Mitchell Keith Bloch

Profile


Status	Grad Student
Class	2013
Location	Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Occupation	Student, Game Developer, and Webmaster
Website	Zenipex
Résumé	Bazald's Resume
Contact Information
AIM	`Ikari Bazald`
Gamertag	`bazald`
ICQ	`117906016`
MSN	`mitchell_bloch at hotmail dot com`
PSN	`bazald`
Skype	`bazald`
Steam	`bazald (a.k.a. Il Buono)`
Primary email
Secondary email

Biography

The first games I ever played were a couple of Sesame Street themed games for DOS. I believe I was approximately one year old at the time. In elementary school I played great classics like Oregon Trail, Odell Lake, and Arkanoid to name a few. My first portable console was the Sega Gamegear, purchased shortly before the first demise of their hardware division. Shining Force - The Sword of Haija made it all worthwhile however. I got my first non-portable console at the age of 13 - a Playstation. Great games like Xenogears and Gran Turismo left their mark. I got my first x86 PC around the age of 14 (freeing me from the prison that is an Apple Computer computer). Since then I have enjoyed games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars - Knights of the Old Republic I and II. (I was also blown away to realize that my Blizzard game-discs bought for my father's Mac were PC-compatible as well. Kudos.) While I generally find role-playing games to be the most enjoyable PC-gaming experience these days, I have enjoyed games like Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Starcraft, Black and White, and many more in the past. I like games with cool controllers: Gran Turismo (Racing Wheels), Guitar Hero (SG), and I've always wanted to try Steel Batallion (for the control panel).

I started programming around the age of 14 as well. I first started learning C, motivated to try writing code to automate the implementation of "secret codes." I've never gotten around to implementing any of that, but I've found plenty of other interesting things to do. C++ and Java are great languages, though I tend to prefer C++ for most situations. (Java's GUI code is awful.) I attended Camp CAEN three times and learned about MFC, PalmOS, and Matt Gilgenbach's EZ2D Game Engine. Anyway, I think the rest is pretty much in my resume, so I'll stop here.

Skills

C/C++,
Java,
xHTML,
CSS,
PHP,
(My)SQL,
SDL,
OpenGL,
DirectX,
Linux,
The GIMP

Side Projects

Battleship Java Applet
JPathfinder

Officer Positions

Mitchell has held the following officer positions:

Project Advisor	2010
Project Advisor	2009
President	2007
Webmaster	2006
Webmaster	2005

Projects

Mitchell has been involved with the following projects:

Zeni Rocket

You must install all 3 redistributables in the redist/ folder!

If you want to try 2-player, copy ship1.txt to ship2.txt and change the controls.

The main concept behind this game is to allow a user to simply customize a spaceship by placing rockets wherever and to allow a user to simply change controls schemes for these rockets as well. The physics are mostly complete (though a better symplectic integrator might be helpful). Customization is…
Coriolis Station

This was a collaboration over the course of 12 days at Sid Meier's Game Design Boot Camp

This is a 2D platformer set on a rotating space station. The puzzles are centered around the altered gravity mechanics.

It's (perhaps) best played with an Xbox 360 controller, but it can be played just fine with a mouse and keyboard. The game should run on Windows XP, Mac OS 10.7, and recent versions of Linux.

Mitchell…
Flag Wars: Capture the Flags

This is a 3D multiplayer online game. There is no single player mode at present and it might not work over WiFi until I get the packet size down.

Most required installation files are in the 'redist/' subfolder. However, if you have trouble installing drivers for an Xbox 360 controller, the recommended interface for playing the game, please visit Microsoft to obtain the manual driver installer.
It was made using the Zenipex…
Perilous Seas

This was my arcade game for EECS 494, game development. It is a naval combat game in which you sail around the seven seas, firing cannonballs and sinking any ships which dare to stand in your way. You are supposed to play the game with a Hori Real Arcade Pro 3. If you have one, you rotate the stick to turn your ship.
Debugger

Made for 48-Hour Contest #4

48 Hour Version (Source Required for Runtime GPL Compliance)
(Version 2.0 runs Zenilib 0.2.6.1)

The code name was Robots vs The Bugs. This is the essence of the game. Two players control one robot each - specifically one humanoid lawn mower each. The object of each level of the game is to kill all of the bugs on the level by attacking them with your…
Lucid Dreams - The Struggle to Awaken

This game placed fourth in the third 48 hour game development contest (Fall 2005).

The setting of this game is a cloud in a dream world. Your objective is to obtain ten caffeine pills in order to wake up. To this end, you must catch the sleeping pills that sheep throw at you, back at the sheep. Once they are asleep, you can take whatever pills they happened to have on them.

…
Zeni Maze

Download d3dx9_30.dll here!
At present, this is best described as a demonstration of the game engine that I'm currently working on. In the future, this game could potentially allow one to explore a maze that could not, in reality, exist. For example, a maze could allow one to take four tight left turns and end up somewhere different than where one started.

Controls:
WASD for moving forward, backward, left, and right
…
WolverineWare

WolverineWare is the first true Wolverine Soft community project in a while. Development of this game will be done by programmers, artists, musicians, designers, beginners and experts alike. The idea behind the game is that it will be like WarioWare, Inc. (the GBA game) with a WolverineSoft/UofM theme. It will consist of a huge number of simple, short (as in, a few seconds long) "microgames" each developed by an individual or group of Wolverine Soft…