Hello, I'm Thomas. I'm a hard-working, passionate games programmer that is currently living in Ferntree Gully, Victoria. I studied at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE), where I obtained a Bachelor in Games and Virtual Worlds (Programming), and currently, I am working full time as a Games Developer at SavySoda.
My passion for programming started with a small community of developers and artists, attempting to recreate the video game Journey to the center of Hawkthorne, shown in episode 3.20 of NBC's Community. I contributed to the project back in 2012 in various ways, from ideas to game directions. But my proudest contribution by far was the creation of various sprite sheets (Abed: Cowboy, Jeff: Heather Popandlocklear, Jeff: Mercury Poisoning, Troy: Bullet Wound) for different characters and skins.
My experience with Hawkthorne's development led directly to my discovery of the Love2D engine, and in turn, the creation of my first personal project, Zombie Game.
Zombie Game is a top-down zombie arcade shooter, created using the Love2D engine and written in Lua. Its development ignited a fire in me that didn't stop for three straight months of development, only slowing down for a job at my local Mc Donalds. I am still very proud of this development today, and not only did it help land me my next position, but it proved to me that games development was what I wanted to do.
After Zombie Game, I applied for a traineeship position at a local software development company known as Advance Computing. I gained many important skills at Advance, made many great friends and got my first real start in the software industry. While I enjoyed my time at Advance Computing developing various apps like PestTrack, it wasn't scratching my video game itch, so I decided it was time to make my first steps in games development and enrolled at AIE.
The Academy of Interactive Entertainment is a games development educator where I started my Bachelor's degree in Games and Virtual Worlds (Programming). I have learnt more than I could ever imagine here, and I can't praise this academy enough for the inspiration it has given me for games and programming!
Unfortunately, after my studies at AIE, the world was hit by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic with COVID-19, which put a fork in the road for my next steps in games development. The best decision for me during this time was to go a safer route for employment, so I started a full-time job at my local Cash Converters. During this time at Cashies, I continued developing personal projects to keep myself practised for when I was ready to work in the industry.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns here in Victoria (We had one of the longest lockdowns in the world, by the way!) I decided to develop a few new projects to keep my mind occupied, but most importantly, help with my mental health during a very difficult period!
The projects I developed during this time were the following:
After starting a development blog and writing about my development experiences over the 2021-2022 period, I gained a lot of confidence in my skills and at the start of 2022, I started applying for work in the games development industry, landing a position as a Games Designer / Unity Developer at a studio in Docklands, Melbourne, called SavySoda.
I've worked at SavySoda for the last two years, working with an amazing team and having some great opportunities! I have worked on two major projects during my time here at SavySoda (Millionaire Tycoon: World and Mirror Planet), and I can't wait to see what happens next!