BILAL KHAN

I'm currently working as an Engine Programmer at Activision, on the engine that powers Call of Duty®.
I enjoy graphics and games programming, though I sometimes delve into other areas such as mobile and web development.
Although alot of my projects are in C++, I also have experience in Python, LUA, and Java.
Take a look at some of my projects below!

CONTACT

LinkedIn
Github
Email

WORK EXPERIENCE

Activision

Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6

Engine and general programming.

C++
Python
LUA

Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3

Engine programming.

Call of Duty®: Mobile

Tools programming (Android).

C++
Vulkan

CURRENT PROJECTS

Blade: Rendering Engine

A 3D rendering engine, with the goal of supporting multiple graphics APIs.

C++
OpenGL

Emulation

Chip-8 interpreter and an Intel 8080 emulator for Space Invaders. The main aim is to work towards PS1 emulation.

Jupiter: Software Renderer

A software renderer made from scratch, based on programmable pipeline graphics APIs.

GRAPHICS & GAMES

Penguin Game Engine

A cooperative project!

C++
OpenGL

Procedural City Generation

Road generation using L-Systems + Block allocation and building generation.

C++
OpenGL

Procedural Terrain Generation

Algorithmic generation of terrain using Perlin noise!

C++
OpenGL

Cloth Simulation

A physics simulation of cloth using a mass-spring model.

C++
OpenGL

SPH Fluid Simulation

A physics simulation of fluids using smoothed-particle hydrodynamics.

C++
OpenGL

Deferred Renderer & Shadows

A high performance adventure with Vulkan!

C++
Vulkan

FakeGL

A software recreation of the fixed-function pipeline OpenGL.

Geometry Hero

A 2D arcade game inspired by geometry wars.

C++
SFML

Raycasting

A journey into the world of 2D raycasting.

C++
SFML

OTHER PROJECTS

WEB & MOBILE

MyGamesList

A website for tracking, organising, and discovering games!

HTML
CSS
JS
Laravel

MyGamesList Mobile

An android counterpart to the MyGamesList website.

JAVA
Android

TV Night - Android/iOS

Cross platform mobile application used for TV Show scratchcards!

HTML
CSS
JS
ionic

Call of Duty®: Black Ops 6

Worked alongside experienced programmers in-office and from other studios to develop new engine systems and to maintain existing ones. For this title, I worked with various components of triple A game development including the engine, automation, UI, packaging, multiple platforms, etc.

Developed new engine systems. One of the systems included the implementation of a texture streaming preload system. This involved engine work (C++), CI / CD work (python), as well as working with LUA.
Maintenance of existing systems such as the On-Demand Texture Streaming system for the engine, aswell as the reflection probe generation code for the pipeline.
Worked on various features in the runtime engine in order to achieve feature parity with another work stream.
Worked across the engine core systems, engine UI, the asset pipeline, CI / CD, and packaging.
Implemented various testing and debugging features for one of our streaming systems.
Supported rolling out new features and monitoring CI / CD for any issues. Aswell as fixing any issues that came up during the roll out process.
Working with multiple platforms: PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Xbox Series X, PC.

Check out Chris Fowler's awesome talk about our On-Demand Texture Streaming system. This is one of the systems which I have been working on.

Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3

My first game credit!

Gathering information about existing features and tracking feature and bug history via perforce.
Fixed bugs related to the asset pipeline, engine systems, and rendering.
Supported rolling out new features and monitoring CI / CD for any issues. Aswell as fixing any issues that came up during the roll out process.
Refactoring various parts of the runtime engine.
Stability testing one of our streaming systems across all platforms in order to ensure smooth performance before the game released. Documenting the testing done and the findings per test. Aswell as fixing any bugs found during this process.
Integrating changes between various work streams.
Working with multiple platforms: PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Xbox Series X, PC.

Call of Duty®: Mobile

Worked largely independently on an internal profiling tool for Call of Duty®: Mobile on Android devices. The tool involved generating and displaying per-shader stats (shader invocations, shader instruction counts, shader processor util percentage, etc). The work on this tool involved the following:

Vulkan.
Building for and working with Android.
CMake.
Git/GitHub.
Qt.

Blade

Note: This project is currently in progress.

The aim of this project is mostly to focus on renderer architecture. The project involves designing and developing a renderer capable of supporting multiple graphics APIs, while implementing various graphics techniques to solidify the design. It currently implements:

Multi-mesh models loadable from file or defined in code.
Runtime asset database. Handles loading and managing of assets.
Scene system. Each scene has its own UI, input, camera, set of renderable model instances, and light sources.
Multiple light types: directional, point, and spot.
Phong shading.
Normal mapping.
Blending.
Stencil testing. Currently used for outlining certain models.
Debug drawing: points, lines, and cubes.

