Michael Noland

(573) 424 1770

michael@auia.net

A senior graphics and systems engineer with an innate ability to quickly learn new technologies and a strong desire to tackle difficult and interesting problems. Experienced in real-time graphics, performance/memory critical programming, concurrent programming, and cross-platform console development. Contributed to 9 shipped products across 5 platforms.

Emergent Game Technologies

Senior Software Engineer, Core Runtime (2009 – Present)

Software Engineer, Gamebryo (2006 – 2009)

• Sprint group leader with a broad knowledge of all runtime aspects of the Gamebryo engine, and a deep understanding of the renderers and system/foundational libraries facilitating the launch of four releases of Gamebryo and two releases of Gamebryo LightSpeed.
• Designed, implemented, and optimized LibGCM based renderer for PS3, providing PPU side improvements of up to 5X depending on the workloads.
• Designed and implemented new features for the core runtime (across PC, PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii), such as lock-free data structures, batched shader-driven rendering, and per-thread allocators.

• Proposed and built a sample testing infrastructure and a performance analysis test bed.

• Ported, profiled and optimized demos for the PS3 including Emerge (GDC 2007), Forbidden Terror on Space Station Z (GDC 2008) and Mangled Metal (GDC 2009).
• Increased customer satisfaction by working closely with them on profiling and optimization of their titles, including on-site visits.
• Designed and built a deferred lighting system prototype for Gamebryo.

University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

Research Assistant, 3D Medical Consultation Group (2004 – 2006)

• Characterized 3D inertial measurement units and designed filters for use in a PDA tracking application.
• Designed a “magic lens” application that displays a 3D dataset in relation to a tracked PDA intended for use in emergency telemedicine applications.

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory

Research Assistant (Summer 2005)

• Researched high speed optical tracking via spatial labeling and various projector-based technologies.
• Designed and built custom hardware, firmware, and software for a real-time high speed optical tracker.

University of Missouri – Columbia

Developer, Computer Human Interaction Laboratory (2003 – 2004)

• Assisted with the establishment of the laboratory.
• Designed and developed several projects for the Art & Archaeology Museum, including a 3D game and a panoramic virtual reality exhibit using position tracking hardware.
• Performed modeling and animation for an engineering fundraising video.
• Designed and implemented a multi-screen kiosk for the display of digitized artifacts.

• Taught recitations for Algorithm Design and Programming 1.

Undergraduate Research Position (2002 – 2003)

• Ported the Interactive Image Spreadsheet System (IISS/QIS) from Forms/GL to QT/OpenGL.

Symbiosys Software / Neko Technologies

Programmer (1998 – 2000)

• Developed the special effects system and scripting engine for the game Absolute Terror.

Education

University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

• Masters Degree, Computer Science (May 2006)

University of Missouri – Columbia

• B.S., Computer Science - Magna Cum Laude (May 2004)
• BSCoE, Computer Engineering - Magna Cum Laude (May 2004)
• Minors in Mathematics and History

Key skills

Languages

• Proficient with: C++, C, Assembly (ARM/Thumb, 6502), Shaders (Cg/HLSL/NSF/FX)
• Comfortable with: C#, Object Pascal, other flavors of assembly (PPC, IA-32 & PIC18)

Platforms

• Proficient with: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Win32, Game Boy Advance, NES
• Comfortable with: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS

Tools and Environments

• Proficient with: Visual Studio, ProDG, GPAD, Tuner, PIX, Perforce, MS Office, Delphi, DevTrack
• Comfortable working in: 3DS Max, Maya, Paint.NET, Audacity, Sfxr (‘programmer’ art & sound)

Middleware and libraries

• Proficient with: Gamebryo, D3D9, LibGCM
• Comfortable with: XNA, OpenGL, GX, FMod, Windows Forms

