Commit. Push. Play.
HELLO, I’M DREW OKENFUSS
Before we dive, like I do when I play Ultimate Frisbee (quick anecdote: I am a "reliable complementary player" according to this UltiWorld article), into my portfolio let me tell you a bit about myself. I have been playing video games since I was a small child. As I got older, I wanted to make small changes to the games I played. First Halo Forge mode, then Minecraft, then modding Minecraft. I wanted to add a specific gameplay element to my Minecraft experience which I could not find on other mods so I built it myself. This sparked my interest in video game making.
I went to USC to learn to code and make games. While there, I interned for EA Sports and DICE LA. After graduation, I finally went full circle and started working for Mojang Studios on Minecraft Education Edition!
Keep scrolling down to see some of the cool projects I have done on the side! Also if you want to see random videos of random parts of projects then check out my Youtube channel!
WORK EXPERIENCE
Minecraft Education Edition
August 2019 - Current
DICE LA
May 2018 - August 2018
NBA Live 18
May 2017 - August 2017
Mira
January 2017 - May 2017
LARGE PROJECTS
Ollie
August 2018 - August 2019
Ollie is a VR animation tool designed for the animators of tomorrow. We make 3D animation as easy as playing with toys. To learn more, visit ollievr.com.
My role on this team was to be the primary software engineer. I built an animation core system that handled recording and playback of keyframe data. Also, I created a feature that mathematically generates Bezier curves, easing, and squash and stretch on user created animations. My third major challenge was to build a virtual camera that could export HD videos at runtime from a standalone Unreal build. I accomplished this by integrating Libav and multithreading the exporting.
Ollie was accepted into the SIGGRAPH 2019 immersive pavilion. Visit our website to see the latest information about a public release.
Plasticity
August 2018 - May 2019
Plasticity is a cinematic platformer game that I worked on as my senior capstone project. I was one 3 engineers on a large (20 ish) student team that worked for the full school year on this project. For the first half of the year I was working on graphics and built some features including cel shading, a day-night cycle, and custom shadow colors. To really see the custom shadow colors in action, I added an easter egg... type the word “menlo” while you are playing the game 😊. We had two more engineers who left the project halfway through the year; I spent most of my time after this debugging and fixing the fragments of features that they left behind.
A Slime In Time
October 2016 - May 2017
A Slime In Time was one of USC’s advanced game projects that I joined as an engineer. For the spring semester I actually was registered in a research class just for working on the project. The team for this project was 11 people, with 7 of them contributing code to the project. This means I got to learn about working on a team with several engineers. We had a hard due date to finish a public demo of the game, therefore I experienced developing and polishing a full game. I am very proud of this game and had a blast developing for the Hololens, a new augmented reality device from Microsoft. Most importantly, I gave myself the title Lead Fireball Engineer because I did the majority of the work behind that feature.
Santiago VR
September 2016 - May 2016
In the fall of my second year at school my friend Brenda pitched her wacky Virtual Reality (VR) experience called Santiago to me asking for me to join as the lead/primary engineer on the team. I was excited to build this mixed reality experience that combines the Vive headset display with the Leap Motion’s hand tracking ability. Unfortunately, our first few months of the project were not well organized which resulted in us submitting ourselves to a weeklong super crunch during spring break. As the only person studying Computer Science on the team I was the leader of all things programming related which was a great learning experience for me. In hindsight I see many mistakes I made while leading that I have learned from so I can do much better in my next leadership role.
The spring break crunch was a wakeup call for us. We were able to realize ways we could quickly improve for last 1.5 months of the project. We accomplished much more in this end part of the project which led us to a final product that we think turned out pretty well. Other people thought it turned out well too because we won 3rd place in the Arts for USC’s Undergraduate Research Symposium and won best Best Interactive Experience at VRSC’s Student VR Festival.
Goblin Gauntlet
February 2014 - April 2015
My junior year of high school I wanted to start making games but my only programming experience was from making a Minecraft mod. Not letting this stop me, I spent countless hours watching tutorials and over time learned Java. I watched many more tutorials that helped me build a working rudimentary game engine. From there I used my imagination and Stack Overflow to add features to my game until it became a full product. I recruited an artistic friend of mine to create all the assets for the game and eventually Goblin Gauntlet was the result. The button below will lead you to a download link, please check it out!
MEDIUM PROJECTS
Simple Sonar Shader
2017 - Current
I published a shader to the Unity asset store which has 3700+ downloads.
Sweet Revenge Prototype
January 2018 - March 2018
Sweet Revenge is a prototype of a game that I pitched for my senior capstone project. I recruited and organized a team of 10 people and then built the whole prototype in the month of March. While the project was not accepted, I still am proud of the project and I feel there is a solid, fun core to the game.
