Crosbie Fitch Curriculum Vitae

Summary

·        A software engineer specialising in systems infrastructure

·        Currently developing a new kind of online transaction system to facilitate en masse sale of digital content (The Digital Art Auction).

·        Over a decade’s wizardry with C++, and a variety of other languages and platforms

·        Very interested in architecting game engines for massively multiplayer games.

·        Experienced with 3D graphics, 3D rendering engines, and 3D tools such as 3DS Max.

·        Snowboarder, Pinballer, Carpenter, Mountain Biker, RTS & FPS Gamer.

Work Type

C++ and 3D games are indeed interesting, but whilst I'm always interested in working in the field of 3D graphics, I'm especially interested in extremely large scale virtual environments.

There are three problem areas relating to the realisation of these that I'm most interested in:

  1. PLATFORM: The system infrastructure to support million player virtual worlds, i.e. distributed modelling systems (see my Cyberspace Engineers site)

  2. CONTENT: Rules based, automatic scenery generation (sophisticated enough to encapsulate architectural/stylistic expression) - I have done a fair bit of theoretical work on this

  3. PAYMENT: Revenue mechanisms that can operate in what will inevitably be an uncontrolled (p2p) environment (T'DAA)

Employment History

Qube Software Ltd, May 01 - March 03

Developed an in-game camera controller, with smooth response to target acquisition (quaternion interpolation), collision detection and avoidance, etc.

Assisted with a game related project that involves interactive scenery construction. Designed a means of specifying scenery connectivity and in support of this, developed Max and Maya 'helper' and 'exporter' plug-ins to allow an artist to specify this connectivity interactively. Have also produced a Max exporter for this, and subsequently adapt the current code base to read in these files.

Computer Artworks, October 00 - March 01

Created the vision and strategy for a new online venture, and made this the basis for the initial draft of a business plan. Worked on a revenue analysis of the various proposals within the plan. Helped refine the vision, business plan and revenue analysis as the team expanded. Ultimately expected to end up as technical lead.

Much research included assessment of various development models and their relative commercial strengths in creating or exploiting new technologies (proprietary R&D, Open Source, licensing), evaluation of numerous marketing strategies required to create/popularise the product's market (online/offline advertising, viral marketing, etc.), and exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of different revenue models (online vs offline sales, micro-transactions, auctions, etc.).

Also researched the state of the art in terms of massive multiplayer games and their technology, with particular attention to their scalability.

Acclaim Studios (London), April 00 – September 00

Joined to head up Tools and Technologies department (once Acclaim had moved to their new Mortlake offices). Initially placed with the Ferrari team given their needs for assistance were greatest. Started work on a C++ memory and resource management system. Once that was operational started on a general diagnostics system. Played a large part in establishing coding standards and project organisation standards (Visual SourceSafe). Then began development of cross-platform libraries to contain core components typically required in games. Acclaim’s financial difficulties put a halt all projects apart from the Ferrari racing game. With this greater focus, I worked on a data import/export system to get game information from Max into the Ferrari game. Thus my object oriented ‘game database’, optimised for fast loading at run-time, was being used successfully just as the Ferrari project was terminated.

Have also used the RenderWare libraries to implement level-of-detail for the cars and written helper and exporter plug-ins for Max.

Pepper’s Ghost Productions, May 97 – March 00

Used C++ and 3D Studio Max scripting language to provide various utilities and plug-ins to enhance production of animated series at Pepper’s Ghost.

My most ambitious plug-in was a rules based scenery generation facility to plug-in to 3D Studio Max which would automatically generate large virtual sets. This has had to be suspended for more urgent needs due to a production being fully underway.

Originally joined Pepper’s Ghost in May 97 to write a networked games engine. Unfortunately, a couple of months after arrival they canned all their current games projects and decided to change direction into computer animation. I still continued my project in the hope that additional resources would be provided when the company’s fortunes improved. In late 98, still being the sole developer, I decided to write up my project in the form of two papers which I presented at the VSMM ’99 conference.

I have also been involved in the development of an in-house document and project management package.

Cinesite, Sep 96 – May 97

Was involved in the development of visual effects plug-ins for a digital compositing package called Cineon. Thus indirectly had a hand in many of the effects seen in recent movies.