Shipped titles and products

Contributed (via Gamebryo) to many titles released since late 2006

• http://www.emergent.net/en/Clients--Titles/
• Gamebryo LightSpeed 3.1 (October 2009)
• Gamebryo LightSpeed 3.0 (May 2009)
• Gamebryo 2.6 (October 2008)
• Gamebryo 2.5 (June 2008)
• Gamebryo 2.3 (April 2007)
• Gamebryo 2.2.1 (October 2006)

2004Mbit Competition Cartridge

• Published by gbadev.org for the Game Boy Advance, 2005.
• Credits: Project Coordinator

Mappy VM Development Suite for the Game Boy Advance

• Mappy VM 0.9 (April 2003)
• Mappy VM 0.7 (July 2001)
• Mappy VM 0.5 (April 2001)

Absolute Terror

• Published by Crystal Interactive for PC, 2001
• Credits: Programmer (Special Effects, Scripting Engine)

Supplemental information

Publications

• Prakash: lighting aware motion capture using photosensing markers and multiplexed illuminators – ACM SIGGRAPH 2007 Papers.
• Complementary Tracking and Two-Handed Interaction for Remote 3D Medical Consultation with a PDA – Proceedings of Trends and Issues in Tracking for Virtual Environments, Workshop at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2007 Conference.
• Instant replay using high speed motion capture and projected overlay – ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 Sketches.
• Improving, Expanding and Extending 3D Telepresence – Proceedings of International Workshop on Advanced Information Processing for Ubiquitous Networks, International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence 2005.
• Inferring a Proprietary Wireless L3 Protocol From Packet Traces – Technical Report, UNC-CH 2005.

Personal projects

• Sunny Day – XNA puzzle game made in 24 hours for the 2009 Triangle Game Jam (http://trianglegamejam.com/games.php#SunnyDay).
• Plus40 – An Advance Wars clone in C++/OpenGL with a C# toolchain.
• Space Fish – XNA physics sandbox game created for the first Global Game Jam (http://globalgamejam.org/games/spacefish).
• Robotender – Automatic drink dispenser with touch screen control (http://www.robotender.com).
• Multitouch coffee table prototypes – Built FTIR, DI, and LLP multitouch screen prototypes.
• Pixelated Martini Roller – XNA platformer game with integrated level editor made in 24 hours for the 2008 Triangle Game Jam (http://trianglegamejam.com/games.php#PixelatedMartiniRoller).
• SDIS/Z – Experimental program transformation toolkit (manipulates machine code into readable C-like code; 6502 and limited ARM support).
• LibNDS – Co-created the first free, legal library for unlicensed programming on the Nintendo DS (http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro/files/).
• NDSTech Wiki – Created and maintained a Wiki (http://www.bottledlight.com/ds/) of information about Nintendo DS development.  Reverse-engineered much of the information contained there.
• Mappy VM – Development tool (http://www.bottledlight.com/mappy/) for the GBA that emulates the hardware and provides source-level debugging and real-time viewers of system information such as VRAM and I/O register contents.
• UNL-YAROM – CPLD+Flash ROM based development cartridge for the Nintendo Entertainment System capable of emulating many mapper configurations without reprogramming.
• Software 3D engines for DOS and GBA, various demo effects, MOD player.
• Various 3D engines, including a real-time raytracer and Quake 3 map viewer with collision detection.
• Numerous 2D map editors, small games, and work on other emulators (NES, SMS, GB, PSX).

School projects

• Physically-based model of the human face, with muscle activation determined by transcribed speech.
• Verilog implementation of a full 3D rendering pipeline on a Virtex-2 FPGA (fragment processor group).
• AMaze – a game for persons with visual impairment, providing spatial audio, haptic feedback, and user-friendly map editor (http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/assist/et/2005/AMaze.html).
• Extracting intrinsic images (reflectance and shading) via image analogies.
• Custom arcade game console (compatible with any JAMMA cabinet) and asteroids-style game.
• Autonomous robot capable of finding golf balls, grabbing them, and scooting them through a goal.

• Cactus Jack and the adventures of the deranged space monkeys – 3D birds-eye view video game in C++/OpenGL.