Frank Force
frankforce@gmail.com – www.frankforce.com
Summary
Videogame development is one of my favorite things and I’m lucky to have been doing it for 30+ years. Much of my career was spent working at large game studios in engineering, design and lead roles. For now I am focused on experimental game dev, generative art, and community building.
Professional Experience
Independent Developer, Killed By A Pixel
- Released many games, tools, and other amazing things including…
- “L1ttl3 Paws”, 2025 – Hill glider with a cat and proc gen for JS13K
- “Driven Wild”, 2024 – Arcade style driving game with proc gen for JS13k
- “Undergrowth – A Tale From O Monolith”, 2023 – Interactive music video
- “Lu1ky Pinball”, 2023 – A 1 kilobyte pinball game with realistic physics
- “Egg Time Rewind 13k”, 2022 – Low fi shooter with time travel twist for JS13k
- “U1KE”, 2022 – 1 kilobyte ukulele for JS1k
- “LittleJS”, 2021 – Small and fast WebGL JavaScript game engine
- “Space Huggers”, 2021 – Roguelike platformer with destructible environments
- “Batafuraiko”, 2021 – Retro style shoot-em-up, Winner of JS1024 2021
- “NoteCraft”, 2020 – Cellular automata music playground
- “OS13k”, 2020 – Tiny web based pseudo OS and game engine
- “1Keys”, 2020 – 1k JavaScript Piano, Winner of JS1024 2020
- “Hue Jumper”, 2020 – 2 Kilobyte 3D racing game with procedural levels
- “Buddhabrot”, 2020 – JavaScript Buddhabrot Renderer
- “Egg Time Rewind”, 2020 – Nokia style low res shooter
- “Dual Axis Rotation Illusion”, 2019 – Winner Best Illusion of the Year
- “Bounce Back”, 2019 – Zelda style boomerang game, 2nd place in JS13k
- “Bogus Roads”, 2019 – Lowrez Retrowave Racing
- “ZzFX”, 2019 – Zuper Zmall Zeeded Zound Zynth
- “ZzArt”, 2019 – Abstract Art Evolution
- “CapJS”, 2019 – Live code editor for capturing video
- “Digilemma”, 2019 – Digital Dilemma of Devious Difficulty
- “JSONCrush”, 2019 – Compress JSON into URL friendly strings
- “Bulkhead”, 2015 – Arcade action rogue-like game
- “Monster Mart”, 2015 – Austin Education Game Jam 2015 Winner
- “Secret Formula”, 2013 – Indie Speed Run 2013 Winner
- “Faster Blaster”, 2012 – Open world action adventure game
- “The Frank Engine”, 2010 – Flexible open source game engine
- “Pixel Words”, 2009 – Word fractal screensaver and game
- “Go Bonsai”, 2008 – Interactive 3D bonsai tree simulator
- “Complements”, 2005 – Physics puzzle game
- More games and projects listed here
Technical Director, Rooster Teeth
September 2017 to July 2018, Austin TX
- Worked on “Vicious Circle”
- Designed and coded weapon and gadget systems
- Developed 1st and 3rd person animation systems
- Provided technical support and guidance
- Assisted with design and art direction
Lead Engineer, Certain Affinity
July 2014 to September 2017, Austin, TX
- Worked on “DOOM, “Mafia III”
- Collaborated with id on DOOM’s multiplayer
- Developed hack module, progression and awards systems
- Implemented game modes and game mode UI
- Managed other engineers
- Assisted with hiring and interviewing candidates
- Provided technical support and guidance
- Worked on several unannounced projects
Contract Developer, Sifteo Inc.
