Tom Vernon Email & Phone Number

Liverpool, England, United Kingdom

Lead of 3Cs code team on unannounced project.

Liverpool, England, United Kingdom

Unannounced titleHorizon: Call of the Mountain

Liverpool, England, United Kingdom

Horizon: Call of the MountainPersistence VR

Liverpool, England, United Kingdom

Persistence VR

Knutsford, United Kingdom

Lego Worlds - I reworked world generation code to allow it to be performed concurrently across multiple threads, including implementation of multi-threading utilities such as a reader-writer-lock and a thread-safe weak pointer. I performed extensive profiling and optimisation of the world generation to support an infinite streaming world, involving work at the macro level, such as prioritisation and scheduling of the various world generation tasks, and at the micro level, such as reducing dynamic memory allocation throughout the world generation pipeline. I also worked on improving frame-rate on lower-end PCs and in large worlds by, for example, removing per-chunk processing, and identifying and resolving stalls caused by lock conflicts with the background threads. I was also responsible for the miniature-world preview on the front-end.Lego Dimensions - I re-factored the 'krawlie'​ system used for large crowds and Lego-brick style visual effects across all Lego titles to allow the size and composition of each entity to be varied across use cases, while ensuring the actual structure of each object was still resolved at compile time. This allowed large scale, but simple, use cases (like the Sandman boss in Lego Marvel) to have a smaller memory footprint (and so be more cache friendly), while maintaining the flexibility to use the same system for e.g. city pedestrians, without a performance penalty to existing systems. I reworked a number of legacy systems to reduce memory usage throughout the game. I also did other things that I can't mention because spoilers!

Knutsford, United Kingdom

Lego Fusion - As lead developer on the Town Master and Resort Designer apps I developed many of the systems across both titles, as well as scheduling and assigning tasks amongst members of the mechanics team. Both games were a significant departure from our normal titles, and so I was required to implement a large number of new mechanics, including dynamic building and prop placement, unique pedestrian AI, and management of user generated content. Additionally, I wrote the initial version of the extrusion technology, responsible for taking a 2D, scanned building façade of Lego bricks and turning it into a full 3D Lego model. This tech was later expanded to add further decoration and embellishments to produce the models seen in the final games.Lego Marvel Super Heroes - I developed the 'Sandman'​ tech, used for the giant Sandman boss in the first level (and demo) of the game, which enabled the boss to be dynamically constructed from thousands of unique objects. The same tech has since been used in many more Lego games. I also implemented the script, set up and code for the Rhino and Mystique/Magneto bosses in the Rapturous Rise level, and the Magneto boss in Magnetic Personality, which included bespoke AI and game mechanics specific to each boss fight. In addition I provided support and feature development for the city hub pedestrians, including handling ambient VO, and implemented Ant Man & Squirrel Girl's swarm attack.Lego City Undercover - I provided support and feature development for ambient AI throughout the game, including the pedestrians in the City, as well as birds and other incidental creatures.Lego The Lord of the Rings - I created bespoke AI for, and set up, armies and hordes in multiple game levels (such as the Prologue and Helms Deep levels), including extensive profiling and optimising of these to keep levels in-frame.

Liverpool, United Kingdom

As a test automation specialist, I created, maintained and ran scripts to perform automated testing using an in-house scripting language. As a functionality tester, I performed structured and unstructured testing across a wide variety of titles; checked that titles conformed to a range of functional, technical and legal specifications; and produced formal written bug reports.

Gloucester, United Kingdom

I reimplemented an existing scientific simulation in Fortran to allow for better maintainability and integration with existing code. I produced a detailed technical-specification and comprehensive documentation for the program. This was accompanied by thorough testing, following a self-developed test plan, to ensure strict safety standards were reached.

Master Of Science (Msc), Physics And Mathematics, First

Education record