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Julian M. Rice

Shujinkou: The Ultimate Action-Packed & Story-Driven Language Learning Game

Julian M. Rice

Dotonbori, Osaka

Julian M. Rice

Westwood, Los Angeles

Julian M. Rice

The Coding School, Santa Monica

Julian M. Rice

Microsoft Tiny House, UCLA

Julian M. Rice

Trials of Rice, Project

Welcome!

Hi there! I'm Julian, a UCLA Alumnus with a double bachelors in Linguistics and Computer Science and Japanese, and a specialization in Entrepreneurship! I spend the majority of my free time developing video games. I am interested and experienced in full stack web, video game, and AI development!

Resumes
(Updated April 2020!)
Software Engineer resume Click!
Instructor resume Click!

Newest Projects: Click!

HobbiesSome hobbies outside of studying and working all day include playing violin, basketball, making music, and practicing my Japanese.

Website last updated on April 9th, 2020

Education

GPA (KAS)
3.80 / 4.00
GPA (UCLA)
3.30 / 4.00

High SchoolI studied at Kaohsiung American School (KAS) from 2012 to 2016 in Taiwan. The best memories I had from high school were probably my time as president of KAS's String Orchestra, Manga Anime Club, and the many rigorous challenges that my excellent IB teachers gave me.

CollegeI studied at UCLA from 2016 to March 2020. Outside of academia, I work part time jobs, develop projects on the side, and run the indie game startup studio Rice Games. I was an active member of the Japanese Student Association (JSA), and retained my skill with the violin by performing at concerts as a member of UCLA's Game Music Ensemble (GME).

Computer Science

Course Name Label Term Difficulty
C++ Programming CS 31 Fall 2016
Data Structures & Complexity CS 32 Spring 2017
Computer Architecture CS 33 Fall 2017
Software Construction Lab CS 35L Winter 2018
Algorithms & Complexity CS 180 Spring 2018
Network Fundamentals (TBA) CS 118 Summer 2018
Directed Research (TBA) CS 199 Summer 2018
Operating Systems CS 111 Fall 2018
Fundamentals of AI CS 161 Fall 2019
Finite State Automata CS 181 Winter 2020
Programming Languages CS 131 Winter 2020
Python and Applications PIC 16 Fall 2018
Calculus I MATH 31A Fall 2016
Calculus II MATH 31B Winter 2017
Discrete Mathematics MATH 61 Winter 2018
Principles of Logic I PHILOS 31 Summer 2017

Linguistics

Course Name Label Term Difficulty
Intro to Linguistic Analysis LING 20 Fall 2017
Syntax I LING 120B Winter 2018
Syntax II LING 165B Spring 2018
Semantics I LING 120C Fall 2018
Semantics II LING 165C Spring 2019
Computational Linguistics LING 185 Winter 2019
Applied Phonetics LING 102 Spring 2019
Phonological Structures LING 119A Fall 2019

Japanese

Course Name Label Term Difficulty
Intermediate Japanese II J5 Winter 2017
Intermediate Japanese III J6 Spring 2017
Advanced Japanese: 3rd Year Intensive J100S Summer 2017
Advanced Japanese: 4th Year Reading A J101A Fall 2017
Advanced Japanese: 4th Year Reading B J101B Winter 2019
Advanced Japanese: 4th Year Speaking A J103B Winter 2020
Advanced Japanese: 4th Year Speaking B J103B Winter 2018
Advanced Japanese: 4th Year Speaking C J103C Spring 2018
Japanese History J50 Spring 2017
Culture & History of Okinawa J123 Spring 2018
Japanese Supernatural J170 Fall 2018
Asian Elective: Late Vietnamese History V180B Winter 2019
Asian Elective: Early Korean History K180A Winter 2019

Entrepreneurship

Course Name Label Term Difficulty
Entrepreneurship & Venture Initiation MGMT 160 Winter 2019
Business Plan Development MGMT 161 Spring 2019
New Product Development & Innovation MGMT 163 Fall 2019
Entrepreneurial Finance & Accounting MGMT 164 Fall 2019