Planned features: Forward+ rendering, PBR, instancing, shadow mapping, SSAO, frustum culling, and occlusion culling.

Emulation

Note: This project is currently in progress.

Development of a Chip-8 interpreter and an Intel 8080 (Taito Space Invaders Arcade Game) emulator, with the goal of working towards implementing a Playstation 1 emulator. Currently, the project implements a complete Chip-8 interpreter capable of playing various roms.

Jupiter

Note: This project is currently in progress.

A software renderer made from scratch and modelled after programmable pipeline graphics APIs. Currently implements the following:

Custom math containers and operations: vec2, vec3, vec4, matrices (4x4), matrix operations (translate, rotate, perspective, orthographic, transpose, inverse), etc.
Scanline triangle rasterization.
Backface culling.
Pipelines with adjustable vertex layouts and adjustable shaders (vertex and pixel).
Depth testing.
Flat shading and phong shading.
Texture mapping.

Planned features: primitive clipping and geometry shader support.

Cloth Simulation

An application which implements a mass-spring system to simulate cloth. Takes an OBJ file as input.

Mass-spring model implementation. The vertices are point masses and the edges are modelled as springs.
Simulation Scenario 1: A piece of cloth which free-falls onto a sphere.
Simulation Scenario 2: A piece of cloth floating horizontally, which then free falls with two adjacent corners fixed in space. The cloth is affected by wind.
Flat shading.
Reading and writing .obj files.
Simple GUI using ImGui.

Procedural City Generation

Based on the following paper: Procedural modeling of cities

Population density and housing heightmaps (procedurally generated or by loading a custom image).
L-systems based road generation.
Parametric control over road generation so that different types of road patterns can be generated.
City block allocation.
Building allotments generation.
Graph data structure.
Visualisation of the full road generation process.
User Interface: GUI and camera controls with keyboard & mouse.

Deferred Rendering and Shadows

An implementation of deferred rendering and shadow mapping using the Vulkan graphics API.

G-Buffer: stores diffuse, normal, specular, and position textures.
Support for multiple light sources (directional and point).
Shadow mapping.
Percentage-closer filtering: manual implementation and built-in vulkan implementation.

Penguin Game Engine (PGE)

A university project by a team of 4 members (Team Penguin). The goal of this project was to create a 3D game engine, aswell as a game using our engine. My focus in this project was rendering and core systems.

What I worked on:

OpenGL abstractions (vertex arrays, vertex buffers, uniform buffers, framebuffers, etc).
Rendering pipeline.
Shaders.
Phong shading.
Lighting types: spot lights, point lights, and directional lights.
Multiple light sources.
Normal mapping.
Materials.
Debug logger.
Metrics logger.
Two cutscenes.

Fluid Simulation using Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics

Based on the following paper: Particle-Based Fluid Simulation for Interactive Applications

Procedural Terrain Generation

Procedural terrain generation with multiple layers of Perlin Noise.

Generate randomised terrain.
Fractal noise.
Parametric control: numerous adjustable parameters to allow changes to the procedural generation.
Phong shading.
Fly camera.
Refractive, reflective, rippling water.
Skybox.
UI with ImGui.

FakeGL - Software Renderer

A software renderer which recreates the functionality of the fixed-function pipeline OpenGL.

Matrix stacks for Model-View and Projection.
Transformation matrices.
Point, line, and triangle rasterization (using barycentric coordinates).
Depth testing.
Gouraud and Blinn-Phong shading.
Texture mapping.

Raycasting

A raycasting demo that I implemented in preparation for a future raycasting project (In which I will create a DOOM style raycasting game).

Geometry Hero

An arcade game inspired by geometry wars.

Entity Component System
Enemy types: chasers and floaters.
Special move: momentarily slow time and fire a piercing bullet that will bounce around the stage.
Enemy-enemy and player-enemy collision detection and resolution.

MyGamesList - Organise, Track, Discover

A website I built for keeping track of games, aswell as discovering new ones. Users can track games that they are currently playing, completed, dropped, and want to play.

Content management system.
Login system.
Admin system.
Search and browse for games (uses the IGDB API).

MyGamesList Android Application

An android app made using Android Studios and Java. This mobile app was made to accompany the MyGamesList website.

MVC Architecture (Model, View, Controller).
Offline and online functionality.
Local storage: Users can still use the app even if they aren't registered.
Themes.
Saved preferences.

TV Night

An application made for TV lovers. The application has scratch offs for some of the most critically-acclaimed TV shows. Users can scratch off manually or use the random button. The application also tracks the current status of each TV show scratch off so that users can keep track of their progress. This was a freelancing project done during my third year of university. The project makes use of Ionic to create an application that works on both Android and iOS.