-platform AI code.
  • Ten Pin Alley: wrote Sega Saturn code inspired by PlayStation version . nearly everything but the shared physics code was rewritten; additional programming for bowling AI and other platform-independent engine code for the PlayStation and Windows SKUs

Previous projects:

  • Caltech Scalable Programming Laboratory: Developed large dataset manipulation tools for half-gigabyte files and scripts to automate lab work. Generated pictures and movies from results of all of the laboratory's scientific simulations with Alias|Wavefront's Data Visualizer and Composer; production quality video equipment used to create videos for publications and funding proposals.
  • SoftDisk Publishing, Inc: Wrote Apple IIGS utilities.

Looks interesting enough? You can email me at nathan.j.mates@gmail.com for more information, return to my home page to see portions of my work online, or see many other ways to contact me
nathan.j.mates@gmail.com