Thomas Helm
Programmer
Tools - Software - Games
Programmer
Tools - Software - Games
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Thomas (T.J.) Helm has been developing projects for years. The examples listed above are a collection of the best representation of his skills. Most of the projects on itch.io were created during week or month long game jams.
You can also check out his various social media accounts. Links are in the footer of this page. Feel free to message at anytime; I love to chat!
During my time at NAIT I worked as a Software Developer implementing features and systems
based on the client and senior developer expectations. I often took the opportunity
to tackle and implement entire features independentely with peer reviewed pull requests.
Epic games was my first payed job in the tech field. I worked here for 8 months
as a software tester ensuring the quality of the Unreal engine and it's core systems.
I interned at Beach Day Studios for 4 months during my last simester of college.
It was a great opportunity to apply some of the things I learned in a working environment.
The focus on the Beach Day team was hypercasual games specifically VR related.
One such game I worked on was the idea of a monster whos' aim was to eat all the food within
a certain time. The monster had no legs and the player was forced to crawl around in the style of
Gorilla Tag. I created the idea and implemented the main mechanics using the Unity VR API.
Unfortunately it seems the company is no longer operating as I did leave to pursue paid work.
Using the Unity inspector window is painful and tedious when working with many objects or when trying to drag and drop items around the screen.
I created the Floating Inspector tool to make working with Unity much more efficient.
It's as simple as selecting (or hovering) over an object in the scene/hierarchy/project windows and pressing "1".
This opens a convenient small window to quickly work within and manipulate selected objects as you need.
(For full sized image of diagram, see the github link below)
The text adventure parser (TAP) is a project I created in C++ to develop my skills and familiarize myself with pointers
and applying systems and patterns I have learned, in a new project.
TAP was created to be simple to setup and use. The releases section of the Github has the .dll file, and a handy diagram
is provided in the README to show how the parser stores each object in the TextAdventure class.
Features:
The Scriptable Object Organizer (SOO) is a tool for both Unity programmers and Developers.
It enables quick and simple access to scriptable objects without the need to dive
through multiple folders.
SOO features its very own window where you can chose between multiple tabs.
The organizer allows for managing objects through a list format using optional filters.
It also allows programmers to quickly alter the backend script of a scriptable object
to add small fields or even whole functions.
You can check out the link to the unity asset store below!
The terrain generator is a tool I created before I started school at NAIT.
It involves a simple UI which is used to generate terrain of many different sizes.
There are functions to create layers in the heightmap resembling different levels of terrain.
I implemented octaves to add diversity to the land scape and generate more unique terrain.
The color picker allows for changing the color of each layer to discern the scale of each.
The scale of the terrain can be adjusted allowing for more/less terrain.
Unfortunately, I lost access to the source code and can no longer work on it. I plan to develop a new version
with better support and export functionality. For now it remains a relic of my early knowledge in procedural development.
You can check out the link to itch.io below!
Drython is an interpreted language developed in Rust as a systems language.
The main purpose of Drython is to act as a game scripting language with player build compiling.
This involves using the drython parser during game editor usage, then converting that parsed
content to a rust (rs) file to be compiled when the developer builds their game. This speeds
up the developers workflow in editor, and speeds up the resulting game for players to enjoy!
Currently the parser is complete and can be viewed on the github. (Link below.)
It has it's flaws, but the drython parser is my first language, so all these algorithms are very new and interesting to me.
The name is a play on of python, (which it shares a similar syntax) but reveals that the language is
quite simple but very dynamic.
Tynted Engine is a game engine created originally to test the concept of the Entity Component System pattern. To showcase this, the engine has multiple features that are important to the pattern. Tynted Engine was created in C# using the SFML C# binding.
Black Matter was my successful project in creating polished mechanics during a game jam.
The game is inspired from the human brain. It encourages the player to build connections between neurons.
It features viruses that try to destroy those connections, and helpers to help fix and create more of them.
Black Matter lacks a tutorial, but instead focuses on introducing mechanics as the player continues
to engage with the game.
Black Matter is hosted on itch.io found at the link below.
Murder Bunnies is a small game intended to showcase a more complete publishable game. The core aspects are based on a 4 player system. Created in Unity C# and published to Itch.io. Much could be improved to make the game more exciting for fewer players, but the mechanics are implemented. Based off the old arcade game "Joust."
Pie Rise is a game I developed with a group of friends during the Global Game Jam in 2019.
The game was built with android devices in mind and involves tapping on the pies in the windows
when they are ready to come off the ledge. If they aren't tapped in time, they go bad and the
hungry raccoon comes to eat them!
The floors slowly build up and the player will need to manage more and more pies.
I worked on much of the programming and handled the publishing and finishing touches before the deadline.
The aging pies, raccoon interactions, and speach bubbles appearing were where I focused most of my time.
Pie Rise is hosted on itch.io found at the link below.
AI dungeon is the conglomeration of a couple of projects previously worked on. It can be
classified as a simulation.
The simulation offers 3 unique types of AI;
procedural dungeon generation, path node
generation, and character state machines.
There is a build for Android VR, see below for details.
The dungeon generation works in 6 steps which are:
Path Node Generation works by first placing path nodes on each dungeon floor tile. The generator then creates connections based on one node next to another. Connections that would connect if there was no door in between the two create a closed door connection. This connection is then paired with the door to allow for it to open and close. Each connection can be traveled across by the AI characters. This system has no connection to the state machine, but the state machine accesses it.
The state machine for this project is fairly basic, but it demonstrates the important aspect
of having a character respond to external stimuli. The player flees whenever encountering an
enemy. The enemies give chase when they encounter a player. When the characters are not fleeing
or following, they chose a random pathnode and attempt to travel to it. The state machine
implementation uses the A star algorithm to navigate the path nodes.
You can find a build of the project in the releases section of the github source page.
If you have an Android device with a VR headset or google cardboard, there is an APK build
that supports it also under the releases page.
