Projects

Built a chassis and custom PCB controller board to help unlock a safe. Don't worry, it's a friend's safe left behind from previous owners of a newly bought home! Algorithm is a brute-force approach, but with several optimizations that reduce the per-combination check to ~1 second.

Created a custom PCB and PID algorithm to control the temperature of a refrigerator used for fermenting homebrew beer. Successfully created a few good beers. We don't talk about the bad beers...

Created a fully functional Game Boy emulator with working disassembler, stepping debugger, memory inspector, and sprite/"Pixel Processing Unit" inspector. Complete with cycle-accurate CPU and interrupt emulation.

A Magic: The Gathering card scanner using Apple's computer vision models and networking to automatically determine the price of card collections. Found solutions to reduce the search-space, as the cards have yearly permutations that look subtly different.

A multi-level, top-down space shooter game designed to fit within 4KB of RAM. Targeted a "mini console", the Arduboy, with a screen resolution of 64×128 pixels. Focused on CPU and memory efficiency. Final game binary: 2,385 bytes for loaded executable, 151 bytes left for stack (93% usage), 18,656 SRAM bundled executable (65% usage).

A fun little board game created with my nephew. Started as a game written on cards, for fun with family, but ended with an online implementation of the full rules.

Restored the electronics, keyboard, display, and plastic molding of a Laser-128: a famous 1980s Apple ][ clone. Ported Ardunix from pseudo-C++ to C89, fitting within 2KB of total RAM.

Implemented an optical illusion in a stand-alone shader.

Implemented a visual effect seen in a music video, through a standalone shader.

Implemented the classic "Snake" game, but through a standalone shader.

Ongoing project where I've developed a toolchain to synthesize PCB boards, using discrete TTL chips, from my own hardware description language. The toolchain can model, simulate, and layout these elements. I've implemented an ALU, memory control unit, and continue to work towards a working 8-bit CPU. The 8-bit CPU is well-defined, has an emulator, compiler, and can be gate-level simulated.

A wearable LED strip display integrated into a top hat. Created custom PCB design for power and wireless control. Could draw letters, show light-show, or animate for fun.

Refurbished a NeoGeo 1990s cabinet. 140 Games-in-One! Professionally printed a new controller board, replaced all controller parts & electronics, cleaned and repaired original main board.

A toy hardware project to show how to directly manage an LCD's control pins.

A C++ implementation of Quadradius, recreating a beloved childhood strategy game with modern C++, networking, and extensive unit testing. Game state was deterministic and hashable to protect against client-side exploits.

A complete BASIC programming language implementation with compiler and virtual machine runtime, built from scratch for scripting support in other projects.

A standalone integrated development environment for the CoreBasic programming language, built natively for iPad. Features a full-featured code editor with syntax highlighting, integrated debugger with step-through execution, real-time variable visualization, and interactive program output. Provides a complete programming experience on iOS, allowing users to write, debug, and run BASIC programs entirely on their iPad.

A BASIC-like language with Just-in-Time compilation targeting ARM64 architecture, exploring modern JIT techniques and native code generation. Compared performance of fibonacci algorithm between interpreter and JIT solution: 1,000x speed improvement!

A high-performance memory allocator implementation focused on speed and efficiency, exploring advanced memory management techniques. Weekend project for fun.

A SIMD-enabled, multi-threaded ray tracer with real-time preview capabilities, supporting complex lighting, textures, reflections, and soft shadows. All based on the nice "Ray Tracing in One Weekend" book series.

Small experimental use of ChatGPT API to play Pokemon Blue via Game Boy emulator. Explored directly sending image, parsing the screen with OpenCV, and memory analysis to track success. It was not very effective.

An experimental arena for testing different glyph rendering strategies, focused on CPU side optimizations relating to multi-threading, SIMD, and CPU cache behavior.

An experimental neural network trained to play Snake. Explored reinforcement learning techniques, and reward system optimization for game AI.

A 2D side-scrolling shooter platformer with a focus on learning lag-compensating strategies for server-authoritative simulation and client-side prediction. Added physics to explore network syncing of non-deterministic elements.

