Frank Hamilton
Gameplay Programmer
NHSGA: Summer 2013
In the Summer of 2013, I was a teachers assistant for the National High School Gaming Academy. In this program graduate students and faculty members teach high school students from across the globe, what it is like to be a game developer and how to work in a team.
I served as a programming and game design teacher. It was a privilege to be able to help those students discover what video game development is all about.
Amalgamedia: Spring 2013
Amalgamedia was an Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University project that created a web based interactive music video for the band Anti-Flag. We combined Facebook, Flash, HTML5 to tell the story of a hypothetical company stealing private information from Facebook.
I served as the technical director for this project. Amalgamedia was a great experience for me, because it forced me to work not only in games but also in interactive film.
Past Work
Project Spearhead: Fall 2013
In the Fall of 2013, I worked on Project Spearhead. Project Spearhead is a graduate level student pitch project of the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University.
Our mission was to explore the affordances of the Oculus Rift to the greatest extent possible and create new and innovative experience from the knowledge we gained. Throughout the semester we created 20 deliverables, which ranged from simple tests to positional tracking games.
Bootcamp: Fall 2012
Bootcamp was the term of endearment for the first semester of my Masters of Entertainment Technology graduate degree from the Entertainment Technology Center of Carnegie Mellon University. In this semester, students are required to develop games, make films, and even learn a little improv.
Building Virtual Worlds was the game development portion of bootcamp. It involved changing teams about every 2 weeks in order to rapidly prototype game mechanics with unique control interfaces. One project Breakfast Bop It was a semifinalist in UncommonGoods Makey Makey challenge. My final project Buccaneer Bay was awarded the First Penguin Award for its innovative gameplay by the Building Virtual Worlds Faculty.
Undergraduate Education
My undergraduate education was at West Virginia University where I studied Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering. I was studying these disciplines because I wanted to work in the robotics industry. I found robotics to be very interesting but when I began working on video games, I found my true passion.
Bewildered: Spring 2012
Bewildered was a puzzle game I created for iOS. This part-time project taught me the difficulties of producing a game and submitting to the app store.