Olympus
September 2017 - December 2017
Olympus was a class project where I worked with a teammate for the majority of the semester. While most other projects were smaller scoped games such as basic side scroller games, we followed our dreams and built this VR sandbox city-building game. Because there was only 2 of us working on the project we both built many systems for the game. Some of the things I worked on were the system for placing buildings, the citizens moving between buildings, and tutorializing everything.
Amazeball
November/December 2016
Amazeball began as a final project yet my teammate and I are taking it far beyond that. Both of us are interested in augmented reality so we wanted to build a game that embraces that technology without trying to fight against its limitations. At first, I spent most of my time programming the core gameplay elements to the game: making the objects rotate and controlling the ball. I then spent some time building out the tutorial levels and the main menu system. Finally, now I get to design levels and also new mini gameplay elements such as the ball launcher. This project has been a great learning experience for me because of the challenges related to using augmented reality.
Unfortunately, due to license restrictions from Vuforia, the image tracking tool we are using I am not providing a download for this game. But please reach out to me if you would like a personal demo!
Don't Make A Sound
January 2017
Originally made during the Global Game Jam 2017, this VR horror game is strongly based on using sound as a tool. I built a system to visualize sound in the form of visible sound waves on objects nearby the source of every sound. We then designed the rest of the game systems around this mechanic. We added a blind monster that goes towards any sound it hears. To make it attracted to the player, we made the player have a heartbeat that would also make sound and attract the monster. There are also many objects in the environment that can be thrown to distract the monster.
We have been getting very positive results from the demos and are working on cleaning it up and adding more features we ran out of time to add. Soon I will have a gameplay video and downloadable version.
Harambe's Revenge
November/December 2016
The idea for this game was initially a joke but then it was too funny for us to pass on the idea. We had just been introduced to Unreal Engine in our class and this project seemed like a perfect way to use the skills we just learned and slightly expand on them. I learned so much about Unreal Engine while building this project and I am very excited to explore the engine more on my own going forward. This game certainly goes down as my funniest game made to date.
Imagination
November 2016
This project has more to it then what meets the eye. We were required for our class to use a java server to handle the multiplayer networking aspect to our game. The big challenge that I tackled was building multiplayer gameplay with only the ability to pass strings of text between the clients. I built an event based system so anytime any action started or stopped it sent a string out indicating that. This was a good project for me because it forced me to build familiar systems in a method completely different from how I normally would.
This game requires setting up our custom java server. Contact me if you would like to play it.
SMALL PROJECTS
Jam Ralley
September 2016
Jam Ralley was the product of my second game jam. This time I had a team to work with which enabled me to have interesting art and music. We had another programmer on the team but he got sick and was unable to participate in the majority of the game jam. This means that all of the scripting and scene editing in Unity was done by me. This was a great experience because I got experience using Unity’s 2D features and I got to meet some fun people in the process.
This game is a 2 player game with the red car being controlled by WASD and the blue car being controlled by the arrow keys. The goal is to last longer than the other car.
Cube Capture
September 2015
Cube Capture was originally made at the beginning of my freshman year of college during my first ever Game Jam. The idea of this particular Game Jam was that underclassmen and upperclassmen would be put into groups in order to mix up the experience. This did not work out as well as it sounds, unfortunately every person in my group dropped out of the Game Jam. Left alone with limited time and minimal exposure to Unity, I started with the basics. Through a tutorial series I was able to become familiar with Unity and build the basic game systems in the remaining 12 hours. I then expanded on my new knowledge by making the gameplay more interesting and porting it to mobile. The Android version of the game is available by clicking the button below!
Pacman Augmented Reality
September 2016
I find Augmented Reality a fascinating technology and I wanted to find a reason to build something exploring AR and gameplay. Then, an open ended assignment for my Intro to Unity class came up which basically required us to build a simple game taking user input over a weekend. I used this as an opportunity to both implement DAQRI’s ARToolkit and do my homework. Also, by making the ghost, I got more experience using the Unity navigation system. This was just a fun little take on one of my assignments; I don't plan on developing it further but it was still a fun learning experience.
Univrsiti
February 2016 - April 2016
In my second semester at USC, I joined a club called LavaLab. The goal of LavaLab is for small teams to create an innovative tech product over the course of a semester. My team of 4 people decided on creating a 360 video showing off what student life at USC is like. We all recorded different parts of the school and I was in charge of developing and editing the video. This project was very fun because it aligns with one of my interests, Virtual Reality.
PERSONAL ART PROJECTS
Every once in a while I take a break from developing to do a little art project. I've not had any formal training, but I have had the opportunity to hang out with some amazing artists in high school and at USC. Here are some of the projects I have made. They were all made using Adobe Illustrator.
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CONTACT
Thanks for checking out my portfolio! If you have any questions for me, comments on my games, want to see my resume, or just genuinely want to chat then send me an email!