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I am Benjamin Leskey

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My Projects

Text engine (2023, Prototype)

screenshot of the text engine An experimental text-based game engine for complex text adventure games. Written in Go, this is based on a design idea I had for managing entire game worlds as a set of related entities for emergent, deep interactions. It's meant to be a full RPG game master. See textengine news.

This Website (2023, Ongoing)

This website is a simple & clean structure to publish my portfolio, blog, links, and other hypertext. I built this site using an ad-hoc Bash-based HTML preprocessor to compile together blog posts, links, RSS feeds, and more. See website news.

Mapping tool (2021, Ongoing)

screenshot of the mapping tool I'm developing a map making application (see news) for authors and storytellers and people who can't draw. It could be used by fantasy authors to plan their worlds, RPG players to keep track of their games, or just for fun! I began development as part of my Senior Honors project at MVNU. I presented this project at MVNU's Symposium for Undergraduate Research and Creative Work in April 2023, where it won the Symposium's top prize.

Cataclysm: DDA mods

Arcana Technoclysm (2023)

A mod adding some more technical aspects to the Arcana mod for Cataclysm: DDA. Includes summonable vehicles, new locations, and new magical tools.

Wesnoth add-ons: Wexlfu (2018, Ongoing)

screenshot of the wesnoth campaign Zeth in the Underland I've made forays into the world of Battle for Wesnoth content development, writing some simple campaigns and—most usefully—developing the Wexlfu shared library of useful markup, code, and data to save reuse between my campaigns. See my wesnoth blog posts.

The Paradise Trap (2023, Ongoing)

screenshot of the wesnoth campaign The Paradise Trap world map for the wesnoth campaign The Paradise Trap A long-form, character-based pirate campaign. Nobody controls the high seas. Privateers and petty navies fight over paradise; many a good man seeks his fortune in the wealth of plundered goods stolen from islands and mainlands, hidden in coves for a day of celebration that may never come. Can one band of mercenary pirates hold together long enough to find a happy ending?

Minetest Games & Mods

Roadtrip (2023, Prototype)

screenshot of the roadtrip game Roadtrip is an open-world post-apocalyptic roadtrip survival simulator, along the lines of The Long Drive. This game is intended to support custom vehicles, physics simulation, exploration, survival mechanics, and more. See roadtrip news.

Aurum Game (2019--2021, Paused)

My most complex Minetest project is the Aurum game, an experimental minecraft-style game mostly from scratch using the minetest engine.

Elevator (2017, Ongoing maintenance)

screenshot of the elevator mod The most well-developed mod I've written is the Elevator mod, which adds a realtime elevator for pretty and fast vertical travel. Get it from the Minetest ContentDB or join the discussion on the Minetest forum. This mod is what remains of a Minetest server I used to host where I would experiment with new mods and game mechanics. The Elevator mod was invented when the Minetest engine got rid of the sneak glitch.

More Mods

I've written more mods of varying levels of development, which are all contained within the Tigris-MT project.

Interactive Freight Infrastucture Viewer (2019)

IFIV is a toy project to illustrate the complexity of supply chains. It provides an interactive display of products, industries, and transport methods in an interconnected web. Every fact and item in the display has associated references to more information and statistics.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup Configuration System (2017, Ongoing maintenance)

I wrote a DCSS roguelike configuration compiler system to support my own configuration file for the game, but it is easily extensible and reusable for building any DCSS rc file. I include a compilation system as well as a library of useful lua methods and workarounds.

My Open-source Contributions

Experience

Full Stack Developer

Summer 2023 -- Present

I work for OPERS.

Mapping tool

Fall 2021 -- Present

screenshot of the mapping tool I'm developing a map making application (see news) for authors and storytellers and people who can't draw. It could be used by fantasy authors to plan their worlds, RPG players to keep track of their games, or just for fun! I began development as part of my Senior Honors project at MVNU. I presented this project at MVNU's Symposium for Undergraduate Research and Creative Work in April 2023, where it won the Symposium's top prize.

Computer Science Peer Tutor

Fall 2020 -- Spring 2023

I've tutored for many computer science classes at MVNU, including Computer Science I & II, Data Structures and Algorithms, Database Systems, and Computer Networks and Telecommunications. As a peer tutor, I have worked closely with students who wanted to improve their understanding of these classes and concepts. Each student learns in their own way, and I have mentored students to successfully develop their own learning habits. I have worked with students through difficult material, showing them how to read, manage, and apply knowledge. Besides Computer Science, I have tutored for a Theology course and Mathematics course. Many learning habits carry over between subjects and fields!

Computer Science Lab Assistant

Fall 2021 -- Fall 2022

I've worked as a Computer Science lab assistant at MVNU for three semesters. I've helped many students in both Computer Science I and II to grasp concepts and develop their programming problem solving skills. In this position, I have troubleshooted technical issues in development tools and workstations, explained concepts to students, mentored students through the learning process, debugged esoteric errors, and helped students succeed in the computer science program.

Automated workflow app for the Community Emergency Response Team

Spring 2022

screenshot of the SERC tool As part of my Introduction to Software Engineering class, my team and I developed a mobile app using Flutter to digitize part of the Community Emergency Response Team workflow to evaluate disaster preparedness. The software was built for Dr. Hicks of the emergency management department, who provided system requirements.

Acts of kindness tracker for a church

Fall 2021

screenshot of the kindness scanner For my Database Systems class I worked with a team of my fellow students to develop a "Kindness Scanner" for my team member's church. The scanner tracks acts of kindness through QR card scanning and a pay-it-forward system. We designed a PostgreSQL database and built a PHP-based web app to track the acts of kindness.

Education: MVNU

a photo of the MVNU campus ribbon cut just before the baccalaureate service I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science (mathematics minor) from Mount Vernon Nazarene University. I graduated Spring 2023 summa cum laude as an Honors scholar. During my time at MVNU, I lab assisted for the computer science department, tutored computer science students, led the creative writing club, and participated in the Honors program (where I created my mapping tool). See my academic blog posts.

Skills

Full stack web development Building Desktop programs Writing mobile apps Programming servers & APIs Administering systems Multi-platform development Network programming Game development Software engineering Linux Github Pages Github Flask Electron Git (Flutter) Wesnoth WML Java EE SQLite (PostgreSQL) Debian Ubuntu (Bare metal programming) Node.js Vanilla JS (Composer) COBOL C++ Go C Java Python Lua UNIX shell HTML PHP CSS Javascript Canvas API (x86 assembly) (RISC-V assembly) (Dart) SQL Make (CMake) Patience Adaptability Attentiveness Curiosity Focus Positivity Cooperation Leadership Coordination

Other Cool Stuff

Programming

Entertainment

Utilities