About

Well about me, I always liked sci-fi and fantasy since a kid thanks to my brothers who were D&D fanatics and early video gamers and computer programmers. Also my dad liked sci-fi, fantasy and adventure movies too. I am not even going into detail about the boxes full of comics… anyways you can say I grew up in a geeky environment. Which is awesome and won’t change a bit, since I got to throw shurikens at an early age.

Anyways, I started making games since a kid, watching my older brothers play D&D, made me create my own version, with a checkered board, papers with enemies drawn in it and some Trouble Poper for dice rolls. Also I made pinpall games by leaning a table and using marbles and pencils to hit it against different objects that had different point values. One of those days I was creating a pinball game in my room, my dad died the next room over from Cancer, I was only 10 if I am not mistaken.

Three years later I got to make my own computer games by just spending hours on a Virtual Reality software  that used vectors and polygon graphics like StarFox at the time. I made a game, inspired by Doom called Virtua Maze, I had a set of levels called Hell. All the levels were saved on separate floppy disks, that could be accessed by finishing the previous one. Around that same time I created a hacked version of an MP3 (that didn’t existed yet at that time) by doubling up the speed of a WAV file and then saving it on a floppy then opening again and making it two times slower… and wallah the song was there, with some slight sound quality loss… anyways it was a work around.

In college, AIFL in Florida, I got into more graphic design and animation and eventually changing my concentration to Multimedia Programming and web design, because I didn’t want to just create and animate things, I wanted to interact with them, I wanted to make games, yet there was no game titles at that time in colleges. So I used some game creation course to actually make games my way. I created some few games, that honestly since I had lot of time for myself they were very detailed in graphics, animation, and even story but I lost them all when my hardrive died. Since I made couple games I became a teacher assistant for a course developing games with Macromedia Director which was my main platform to make them at the time. I hated VB… at the time.

Back in PR, I became a teacher using as an advantage that web design and multimedia development in PR was still on diapers, so while teaching I created some games, not that much, but I started teaching a game development course in Director and it was fun times, was something new for the students.

Later on I quit teaching and started working more on the web advertising industry in a newspaper website, after getting bored I suggested making games for the clients that were advertising on the site. After a test project became very successful, making a game whose highscore winner got tickets to a concert as a prize, we knew there was something awesome to do here. So I created the first website for web indie games in PR. In the first year I created over 12 games for it, the website had over 30 games in it, made locally. I did this besides the fulltime, under a contract of revenue sharing.. that wasn’t fulfilled… which knowing the industry here now, I am not surprised.

After some trips to a conference in San Francisco, CA, Zynga approached me for interviews, but I backed out, so I took that year to prepare more in recent technology and tour with my thrash/grind band at the time La Virgen del Pozo. A year later I went back to San Francisco, to the same conference and Zynga still wanted to interview me, I accepted, the interviews went thru, next day I got an offered to start in two weeks, with moving expenses paid… so yes I moved.

I worked at Zynga as a Flash Developer in YoVille, making features, on a pod that applied energy based game design to the game. Then I worked on items and assets for the game, preparing them and coding them into the game, so I had the idea to create mini arcade cabinets so when users clicked on them you could play a mini-game. Everyone was skeptical, I did it on my owned, it was published and became one of the top most selling items on that sale. Then I worked on Frontier Ville, doing less programming more setting up stuff, I got bored and that is when John Romero got in contact.

I knew John Romero thanks to Doom, the game I tried to emulate like 16 years earlier, we met in San Francisco after a really funny awkward conversation, and he suggested to have lunch. We met, talked about games and life, six months later he sent me a text saying if I wanted to join his team at his company Lootdrop.

I worked in Lootdrop mainly with a 5 engineers team, John (game design and audio code) was in it, his son Michael (engine and gameplay code, and 2 other awesome programmers, Chris (engine and everything code ) the lead and Harrison the server guy. And I was mainly doing front end, interface code. Honestly, job wise, was the best experience, specially in the first office, when the team was smaller and the place more cozy and we were pretty much modifying the base engine that would be use for the rest of the games. Even though the game never came out cause of publisher issues, we made it, and it exists, dormant on a server. It was the best experience, so far. Then I pretty much worked on every game in Loodrop by rotating teams, helping here and there, until I decided it was time to go back and do my own thing.

Now I am here running a company called Red Patch with some partners, but also doing lead developing on it, is not easy to handle both tasks but it is possible for now. And of course many other game projects to come.  This part here I need tod oa whole blog post about it, the good thigns that came out of it and the horrible and sad true abount fomring a company with toally sketchy partners.

While at Red Patch I worked on a game for the Vivire agency for T-Mobile, it was a game called Culsonic 4G and it was released on Android and Facebook, and it became a success, and also having a rating of 4.7 on the Google Play store. Also worked wtih a game for a known artist, well still in production or hold until something get clear. Also worked on another independent project, but because of unclear ideas, or maybe not proper support form some parts , this project I was leading and programming, was halted, I still have the main code, but to continue the game I need the green light for it.

After couple business situations of greedy people I decided to leave Puerto Rico again and get a job in the actual game industry, and this time is Konami, the company I always admired since a kid, its games like Contra, Castlevania, Gradius, Jackal, TMNT, etc were games that defined my video game child hood, teen years and still as an adult. I work as a Software Engineer and it is great, I can’t imagine working for another company that I admired since a kid.

I am also on a challenge of making a game a month now in 2013 to 2014, and its about that, making a game a month, so far released two on Facebook, and one of them has an Android version in the Google Play market. Now programming the third one. And that is all for now.