Hello there! Thanks for checking out my portfolio. I'm Jason Meisel, and I love to make games. I've been programming as a hobby all my life, but in 2009 I took it to the next level at DigiPen Institute of Technology. There I found that game development was my true calling, and created award-winning student games year after year.
Having just shipped Mekazoo on Xbox One, PS4, and Steam, I'm looking for the next step in my game development life. I have a strong passion for creating new experiences for players, especially those that challenge existing notions of what games are capable of.
Please, take a look at my work. If you like what you see, shoot me an email. You can also twit me on the Twitters @jasonmeisel, link me at the LinkedIns, or look at my boring resume.
Perspective
Perspective is an experimental game combining a first-person puzzler with a 2D platformer. This was my Junior project at DigiPen, but was worked on into my Senior year as well. I was formally the Design Lead and Gameplay Programmer on this project.
My Responsibilities
Designing the feel, experience, and flow of the game and working with a level designer, a musician, and a team of artists to implement them
Playtesting the game and responding to user feedback
Creating the DirectX 11 graphics engine to allow for rapid art iteration
Writing many different shaders to help iterate on the art style
Assisting with the design and coding of the game's editor, built with WXWidgets
Implementation of all gameplay code, as well as much of the UI
Assisting with the general production of the game by managing the team's wants and capabilities, seeking out feedback of experienced developers, and creating trailers and other press materials
Honors
DigiPen Game Awards 2012 - Most Innovative Design, Best Physics, Best 3D Visual Design, Best Junior Technology, Best Junior Game, DigiPen Game of the Year
Independent Games Festival 2013 - Finalist for Technical Excellence
Game Developers Conference 2013 - Experimental Gameplay Showcase
Develop Conference Indie Showcase 2012 - Showcase
Brazilian International Game Festival - Finalist for Best Gameplay
hoPLAY Festival 2012 - Finalist
Nous
Nous is a 2D free-flowing action game developed by the team Awesome Shark Volcano. It was my sophomore year game project at DigiPen Institute of Technology and was developed from May 2010 to September 2011.
My Responsibilities
Creating a 3D graphics engine using DirectX with deferred lighting, normal maps, texture atlasing, depth sorting and billboarding for sprites, text rendering, and an extensible particle system
Creating graphical effects in HLSL including meta-balls, edge lighting, motion blur, desaturation, pixelization, radial pixelization, 2 types of distortion, bloom, pixelized explosions, and 3 types of “screen glitching”
Brainstorming, designing, and implementing game concept prototypes
Integrating, extending, and bug-fixing the UI library (originally using CEGUI, then switching to Gwen)
Integrating the Audio library (FMOD Ex)
Creating 3D art content
Creating game logic scripts in Lua
Designing and implementing the boss chase level
Implementing screen capture facilities
Honors
Independent Games Festival 2012 - Student Showcase
DigiPen Game Awards 2011 - Best Sophomore Technology
PC Gamer - #2 Free PC Game of 2011
Toronto After Darkcade 2012 - Showcase
Brazil International Game Festival - Finalist for Best Best Sound, Best Narrative
FILE Festival 2012 - Showcase
SONAR
SONAR is a 1940′s spy comic book stealth/action/puzzle papercraft game with visible sound waves in a web browser. It is the first full commercial game made from the ground up with WebGL. SONAR marks my first commercial game project. It was independently developed by Subsonic LLC: a company formed by myself and three other developers. It was created from scratch by a small team of 3 programmers, 1 designer, and 2 artists in just 3 months. It was written in Javascript and used the (at the time experimental) WebGL API for rendering the graphics.
My Responsibilities
Creating a 3D graphics engine using WebGL with bone animation, phong lighting, a custom pipeline from Blender, glass rendering with screen-space reflections, specialized wall rendering, and optimized environment rendering
Creating a 2D physics engine with support for tile-based environments, circular rigid bodies, dynamic particles, collision detection and resolution, and raycasting Working with artists to improve the art pipeline
Implementing gameplay code such as the character controller, weapons, power-ups, and more
Creating and optimizing UI elements including tutorial text, subtitles, and achievement pop-ups
The Y-Front is a 3D forward-scrolling shooter rendered completely in the Windows Command Prompt. It was created as my second semester Freshman game project from January to April 2010 at DigiPen Institute of Technology.
My Responsibilities
Scheduling the team’s tasks over the course of the project
Writing the Technical Design Document
Creating the core game engine Creating a 3D math library
Creating a 3D rasterizer Creating data structures (dynamic array, hash table, linked list, binary tree)
Creating a gameplay behavior system
Creating a 3D level editor (based in Blender)
Creating the high score system
Designing and implementing all the game logic (character controller, levels, bosses, etc.)
Honors
DigiPen Game Awards 2010 - Best Freshman Technology, Best Freshman Game
Barry's Magical Escape: DigiPen Ball-Stars Edition is a tribute to DigiPen's wonderful collection of games over the years. It builds on the gameplay of the Bumper Balls minigame from Mario Party. It was built in Unity during my final semester at DigiPen.