Scott Schlegel

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Schlegel
Schlegel's office circa April 23, 1998

"Directed development of a multiplayer matchmaking and chat system using Windows networking and client/server technologies. Created a system for uploading scores from a children's game to a website where the scores would be recorded and ranked. The score uploading system became a popular feature, bringing more value and repeat gameplay for users as well as increased web traffic to the company's website. Worked on various gameplay elements such as AI, UI, and special effects for several PC action titles." — Resume description on Monolith role

Scott Schlegel was the AI engineer for Blood II: The Chosen and its The Nightmare Levels expansion pack, as well as having done "additional LithTech engineering", and similar additional engineering for Shogo: MAD and Claw for Monolith Productions. He replaced the role played by Daniel Leeks in the original game.

Biography[edit]

"Software Engineer with over 17 years experience in designing, developing, and managing software projects for the consumer electronic markets as well as the home entertainment industry. Experienced with developing embedded software applications and PC-based tools for both local and international markets. Produces good software that meets customer requirements in a timely fashion. Demonstrated ability to manage project development from design to deployment as well as produce new and innovative solutions to customer issues. "Linkedin profile

Schlegel is head of engineering at Clarity Pediatrics as of August 2022. Prior to this he was an engineer and manager at GoodRx from July 2019 to August 2022, senior engineer at Cleo from April 2018 to July 2019, senior engineer at IXL Learning from April 2017 to April 2018, software designer at nurx from November 2016 to March 2017, senior software engineer at Robots and Rockets from April-August 2016, and principal software engineer at Monotype Imaging from January 2010 to April 2016, as well as briefly for Whirlpool Coproration from March to December 2009, and serving as lead software engineer for MonoType acquisition Planetweb for nine years between July 2000 to February 2009. His gaming career ended (although his work at Planetweb targeted gaming hardware) after he left Electronic Arts, which he joined in November 1999, after having gone over to Humongous Entertainment (via Cavedog) from Monolith in January 1999; migrating there shortly before Blood II designer James Wilson III. Before joining Monolith in August 1996 to work on Claw, he was a student programmer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications from September 1994 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

He presently lives in the Los Angeles, California region, having moved away from Kirkland, Washington after his Monolith days. He lists his interests as "DIY Hardware/Electronics, 3-D Printing, Black Belt in Aikido, Blue Belt in BJJ", and specializes as "C/C++, GUI architecture, Windows development, Tools development."

Blood II[edit]

"[The AI is a] finite state machine with state transitions occurring through the computation of various input and stimuli against several tables of fuzzy logic values."Scott Schlegel

Unlike most of the other staff listed in the Blood II credits, he is not given a comment or playful description, instead given a silly nickname of "Pookie Smoothbone", though it is also said he "will code for food..." as an additional engineer. His role in the project is referenced in audio messages present in C1L6: Center for Disease Management with: "Dr. Schlegel, please report to AI research immediately. Dr. Schelgel? It's no use, Marge, he's probably home sleeping anyway."

Although widely criticized for its flakey implementation, caused due to the time pressures of the Blood II development, the AI for Blood II was actually rather ambitious, with enemies attempting dodges, leaps, rolls, and various other tricks beyond the then standard "activate, approach player, fire" paradigm of the time.

While incomplete and glitchy in both cases, this work is arguably best shown with the Fanatic and Shikari enemies. If anything the attempted advances lend to its bugginess, unlike in Shogo where running out of development time was compensated by having largely sedate enemies with high hitscan accuracy (based on Craig Hubbard's decision to if not make Shogo "great" than to make it "fun").

The AI code for the game has been further modified and/or enhanced by the DarkAct mod, as well as more extensively still in the FX Enhancer and the presently still being developed Extra Crispy modifications.

External Links[edit]