Jonathan Dearborn's Portfolio

Jonathan Dearborn

I've been involved with a lot of great projects as a game developer.
Most of my games and tools are made in C++ with SDL or in C# with Unity3D.

The Walking Dead: March to War

The Walking Dead: March to War is Disruptor Beam's massively multiplayer strategy game based on the comic series. I fixed lots of bugs throughout the client and server as well as implementing much of the server-side analytics that help the developers understand their players.

Star Trek Timelines

Star Trek Timelines is an extremely popular story and character collection game from Disruptor Beam. You level up your crew, send them on away missions, discover new and rare crew members, and engage in ship-to-ship battles across the galaxy. I worked on feature development, then ported the app to Steam, hooking up the in-app purchases, achievements, and more.

Pixel Proof

Pixel Proof helps you make amazing pixel art and game sprites. The interface is clean and customizable, leaving your workflow smooth and focused. Included are specialized tools that you can't find anywhere else and Twitter integration so you can easily share your work.

itch.io

Tangible Math

Tangible Math is a virtual magnetic whiteboard where you can set up lessons and teach math in a personal way. Before you are dozens of pieces to interact with. Numbers snap together to form larger values, mathlink cubes break apart into smaller sets, and familiar objects make counting fun. Activity boards provide a focus to a lesson with math sentences to complete, areas to group similar objects, charts to fill in, and clocks with realistic hand movement. Draw in color on any board to highlight and annotate the exercise. Your student will thrive as you work together to explore our world through math.

We searched for an app to help demonstrate and practice math concepts with our homeschool kids, but we couldn't find anything like we wanted. What to do? Make it. Tangible Math is leagues beyond what was out there previously and we really hope all kinds of educators will make use of it.

iTunes Google Play Amazon Appstore

Gladiator (Openglad)

The official version of Forgotten Sages' classic action RPG, now for Android! Hire soldiers, archers, elves, clerics, mages, orcs, skeletons, and more, then train them into an unstoppable team as you face opposing armies and monsters. Dozens of levels lie between you and a monstrous evil. Can you make it?
This game is part of the Openglad project, which is released under the open-source GNU General Public License (GPL). You can find the project on Github:
https://github.com/openglad/openglad

I took over this open source project as a work of affection for this old DOS game. I played it as a kid and wanted to fix it up and let others enjoy it too. I designed brand new enhancements, added lots of little touches, balance fixes, and squashed age-old bugs as I ported it to SDL 2.0 and Android.

Google Play Amazon Appstore

Board Game Apprentice

Are you missing some parts of your favorite board game? Need to flip a coin, draw a sketch, or deal out tokens? We’ve got you covered. Board Game Apprentice features a full set of tools for your gaming needs. Roll dice with saved history and a holding tray. Time your games with one of 4 different timer styles, even while using other tools. Give the realistic spinner a whirl. Pick and choose which tools you need, then customize and configure them to fit your game.

Google Play Amazon Appstore

SDL_gpu

SDL_gpu is an open-source rendering system for SDL 1.2 and SDL 2.0 that presents a powerful hardware-accelerated API for 2D applications and games. The source code, written in C, is portable to a variety of platforms which have SDL and OpenGL support, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android.

I wrote SDL_gpu from the ground up and use features of each of the different versions of OpenGL and OpenGL ES that are supported. This library plays a prominent role in all of my games and apps.

Project on Google Code

Don't Blow It!

Gather your friends for a true cooperative experience in Don't Blow It! Work together to solve puzzles and reach new heights of platforming, but when the bomb is lit, don't be the one to blow it!

I started this game for Ludum Dare #20, "It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take This!". What I came up with was really fun, so I kept working on it and got my wife to make better art.

Don't Blow It! was featured in the Digital Game Showcase at the 2012 Boston Festival of Indie Games and also appeared in a PBS Off Book special about indie games. We have plans to take what we've done for this game and branch it off into a bigger project that pursues the best parts of playing DBI.

Gameplay video

Solarity

Solarity is a 2D solar system gravitational dynamics simulation. Mostly, I just made it to have some fun with testing the stability of a Runge-Kutta 4 numerical integration scheme. However, it did help to test and refine the capabilities of the graphics libraries I work on. I used accepted values for each planet's mass, diameter, and orbital velocity so that one can zoom and pan around to get a feel for the true size of our solar system.

Atomic Hero

Combine atoms to form real molecules and stabilize the mysterious black holes occuring around the world.

