Samantha Halloran

I am a Senior Gameplay Engineer starting an adventure at a new studio very soon.

Contact

comic.samantha@gmail.com

Fuser is a music mixing virtual festival for Xbox One, PS4, Switch, and PC where I,

• Engineered multiplayer competitive 1v1 gameplay modes

• Prototyped and iterated quickly on gameplay mechanics

• Implemented gameplay UI with artists and designers

• Worked in C++, Unreal Engine 4, and Blueprints

• Lead junior engineers in the engineering of gameplay features

• Designed and engineered dance scoring system

• Designed and engineered dance-based VR locomotion system

• Worked closely with designers, QA, and professional dancers on dance evaluation

• Implemented networked multiplayer dance games in a VR social space

• Implemented DLC entitlement systems

• Worked in C++, Unreal Engine 4, and Blueprints

I worked as a gameplay engineer collaborating with artists and UI designers to implement and optimize UI and VFX in VR. I also worked on a prototyping team creating new gameplay features where I proposed designs for and implemented features in a fast paced iterative process.

Take on-the-job training to new heights!

Intern Astronaut is an immersive virtual reality game for the GearVR and Oculus Rift that enrolls the player as an intern tasked to fly a secondhand spaceship. The configuration of the spaceship is new at the start of every game, so every attempt will feel like the first day on the job!

I was one of the founders of Broken Door Studio, a group of four independent developers who came together to make this game. I was the sole programmer, responsible for optimizing code and graphics to run on mobile VR, handling cross platform VR input, spaceship generation, and gameplay design. I also served as public speaker, PR person, and social media caretaker of Broken Door Studios.

Hikari Hook is a 2015 game for the Oculus Rift and Razer Hydra controllers where you grapple through the trees of an ancient forest with dual lighthooks. By pointing and aiming with the Hydra motion controllers, you can attach yourself to branches with beams of lights, and either swing form them or pull yourself towards a target. Commercially available motion controllers for VR were new in 2015, and we sought to apply academic research to game design to find novel VR traversal designs comfortable for a wide range of players.

I was the project manager and a programmer for the team of undergraduate students working in the Takemura Lab of Osaka University. I worked as a software engineer and managed a team of programmers while presenting progress updates and researching findings to the Takemura Lab.

Gameplay featuring:

• Player recording and playback system

• Recording synchronization with a cloud server

• Voice acted audiologs

• Intractable swinging physics platforms

Coding for this project, I worked on the player controller and input system using c# in Unity. The theory behind our VR traversal system was that if we created a physically realistic system of in-air rotation for the player that eliminated jerk and limited acceleration, the player would be able to better anticipate and control their motion while flying, and feel more comfortable doing so. Whatever improvements we made to this system though, a significant number of players always found the movement discomforting. If we were to attempt to make a game with swinging mechanics again, we would keep the player's rotation constant, and design a game of smaller scope that worked with this fixed rotation, more of an endless runner and less of a complex 3D platformer.

I was a software engineer and game designer for Myomo, a medical device company who makes the MyoPro, a powered orthotic brace for one's arm that uses arm-mounted EMG sensors to read an impaired user's intent to move their arm and responds by moving their arm as they intend. For someone living with an impaired limb, the MyoPro is a great way to make their limbs functional again, and the games I made focus on allowing users to enjoy practicing to use the MyoPro training them for use in their daily lives.

I worked in c++, c#, and Unity to make these games myself with assets from the Unity Asset store. This involved designing UI for connecting the MyoPro to the game, AI to play against in Backgammon, and the native plugin tools for making the MyoPro work with Unity.