Was very pleased to design and implement the infrastructure of the 3D rendering system that is now incorporated into Cineon (still in use in many effects houses). This had the task of holding and interpreting a high level scene description, and then farming this out to one or more low level rendering services, then coordinating the 3D output into Cineon’s 2D image processing pipeline. This was quite an enjoyable foray into SGI multithreaded C++ code.

My colleague who moved on to Manex Visual Effects was so impressed with the relatively novel design pattern I’d used, that he used it in developing a renderer used for “The Matrix”.

I also designed the architecture for a camera tracking and match-move system.

Argonaut, Apr 95 – Sep 96

Joined BRender development team and involved in a variety of areas. Developed the C++ API to BRender, though this was never released due to lack of marketing confidence. Also wrote the BRender technical reference manual.

Developed a high level scripting language. Designed a games development system, which was proposed as a project to various companies, but despite favourable response, never obtained funding.

Others, May 84 – Feb 95

Transcendent, Nov 94 – Feb 95

Obtained initial funding to develop networked games engine. A few months good work. Contract did not get signed after all.

Climate Changer Computing and Concessionaires, Oct 94 – Nov 94

Completed porting of a report generator from Borland OWL to MFC.

Institute for Employment Studies, Apr 86 – Oct 94

Started off with statistical and graphics C programming. Much C++ Win32 graphics programming for computer assisted diagramming.

University of Sussex, Oct 92 – Dec 92 (part-time)

Conducted a ten week statistics course for humanities undergraduates.

Ashdown Software, Feb 87 – Jul 87 (part-time)

Wrote the Maestro music editor as supplied with the Acorn Archimedes and RISC PC.

Beebugsoft, May 84 – Apr 86

Many utilities in BBC BASIC and assembler for EPROM based utilities.

Writing

2003 – Plan B: The Bedroom Coder's Business Model, Develop Magazine (March), draft

2002 – Reviewed two books for Game Developer Magazine, June issue.

Continued series of articles in Gamasutra: “Cyberspace in the 21st Century”

7 Aug: Security is Relative

2001 – Continued series of articles in Gamasutra: “Cyberspace in the 21st Century”

26 Feb: Scalability With a Big 'S'

12 Jun: Proksim (now Quazal) NetZ Review

2000 – Series of articles in Gamasutra: “Cyberspace in the 21st Century”

29 Dec: Foundations II

1 Dec: Foundations

13 Mar: Cyberspace and Twelve Monkeys

20 Jan: Mapping the Future of Multiplayer Games

1999 – Proceedings of VSMM99

Consensus: A Scalable Interactive Entertainment System

Strategies for Scaling Interactive Entertainment

1998 – Article in Pinball Player: “Pinball Martial Arts”

1996 – In-house publication for Argonaut: “The BRender Technical Reference Manual”

1994 – Articles in EXE: “Shannon-Fano compression”, “C++ Reference counted values”, “Use of #include in large C++ projects”

1988 – Articles in RISC User: “Develop your own drum machine”

Public Speaking

2002 – Introduced and chaired Pricing, Partnerships & Payment for Entertainment Content at the Café Royal, London - 26th April.

1999 – Presented two papers at conference VSMM99

Consensus: A Scalable Interactive Entertainment System

Strategies for Scaling Interactive Entertainment

Online Activities

Member of IGDA and Moderator of its Online Games SIG.

Other Knowledge and Experience

Networked Games Engines, 3D Graphics, Neural networks

Systems infrastructure, class library design, algorithms

OOP, C++,  templates, STL, COM, ATL, multi-threading, synchronisation

Structured approach, high standards, documentation, 'Hungarian' coding style preferred

Team worker, team leader, self-starter, patient, co-operative

Distributed systems, parsing, data compression, neuron models

Editors, assemblers, compilers, profilers, version control, etc.

Glockenspiel C++, SGI C++, MS Visual C++, C, BASIC, Pascal, Assembler (6502, ARM)

UNIX/SGI IRIX, Windows 98/NT/2000, DOS, RISC OS, BBC OS, VAX/VMS.

Zope, Python, PHP, MySQL, HTML

Education

O levels: 6; A levels: Maths A, Further Maths B, Physics E; University: BSc Engineering (5 terms).

Personal Details

Name: Crosbie Fitch, Born: 1963

Address: Lewes, East Sussex, UK

E-Mail: crosbie@cyberspaceengineers.org