Hi,
I am Yifan (York) Liu, an M.S. candidate in UC San Diego majoring in Computer Science. I am a former game developer and a former researcher in the field of server software and parallel computing. I will graduate in 2023 and I am looking for new grad jobs in the field of software engineering or game development. Below are my projects with links to code samples.
Volumetric Path Tracer
My teammate and I implemented a path tracer to generate images using physically based rendering techniques and monte carlo integration. The path tracer reads in an obj-like scene file together with materials and produces an image with realistic soft shadows, diffuse/specular reflections, and homegenous volumetric effects.
This path tracer was used in a the Rendering Competition of UCSD CSE168 Spring 2022 and received 98/100. It features
- C++20 with parallel execution policy
- Usage of industry-level graphics libraries such as embree, glm, and oneapi
- Monte Carlo integration
- a Microfacet BRDF (GGX) and Importance Sampling
- Equi-angular sampling for homogeneous volumes
- Henyey-Greenstein phase function
SyGuS Program Synthesizer in Rust
My teammates and I wrote a program to generate programs given a SyGuS specification (which specifies syntax and input-output examples). It features bottom-up enumeration with observational equivalence using egg (a Rust library).
We also wrote a baseline program (a Rust-rewrite of ESolver) and benchmarked our synthesizer against the baseline on bitvector problems.
Links:Operation Scorpion (an FPS game on Roblox)
I was the only programmer in a startup game studio called Maximillian Studios, and I worked intensively with the artists, game designers, and marketing people in the team. We shipped our first game Operation Scorpion in 2018. To date, the game has accumulated 10 million visits and sparked thousands of Youtube Videos.
Operation Scorpion is a tactical first person shooter game on the Roblox platform and I handled every aspect of programming: user interface, character animation system, gun animations, multiplayer game logic, user progression system, matchmaking system, and persistent datastore. The game itself is written in Lua and the data servers are written in ExpressJS and postgreSQL. During year 2019, we shipped monthly updates and I am proud to claim that I managed a large codebase very well. Making this game transformed me from a top grader in university to a full stack game developer with team mindset and practical experience.
Links:
Below are Youtube videos made by fans and Youtubers doing Roblox contents:
- The Most UNDERRATED FPS on Roblox | Video by Oscar
- This FPS is Insame | Gameplay recording by ItsJustAGhost
- The Best Graphics on Roblox | by Ruben Sim
- Gameplay montage by Rataids
- Gameplay recording by Brikon
- A competitive match organized by fanbase, credit to PetriFyTV
- More Youtube videos about our game
Vocabulary Memorizer
My teammate and I designed and implemented a Vocabulary Memorizer using HTML, CSS, javascript, browserify, Google Sheets API, and Google OAuth2 API.
The user can import/edit the word list in a Google Sheet, and start memorizing words in a flashcard mode, where the front of the flashcard is the word and the back of the card is its meaning. The front and back can hold texts in any language, which is useful when learning a new language and memorizing unfamiliar words.
The repository (link down below) shall contain a README file that provides more detailed instructions and design choices.
Links:
A Todolist Based on React.js
I Built a web-based todo list using React, where the user can add a todo item, mark/unmark a todo item as done, and remove a todo item. This web application scales with your display and, specifically, it supports mobile view.
Links:
More Projects
Please use my Github link to view my projects with source codes.