General Education

Course Name Label Term Difficulty
[AH] Japanese History J50 Spring 2017
[AH] Intro to Linguistic Analysis LING 20 Fall 2017
[AH] Chinese Performance Arts WLARTS 98TA Winter 2017
[SC] Discovering Romans CLASSIC 20 Winter 2017
[SC] Classical Mythology CLASSIC 30 Summer 2017
[SC] Human Biology & Society SOC GEN 5 Summer 2017
[PL] Sex, Biology, and Society CLUS M72A Fall 2016
[PL] Intro to Statistics STATS 10 Fall 2017
[PL] Exploring Mars EPS SCI 10 Winter 2018
[PL] Air Pollution (+Lab) A&O SCI 2 Summer 2017
[W2] Politics of Economic Knowledge HIST 96W Spring 2019
  • [AH] => Arts & Humanities
  • [SC] => Society & Culture
  • [PL] => Physical & Life Sciences

Non-UCLA Courses & Material

Course Name / Textbook % Details Date
Network Fundamentals (Certificate) 100% University of Colorado Sep 2018
Linear Algebra 50% Khan Academy Jan 2018 - Now
Coding Projects in Python 100% MBE, Steele, Quigley Apr 2018 - Sep 2018
Algorithm Design 70% Kleinberg, Tardos Mar 2018 - Now
Game Programming in C++ 25% Madhav May 2018 - Now
The C Programming Language 15% Kernighan, Ritchie Sep 2018 - Now
Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment 15% Stevens, Rago Sep 2018 - Now

Work Experience

Game DevelopmentI started making games in 6th grade at a camp when I lived in San Francisco from 2006-2010. Before that, I was attached to games because my father thought that a three year old playing Test Drive 6 on the Sega Dreamcast would be ...sweet. I want to keep developing games because I got to see my high school friends play MY game (How Far Can You Go?) and show me the emotional roller coaster one goes through when gaming.

September 2018 - Present

Details to be explained later. A summary can be found below:

About Shujinkou

https://www.ricegames.net

New, revamped description coming soon...

October 2020 - PRESENT
Time Commitment: 40 Hours / Week


ProgrammingI knew next to nothing before I started studying at UCLA: I never heard of loops and thought Python was some Minecraft language. However, my time in college has really pushed me in so many aspects. Check it out below!

Highly Skilled Experienced Intermediate Beginner

TutoringI have been tutoring students in numerous subjects ever since I started high school, starting with math and the sciences. I have two younger siblings that I had to take care of and teach, which has really motivated me to become the 'advice guy' over the last few years, helping those I am close to in any way I can.

Past Work & Internships

June 2019 - August 2019
Time Commitment: 40 Hours / Week

Details to be explained later.

February 2020 - PRESENT
Time Commitment: Variable


September 2017 - September 2019
Time Commitment: ~10 Hours / Week

I work along two other entrepreneurs, assisting with website & curricula development, marketing, and increasing social media presence.

I have planned and developed the entire curriculum for the following courses:

  • Practical Coding (HTML/CSS, C++)
  • Practical Coding 2 (Python 2.7)
  • Practical Coding 2 Python Projects (Turtle/Tkinter)
  • 2D Game Development 1 (Top-Down Action)
  • 2D Game Development 2 (Platformer)
  • 2D Game Development 3 (Action-Platformer)

You can check out the website and the courses we offer below

I instruct weekly online and offline courses for all levels of 2D Game Development, creating and helping elementary and middle school students create video games using GameMaker Studio 2 (C++).

Furthermore, I also instruct weekly online and offline courses for all levels of Practical Coding, programming and helping high school students write programs and design websites using C++, Python (including Tkinter and Turtle), and HTML & CSS

April 2019 - Present
Time Commitment: 10-15 Hours / Week

Working with Swift and Firebase to optimize and develop new features for Logos News.

