Zach Burke Email & Phone Number

Vancouver, Wa, Us

Vancouver, Wa, Us

Making games for Generation X using Unreal Engine.As a Co-Founder of Hypercane Studios, I transform creative ideas into engaging digital experiences. With over two decades of expertise in game development and software engineering, my work encompasses everything from netcode optimization to cinematic storyboarding.I thrive on creating out-of-the-box solutions and am passionate about pursuing projects that push personal and technological boundaries. For the past decade, I've specialized in working with Unreal Engine, continuously exploring its potential to craft immersive and innovative experiences.I am an expert in writing multiplayer systems, VR, plugins, automated build systems and more. I also enjoy animation, particle systems, audio, scoring, coding standards and automated testing.I often work as a solutions architect and project lead, managing multi-disciplinary teams to consistently design, estimate, schedule and deliver on time and on budget.

Design and implementation of Holographic AR gaming platform in Unreal Engine 4. Doing whatever the job requires, highlights include: * Calculating custom view and projection matrices for reflected AR rendering with distortion correction * Integrating OpenCV & Dlib into UE4 build system for multiple architectures/platforms * Writing custom UE4 plugin for networking protocol and wireless gamepad implementation * Building and integrating multi-architecture android libraries * Making multiplayer demos for UE4 using C++ and SkookumScript

Worked as a software engineer on the SkookumScript programming language for Unreal Engine 4 leading up to its acquisition by Epic.

Worked on an Unreal Engine 4 project called The Grand Canyon VR Experience.* Wrote physically accurate paddling simulation for VR motion controllers* Implemented drag model for simulating object physics underwater* Integrated Oculus Platform SDK into Unreal Engine 4 to allow for Oculus Store entitlement checks* Created Automated Build Scripts for Steam, Oculus Store & VivePort

Worked on the Starship Commander VR game.The majority of my contributions were engine-level modifications to Unreal Engine 4 source:* Wrote threaded Sphinx implementation for speech recognition.* Wrote interface for wit API for natural language recognition.* Wrote threaded Bink implementation for blueprint controlled movie playback that sync'd video frames to a wwise audio source.I also contributed various build scripts/tooling:* Automated build system that packages Shipping/Debug builds of UE4 project* wit API uploader

Create custom Android ROMs and bootloaders for various Android devices. Most of the work I've done is in the Android Framework itself:* Restrict services (SMS, Telephone)* Restrict hardware (SD Card)* Create SIM card whitelist/blacklist

Created a customized Windows Installer for an Unreal Engine 4 project. The installer utilized InnoSetup and used multi-volume archives.

Beaverton, Oregon, Us

Primary contributor for the Digimarc Discover application. This Android app reads watermarks with the camera and fetches results from a remote server based on the contents of the watermark. It also integrates the Gracenote API for music recognition (the hard way). I did everything from the UI to the SDK and all the bits in-between.This is a complex product that uses the camera in an interesting way. It is more involved than the typical Android application due to the live camera preview which sends raw camera data to native C libraries. It also does some interesting things with a transparent WebView overlaid on the camera preview.One of my last contributions was overhauling the app for ICS, using Action Bar Sherlock to provide backwards compatibility for the UI.High Level Description--------------------------------Write new features, fix bugs and architect/implement the SDK with an eye specifically on the Android ecosystem. This means:* Constant research on the Android SDK camera APIs* Constant research on various vendor-specific camera oddities (Motorola, Samsung etc) * Adding new features while maintaining backwards compatibility with devices on older Android releasesLow Level Description-------------------------------The most relevant tasks that I perform on a regular basis are:* Implement new product features (Java + Eclipse)* Implement JNI to interface with native libraries* Maintain an SDK for 3rd parties (Java + native libraries)* Profile Java/C++ code on the Android platform* File bugs with Google and various other device vendors* Port existing C++ libraries to Android when appropriateOther ad-hoc duties----------------------------* Write documentation* Maintain SDK Portal, post new SDK releases & release notes* Write build scripts for android NDK components* Write mobile web pages using HTML5/CSS3/Javascript* Take professional studio photographs for in-app photo content* Edit and create graphics in photoshop

Houston, Texas, Us

Provided level 4 support for the PolyServe Clustered Filesystem - later renamed to HP Extreme Data Storage (EXDS).High Level Description--------------------------------This product was a symmetric clustered filesystem that used a distributed lock manager running in user-space. It ran on Windows and Linux and was used to provide high-availability to various services (web server, file sharing, databases). The software ran on industry standard servers with industry standard storage.The problems ranged in complexity with data recovery and performance being the most challenging. There were multiple layers of switches, storage and servers that all contributed to create a wonderfully complex problem environment, one that I greatly enjoyed unraveling and solving.This was a job that often required flying out to customer sites, engaging with customers who had lost data and in-general fixing high-priority problems that were significantly impacting business and revenue.Low Level Description-------------------------------Common tasks that I performed:* Wrote scripts to trigger memory dumps based on various system conditions - anything from the number of CPU jiffies to a specific flag on an HBA* Analyzed linux and windows memory dumps * Implemented performance logging in linux and windows* Analyzed linux/windows performance data and solved various CPU, memory and storage bottlenecks* Solved various other environmental issues (storage, network, etc).In my spare time, I wrote an automated log analysis tool in C# that parsed cluster logfiles and pinpointed configuration issues, failures and resolutions. Based on the knowledge I gained from writing this tool, I often gave presentations on various cluster components to educate my colleagues.

Worked on a 4-man team providing worldwide Level 1 - Level 4 customer support for the PolyServe Clustered Filesystem. I gained valuable experience working time-critical escalations where revenue was greatly impacted, customers were highly stressed and problems were extremely technical.

Taught English as a Second Language and Computers to ages 5-12.

* Wrote control software for FPGA based embedded systems* Wrote Linux device drivers* Wrote Matlab libraries* Built remote data-logging devices* Built analog and digital circuits