Gavin Dodd

Mortal Kombat: Unchained

After the original programming team had been disbanded I spent a month fixing bugs and cleaning up the game so that it could be presented at E3.

Resistance: Fall of Man

  • Director of Tools Development.
  • Managed all tools development.
  • Architected next generation tools and managed smooth transition from previous generation.
  • Negotiated with Anark for discounted license for, and guaranteed improvements to, Anark Studio and Client.
  • Designed and managed development of 'smart' buffer serialisation system to handle data through tools pipeline and into the game.
  • Designed and managed development of wad packing and disk burning system.
  • Designed and managed development of Maya tools to allow artists to manage extremely large levels.

Ratchet:Deadlocked

  • Director of Tools Development.
  • Managed all tools development.

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal

  • Director of Tools Development.
  • Managed all tools development.
  • Managed roll out of the in house gameplay editor.
  • Managed development of web based reporting tools.

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando

  • Director of Tools Development.
  • Hired tools team.
  • Architected and managed development of custom integrated asset management system.
  • Managed development of in house gameplay editor.
  • Automated disk burning process.
  • Automated development builds.

Ratchet & Clank

  • Gameplay/Lead Tools Programmer.
  • Designed and programmed the sound and audio streaming system and tools.
  • Designed and programmed the data loading system and wad packing tools.
  • Designed and programmed the experience and auto challenge tuning system, to the designer's specifications.
  • Designed and programmed Maya plug-ins for texture, instance and gameplay placement.
  • Created 'Headerparser' system to automatically reflect game code structures into tools. Programmers could easily control what data was exposed and guarantee that it was packed correctly.
  • Reverse engineered GOAL and wrote a dissassembler so that Naughty Dog's rendering engine could be integrated into the Insomniac code base.
  • Programmed gameplay and special effects.
  • Designed and built the code overlay system - worked closely with SN Systems to resolve bugs and add features to their build system to enable this to work.
  • Designed and programmed the focus data collection system and viewer.
  • Implemented the video playback system and supervised the capture and compression process for maximum video quality.
  • Built and managed the disk burning process.
  • Optimised boot and load times.

Spyro: Year of the Dragon

  • Gameplay Programmer.
  • Programmed custom special effects.
  • Programmed enemy AI.
  • Added to the Sony provided copy protection by writing a crack protection system.
    • Wrote an article about the system for Game Developer Magazine
  • Co-wrote the story and in game dialogue.

Spyro (2): Ripto's Rage

  • Gameplay Programmer
  • Designed and programmed streaming audio system, including packing tools.
  • Programmed custom special effects.
  • Programmed enemy AI.
  • Implemented the Sony provided copy protection, including obfuscation of the code.
  • Co-wrote the story and in game dialogue.

Colony Wars:Vengeance

  • Gameplay programming
  • Upgraded the in house gameplay editor.

Colony Wars

  • Gameplay programming
  • Designed and programmed the in house gameplay editor.
  • Designed and programmed the audio streaming system and packer.

Johnny Mnemonic

Sega CD and Playstation (cancelled)
  • Gameplay programming.
  • Upgraded the compression on the video system to support full screen, 512 colors at 10fps.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Sega CD

  • Designed and programmed a complete CD-OS that supported multi-channel streaming in 68000 assembler.
  • Designed and programmed a movie compressor and playback system.

Microcosm

Sega CD

  • Programmed gameplay.
  • Took over and completed the development of the data loading system.
  • Managed the disk burning process.

Bram Stoker's Dracula

Sega CD

  • Designed and programmed sprite animation packing tool.
  • Programmed gameplay.

Wiz 'n' Liz

SNES (cancelled)

  • Ported from Sega Genesis version as it was developed.