Name: Richard Davison
Date Of Birth: 30/09/1983
Location: Sunderland, United Kingdom
Current Role: PhD Student at Newcastle University
Qualifications:
MSc with Distinction in Computer Game Engineering from Newcastle University
BSc (Hons) Network Computing from University Of Sunderland
(Currently lapsed) Cisco CCNA holder

I have been interested in computer game programming for a number of years, starting when I downloaded the Doom 3 SDK, to see just how hard programming could be! I have been hooked ever since, and have been involved in programming ever since, gaining experience in OpenGL, OpenAL and the Visual Studio development environment as I go. My largest project has been a game engine capable of loading maps and models from the 1996 Bullfrog game Syndicate Wars, which included some degree of reverse engineering of file formats that were barely documented. As part of the engine, I also designed and implemented a GUI system, which can utilise simple scripts to control the position, style, and function of GUI elements, and was loosly based on the GUI scripting of Doom3, which obviously left an impression on me as the first codebase I’d ever tried to modify.

I’m currently a PhD student at Newcastle University, working on a project that aims to bring the fields of concurrency control and biological computation together. I also work with the newly established ‘Games Lab’ at Newcastle, having created the MSc-level Graphics For Games module, as well as teaching smaller courses on console development and audio in games. I take great pride in being able to share my knowledge with the undergraduate and postgraduate students attached to the Games Lab, and enjoy helping their various gaming projects come to fruition.