HI THERE, I'M MARK

Ascend is a first-person VR arena shooter where you rise to greatness in a crucible of visceral and kinetic aerial combat. Rise above your enemies through intense engagements and leverage the power of VR with our unique lean motion system to tower above your opponents.

The player is given control of a jetpack, which they can fly by throttling the controller and leaning in their direction of flight. This is done by dynamically estimating their lean origin, while still allowing for free movement, all while leveraging leaning to minimize motion sickness.

Ascend is an advanced game project at USC. A large multidisciplinary team is working on the project, targeting a Steam release the Summer of 2019.

Project Responsibilities:

• Directed vision for a multidisciplinary team of 40 engineers, designers, artists, producers, usability, and marketing students.
• Documented player experience goals and presented game demos and vision to large groups of stakeholders.
• Worked with production to increase velocity and parallelize content development pipelines.
• Developed a team culture with a focus on sustainable work hours while hitting production targets.
• Worked closely with Engineering and Design teams to drive vision, implementation, and tuning on four warriors with unique ability sets.

Prototype Responsibilities:

• Iterated on locomotion controls to find a comfortable movement scheme that minimized motion sickness.
• Integrated Photon PUN Networking API for multiplayer
• Designed a level that takes advantage of flying afforded to the player while creating areas requiring skillful maneuvering on the part of the player.

As part of the Maestros team, I joined as a dedicated User Interface / User Experience engineer. I joined the project as an intern with no knowledge in Flash/Scaleform or Unrealscript, and within six months, I had completed a top to bottom rehaul of the game menus and in-game HUD.

Project Responsibilities:

• Worked with Flash and Scaleform to rebuild and design new, user friendly, and graphically appealing interfaces
• Integrated a brand new progression system from scratch in the UI and in any pertinent front-end code
• Worked with our network engineer to design and integrate a new account creation system with functional user verification

On the Sky Command team, I led User Experience and Systems Design for the team. In this role, I focused on room-scale interactions that allowed the user to engage with the space while maintaining the immersion of the experience.

Project Responsibilities:

• Designed and implemented elevator locomotion to enlarge playspaces while maintaining a 1:1 room footprint
• Designed and integrated an AI companion for guiding new users through a room scale VR experience while introducing players to the game world and narrative.
• Scripted modular, magnetic handles in VR that provide 1:1 visual feedback on user interactions while using mounted objects
• Prototyped a modular repair system driven by atomic actions for placement by level designers

Our game uniquely asks players to control two independent ships with their own resources as they explore a procedurally generated board that builds throughout the game. We've also built a deep card based combat system and a tailored story, both of which are tied to exploration, so as players explore the final frontier, they encounter perilous situations, quests, and build themselves into a formidable competitor on the intergalactic stage.

Project Responsibilities:

• Rapidly prototyped an original game concept, creating the systems that served as a baseline for the current version.
• Led a team of specialized designers to ensure a cohesive final product with deep systems.
• Worked with our production artist to unify our design throughout the game.

Global Game Jam Los Angeles

Best VR Game | Best Gameplay

Don't Make A Sound is an immersive VR game for the HTC Vive, where the player is dropped in the shoes of a new lab technician. After waking up in the breakroom, the lab goes into lockdown and the player is forced into a game of hide and seek with a blind, bloodthirsty bat-monster.

Project Responsibilities:

• Handled Level Design and Environmental Design to build an extreme sense of immersion
• Worked with our design lead to create a challenging and terrifying monster for the player as the center of an echolocation-themed puzzle with significant in-level object interaction
• Laid the design groundwork for the scripted event system and end-game puzzle

Elevation is a competitive top-down shooter where one player on each team takes control of a dynamic level while the other takes control of a shooter on the ground. As the two shooters fight it out, the level changes and evolves around them as other players raise and lower blocks to support their team.

Project Responsibilities:

• Worked as design lead to build and refine a fast-paced, team-based game
• Integrated varied gamepad-based control schemes based on player role
• Developed User Interface and Brand Bible for the project

This prototype is intended to demonstrate a possible concept for a character selection screen in VR. Dynamic character profiles are spawned throughout the playspace, which display spatial interfaces when picked up by the player. These are fully animated in UMG and display unit types, pictures, and biographies. Characters must place their chosen profile into the podium, which lights in three stages to confirm the selection. In a game build, profile blocks would be replaced with character-specific statues.

Project Responsibilities:

• Developed dynamically populated Profile interface with UMG and Photoshop
• Controlled motion transitions and animation through scripts in Unreal
• Built an implementation that's scalable for up to 20 characters with interaction that takes advantage of the physicality of VR hardware

Platform: PC

Engine: Unreal Engine

Languages: Blueprint

Additional Tools: Adobe Photoshop

Date: May 2017

Echo is an Android app that allows people to quickly build a digital business card, effortlessly exchange information with people, and build a portfolio of connections through Bluetooth technology.

Project Responsibilities:

• Created wireframes, flow diagrams, and final interface designs in Android Studio and XML with Photoshop
• Developed an intuitive, reactive button-based interface to highlight the exchange of information over Bluetooth
• Contributed to documentation for front-end and application deployment

HackSC 2015

WideAwake is a minimalist alarm clock for iOS designed to wake you up both physically and mentally. Once the alarm goes off, the user is unable to turn it off until they complete a short physical and a mental challenge. This forces people, like me, who have trouble getting out of bed to get moving and get thinking so they can wake up.

Project Responsibilities:

• Coordinated visual design with a brand bible and design direction to ensure a cohesive, user friendly application
• Integrated iOS CoreMotion framework for driving physical activity sensors
• Developed wireframes and flow diagrams for an intuitive, user-driven UI