Daniel Brennan Designer/Scripter https://locustsoftware.com dandaman@locustsoftware.com Baltimore County, Maryland 203-313-7782 • Senior-level designer with 15+ years of experience across most areas of design, specializing in scripting and encounters • Credited on 10+ products including The Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Shroud of the Avatar • Keen attention to detail and passion for creating unique content focused on supporting narrative and theme • Seasoned ability to respectfully tread line between advocating for worthwhile ideas and deferring to leadership Work Experience Senior Encounter Designer / Encounter Designer September 2018 – November 2026 ZeniMax Online Studios — The Elder Scrolls Online, Hunt Valley, MD • Handled huge variety of tasks across 6 chapters, 4 DLCs, and several other releases; these included encounter staging, enemy faction composition, scripted/wave events, idle/combat brains, ability scripting, animation/VFX/VO timing, combat balance, NPC dialog, theaters, instance scripting, bug fixes, design/pitch documentation, and more • Created encounters for 9 side quests, 5 solo dungeons, 2 public dungeons, and 2 wildernesses; and support for 2 cities • Implemented ship battle, underwater encounters/bosses, and harpoon/bubble mechanics for High Seas of Tamriel event • Constructed unique bosses with custom abilities and combat phases, such as Crowborne Horror and Lord Hollowjack • Created interconnected dynamic encounters with branching dialog and variation based on players’ previous actions • Worked on companion response data, main quest tutorial updates, and Hero’s Return combat tutorials and boss event • Collaborated with content, editorial, animation, VFX, audio, QA, and other teams to bring creative visions to life • Investigated/fixed hundreds of bugs in content created by others after Live Events team inherited bug backlog • Responsible for training new encounter designer and interviewing numerous encounter design candidates Level Designer November 2015 – June 2018 Portalarium — Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, Austin, TX • Worked on wide range of content in Unity including puzzle and trap scripting, interaction setup and animations, NPC and resource spawning, player-owned town customization, world building, navmesh maintenance, and much more • Set up dynamic, patrolling, and wave-based mob encounters; schedules, behaviors, and animations for city dwellers • Created Lost Vale’s Grand Artificer encounter, in which players fight waves of mobs while keeping NPC from drowning • Designed and constructed puzzle-driven Kiln Cistern dungeon, in which players manipulate water depth to advance • Consistently participated in studio live streams, presenting latest work to player community • Collaborated closely with world builders, artists, programmers, and customer service on regular basis • Delivered work within tight monthly build cycle, each with content lockdown week devoted to bug fixes, for 30+ releases Mission Scripter / Level Designer June 2013 – August 2017 Mission One — Robo Collection/Run for Money/Koropoyo Knight, Tokyo, Japan (remote) • Created content in Unity for several mobile games, including level layouts, missions, weapons/armor, and more • Created assets/bundles in Unity and data in GameSparks for equipment, items, and stages for flick-based action game • Scripted missions for 3D stealth-action game, with variable NPC dialog and multi-step mission objectives • Handled navmesh generation and lighting for day/night level variants, and design/creation of one level for above game • Constructed levels for 2D platformer, utilizing gameplay elements in unique ways within tight spatial constraints World Designer / Live Designer August 2011 – July 2012 BioWare — Star Wars: The Old Republic: Rise of the Hutt Cartel, Austin, TX • Initially served on live team as designer, acting as liaison between customer service and world design • Prescribed and authorized tailored solutions for design-related, tester-character blockers • Tracked down root design issues and pushed fixes through for incremental patches on live environment • Later transitioned to block-out/spawn team as world designer, resuming previous duties in addition to those below • Responsible for gray-boxing several world hubs on multiple planets • Constructed and iterated on blockout for multiple world hubs on two different planets Level Scripter / Single Player Game Designer February 2011 – June 2011 UTV Ignition Entertainment — Unannounced Shooter, Austin, TX • Served as sole scripter on small team developing first person shooter using Unreal Engine • Scripted natural-disaster events and single player missions utilizing Unreal Kismet • Collaborated with programmers and artists to ensure desired functionality of required assets • Designed/documented several iterations of single-player campaign including challenge, reward, and narrative structures • Documented and critically assisted in design of player classes and abilities • Made significant contributions to map, gameplay and narrative-related design meetings • Wrote situational dialogue quips for 8 player-character personality types World Designer January 2010 – January 2011 BioWare — Star Wars: The Old Republic, Austin, TX • Served on team handling mob creation/placement, idle animations, patrols, AI pathing, cover system, combat abilities, vendors, crafting stations, harvest nodes, player respawn system, bind point system, taxi networks, elevators, and more • Personally responsible for spawning-related polish, updates and documentation for 3 planets • Contributed to project's story-driven gameplay focus through thoughtful mob/NPC composition, arrangement and animations — as well as placement of support props and cover objects — designed to sell narrative of each given locale • Worked closely with art, writing, and quest-design teams to ensure cohesion of implemented systems • Developed with wide range of in-house tools and contributed to tool refinement via user-feedback • Maintained standards for and trained team members on player respawn system • Monitored performance dips resulting from added content and adjusted accordingly to maintain smooth framerates • Assisted bug cleanup through spawning-related bug fixes and general playtesting/bug reporting Education Masters of Interactive Technology in Digital Game Development, Level Design The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University, Plano, TX Masters Thesis: “Manifestations of Conflict in Games: Stealth vs. Action” Cumulative GPA: 3.7 Bachelors of Arts in English - Professional Writing, General Writing Option Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT Completed 26 credits in Computer Science & Math coursework Senior Thesis: “Contrapasso,” a novella Cumulative GPA: 3.5; Merit Scholar; Dean’s List in Spring 2003, Fall 2004, Fall 2005, Spring 2006 Skills • Editors: Unity, UnrealEd 3, Hammer (Half-Life 2), Elder Scrolls Construction Set (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) • Design: Code/visual scripting, encounters, events, bosses, enemy abilities/brains, puzzles, single/multiplayer level flow • Scripting: C#, Lua, Kismet (UnrealEd 3), Hammer (Half-Life 2), TESScript (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) • Writing: Technical and creative; design documents/pitches, NPC dialog, combat barks, short stories, novella • General: Confluence, Jira, P4V, GameSparks, DoneDone, ExtraView, DevTrack, SourceTree, TortoiseSVN, TeamCity, Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Google Docs, Adobe Photoshop, Google SketchUp, Autodesk 3D Studio Max