Benjamin Brogniart

At Ubisoft Owlient, I worked on Elite Squad, a free-to-play action RPG for mobile platforms. I arrived during the mid stage of the game production and worked as a mobile developer. I contributed to different aspects of the development of the game, mostly on the client-side.

My main focus was on the tools of the game: I developed a tool for the QA team to allow them to play fully customizable missions (unlock missions and arenas, modify team layouts and character properties, etc.) coupled with another tool to tweak the missions in real-time (modifying character status and stats, etc.). This tool was particularly useful to recreate the very specific conditions of certain bugs and thus help our team to fix them. In addition, I developed a tool for the Marketing team, to allow them to take screen captures of the game using a dedicated camera system with cinematic movements (panning, tilting, tracking, etc.) as well as post-processing options, game object filtering capabilities, etc. This tool was used for the production of marketing assets that showcased the battle element of the game.

Additionally, I worked to a great extent on the core component of the game: the battle, for which I developed the main camera system as well as a cutscene integration pipeline that allows artists and designers to easily integrate content for battle events. I also participated continuously in the maintenance and debugging of the game, the client/server interfacing, the different game design tools such as the data exporter/importer tools, among other activities.

Most of these tasks involved working collectively with more than a dozen developers, which required a certain level of rigor in the version control workflow (branching, merging, code reviewing, etc.) to ensure stability and efficiency in the game development.

Explore Studio is a communications agency where I worked as lead developer on numerous projects related to communications and events, such as VR/AR applications, video mapping software and product configurators.

The main technology I have used in this role was Unity, along with occasional use of web-based frameworks or specific development environments/technologies. Among other things, the most common features I worked on were VR/tactile camera rigs, client-server communication, content management systems, teaming/multiplayer systems, and video mapping features such as projection matrices, screen stitching, etc.

I've also had the opportunity to work on more experimental projects, such as installations using motion detection systems and/or robotics and micro controllers. In this context, I've worked with Microsoft Kinect and IR sensors. I've worked with Arduino and did some sketch programming as well as electrical circuit prototyping. I've also worked with robotic arms and wrote a binding library to use Universal Robots UR 3/5/10 products with Unity to do motion capture/control.

Furthermore, I have participated in a number of events such as product reveals, press conferences or trade shows, as a technical supervisor or runner. Even though this was not always directly related to my day-to-day job, it trained me to work against the clock in stressful environments.

I co-wrote and worked as a game designer and lead developer on Mirages of Winter, an iOS adventure game. Using Unity, I implemented the main game mechanics and created numerous tools and scripts for the artists and designers to build the game environment and its puzzles.

One of the main challenges I faced during the development of this game was creating a graphical pipeline that would allow us to have very few draw calls and optimal performances on mobile devices. This was achieved by creating custom shaders as well as atlasing and pooling tools.

In addition to this, I created several procedural terrain/prop generation tools as well as a XML-based NPC system, allowing the designers to easily build and tweak objects and characters.

Some other tasks I worked on were implementing a smooth control/camera/character system evolving around Bézier curves, developing an open-world scene management system and creating a custom state machine system compatible with Unity's Animator component, among others.

The CRI is a convivial place at the crossroads between sciences, education, research and hacking. My work there focused on designing earnest gaming experience to stimulate scientific creativity, trigger interest in learning and develop citizen science activities.

I mainly worked as lead designer on Hero.Coli, a synthetic biology adventure game. I also had the opportunity to provide game design training to doctoral students and intervene as a consultant on numerous game projects.

I worked on the level design (editing, creation and building) and 3D design (creation of models and textures) of the game Bloodknight.