William Sykes
Will Sykes, lecturer in games programming:
Will Sykes is a veteran games developer. He has worked in the games industry for over 20 years, coding on many successful projects, including Monument valley, Crackdown, Too Human, Project Cars and many more. He has developed products on many platforms, such as Amiga, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Switch, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, iOS, Android, Linux and Windows.
He now works as an independent consultant alongside teaching. In addition to working at major studios, Will has developed several solo indie games. He aims to create genuinely new game mechanics with a focus on ‘fun’ rather than story.
As a programmer, Will has in-depth knowledge of physics, computer vision, computer graphics, gameplay programming, VR and team management. He has worked in Assembly, C, C++ and C# programming languages and has experience using the Unity and Unreal game engines.
While Will’s primary experience is in programming, in his solo projects, Will develops all content including 2D art, 3D models, animation, music, sound, code and design.
Will has significant management and project planning experience. He has led development on several games projects and run a computer vision R&D team at Sony.
Will started his teaching career while working remotely on Crackdown 2 in 2009. Working from home was leading to social isolation, so Will spoke with London Metropolitan University about teaching opportunities. Will provided practical advice for the course and gained teaching confidence in regular guest lectures. When the opportunity to teach at UCL came around, Will jumped at the chance.
What Will teaches:
Will believes that anyone with a strong interest can become a game developer. While Will teaches programming to all, he embraces the different interests of students, and as such, he will try to engage different students in different game development areas depending on their primary interest. He teaches games programming, gameplay design, 3D asset creation and animation.
Will believes that learners gain confidence by teaching themselves, however, before one can learn something one often needs to be shown the basics to gain confidence. Alongside lectures, Will creates tutorials that show step-by-step work flows for programming and asset development, then spends one-on-one time answering any questions students might have when following these.
Will is always happy to discuss game development skills and to help students learn, he encourages students to ask as many questions as possible.
Solo Projects:
Endless Knight:
A classic fighting game with a twist. This 12 month project was originally targeting the Nintendo Switch, but the original development partner pulled out to work on free-to-play games.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1173870/Endless_Knight/
Perfect Universe:
A collection of games that experiment with gravity. Released on both Window and PS4 with help from my publisher
https://store.steampowered.com/app/405720/Perfect_Universe__Play_with_Gravity/
Perfect Wings
A VR flight simulator for the Gear VR Platform developed during the night while looking after my newborn daughter
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/gear-vr/1017219438375731/?locale=en_GB
Perfect Moon
Developed for Android and iOS, this platform game explores unusual gravity game mechanics
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.willsykes.perfectmoon&hl=en&gl=US&pli=1
Perfect Moon VR
A conversion of Perfect moon for the Gear VR platform. This project turned out to be extremely successful and has been ported to other VR platforms in China
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/gear-vr/798584850248075/?locale=en_GB
Phoni-Chord
A musical tool I developed for my own use. Allows the user to play the i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii chords from any major scale in iOS or Android
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.willsykes.phonichord&hl=en_IE
Patents:
https://patents.justia.com/inventor/william-oliver-sykes