Loren Crain

Frontend Software Engineer
Indie Dev
Generalist Engineer
Web Dev
TypeScript
React
C#
C
Go
SQL
Linux Systems

Antistatic

A screenshot of the current state of the 0.8 open alpha test.

A screenshot showing a graphics engine test. It uses public domain high-detail models of a DSLR or mirrorless camera, and a rolling coffee cart.

Antistatic, an uncompromising platform fighting game, has been in development since 2012 as an experimental homage to Super Smash Bros. Melee. It is built in a custom engine, written in TypeScript and C, with a 3D OpenGL graphics engine.

Tech stack

Antistatic runs on top of Node.js, with the bulk written in TypeScript. Native portions are written in C, and run as a Node.js addon.

The graphics engine is also split, with lower-level code written in C and OpenGL and much of the model manipulation, vertex rendering, and animation written in TypeScript. FreeType is used to render a dynamically-growing font atlas. Other libraries used include: GLEW for OpenGL bindings, SDL2 for window management, and SDL2_image for image loading.

The audio engine uses OpenAL-soft to interface with hardware. Files are OGGs, and libvorbistools is used to decode them.

To connect to the official Wii U/Switch GameCube controller adapter, I used LibUSB to directly communicate with the adapter over USB.

Internationalization is handled using Fluent, with the language files available on GitHub. (And open to pull requests!)

Antistatic's matchmaking server is very simplistic, but is built in Go to run on a Linux host.

Netcode is peer-to-peer and delay-based, and some infrastructure work has been done to move toward adding rollback in the future. It runs on UDP, with higher-level messages encoded in JSON along with a binary stream of controller snapshots. The engine (poorly) attempts to synchronize beginning times and input delay, poke through permissive firewalls, and gracefully handle dropped packets.

Antistatic's build system is mostly automated starting from a build-free git repo, pulling in and installing dependencies as well as building a few binaries. The process is a mix of PowerShell and Bash scripts.

Originally, Antistatic ran in a web browser. The limitations started adding up, and I made the decision to move to Electron and add a native add-on. When I couldn't squeeze the consistent performance and hardware support I felt I needed, I re-implemented more pieces in C and moved onto Node.js directly.

Senior UI Engineer @ Zazzle.com

A screenshot showing a few technologies I built and worked on being used on the website. I worked extensively on displaying images, interactive hotspots, and our content management system.

A screenshot of other examples of rich content and image use I worked on.

A screenshot of a featured creators spotlight, using a highly-configurable profile photo embedding feature I originally authored.

A screenshot of an internal table editing tool built for React that I fully designed and implemented.

A screenshot of a table rendered in React that was created using the internal table editing tool I authored.

At Zazzle, I built and maintained frontend UI infrastructure and for public and internal pages. The primary technologies I used were TypeScript, React, Redux/Sagas, and C#.

Lead Programmer @ Air Dash Online

A promotional screenshot showing Tesla using side-special against a stationary Chai.

A short animation showing Tesla comboing Chai. It ends in an air dash knee used to punish a stun cancel air dash for the KO.

A screenshot of progress made after the EVO demo, leading up to the Kickstarter launch.

Air Dash Online was a prototype of a fast-paced platform fighting game by JV5 Games. As the lead programmer, I built its custom platform fighter gameplay engine inside of Unity and performed all non-graphics programming.

Don't Starve Food Guide

A screenshot of the statistics analyzer in the Discovery tab.

The open-source Food Guide (on GitHub) was created to simulate the in-game crock pot, which crafts different dishes depending on what four ingredients are chosen. It expanded to include more tools, and has been maintained since Don't Starve was in Early Access.

bluehexagons.com

This website is hosted on a headless Linux server running nginx, written using modern HTML, CSS, and TypeScript. It's still under construction.