Phil Chu, Technicat LLC

Salt Lake City, Utah, United States https://technicat.com/

technicat@Github

technicat@Mastodon

Developing software since the 80s

Career

working for myself @ Technicat LLC

January 2000 to present

Consulting and contract development, self-publishing apps and games.

working for the man @ various

June 1988 to June 2001

Journeyed through the semiconductor, defense, space, computer graphics, mobile Internet, and video game industries.

Projects

Fedicat @ Technicat

developer, publisher from March 2022 to present

Mastodon/fediverse iOS app in progress, available on Testflight

app: iOS, Swift, Mastodon, fediverse

Talk Dim Sum @ Technicat

developer, publisher from January 2014 to present

Your dim sum companion. Read about dim sum and learn how to pronounce the dishes. Available on Itch.io and the App Store.

app: iOS, Swift, dim sum

HyperBowl @ Technicat

developer, publisher, licensee from December 2008 to December 2019

Be the ball! A Unity reimplementation of the classic bowling game, licensed from Hyper Entertainment.

One of MacLife's Greatest iPhone Apps of 2009
Available on the App Store and Steam
Formerly available on the Amazon Appstore, Nook store, Itch.io, and various crappy app stores (crappstores?)

game: bowling, 3D, Unity

Cinefex iPad Edition @ Cinefex

developer from April 2016 to present

An iPad reader for the Cinefex visual effects magazine, with extras such as videos and image galleries.

Facilicated transfer from original developer to Cinefex LLC
Fixed in-app-purchase issues
Updated video player after Apple dropped support for previous API
Updated issue download code after Apple dropped support for previous API (notice a trend?)
Optimized startup time and browsing
Updated to comply with ever-changing Apple requirements

app: iOS, magazine, visual effects

Emo-Ray vs. the Intergalactic Teddy Bears @ Heavy Water

programmer from September 2011 to December 2011

A Playstation Home driving/shooting game with alien invader teddy bears.

Implemented collision physics among cars
Programmer credit displayed in-world

game: Playstation 3, Playstation Home, virtual world

RC Rally @ Heavy Water

programmer from September 2011 to December 2011

A Playstation Home multiplayer racing game.

Made some UI fixes just before release

game: Playstation 3, virtual world, racing

Blue Mars @ Avatar Reality

programmer from September 2007 to January 2011

A 3D virtual world implemented with CryEngine.

Documented the Lua API and framework for creating minigames on the community wiki (a CryEngine wiki even copied part of it!)
Integrated newer versions of Scaleform, including Scaleform IME for localization
Tweaked CryEngine physics to support an in-world golf game
Attended in-world developer meetings. Better than Zoom.

virtual world: CryEngine, metaverse, Lua, C++

Nendo @ Izware

programmer from May 2007 to June 2007

A nifty 3D modeler originally developed at Nichimen Graphics.

Updated to work on Windows XP.

graphics: 3D, C++

Darkwatch @ High Moon Studios

programmer from September 2006 to April 2007

A vampire western for Playstation 2 and Xbox. demo builds.

Worked on HUD elements for health, ammo, special powers
Implemented split-screen (multiple Renderware cameras) for multiplayer
Added PAL support
Integrated Lua scripting for audio effects and HUD elements
Received programmer credit (but oddly required to list city of birth)

game: Renderware, Xbox, Playstation 2, Lua, C++

Fugu Games @ Technicat

developer from June 2007 to present

Small games released as webplayers, Mac widgets, and mobile apps.

Fugu Maze, a suspense maze walkthrough that got twenty thousand downloads on the App Store in the first week and then a trickle after I started charging for it
Fugu Bowl, a simple proof of concept for HyperBowl that got low ratings but was my most downloaded app (until Apple rejected upgrades).

game: 3D, 2D, Unity, J2ME, C#

Tech Deck: Bare Knuckle Grind @ Visionscape Interactive

programmer from December 2003 to May 2004

A skateboarding game bundled with Tech Deck figures.

Implemented installers so each game could be packaged separately and installed in any sequence
Added dynamic shadows to replace the placeholder blob shadows (and then switched back to the blog shadows because the art director liked them better)
Set up a push-button scripted build system so the producers could create a latest build from the subversion source at any time

game: Windows, Renderware, C

HyperBowl @ Hyper Entertainment

programmer from January 2001 to June 2001

A 3D attraction bowling game, rolling in fanciful locations.

Added localization support, particularly for Jillian's installations in Montreal (French)
Implemented support for (potential) new lanes, e.g. a toy room, motocross slope...
Profiled, optimized (those lanes kept getting bigger and bigger)
Fixes for new graphics cards (pesky w-buffer...)
Changes to facilitate arcade and PC versions (I'm there in the mobygames credits)

game: 3D, Windows, arcade, attraction, C++

Neomar @ Neomar

programmer from December 1999 to July 2001

One of the first mobile web browsers, conforming to WAP standards.

