Name: Barnaby Smith
Occupation: Games Programmer
Location: Cirencester, Glos, England

I started programming at 8, back in the days of QBASIC and Windows 3.11. My first game was a text based adventure game called Explorers, followed by a space themed adventure game and a pokemon fan game (I was very in to pokemon at the time, don’t blame me.) A few years later I started using Visual Basic 4.0 and worked on a series of games that utilised Windows controls and timers. I then gained some interest in web development, making games like a penguin themed GTA clone which can still be played on the net here, learning ActionScript 2.0 in the process. Following on with that, I learned XHTML, PHP, XML and CSS and started to make my own websites and content management systems.

By this point I had moved up to Visual Basic 6.0 and started using DirectX 8.0 with it, working on a space themed game which I hoped would be an Elite clone but ended up being more a learning experience as to 3D computer graphics. I also did a lot of modification on the GTA series of games, which I’ve found very valuable since seeing how a triple A game is structured and the methods used for certain problems.

With my strong interest in developing computer games and programming in general, I decided I should make a career of it and enrolled at the University of Huddersfield on the BSc Computer Games Programming course. I’ve since learned C#, C++ and Java, gaining experience with DirectX 9.0 and the XNA framework. My particular interest is in graphics programming, engine design and tools development. In terms of graphics programming I’ve been teaching myself the fundamentals of the graphics pipeline and understand a lot of the inner workings of Direct3D, I’ve also been improving by knowledge of shader writing in HLSL.

In terms of tools development, I believe in targetted small tools with very good usability and see effective tools as a major part of streamlining development, I’ve written an article on what I’ve learned about tools so far here. In the last year I’ve been blogging a series of articles on my blog at the XNA UK usergroup, but subsequently use this website for my blog posts. As a hobby I have been reverse engineering an old RTS, Dune 2000 to extend the lifetime of one of my favourite games. This has been very instructive in how data and programs work at a lower level, having used disassemblers and decompilers like IDA and hex editors to understand how binary files are structured and stored. I’ve learned a lot about how maps, mission files, string tables, image archives, constants, UIs are stored and structured.

I worked for just over a year at Canalside Studios, a games company in Huddersfield, England which provides placement opportunities for students. Subsequent to that I worked as a junior programmer at Four Door Lemon in Bradford, developing a port of their iPhone game QuizQuizQuiz as a launch title for Windows Phone 7.

My final year consisted of a team project, dissertation, AI module and graphics module. I recieved A’s in all four modules and graduated from Huddersfield University with a first class honours degree in July 2011. After my dissertation hand-in I worked at Four Door Lemon for three months, before starting my current job at Neon Play. If you want to get in touch please mail me here.