I began my career in Software Engineering at Larsen And Toubro Infotech Ltd, a CMMi Level 5 IT firm based in India. After almost 3 years of experience in the industry, I had an urge to make Software Engineering more exciting and challenging. This led me to pursuing a career in Game Development.

John Kolencheryl

Languages :
C++, C#, ActionScript 3, Java, COBOL, BatchDB2, UNIX Shell Scripting.

Game Engines : 
Unity3d, Unreal Engine 3.0, Panda3D.

Tools :
Visual Studio 2008, UE3, UDK, XNA 3.0 Game studio, XDK, XUI, Surface SDK, Perforce, Flash CS4, Photoshop CS4, 3DS Max.

1. Schell Games LLC, Pittsburgh, USA

Project : NATAL project                                                               Game Engineer Intern
Tech : NATAL, XDK, XUI, C++, DirectX.                                        January 2010 – April 2010

Project : SPY                                                                               Game Engineer Intern
Tech : AS3, Flash CS4, XML, Photoshop CS4                                   January 2010 – April 2010

Project : PCH                                                                              Game Engineer Intern
Tech : AS3, Flash CS4, Photoshop CS4.                                         May 2009 – August 2009

2. Larsen And Toubro Infotech Ltd, India

Project : Fin-DB                                                                           Software Engineer
Tech : C++, Shell Scripting, COBOL, BATCH DB2                            October 2005 – July 2008
SQL, BTEQ, TeraData, Mainframes.

1. PandAI

A student pitch project at ETC to create an AI (Artificial Intelligence) Framework for Pand3D game engine.

Tech: C++, Panda3D.
Website: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/pandai/

Contributions:
a. Designed and developed a robust AI framework which is flexible as well as easy to use.
b. Implemented Pathfinding system using A* for a waypoint navigation system.
c. Implemented flock behavior.
d. Ported the mesh generation process to a standalone tool for better efficiency during runtime.

Pathfinding using A*

Flock Behavior

2. Salvation

This project was part of my independent study with Jesse Schell for creating an Unreal mod using UDK, UE3 and Unrealscript. It was an attempt to fuse storytelling and FPS action. I designed and developed this mod from scratch. The design details are available under the 'Game Design' category of this website.

Tech: UDK, UE3, Kismet, Unrealscript, Unreal Matinee.

Gameplay changes (Unrealscript / Kismet):

a. Seek and destroy A.I. for bots.
b. A gravity cycle which toggles between normal and low gravity based on a specified time period.
c. Slow motion kills.
d. A single player experience.
e. The player wins the game when he has successfully killed all the bots in all the 3 islands.
f. Each island has a cutscene associated with it to alert the player of enemy attack.

Gameplay Footage

3. Molecules [In Progress]

An educational game to understand chemical bonding and the structure of atoms and molecules. This is a solo project being developed
to meet the vision of Jesse Schell to create a game based on atoms and molecules.

Tech: C#, Unity3D.

Gameplay Features:

a. The game has 3 phases - Linking, Bonding and Display phase.
b. In Linking phase, the player links the atoms he wants to stablize.
c. In Bonding phase, the player donates valence electrons through ionic and covalent bonds.
d. In Display phase, the player can manipulate the resultant molecule structure in 3D.

Gameplay Footage

4. Souda

A client based project at the ETC with Lockheed Martin to create innovative and immersive applications for the Microsoft Surface.

Tech: C#, Microsoft Surface SDK, XNA 3.0, WPF.
Website: http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/surface/

Following were the applications that I worked on:

Scenario Decomposition

An application which utilizes a clever new interface of representating data in 3D space. In this application information is represented as words scattered in 3D space. The depth of these words in 3D space represents the relevance of that information to a subject. Users will be able to give each word a criticality and this will place it closer or further away in 3D space. In other words, information having a higher criticality will appear closer and bigger as compared to those which are less critical. This application was build using the XNA 3.0 framework on the Microsoft Surface Platform and uses the multi-touch interface for manipulating the words.

Application Footage

IR Pulse Pen

Another application developed for the Microsoft Surface using the Surface SDK and WPF. This application will recognize IR pulses shot at a particular frequency at the Surface and links it to a user's profile. The application constantly checks frequency and understands who is currently writing with the pen. To generate the IR pulses I created a 555 timer circuit and varied the resistor and capacitor values to pulsate at different frequencies.

Application Footage

Wiimote and Surface

This application was developed using XNA framework, Surface SDK and Brian Peek's Wiimote Library. It was an experimental project to open new ways of interactivity by interfacing a Wiimote with the Microsoft Surface. The Wiimote's accelerometer values were used to directly map roll and pitch onto a jet model in 3D space.

1. Snake Remixed:

A remake of the classic Snake game with a few additional game mechanics. This was created using Unity3D. Please visit the"Toy Box" page on this website to play the game.

Tech: C#, Unity3D.

2. Game of Life:

A remake of John Honway’s "game of life" algorithm. This is an automation of cell life. It was created using Unity3D. Please visit the"Toy Box" page on this website to play the game.

Tech: C#, Unity3D.

3. AlphaBeats:

A word game created in XNA 3.0, in which the player creates words from flying letters using a simple mouse interface.

Tech: C#, XNA Game Studio 3.0.

Gameplay Footage

4. Tic-Tac-Toe:

A tic-tac-toe game with intermediate AI implemented using XNA 3.0.

Tech: C#, Unity3D.

Gameplay Footage: