Benn Herrera

Current

• Sr. Game Engineer at Secret Level

Past

• Game Engineer at Electronic Arts
• Senior Game Programmer at Totally Games
• Game Programmer at Backbone Entertainment

• Game Programmer at Mind Control Software
• Senior Software Engineer at Senior Software Engineer at Panscopic Corp/Zero G Software
• Senior Software Engineer at Resolution Sciences Corporation
• Senior Software Engineer at Light Source
• Senior Software Engineer at Abekas Video Systems
• Software Developer and Support Engineer at The 3DO Company
• Graphics & Image Processing Engineer at Xaos Tools
• Graphics & Language Developer at Computer Arts & Developments
• Software Engineer at SGI
• In-House Software Developer at Franz Inc

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Education

• University of California, Berkeley

Recommended

12 people have recommended Benn

Connections

103 connections

Industry

Computer Games

Benn Herrera’s Summary

20 years professional engineering experience in several fields including computer games, scientific imaging, video manipulation & post production, image processing

Expert in C, C++, Lua, Win32, next-gen console, Unix, embedded environments.

Shipped titles on PC, PSP, PS3, Wii, experience with XBox 360 dev env

Located in San Rafael, Marin County, CA

Benn Herrera’s Specialties:

Game systems & tools, level-specific coding, networking, build & delivery systems, scripting languages such as Lua (internals & usage), 2D & 3D graphics, audio

Benn Herrera’s Experience

• Sr. Game Engineer

  Secret Level

  (Privately Held; Computer Games industry)

  September 2009 — Present (3 months)

  Game programming generalist

• Game Engineer

  Electronic Arts

  (Public Company; ERTS; Computer Games industry)

  March 2009 — September 2009 (7 months)

  Generalist game engineer for Maxis/EA
  Quickly assimilated large body of proprietary systems for general game infrastructure, UI and project-specific subsystems.
  Worked on Spore Creature Keeper (GM reached, ship date pending) general systems, game flow, UI, client/server communications, asset hookup. Saved production team many hours of manual work with one-off utility scripts. Coordinated with art dept. on addition of new assets to game.

• Senior Game Programmer

  Totally Games

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry)

  January 2007 — November 2008 (1 year 11 months)

  Senior PC and Console Game Programmer
  Worked on custom Vicious Engine modifications and game levels on Alien Syndrome for PSP and Wii. Vicious Engine modifications included Wii-specific VRAM management modifications.
  Current project: Custom 2D casual engine with Lua scripting hooks for PC casual learning game.

• Game Programmer

  Backbone Entertainment

  (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Games industry)

  January 2006 — January 2007 (1 year 1 month)

  * 5 month overlap was employer-approved work on non-competing project through Mind Control spin-off ICPU.
  
  Shipped PSP title Death Jr. 2, Worked on internal engine technologies such as proprietary scripting language and FSM engine. Did coding required to implement specific game weapons and objects from behaviors to graphics. Did boss-level special coding, graphics features such as a ground-hugging animated reticle as well as custom art & designer tools.
  Did extensive network coding for a PS3 arcade pack project.

• Game Programmer

  Mind Control Software

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry)

  May 2005 — May 2006 (1 year 1 month)

  Worked on 2D casual games for PC using proprietary Orbital Engine and 3rd party technologies. Worked on technology internals of Orbital Engine - data formats, particle system, rendering.
  
  Worked with Sony Computer Entertainment through contract with Mind Control Software on Field Commander PSP title. Game internals + tools optimizations.

• Senior Software Engineer

  Senior Software Engineer at Panscopic Corp/Zero G Software

  (Computer Software industry)

  February 2002 — May 2005 (3 years 4 months)

  Business software architecture and implementation. Most work was in Java. Extensive work with XML and DOM as well as SOAP and DHTML.

• Senior Software Engineer

  Resolution Sciences Corporation

  (Biotechnology industry)

  November 1998 — February 2002 (3 years 4 months)

  Extensive work on 3D volumetric rendering, 2D image manipulation and enhancement, 3D volumetric statistics algorithms. Custom Win32 interface widgets, controls and design. Massive volumetric dataset manipulation tools. Designed and evolved volumetric and time-varying volumetric dataset format.
  
  Co-inventor on U.S. Patent 6,295,451 covering the simulated staining of digitized microscopic images.

• Senior Software Engineer

  Light Source

  (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

  February 1998 — November 1998 (10 months)

  Developed and modified portions of Light Source's Colorshop 2.5 (Win32) product. This work was especially challenging due to the size (>250,000 lines) and legacy nature of the body of code. Gained valuable exposure to color science theory.

• Senior Software Engineer

  Abekas Video Systems

  (Broadcast Media industry)

  January 1995 — January 1998 (3 years 1 month)

  Developed and modified software subsystems for the Texus live broadcast digital character generator. Designed and implemented a macro scripting language for the Texus. Implemented and managed a nightly build system for the team. Developed a Texus emulator (starting from SunOS emulation code) with Visual C++ for the PC using MFC and GDI.

• Software Developer and Support Engineer

  The 3DO Company

  (Public Company; 201-500 employees; THDO; Computer Games industry)

  June 1994 — December 1994 (7 months)

  Authored utility software and example code for developers on the 3DO platform. Answered involved and sometimes bizarre technical questions for developers in addition to providing creative solutions for the unique needs of their real-time titles. Helped form and manage a multi-department group for the revision, quality control, and management of a large body of example code.

• Graphics & Image Processing Engineer

  Xaos Tools

  (Computer Software industry)

  May 1993 — June 1994 (1 year 2 months)

  Developed device drivers for several types of video hardware and file filters for a variety of image formats. Wrote a high-quality, high-performance resampling library. Developed a licensing encryption library. Designed and implemented a license-permitted add-on package installation tool in Motif. Debugged and modified a large variety of modules in a sophisticated, high-end post-production system built on a variety of proprietary technology libraries.

• Graphics & Language Developer

  Computer Arts & Developments

  (Broadcast Media industry)

  May 1992 — May 1993 (1 year 1 month)

  Wrote a custom LISP interpreter that was used for image processing and application prototyping. Designed and implemented a low level image processing scripting language that executed single frame output image effects. Designed and implemented a high level video segment processing language that compiled to the low-level frame language. Did the majority of the development for a non-linear editing and post-production system.

• Software Engineer

  SGI

  (Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; SGI; Computer Hardware industry)

  November 1990 — April 1992 (1 year 6 months)

  Designed and implemented GUI-based productivity tools for managing a developer support porting lab. Wrote a color date book for the then-new Iris Indigo. Worked extensively on a prototype of Irix Voicemail. Administered a lab of machines ranging from entry level systems to project supercomputers.

• In-House Software Developer

  Franz Inc

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

  December 1988 — September 1990 (1 year 10 months)

  Wrote data access & processing utilities in C and Bourne Shell. Wrote productivity tools for salespeople in C, Bourne Shell, AWK, and EMACS Lisp. Administered a heterogeneous network of Unix machines. Wrote a custom Lisp interpreter as a tool for writing powerful database scripts.

Benn Herrera’s Education

• University of California, Berkeley

  Computer Science 1988 — 1990

  Activities and Societies:

  Fencing

Additional Information

Benn Herrera’s Interests:

Tennis, dogs & cats - critters in general, learning about other peoples' specializations (biosciences, aeronautics, history, what have you), actually playing computer games

Benn Herrera’s Groups:

Marin Humane Society Volunteer

•    Xaos Tools Alumni

Benn Herrera’s Honors:

Recruited by UC Berkeley as Regents' Scholar
Academic All-American
Academic Decathlete

Benn Herrera’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• job inquiries
• expertise requests
• reference requests
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