Implemented an HTTP proxy in Java for the Neomar WAP gateway
Launched on Motient's Blackberry service
Company assets acquired by Good Technology

enterprise: WAP, HTTP, mobile, Java

Leverage for Scheduling @ Interval Logic

programmer from December 1998 to December 1999

Supply chain scheduling software for semiconductor fabs. Managed the group reponsible for installation, XML interoperability, and user interfaces.

enterprise: Java, XML

Leverage for Planning @ Interval Logic

programmer from November 1998 to November 1998

Supply chain planning software for semiconductor fabs. Upgraded from Tcl to TclPro.

enterprise: Tcl

Mirai @ Nichimen Graphics

consultant from September 1997 to September 1997

Successor to N-World

Fixed some graphics code (which I eventually realized was originally written by me)
visited 3D hardware vendors in Silicon Valley (including a young nVidia) to get test cards and discuss OpenGL issues
Used to make Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.

graphics: 3D, OpenGL, Windows

N-World @ Nichimen Graphics

programmer from December 1995 to June 1997

A 3D modeling and animation package descended once upon a time from the Symbolics Graphics Group (written in Lisp, shhh!).

Ported from IrisGL to OpenGL on SGI workstations
Ported from Irix to Windows NT
Manager of Core Software (I made up the title)
Used in the making of Mario 3D.

graphics: 3D, OpenGL, Irix, Windows

ORBIS @ JHU Applied Physics Lab

programmer from December 1992 to December 1993

An expert system for submarine simulation.

Added support for local area network simulations (i.e. games)
Added Distributed Interactive Simulation support for wide-area network simulations (wargames)
Donned a submarine uniform and took part in two exercises like I was in The Hunt for Red October

government: Distributed Interactive Simulation, Lisp, C++

Proposal Entry Processor @ Space Telescope Science Institute

programmer from November 1990 to May 1992

A syntax-directed Emacs mode used by astronomers and Institute staff to prepare and edit Space Telescope observation proposals.

A member of the proposal preparation staff asked for my project to be continued after I left (but alas, no takers).

government: space, emacs, Lisp

Database Accelerator @ MIT

programmer from October 1989 to October 1990

A computer architecture based on content-addressable memories. Implemented compilers and simulators and simulations for the Database Accelerator and Content-Addressable Parallel Processor.

research: VLSI, CAD, Lisp

DROID @ Texas Instruments

programmer from May 1988 to September 1989

A VLSI layout synthesis tool, used in-house to design new products, running on TI Explorer Lisp Machines. Added optimizations and other improvements, skipped most of the meetings (also an optimization).

enterprise: VLSI, CAD, Lisp

Multilisp @ MIT

student from September 1987 to May 1988

Bachelors thesis project implementing an Othello game in Multilisp (Multello) to run on the Concert 32-processor computer, trying various parallelism strategies to compare processor utilization and final performance.

Wrote the thesis in LaTeX on a Symbolics Lisp Machine.
Cited in a PhD thesis.

research: game, parallel processing, Lisp

START @ MIT

student from June 1987 to August 1987

Part time student work on a graph display for the the START natural language parser, then running on Symoblics Lisp machines.

research: natural language, Lisp

Publications

Learn Unity 2014 for iOS Game Development

Published June 2013 by Apress

Introduction to mobile game development with the Unity game engine.

Technicat on Software

Published January 2015 by self

Collection of software development essays.

Education

Johns Hopkins University

September 1991 to May 1993

Masters degree in Computer Science, 3.x GPA

AI, computer graphics, automata, algorithms, compilers, functional programming

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

September 1984 to May 1988

Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering, 3.x GPA

6.001, 6.002, 6.003, 6.004

West Senior High School

September 1981 to May 1984

High school degree in Iowa, 3.x GPA

Languages

Native speaker in English

Food in Cantonese

Kdrama phrases in Korean

Interests

Cats

adoption, cat cafe, lucky cat, samurai cat

Reading

Asian-American fiction, graphic design, graphic novels, history, philosophy, scifi, spy stories, technology

Viewing

kdrama, scifi, MMA

Learning

English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese

Listening

Motown, NPR Podcasts

Playing

piano, video games

Skills

App Development (Experienced)

Flutter, J2ME, SwiftUI, Xamarin

Game Development (Experienced)

CryEngine, Godot, Havok, Qube, Renderware, Ren'py, Scaleform, Unity, Unreal

Graphics (Experienced)

Direct3D, OpenGL, Processing

Programming (Experienced)

6502, BASIC, C, C++, C#, Dart, Java, Javascript, Lisp, Lua, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Python, Swift, Tcl

Writing (Experienced)

English, books, press releases

Awards

Leverage for Planning/Scheduling

Interval Logic on April 1999

They misspelled my name.

Maritime Simulation Demonstration

ARPA on October 1993

They misspelled my name, too.

First Hubble Servicing Mission

Space Telescope Science Institute on December 1993

Includes a patch flown on the first Hubble servicing mission. Best workplace award ever. And they got my name right.

Files

index.md

Latest commit

History