Tim Dodds

Magical Spell Masters is a turn-based strategy game about spelling words to cast spells. I was a programmer, music composer, sound designer, and producer on the project.

A mix of Slay the Spire and Scrabble, the game is all about combining clever words with powerful magic to defeat your foes.

It was developed over 15 weeks by a small team at AIE Canberra. I blogged about the development of the game here.

Snow Globe Decor was a small project created by Fred Bancan and me for the AIE and GamePlus December 2021 Game Jam.

It puts players in a small sandbox world that they can fill with lights and decorations. I was responsible for the music, sound, and UI design. I also helped figure out a simple and reliable approach for our rope physics.

It began as an exercise in us asking, ‘Just how many lights can we get into a scene?’ But out of that came a lovely, expressive little game about finding joy in a dark place.

Procedural Soundscapes is a small Unity project that explores the possibilities of procedurally generated environmental sound effects. Sounds are randomly scattered throughout an environment based on a coloured Perlin noise map.

The idea was inspired by my general love of field recording, and the pleasure I take in moving through natural spaces and hearing sounds unfold around me. The aim was to create an effect that is more dynamic and evocative than the use of ‘flat’ ambience tracks.

As part of a graphics assignment while studying at AIE, I created a real-time graphics engine in C++/OpenGL. This project is a demonstration of texturing and simple Phong lighting in this engine.

As part of a physics assignment while studying at AIE, I built a real-time physics engine in C++. This engine includes sphere, box (axis-aligned and oriented) and plane collisions, as well as an implementation of rope soft-body rope physics based on Hooke’s law.

I surfaced this physics system in a simple scene where where you launch balls between different slings.

Small Stars was EF Education First’s flagship English course for 3-5 year olds. I worked as a sound designer and music composer at EF’s headquarters in Shanghai, China.

I was also a senior producer on the project, overseeing all aspects of audio production. This included creating dozens of songs, recording thousands of lines of dialogue, and managing external partners for voiceover work in 32 animated videos.