Hi, I'm Thomas
I'm a QA Tester for Blizzard Entertainment and an independent game developer based in San Marcos, Texas. I enjoy all things code-related and spend much of my free-time learning new coding skills. When I'm not coding, you can find me writing music, which I post on my Youtube, or out playing board games or disc golfing.
Portfolio
About Thomas
From a young age, I have always been fascinated with video-games. I love the stories that they tell and the emotions they invoke. My family (consisting of my mother, my father, and my five younger siblings) has closely bonded over shared playthroughs over games such as Final Fantasy VI and MarioKart DoubleDash, among others. I have fond memories of my siblings and I duking it out in Super Smash Brothers or gasping in dumbfoundment at the latest plot twist as we journeyed through the fantastical world of Tales of Symphonia. It is my dream to create video-games that evoke the same kinds of joyful and bonding experiences as the video-games that have done so for me.
300 - Mobile Game
A friend of mine commissioned me to write this game as a companion for a rap album he plans on releasing soon. The game tells the story of an artificial humanoid named Tsukabi, and his escape from the lab where he was created. Since escape was a big part of the story, I decided to make the game a metroidvania, since those games are often maze-like with lots of backtracking. One of the challenges I faced was the game's controls. Metroidvanias often require the use of many different buttons or keys on console and PC platforms, but the target platform was mobile. This meant I would have to use virtual buttons for the controls, which are difficult to use and may dissuade players from playing the game. My solution was to use controls that mobile platforms have strength in: swipe and tap. You can swipe in a direction to dash in that direction, and you can tap to attack. This made the game easy to learn how to play, and gave it a unique feel from other metroidvanias. Though the game is quite short (beatable in under ten minutes), I learned a lot, including how to build a state machine, the advantages and disadvanteges of static events, how to give a game "juice" with screen shake and particles, and how to use Unity's Shader Graph.
SpaceBot_X
I built this game with my sister for the SpaceScore Jam #17 in 2022, a game jam where all games must include a high score mechanic. My sister drew the artwork, and I programmed the game and handled the sound design and music. The theme of the jam was "Protect", so we created a game with a duel mechanic: the very things you must protect are also your only weapons. In this game, you play as a robot protecting his power cells from alien invaders, who can only be killed by throwing the same power cells at them.
Deep-Sea-Diver
This game was developed in Unity for the 2021 Ludum Dare Game Jam. This was my first Game Jam and I collaborated with my brothers to build this game. I was responsible for all sound design and programming, while they handled art and level design. This game is a short 2D platformer where you control a diver trying to get to the bottom of the ocean. You can swim and throw a trident, and you must collect air to stay alive. Your air supply depletes over time and enemies can knock extra air out of you.
Dr. Diesel's Revenge
This game was developed in Unity for the 2021 My First Game Jam (though this game jam was actually my third). I collaborated with my brothers again to build this game, again handling most of the programming and sound design. We took inspiration from the tank game from Wii Play. In this game, you play as Dr. Diesel, a maniacal tank-driving scientist set on blowing things up. Should your own tank get destroyed, you have a chance to hack other tanks and take control of them and their unique capabilities. In this game, I learned how to use Unity's 2D render pipeline for 2D lighting, how to use Unity's particles systems, and how to use events to decouple code and reduce dependencies.
Windows Console Audio Recorder
I wrote this program while diving into the Microsoft Core Audio APIs. Since I have a background in music, I am very interested in how computers handle audio, and in writing this application I learned how computers format, write, and read binary files, especially for WAV files. This program will find any audio output devices connected to your computer, ask you choose one, then write the output audio to a new WAV file. See the source code on Github for a downloadable version of the project.
Windows Console Snake Game
This game runs a text-based version of the classic Snake Game in a Windows console terminal. The snake is controlled with the arrow keys. The snake grows longer and moves faster as you collect food. The game also saves the ten highest scores in a .txt file, which it reads and displays when first starting the application. See the source code on Github for downloadable a version of the game.