Scotty Hoag
Programmer Portfolio
 
scotty.hoag@gmail.com  (209)-298-2622
NES Mug


Professional Works



High
                              On Life
The Sphere, Las Vegas
Sphere Entertainment, Madison Square Gardens


The Sphere in Las Vegas is a new kind of immersive entertainment venue. The outside is a 360-degree animated display that dominates the Vegas skyline. Inside is an 18,600 seat theater with a 16K screen that wraps around the entire audience, offering new ways to present films, live performances, and interactive media.

I am a Senior Engineer on the Interactive Media Team at Sphere Entertainment. We are building games and other interactive content for visitors. Check back to see info on completed projects, soon!



High On Life

Humans are being captured and sold as a powerful drug. Journey across the the universe with your talking guns to take out the alien drug cartel.

I worked on a lot of the end game content, including the final boss fight, the ultimate player weapon, and hunter challenge systems.



Moxie

Moxie is a robotic companion for children. It can have conversations, play games, tell stories, and teach kids positive life lessons.

I wrote various games and conversation pattern rules to help Moxie interact in natural ways with people.



Sex, Death &
                                Rock!

Grab a drink and tune into this Adults-only dinner-theater game show based on classic rock music and culture.

I wrote a bunch of mini-games, sped up network communication via multithreading, and wrote image parsing and scoring algorithms for a game where you draw genitals on a concert bathroom wall (Seriously).



Freefall

An Oculus Quest VR skydiving experience using cables and fans to create a real sense of falling. I wrote the VR game software.



Skee Battle

A projection-mapped target game where players try to throw real and virtual balls into scoring holes for points. I wrote all of the game software, including in-game mapping tools to line up the virtual elements with their real-world counter-parts. 



Dr. Botcher's
                                Minute Medical School

Learn how to perform high-risk invasive surgery in minutes, just feet away from a fully stocked bar!

I wrote countless mini-games, added tons of multi-threaded optimization for the network code, and provided the voice of "Ken", the surgery victim patient.



Last Ball Standing

Spin giant circus ball controllers to bump the other players off of the platform in a king-of-the-hill combat game.

I wrote the gameplay code and firmware for the circus ball trackball controllers.



Demolition Zone

Throw a wrecking ball at the screen to knock down buildings and score points.

I wrote code for gameplay, procedural level creation, force-feedback rumble floors, sensor communication, and automated testing.



Big Top Balloon
                                Pop

The classic carnival balloon game, but with match-3 mechanics and computer vision. I wrote PLC communication scripts over Modbus TCP to blast air at players when they hit balloons, activate stage lighting, and raise or lower a pneumatic platform.



Super Thunder
                                Bloxx

Get ready to sweat while moving to some awesome beats! Pose to hit the green blocks for points, but don't hit the red ones!

I added a social media sharing system to share videos of the player's real-world dance moves after the game ends.



Danger Danger

AVOID MINES FOR HIGHSCORE. The longer you survive, the higher you climb on the leaderboards. How high can you climb?

I wrote most of the key systems including player control, mine spawners, and the chain-reaction scoring system.



Danger Danger

You are a machine built to battle! Wind up and slam into the other bots to get the high score in this networked 4-player combat game.

I wrote all of the networked gameplay code including player controllers and physics.



Battlezone

I wrote the joystick firmware for the Two Bit Circus VR POD version of Rebellion's Battlezone (And for several other park attractions as well).



Battlezone

I wrote several VR-enabled vehicular motion simulator game prototypes for Two Bit Circus attractions.



World War Toons

A mobile VR on-rails shooter where you drive a tank. I developed  camera, weapon, and vehicle systems.



Gadgetron

Push buttons, turn cranks, pull levers, bop punching bags, and do whatever else you can to raise the score to 1 Billion points!

I wrote the gameplay code and communication with all of the various widgets.



Spellbinder

Use your facial expressions to help creatures in a fantasy land.

I helped fix bugs and build in gameflow to get the game ready for production.



Spellbinder

Travel back in time with the mysterious Deja Cube! Meet famous historical figures, then use the widgets on the faces of the cube to solve puzzles and help them with their problems.

I wrote most of the Python gameplay-side logic, including a bunch of cool minigames.



Adventure Time
                                Puzzle Quest

Gather a group of brave adventurers to slay monsters and match like-colored gems! I wrote pretty much everything that deals with the puzzle half of the game.



Teenage Mutant
                                Ninja Turtles: Danger of the Ooze

Explore the city in a classic Metroid-vania style action adventure. I programmed boss and enemy AI, and implemented a coroutine-based scripting language for allowing rapid programming of advanced entity behaviors.




Adventure Time: Explore the Dungeon Because I DON'T KNOW!
For WiiU, XBox 360, PlayStation 3, 3DS, and PC


Explore the dungeons underneath the Candy Kingdom and stop the prisoners from escaping. I programmed two of the game's boss scenes.