A 2D side-scrolling game built entirely from scratch in pure C++ and OpenGL with zero dependencies. Featured a live in-game level editor allowing real-time modification of game environments, bipedal character animations with inverse kinematics, physics simulation for realistic movement and interactions, and custom rendering pipeline. All game systems including collision detection, particle effects, and audio were implemented from first principles.

A 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons dungeon generator that creates detailed SVG maps with rooms, corridors, and encounter areas for tabletop gaming.

Implemented a real-world tabletop board game into digital form. It allowed multiple AI agents to act as players, with strict game rules enforcement. Implemented both a human-friendly user-interface to manually play the game against agents, or use a "headless" mode for mass simulation. Ran a competition with friends, to find the best AI agent!

An experiment in generic algorithms and A* path planning to build a LEGO mosaic from a source image, minimizing cost.

Implemented the famous card game in code, allowing various "AI" agents to compete to try and find optimal strategies.

A simple exploration of real-time deferred rendering, implemented in OpenGL.

An OpenGL graphical user interface with dozens of controls to help with application development. Supported Windows, Linux, and macOS.

A multi-layer laser-cut wooden slider puzzle designed as an interactive toy for dogs. Learned details of laser-cut wood design process.

An experimental rogue-like game designed to explore Entity Component System (ECS) architecture patterns and modern game development techniques. Was physics-enabled, rendered through Metal, had scripted agents.

An automated trading bot for EVE Online using OpenCV for screen analysis and automated buy / sell behaviors for profit. Was fun to code, not play.

A simple Wordle solver with a GUI that runs on macOS.

An online tutorial, and self-published book, designed to teach the fundamentals of 3D graphics through writing a Javascript software renderer.

Worked on various table-top and sidewalk-sized robots that would navigate and solve mazes and paths across campus.

An Arduino-controlled 32x32 LED matrix display featuring artistic animations and visual effects. Explored real-time rendering on constrained hardware, color blending algorithms, and creative pattern generation for ambient lighting.

A top-down space simulation and real-time strategy game built in Unity. Features fleet management, resource gathering, strategic combat, and procedural space environments. Implemented AI-controlled factions, physics-based ship movement, and dynamic tactical decision-making.

A 3D voxel-based colony simulation game inspired by Dwarf Fortress. Built rendering engine from scratch using OpenGL with custom lighting system. Implemented job scheduling and entity management systems, basic combat mechanics, resource gathering, and a fully functional user interface for managing complex colony operations.

Led training sessions for Penn State's ACM Collegiate Programming Competition team. Taught algorithmic problem-solving, data structures, and competitive programming strategies through recorded lectures and hands-on practice. Helped prepare students for regional and international programming competitions, contributing to the team's success in multiple competitions.

Built a full-stack competitive programming website where users could create accounts, solve algorithmic challenges, submit code solutions, and compete on a global leaderboard. Implemented secure code execution sandbox, automated test case validation, real-time ranking system, and comprehensive problem database. Featured multiple programming languages support and detailed performance metrics for submitted solutions.

A procedural texture synthesis tool that generates seamless, tileable textures from sample inputs. Implemented advanced image processing algorithms including patch-based synthesis and graph-cut optimization to create high-quality textures for game development and computer graphics applications.

Built a fully physics-based roller coaster simulation from scratch using C++ and OpenGL. Implemented realistic physics including velocity, acceleration, friction, and gravitational forces along spline-based tracks. Features dynamic camera perspectives and smooth 3D rendering of track geometry and environment.

During a Microsoft internship, built and programmed a robotic testing system for Windows Phone devices. The robot automated phone-to-phone communication testing, using OpenCV for visual verification of UI elements and call states. Verified OS stability and feature functionality across multiple devices simultaneously, significantly reducing manual QA time and improving test coverage for the Windows Phone platform.

A 3D flying simulator built from scratch in Java using LWJGL (Lightweight Java Game Library). Implemented custom OBJ file parser and loader for 3D models, developed artistic stylistic shaders for visual effects, and created flight dynamics with keyboard and mouse controls. Features terrain rendering, atmospheric effects, and smooth camera movement.