January 2013 to October 2013, Austin, TX
- Shipped “Wildflower” 2013, a game development kit and engine
- Created “Squaresville” 2013, an original action adventure puzzle game
- Created design document and artwork for original game concept
- Worked directly with publisher to meet all milestone deliverables on time
- Built a powerful custom game engine to run on very minimal hardware
- Hired and managed a musician to write original music score
- Developed several other prototype games for Sifteo Cubes
Senior Engineer, LightBox Interactive
August 2009 to August 2012, Austin, TX
- Shipped “Starhawk” a PS3 exclusive multiplayer shooter
- Worked on two major title updates and many incremental hotfixes
- Responsible for all weapons and assisted with their art/design
- Hooked up networking for various systems to work in multiplayer
- Developed SPU cloth simulation and some other special effects
- Worked with artists to implement most of the HUD and UI elements
- Developed turrets and many other gameplay systems
Software Engineer, Volition
October 2005 to November 2007, Champaign, IL
- Worked on “Red Faction: Guerrilla” for Xbox 360 and PS3
- Developed weapons and player control system
- Implemented and tweaked vehicles using Havok
- Converted gameplay and animations from 1st to 3rd person
- Worked on small team to design and build studio wide UI solution
Software Engineer, Midway Games
January 2003 to June 2004, Chicago, IL
- Shipped “Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy” for PS2 and Xbox
- Developed weapons system and implemented all weapons
- Designed AI behaviors and combat logic
- Wrote graphics shaders and other programming for Xbox port
Software Engineer, Hypnotix
February 2001 to November 2001, October 2002 to December 2002, Little Falls, NJ
- Shipped “Outlaw Golf” for Xbox
- Shipped “Deer Avenger 4” for PC
- Worked on “Outlaw Volleyball” for Xbox
- Implemented controls, animation, AI, HUD, and sounds
- Wrote custom pathing system for AI
- Helped design 3rd person combat gameplay
- Developed studio wide particle sim and created special effects
Web Developer, Netsmartz
June 2000 to December 2000, Rochester, NY
- Created a large scale online order tracking system for Global Crossing
- Developed active server report pages with SQL and VBScript
Web Developer, PLH
June 1999 to August 1999, West Chester, PA
- Shipped “Paracalc” for Windows, a heat transfer calculations program
- Developed dynamic web pages and windows apps for clients
Professional Videogame Credits
- “Vicious Circle” , 2019 – PC
- “DOOM” , 2016 – PC, PS4, and XB1
- “Mafia III”, 2016 – PC, PS4, and XB1
- “Wildflower”, 2013 – PC
- “Starhawk”, 2012 – PS4
- “Red Faction: Guerrilla”, 2009 – PC, PS3, and Xbox 360
- “Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy”, 2004 – PC, PS2 and Xbox
- “Outlaw Golf”, 2002 – PC, Xbox and Gamecube
- “Outlaw Volleyball”, 2003 – PS2 and Xbox
- “Deer Avenger 4: The Rednecks Strike Back”, 2001 – PC
Generative Artwork
- fxVase, 2024
- fxPottery, 2023
- Scribbobbles, 2023
- Rad Impressions, 2023
- Flexagon Frenzy, 2023
- Tilemoji, 2022
- ROIL, 2022
- Gradient Ascent, 2022
- Chaosplot, 2022
- Auto Park, 2022
- Antiflow (with Ryan Bell), 2022
- Byte City Night, 2022
- Chaospill, 2022
- Tree Skyness, 2022
- Astronomic Comics, 2022
- Divide by Circle, 2022
- Gensuzendō, 2022
- Dithered Branches, 2021
- Broken Flows, 2021
- Batafuraiko, 2021
- Indifferent Strokes, 2021
- Infrastructures, 2021
- Grayscale Byes, 2021
- Iris Variations, 2021
- Zpritez 3D, 2021
- Zpritez, 2021
- Aliendscapes, 2021
- Bad Shapes, 2019 – Interactive Music Album
- Over 1000 Dweets, 2019-2023
Education
B.S. in Computer Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
September 1997 to June 2002, Rochester, NY
- Focus on Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence, Physics, Math, and Art
Technical Background
- Code: JavaScript, WebGL, HTML, CSS, C/C++, WebGL, DirectX
- Tools: UE4, Visual Studio, GitHub, SVN, Web 3.0
Awards and Recognition
- “Dual Axis Illusion” – Best Illusion of the Year 2019, First Place
- “Monster Mart” – Austin Education Game Jam 2015, First Place
- “Squaresville” – Experimental Gameplay Project, 2013 Sifteo Winner
- “Secret Formula” – Indie Speed Run 2013, First Place
- “Bogus Roads” – Game Dev World Championship 2019, Second Place
- “Bounce Back” – JS13kGames 2019, Second Place
- “Space Huggers” – JS13K Games 2021, Eighth Place
- “Dr1v3n Wild” – JS13K Games 2024, Eighth Place
- “1Keys” – JS1024 2020, Overall Winner
- “Batafuraiko” – JS1024 2021, Overall Winner
- “Lu1ky Pinball” – JS1024 2023, JS Winner
- “Ant1k Attack” – JS1024 2025, Overall Winner
Talks
- “JavaScript Haikus”, 2024 – Live at Nerd Nite Austin
- “LittleJS Breakout Tutorial”, 2023 – Self Published
- “JavaScript Haikus: My Adventures in Tiny Coding”, 2023 – JS GameDev Summit
- “Tiny Game Live Coding Workshop”, 2023 – JS GameDev Summit
- “Artist Spotlight: Frank Force”, 2023 – Interview with 256Art
- “Making Awesome Games with LittleJS”, 2022 – JS GameDev Summit
- “How to make amazing generative art with simple code”, 2022 – JS GameDev Summit
- “Make a city sunset with JavaScript in only 140 Bytes”, 2020 – Self Published
- “Tiny Coding – Making Big Games with Little Code”, 2020 – Live at MAGFest
- “Professional AAA Game Developers Reveal All”, 2020 – Live at MAGFest
- “How to Make a Game in 48 Hours – Revisited”, 2018 – Live at MAGFest
- “Game Jam Q&A Panel”, 2016 – Live at MagFest
- “How to Make a Game in 48 Hours”, 2015 – Live at MAGFest