This was a game done to introduce Muzzy Lane's ClearLab Project educational initiative. I turned the designer's ideas into a working game using Muzzy Lane's Sandstone in-browser 3D platform with scripting done in Locustscript (XML+Javascript).

Play in browser (plugin required)

Fire, Fire, Where You Are

"Fire, fire, where you are, I'm going to fight you with a fire department" (name given by my 4 year old daughter) is a game where you control a firefighter burning away grass (fire fuel) before a wildfire comes.

This game was made for Ludum Dare 18. The competition theme was "Enemies as weapons", the very theme I suggested! It ended up with being voted as #32 overall (out of 172 entries), #4 in Innovation, and #9 in Theme.

Controls: Use the arrow keys or 'wasd' to move, aim with the mouse and click to start a fire near your firefighter.

Download w/source

Treasure Tub

Pilot your toy boat in the search for gold. Be warned: The other ships are willing to fight for it! Collect the most gold by the time the last chest is found and you win!

This is another entry to the Ludum Dare 48-hour game competition. The competition theme was "Islands". This is the original version produced in 48 hours. The source code is included in the download.

Controls: Use 'w', 'a', 's', and 'd' to move. Use the mouse to aim and shoot. When you have a map, you can fish for treasure with a right-click.

Download w/source

Frank the Dinosaur

Play as Frank in a quick, fun dino adventure with a twist.

This was my first submission to Ludum Dare (actually, MiniLD). There are some interesting concepts in this small game, like stealth and humor. The original game was made in much less than 48 hours. This version has some bug fixes and minor changes made after the fact.

Controls: Use the arrow keys to move, spacebar to jump, left shift for action (once you gain it), and up/down arrows to aim.

Download

Destiny of the Sword (prototype)

Destiny of the Sword is a turn-based tactical RPG similar to Vandal Hearts and Final Fantasy Tactics.

I was the lead programmer on this project, which involved a group of 5 developers. My goal in this project was to gain some experience working in a collaborative team and to help the team get to a working prototype. Two of the developers are also the designers, so I interpreted their designs into a working game using assets created by the other developers (sprite graphics temporarily stolen from Battle for Wesnoth).

Knight of the Cave Dragon

Take the role of a courageous knight who must save a village from an evil dragon. This totally original plot line takes you through dark caves and into the lair of the fire-breathing villain.

This game was made for Ludum Dare 15: "Caverns". I played a bit with shadow puzzles in this and I got a lot of positive feedback on the blocky pattern of the light. A few minor features were added after the competition.

Controls: Use the arrow keys to move. Left shift is jump. 'z' is attack. 'x' is for throwing torches.

Download

Slugs v Salt

You control a hotshot squad of slugs against hordes of salty foes. Use your water guns to melt the enemy lines.

This is my Ludum Dare 14 entry for the Advancing Wall of Doom theme. The interpretation of the theme was pretty unique. There's not much AI involved, but it is fun watching your team release a torrent of water. The difficulty was adjusted after the competition.

Controls: 'wasd', 'g' to fire, 'h' to jump for player 1. Arrow keys, 'm' to jump, 'n' to fire for player 2.

Download

GigaSun Jet

In GigaSun Jet, you customize and control your own spaceship as you and up to three other players race through a variety of star systems, destroying enemies, earning credits, and upgrading your various components. Choose from an unlimited variety of each of the 12 component types to fill your ship with the best equipment. Activate outrageous special abilities to gain the upper hand.

I designed and wrote every line of this relatively large game. There is still much that is unfinished, but someday... someday...

Breakdown

3D Breakout clone written in OpenGL with Glut for my Computer Graphics course.

The actual assignment was too simple (it only required drawing of boxes and player input), so I went ahead and made a fairly complete game out of it. The professor was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. There are some useful additions like powerups, score, and level, and there are fancy additions like the setup sequence and the brick debris.

Controls: Use the arrow keys to reflect the ball and destroy the bricks above.

Download

NFont

A complete and very simple to use C++ bitmap font class with text-block alignment, newline support, font metrics, and even animation. NFont can also load/cache SDL_ttf objects if you want to use a TrueType font.

I designed and implemented the entire library and each revision, starting from a bare font drawing routine. I use this in most of my 2D SDL aplications.

Sprig

SPriG is a graphics primitive generator for SDL. It supplies a quick and simple interface for the drawing of primitives (pixels, lines, polygons), the rotation and zooming of surfaces, and many useful surface functions. It also implements several alpha-blending modes and line thickness controls.

I started from the SGE library, made lots of interface tweaks, removed several misfitting features, and added other features to enhance the major goal of providing graphics primitives and surface transforms.