Steve Hales
Palo Alto, CA 94301
email: steve[at]igorlabs.com
www: www.igorlabs.com/steve
linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/stevehales

Objective:
I'm looking for an opportunity to work with a talented team to create products that use audio in creative ways on mobile devices or consoles. Specific interests in games that use audio for social gaming.

Skills:
25 years production experience. 18 years with experience with C/C++, 5+ years with Java. Shipped products for MacOS, WinOS, BeOS, SolarisOS, Linux, BSD, 1980’s console game machines. Atari 2600/400/800. Some experience with modern console systems, and other embedded OS's.

Embedded experience with ARM7/9, DangerOS, Nokia. Experience writing device drivers for Windows 3.1/98/NT. Familiar with 6502, 68000, PowerPC, Intel assembly language, ARM7, ARM9. Over 10 years experience as a contractor. Management of my time key to a successful project. Experience with all kinds of development tools. Visual Studio, CodeWarrior, gcc, make, subversion, Perforce, source safe source control. I have written my own compilers for various projects. Doing home brew development for Nintendo DS, and most recently XBOX 360 XNA development.

Experienced working and debugging on unstable hardware, or software platforms, like plugin’s, game boxes, or new hardware platforms. Experience with audio DSP and other audio technologies, audio file formats including MPEG 1 layer 3 (MP3), AAC, Ogg, and 3GPP formats like AMR-NB and AMR-WB.

Experience with 2D graphics sub systems, some OpenGL for 3D. Experience with Virtual Machines, software/hardware emulators. Working with a diverse client base, helping then understand how to use technology.

Employment, contract history:
2007 September to present:
TribalBrands, Inc – Working with a team of 3 to define, and build a MMS commerce engine.

2007
Apple, Inc iPod Division –
Contracted 3 months with iPod division for interactive audio technologies for next generation iPods.

2001 to June 2007
Danger, Inc –
System architect for Danger OS. Integrating video/audio codecs. H.263/3gp. Re-engineering the bitmap based font engine to use a TrueType engine based upon FreeType. This involved integration and re-architecting API’s that 3rd developers relied on, so the changes had to be incremental.

Team lead and manager for internal games group. Built and owned 7 games. Rock & Rocket, Bob, Bob's Journey, Cactus Connections, Pumpjack, and three unshipped. Directly coding for 3, and internal game design tools. All of our games feature high levels of polish and interactivity, especially with audio. A number of these are the built in default games for the Sidekick. Managed 3 people.

Part of the team that development the Software Catalog used on the Sidekick. Was a member of the API counsel that reviewed and recommended API’s for use to 3rd party developers.

Lead architect for the audio sub-system for the Danger OS Sidekick series. A 2.5G mobile phone. This involves writing Java/C using the Beatnik Audio engine. Working with the sound designer to perfect the Sidekick sound. Adding Sidekick specific enhancements to BAE. Had a small involvement with hardware design of next generation designs for speaker and other audio features. Part of the 1.0 launch team.

1996 - 2001
Beatnik, Inc – Lead architect behind the Beatnik Audio Engine, which is a software synthesizer and audio mixer, and supported development of the Beatnik Player. This is an interactive audio web plugin for IE and Navigator. Deployed on MacOS, WinOS.

Ported our technology to at least 7 different platforms: MacOS, WinOS, SolarisOS, BeOS, WebTVOS, and others. Major development effort. Features include support of Midi, wavetable synthesis, support for reading and writing various file formats: AIF, WAV, MP3, au.

Highlights:
Development and design of cross platform C/C++ API’s to be used by third parties. Abstraction of hardware to allow easy porting to different types of hardware.

Integrated BAE into cell phones. Small memory, dual CPU support. ARM variant, and a TI DSP. Worked with clients to define what they needed, how we could redesign our code to fit into their platform. Nokia was our first license. The N-gage, Nokia 3650, 7650 use this codebase, to name a few. Over 100 million phones have shipped with this code.

Created an SDK package for licensing to third parties of our technology. Key implementer for Sun's JavaSound API. BAE is the core technology licensed to Sun.

Experience working with Java from the host point view. Consulted with Apple engineers to port BAE and JavaSound to the MacOS.

Lead developer of the Beatnik Editor a MacOS application, and an aborted port to WinOS. Experience with graphics UI, audio. Consulted on second generation editor.

1991 — 1996
Co-authored the SoundMusicSys audio driver that is now the basis behind the Beatnik Audio Engine. Did consulting work and licensed this technology to over 20 games companies, and Apple Computer, General Magic, WebTV, Be. Contracts to build an Xtra for Jump Music’s various music related music teaching projects. Delivered on MacOS and WinOS platforms. Contracts with Broderbund software working on their cross development platform for games. Co-authored the Audio chapter for the book "Tricks of the Mac Programming Guru's" from Hayden Press. Worked with Presage Software to create audio pre-production tools.

Managed a games startup with 15 employees at its peak, creating games for GameBoy, MacOS, and WinOS.

1989 - 1991
Application programming for Broderbund and Pixellite to create BannerMania and Type Twister for the MacOS. Used a vector technology that was built by Pixellite to create banners and type styled effects for desktop publishing. Widely pirated for use in colleges, and dorms. :)

1988
Did a little consulting with another new startup that had an incredibly simple idea. A city simulator. Will Wright and Jeff Braun later turned their company, Maxis and SimCity into a new brand name, type of game, and style of marketing that has changed the entire game industry. Developed a simple Sound driver and sound programming, for SimCity and RoboSport.

1987
Worked at a small startup called GO Corporation who was trying to build the first PDA systems. I left realizing GO was a little ahead of its time, and still wanted to build products. Developed the initial graphics subsystem.

1986
Did of port of the popular Fantavsion for the Apple II to the Amiga, completely rewriting and redesigning it. It was one of the first multimedia authoring tools for personal computers. It allowed you to combine 2D vector and bitmap graphics and audio to create movies. The product has been used to create animation’s that have been entered into early festivals of computer art, and to design laser light patterns for music auditorium laser light shows.

1982 - 1985
Created products for Synapse Software on the Atari 800, Commodore 64, Apple II and finally the IBM PC Jr! If anyone remembers: Fort Apocalypse, Slime, Dimension X, and my favorite, an text adventure game called Mindwheel. With Mindwheel. I got to work with Robert Pinsky, a poet with a unique vision, and to seriously learn about object oriented programming.

1981
Starpath. Did game design and reversed engineered the Atari 2600. Shipped one title, Suicide Mission.

References available upon request.

United States Patent granted: 7,183,481.