Wicked Manatee Games

William Mearns

Austin, TX

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About

Self-motivated game creator with experience in Agile Project Management. I have independently worked on titles across a variety of platforms, ranging from tabletop, mobile, PC, and VR. In doing so, I've worn all-the-hats including performing market research, creating new intellectual property, managing and prioritizing backlogs, mocking up game user interface, designing game mechanics, user interface and user flow diagramming, native documentation, back-end coding, networking coding, animations, 3D modeling, sprite sheets, audio creation and effects, designing paper prototypes, playtesting, and much more.

Tools & Technologies

Tools - Unity, MS Office Suite, MS Project, JIRA (Structure, Plans, EazyBI), Confluence, Trello, Freedcamp, Visio, TFS, OneNote, Visual Studio, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop. Paint.NET, Blender, Audacity, VSDC, MonoDevelop, SQL Server, Miro, Shotcut

Skills - Sprint planning, retrospective meetings, coaching agile practices, removing impediments, burndown charts, requirements gathering, documentation, forecasting, resource allocation,

Soft Skills - Active listening, creativity, adaptability, problem solving, organization, planning, team building, communication, decision making, leadership, coaching

Language/Scripting - C#, Java, Lua, Love2D, .NET, VB, Pascal, Ada, SQL, HTML5, CSS, Javascript, LUA, Game Maker, Matlab, C++

Experience

Wicked Manatee Games Mar 2013 - Current
- Founder/Producer/Architect
  - Design game concept, develop game code, and playtest functionality on multiple platforms (tabletop, PC, VR, mobile)
  - Manage each project’s scope and timeline
  - Handle each campaign’s marketing, budget, and schedule
Unity3D Nov 2020 - Current

Snr Technical Program Manager, Multiplayer - GameObjects

Led the first release of Netcode for GameObjects and Multiplayer Tools 1.0 packages
Conducted a Jira consolidation program to move 10 teams into Jira that reduced overhead, leveraged repeatable victories, and guided collaboration
Ushered the first scrum of scrums process to help navigate risks/blockers
Manage various communication channels in Confluence, Slack, and email to ensure stakeholders within and outside the org are aware of each program of Multiplayer
Improve the team’s ability to plan and deliver software without hampering progress or autonomy of developers through coaching Agile development practices

Games by Moonlight Jun 2020 - Aug 2020
- Lead Level Designer
  - Designing levels, obstacles, and puzzles utilizing Unity TileMaps and prefabs
  - Creating unique player abilities, enemy types, enemy attacks, and boss fights
  - Organizing Github repository for task management and documentation

Education & Certifications

Indiana Tech
- Bachelor of Software Engineering - Aug 2008 - May 2012
Project Management Institute (PMI)
- Project Management Professional (PMP) - Dec 2015 - Present
Scrum Alliance
- Certified Scrum Master (CSM) - Mar 2017 - Present
HardvardX
- Introduction to Game Development

Code Samples

I've pulled some basic logic from my enemy spawning code in Space Duel (prototype of Cosmic Battle). This is just calculating the time and difficulty of the wave level based on some linear math. I enjoy this snip-ip because I'm not calculating the number of enemies that are spawning. I'm calculating the "power" of the enemies as the limiting factor. (Higher numbered aliens have better stats)

private void PrepWave() { doSpawn = true; waveTimer = (level*30) + (Mathf.FloorToInt(level/5)*15f); //you have 30sec a level plus an extra 15 each 5 levels before the next wave comes if (waveTimer == 0) waveTimer = 15; timer = waveTimer; wavePoints = (level * 2) + (Mathf.FloorToInt(level / 5) * 2); //2 points a level plus an extra 2 each 5 levels. These are used to generate enemies to be spawned if (wavePoints == 0) wavePoints = 1; level++; CreateNotice(); }
private string PickRandomAlien() { int alienNum = 100, maxAlienDifficulty = 1, randomAlienNum = 1; int totalAlienTypes = AlienManager.GetInstance().GetAlienTypes(); maxAlienDifficulty = Mathf.RoundToInt(level / totalAlienTypes) + 1; //only unlocks next tier of enemy every X levels, where X is total number of enemy tiers
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) //loop three times to try and get a lower strength enemy { randomAlienNum= UnityEngine.Random.Range(1, maxAlienDifficulty+1); if (alienNum > randomAlienNum) alienNum = randomAlienNum; // alienNum to be spawned should be weakest } if (alienNum > totalAlienTypes) //safe guard so we arent trying to create something that doesnt exist alienNum = totalAlienTypes; wavePoints -= alienNum; //adjust our pool of points to spend generating enemies return "Alien" + alienNum; //spawning this Alien }

You can also check out my Github here.

What am I playing?

PC: Cyberpunk 2077
Switch: Lost in Random
PS4: Outer Worlds
Tabletop: Hopefully some Charterstone whenever I can shepherd some cats together

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