Judd Cohen
Seattle, WA
Phone: 206-552-0118
Email:
Last updated: May 2023
Technical Skills
Keystone Skills
Unreal Engine: 10 years of gameplay programming experience
C++: 10 years of experience
Python: 15 years of experience
Tools Unreal Engine 5, Unreal Engine 4, Unity3D, Blender, Photoshop
Programming C++, Python, C#, Rust, Java, Javascript, Typescript, Dear ImGui, Git
Employment
City State Entertainment
Gameplay Programmer Seattle, WA
  • Built gameplay features in custom massively multiplayer game engine across a wide array of systems (designer gameplay data, server logic and networking, client processing, and user interface)
  • Supported live multiplayer game - regularly went on-call to monitor servers
  • Overhauled user interface by writing a custom tool to parse the entire codebase, automatically make needed API changes, and extract data
  • Built custom server data management tool for designers and other gameplay programmers (TypeScript and React)
  • Built custom artist tool for generating textures (C++ and Dear ImGui)
  • Regularly reviewed and approved pull requests from other programmers
Studio Wildcard
Gameplay Programmer Seattle, WA
  • Collaborated with character artists, animators, and VFX/tech artists to build rideable dinosaurs, weapons, placeable structures, and items
  • Built a mission system from scratch as a new low-level core gameplay system with an API that is easy for designers to use
  • Assisted with planning, time estimates, and scheduling; mentored less experienced gameplay programmers
  • Built complete playable multiplayer prototype of an unannounced game including an inventory system, structure building system, weapon system, and resource harvesting
  • Supported live multiplayer game; added numerous features and fixed bugs in existing gameplay systems without breaking old content
Zen Relay Games
Lead Developer, Lead Designer, Owner Seattle, WA
  • Designed, developed, and shipped Geoid, a 3d platformer game
  • Managed the full game development process, including design docs, prototyping, implementation, testing, polish, and release
  • Built using Unreal Engine 4 with game logic in C++ and art assets created in Blender and Photoshop
  • Streamlined modeling workflow by writing custom Blender add-ons in Python
Tricky Fast Studios
Game Developer (Contractor) Leominster, MA
  • Developed mobile games with Unity3D
  • Integrated 3rd party C# asynchronous libraries into an existing framework and codebase
  • Worked with producers, artists, and lead server architect to integrate features
Education
University of Puget Sound
Tacoma, WA
  • Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
  • Studio Art Minor, specializing in interactive wood sculptures using Arduinos
Personal Projects
JXC
Language Designer, Lead Developer
  • A language similar to JSON but designed to be pleasant to edit for game designers, and easy to extend for gameplay programmers
  • Designed language syntax, wrote the reference implementation in C++, wrote extensive unit tests and comprehensive technical documentation
  • The language syntax supports key/value maps, arrays, type hinting, numbers with units, timestamps, comments, and custom lexical expressions (for embedding math expressions or small snippets of game logic into configuration files)
  • Wrote syntax highlighting extensions for Sublime Text and Visual Studio Code
Hoshiko
University of Puget Sound Computer Science Capstone Project
  • A game using Unreal Engine 4 that taught basic programming concepts in a visual way by having the player enter code into in-game computer terminals
  • Each in-game computer terminal had an embedded Python subinterpreter thread with APIs for controlling game mechanics (for example, typing door.open() would open a door connected to that terminal)
  • The in-game code editing UI was powered by Chromium Embedded Framework