The Smurfs 2
For Wii, Wii U, XBox 360, and PlayStation 3


Help Papa and the rest of the Smurfs rescue Smurfette from Gargamel! I worked on coding the AI and attack patterns for some of the enemies and bosses, backend elements like loading screens, and lots of other various gameplay elements.



Lalaloopsy

Lalaloopsy: Carnival of Friends
For Nintendo DS/3DS


Help Peanut Big Top get everything ready for the carnival! I programmed a lot of behind-the-scenes memory managemnet issues and added in the bonus game segments.



Pokerwalk


Race your friends around your actual neighborhood using GPS in search of virtual poker cards. This was created for the Berkeley Center for New Media to be used as a tool for exergaming and city planning research. The game is available now for Android cellphones.



Conway's Wallpaper

Generate beautiful, dynamically shifting patterns on your Android cellphone's home screen with this FREE live wallpaper app! The visualizations use user-specified cellular automata rule sets to create dancing lights and flashing colors as the cells move, grow, and evolve.








Personal Works
Below includes school and hobby projects ranging across art,
gaming, and robotics.



Flu Discovery

This is a prototype for a iPad storybook written in HTML5 and Javascript that is meant to teach children about the flu. Children can learn by watching the pages come to life through silly animations and through playing games.



STARMAC Quad-rotor


A research project for the Berkeley EECS Hybrid Systems Lab to play capture the flag with robots. Players communicate with a central server using GPS enabled cell phones that also track the players movement. The phones are used to send reconnaissance commands to the STARMAC quad-rotor helicopters and
display optimal movement suggestions for the human players.



Tank Robot


A robotic tank finds its way through a model city to a target. When the target is within range, the tank fires a toy missile at it. The tank receives information about the target via a camera ("Satellite") placed above the city that tracks fiducial markers on the robots. City buildings are detected using IR sensors on the robots.
 



Natcar Design


I competed in the National Semiconductor intercollegiate autonomous model racecar competition with a group of friends. The car had to follow a path defined by a wire carrying a 75k-Hertz signal. My team built electro-magnetic sensors into the front bumper of the car to detect the signal and control software to steer the car based on this input. We also wrote code to memorize the track so that subsequent laps of the race could be performed in even faster time.



BMO Buddy


The BMO Buddy is an on-going personal project to make a real life version of the robot/game system hybrid from the cartoon Adventure Time. Custom electronic circuits, special interchangeable software systems, and 3D modeling are all involved to make BMO as functional and adorable as in the show.



Dragon Slayer

This is a cartoon made entirely in Maya. Starting with no previous experience, I modeled, rigged, and animated, and then edited the entire production.



Barkeley Ball


A friend and I designed this augmented reality version of Pong for the Xilinx Virtex V FPGA. A webcamera tracks colored markers held by each player and moves the corresponding paddles to match their positions. A bluescreen paints a backdrop behind the players and makes them feel like they are really in the game. Custom image compression algorithms were written in order to fit all of the animated graphics into our unforgiving memory constraints.

This was made as the final project for a Digital Design class. Our submission received the highest grade in the class and won my partner and I our own FPGAs as prizes.



Particle Filter


A blind PacMan hunts for ghosts with a particle filter. Using Markov chains and Baysian Inference, Pacman listens for the ghosts and tries to find and eat them. The brighter the square is, the more likely Pacman believes the ghost is hiding there. This was done with a friend as part of an artificial intelligence class.



BlenderBot


You play as a paint mixing robot. Each time the factory gives you a target color, you need to toggle the primary color spigots to produce that color. You do this by grappling color bubbles with your tractor beam and colliding into them or swinging past and using the resulting momentum to shoot yourself off towards other bubbles. Flawless play results in score multipliers. Go for the high score!




Pong Quest


As the brave Sir Ball, bounce your way accross perilous platforms and through dangerous traps. Move your paddle warriors into strategic positions to help you cross gaps and climb to new heights. This obscure re-imagining of the classic arcade game requires strong puzzle solving skills and a bit of ambidextrousness.



Spitball


In this dodgeball-style game, players move their "Spit-Baller" using Wii Nunchuck controllers and attempt to hit each other with spitballs. The longer a ball is held, the faster it will fire. Hold the ball too long, however, and your baller will implode! Catch three of your opponent's thrown balls in a row to unleash a devastating Super Attack!



Conway's Maze of Life


Create a maze by "painting" a seed onto your map and watch it grow via cellular automation. Then try to find your way to the exit. You can make the path more complicated by putting down waypoints that the solution has to pass through.



Ataxx

Take turns placing pieces on the board, or try converting your opponent's pieces to your color. The player with the most pieces remaining when the board is filled is the winner. You can even enter an IP address of a friend to play the game online!

This was originally part of a month-long school project for a Data Structures class. I finished the project two weeks early so I could spend the remaining time building a graphical user interface. My submission received the highest grade in the class.



To see older works and more school and hobby projects, click ALL Works.