Hi! I'm Dario, programmer.
I'm keen on many aspects of game development, from graphics programming and engine architecture to game design and interactive storytelling.
I've always been hungry for stories and interested in how they are conveyed across different media (movies, tv-shows, books, comic-books and of course videogames).
I've always been passionate about computer and videogames, and I've been doing all kinds of programming since the end of the 90s.
I studied computer science at Università degli studi di Salerno (good times!). Thanks to the opportunities I was given at ISISLab , the projects I worked on for my bachelor and master thesis were important milestones in building my professional background.
Testing my bachelor thesis demo at ISISLab (on a rear projection stereoscopic system).
Grabbing a ball and throwing it to hit something: a staple of hand-based interaction.
A giant teapot in the Sponza atrium, featured in my ambient occlusion demo.
Visually debugging and comparing sampling strategies aided by the UI of my rendering sandbox.
I approached VR development (interfacing a VR glove to a 3D engine) and studied computer graphics and low-level graphics programming (developing an ambient occlusion technique in my own rendering sandbox).
After completing my studies, I worked for some years at SpinVector , doing gameplay programming and developing B2B XR/multimedia applications.
VR programming on the go, at a hackathon. Stressful but fun.
Early passthrough AR and hand tracking with Vive Pro and Leap Motion (2018).
Behind the scens of an installation in Maratea. Beautiful place.
A screenshot from Artusi: Cooking Time, a match-three game we developed for Treccani.
It was a great environment to "play" with all kinds of devices (Oculus/HTC VR headsets, Leap Motion, Hololens, stereo projectors, IR cameras...) and to work with talented developers and artists.
I'm fond of narrative-driven games, from classical point & click adventures to more modern/hybrid takes on the genre. So, I have also done some amateur and freelance work in that space, not only taking care of programming (as usual!) but also doing game design and a little bit of localization.
I was programmer and co-designer for a Star Wars point & click fan-game.
I helped a bit on the Shadows on the Vatican series, still in progress.
I developed the client/DRM system for Zodiac, a (now defunct) DD platform focused on adventure games.
I did a bit of localization programming for the Italian release of Gemini Rue (a Zodiac exclusive). Great game.
I was part of the team localizing Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded to Italian. So many puns, I learned a lot!
I look forward to be involved in more story-driven projects.
A while ago, I moved from Italy to the UK and founded my own limited company, Binary Charm.
I started splitting my days between development of personal/independent projects and remote contract work for third parties.
It's become more and more important for me to retain ownership and control of at least some of the work that I do, and to pick according to my interests technologies and projects to work on.
So far, in practice, this brought to light a quite atypical short game I co-authored, Shadows on the Vatican: Nightingale , and some software components available on the Unity Asset Store .
Main menu of Shadows on the Vatican: Nightingale.
Story navigation UI from Shadows on the Vatican: Nightingale.
Semantic Color Palette, an advanced color management system for Unity.
TextMeshPro Alpha makes available to third parties the smooth text fading developed for SotV: Nightingale.
Text Color Buttons, to handle Unity buttons with colored labels (freeware).
Particular Reality, a VR game I'm currently developing.
Currently, I'm in the advanced prototyping phase of what will be the first videogame I have full creative control on, Particular Reality . I'm also publishing a DevLog about the process, which is probably the best way to get a glimpse of how I do game development. Once in a while, I'm also doing a bit of Rust development (e.g. the software I'm using to generate this website).
On the contracting side, I'm helping to bring forward some challenging Unity and Unreal projects.
If you want to know more about all kinds of thing I've been doing, check my portfolio.
TOBUTOMABLO
TOo BUsy TO MAntain a BLOg, but once in a while I write something here.
Binary Charm
My company website, with information about products and projects.
DuskZone
Archive of old content, mostly related to my university studies.
Hexence
Independent (and no-profit) fan-game development from the past.
Have we met?
I'm not great at staying in touch with friends and acquaintances but I'm always glad to reconnect and catch up.
Wanna hire me?
I'm not looking for jobs as an employee at the moment, but if you have interesting contract work for me, or want to schedule a quick consulting call, get in touch.
Curious about something?
If you have questions about something I'm working on, or have worked on in the past, feel free to ask!
Send me an email
I do my best to reply to every non-spam email in not more than a couple of days. If you don't get a reply, your message might have been erronously filtered as spam.
In that case, please try to reach me via private message (Telegram, Twitter, Mastodon, Discord...).