September 2018 - December 2018
Time Commitment: 6-12 Hours / Week

I commute to Quantasy's office in downtown LA once a week for six hours of work, and work remotely from my apartment on Sunday mornings for six hours designing levels, debugging the game, and working on ways to make design more efficient.

Summary

For this Fall 2018 internship, I am primarily working on the creation of new levels for the iOS app hit, Harvey's Hundreds (App Store). I have already created over 100 custom levels and plan on pumping out more as the internship continues. The process includes modifying both the progression screen and level data files (JSON), then pushing the updates to a Github repository that then gets manually pushed to an Amazon S3 server.

The newly created levels are then available to play on the QA app that is installed on my phone (without a need to rebuild the app). I then go through every level and make sure that they are optimized and fun to play for basically any kind of player.

Custom Level Generator (C++)

I developed a level generator that takes the following input: the number of levels to generate, and the starting point (level). The generator's output is a text file that contains all of the levels generated and formatted properly, as well as the actual output (cout) just for viewing purposes. I felt that developing a level generator would be an excellent way to polish my programming skills (C++) with an "assignment" that would benefit me and make level design and creation a much more streamlined process. You can find the files at my Github repository with by clicking the button below.

Progression Screen, Level Optimizations

Modifying the progression screen is an essential part of getting the levels to be properly updated. One syntax error can render the entire build untestable; I found this out the hard way a couple times, and has helped me learn to an even greater degree how important syntax is in programming. The paths are set when updating the progression screen, but the positions of the images are variable and are always different to keep the level layout fresh for the player.

Thinking through each and every level carefully and playing through each and every level are completely different things. I found this out as I began to debug the levels and work on QA (quality assurance). Some levels that I thought would be very easy proved to be impossible without using powerups, and levels I expected to be difficult proved to be simple. I organized every new level that was being designed into a colorful spreadsheet that would then get remarks and constructive criticism from every playtester on the project. By separating every set of levels (sets contain 16 levels) by color, the spreadsheet was super easy to read!


September 2017 - May 2018
Time Commitment: 10-15 Hours / Week

I spent 26 weeks promoting Microsoft via marketing, conducting over 25 in-depth conversations and weekly group announcements with UCLA students per week. It was a great experience because I got to connect with countless UCLA students and faculty!

I gathered over 1000 total likes through Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The majority of my likes came from Instagram, and I had more than 15 Instagram stories that received over 180 views. The goal of these tasks were to increase awareness of new Microsoft products (like the Surface Book 2 and Xbox One X), and seeing some of my friends get new Books instaed of Macbooks made my day.

I documented activity weekly by sending a report to my boss, containing a couple paragraphs on the weekly activities done, results of the surveys, occasional videos and quotes from tabling.

Last but not least, I participated in the Tiny House event, which was two straight days of extremely crazy Microsoft marketing, consisting of social media contests (beforehand), raffles, and a ton of free nitro coffee. The Tiny House is a portable two story mini building that allows around 50 people at the time to view all of the Surface products and experience games like Cuphead, 2K18, and Madden 18 on two Xbox One S'.

September 2017 - December 2017 (HTML/CSS)
September 2018 - December 2018 (JavaScript)
Time Commitment: 2 Hours / Week

During Fall 2017, I taught 27 students the basics of HTML 5 and CSS 3 over 10 weeks, using a custom made GitHub organization to allow all students to concurrently view the progress behind their site throughout the course.

During Fall 2018, I will be teaching students at the same school the basics of JavaScript over 10 weeks, and will consist of a similarly constructed GitHub organization that will allow all students to view their progress throughout the course.

Images will be posted below from Fall 2018 when the curriculum starts.

JavaScript Showcase - Week 1

August 2017 - April 2018
Time Commitment: 6-12 Hours / Week

Over the course of eight months, I tutored more than 10 students ranging from early high school to community college students both online and offline, teaching the following subjects:

  • ACT Math (2)
  • ACT Science (1)
  • AP Japanese (2)
  • Algebra II (2)
  • Precalculus (1)
  • IT Systems (1)
  • C++ Programming (1)
  • Nutrition and Biology (1)

Students that were preparing for the ACT Math and Science sections saw their scores increase from between 3 and 6 points after 10 hours of tutoring over the course of 5 weeks.

Students learning AP Japanese became proficient with reading and writing over half of the 400 required Kanji characters, learned numerous vocabulary through my personal intermediate Japanese materials, and practiced speaking Japanese with accent fixing for four hours a week.

I have provided a list of data that corresponds to my teaching below, obtained at the Varsity Tutors account.

Average Rating
4.9 / 5.0
Average Sessions
10
Response Rate
35.5%
Average Response Speed
1 minute

Average Rating: The average number of stars given at the end of each tutoring session (out of 5) by the tutee.

Average Sessions:The average number of sessions that the tutor has completed with the same student.

Response Rate: The rate at which I respond to a potential tutoring opportunity. This decreased as my workload increased.

Average Response Speed: The average rate at which I respond to an opportunity, given that I do respond.

Highlighted Projects

Read about my four most current projects here!
Shujinkou | Enigma | Ryugaku

Shujinkou

Shujinkou is a Japanese language learning JRPG in-development for PC, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, and more.

You can read more by clicking the button more, or by checking out the Rice Games website.

Read More

Enigma

Enigma was developed during November 2019 for the Github Game Off. It is a short, turn based RPG that follows the life of Kai, a young man with a traumatic past.

Read More

Ryugaku

Ryugaku is a currently in development full stack website that aims to connect Japanese study abroad students in the United States with each other, and act as a resource for Japanese students and parents in Japan, interested in job hunting and the college lifestyle in the United States.

Read More

Beanstalk

This is a platformer game that randomly generates grass platforms as the beanstalk in the background grows. Your goal is to cut your way through the platforms and reach the top, while dealing with enemy flies and other obstructions.

Read More

An Evaluation of the Rotor Router Mechanism

During my research program in Osaka University's Graduate School of Information Sciences and Technology, I researched the rotor router mechanism and developed a simulator that analyzes the average stabilization period into a Euler cycle, and wrote a big and nice paper. To get those technical details down...

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Element of Surprise

Element of Surprise is a Python3 GUI turn-based text-style 2 player RPG. It uses many modules and heavy amounts of object oriented programming. Some of the modules used for developing this pokemon-esque project include PyQt5, PyAudio, OpenCV, Numpy, Wave, and Threading (multithreading!).

Read More

How Far Can You Go?

The game I spent hours and hours drawing over and over again - I really learned how gradients mix and how simple colors can be used to create (almost?) a stunningly minimalistic and attractive game. It took a couple years to get the art right, but I think it all worked out in the end. Alas, if you want to play this game, you are going to...

Read More

SV HiTech Accounting Website

My friend needed my help making a website for his parents' company, so I decided to help make one. You can see the results of my efforts by visiting it, but to do that, you have to...

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Trials of Rice

My siblings really pushed me to make some kind of turn based RPG where they (and me) could star as the MAIN players. Well, I put a lot of time, sweat, and pens to use to create something that had a decent story. It's still in progress, but...

Read More?

Bandcamp

Yes, making music is also a part of game development, and my extensive experience with music, from playing violin, piano, cello, to studying IB Music and learning music theory and analysis the HARD way, has allowed me to compose music... to some degree.

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Optimal Camera Angle in Super Mario 64

I wrote a paper about finding the optimal camera angle in Super Mario 64, the pioneer of 3D platform video games - one of my favorite genres ever!

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MobilePerhaps you are on your smartphone and managed to click on the circular images to get them to spin, but the cool boxes above don't do anything when you click them! Well, I have included buttons below for mobile users to click on - click on the project that interests you!

Contact Me

Feel free to contact through anything you see above! Also, you can email me at for any questions, requests, potential job opportunities, or just want to know more about me!

By the way, this is my favorite thing ever! So cute!