University (September 2023 - present)

Summer Break (2024)

For the first summer break after finishing our university modules, I was determined to not waste the opportunity to further develop my skills by sitting idle without working on anything productive. As such, I took the time to expand upon my learning by completing personal projects. The projects mentioned below (which I had made over the summer break) are found on my Personal Projects page.

Initially, I had planned to use the entire break to work on a simple 3D video game on mobile devices in the Unity game engine which uses the user's mobile device's built-in Accelerometer to move a ball throughout the environment. I developed the game to the extent of having procedurally generated tracks for the player to play around with, attempting to navigate past the obstacles and reach the end of the track. The procedural generated tracks allowed the game to feel fresh with each launch of 'quick play' as it'd be a different track to experience every time. While developing this project, I researched into 'Game Jams' and determined that my programming efforts over the summer would be better suited to tackle those as opposed to spending the whole summer working on one game project.

The first challenge in the form of a Game Jam which I decided to take on was the Game Jam titled 'Bullet Hell Jam 5' and I had named my project 'Relentless Ricochet' - the requirements of this Game Jam were that the game would need to feature many fired projectiles and follow the theme 'consequences'. Within ten days (the allocated time we had to work on the project), I was able to create a third person shooter game whereby the player's character was unable to stop firing their weapon which was a detriment to the player's performance as every projectile fired by the player's weapon would bounce off the walls, potentially ricocheting at the correct angle to come back and hit the player. This was the first feature I incorporated to meet the 'consequences' theme. The second was by having the player's vision of the game suffer (darken, shrink and become grainy) depending on how many friendly characters in the game the player's gun indirectly killed (by accidentally hitting them with the weapon's fired projectiles.)

The second Game Jame I entered was the Jam titled 'The Secret Cult Horror Jam' and I aptly named my project 'PSX Secret Cult'. To match the requirement of being a horror game focussed on a secret cult, I sought to make the player's character feel trapped in an uneasy environment where robed assailants attack the player if they come close enough to be seen by them and to capture the horror feeling I made the game in the style of the PS1 console's graphical limitations (an art style for video games which I favour) as it is widely reported that those games have an inherently 'creepy' atmosphere.

In-between College and University

After finishing college, I experimented with a multitude of video game projects developed in the Unity and Godot game engines and I also worked with the Unreal Engine to a lesser extent. Outside of video game development. I experimented with WinForms to create small scale applications with the sole purpose of gaining a basic understanding of how to develop a Windows Form application.

College (September 2014 - July 2017)

My first real experience with programming was when I attended Newcastle College to study BSc. Games Development, where I was taught the fundamentals of the C# programming language, which I used to develop:

• A Windows-based video game based off the retro video game from 1979 named Asteroids, which I had created using XNA Game Studio 4.0

In the second year of college, we learned about Object Oriented Programming and I used my knowledge of C# to program the following:

• A WinForms application which allowed the user to view 3D renders of various weapons used by the British Army and display stats and information regarding the weapons. The WinForm window embedded a small XNA Game Studio 4.0 window within it to display the 3D render of the weapons, which I quickly modelled myself in 3ds Max.
• A prototype version of a Windows-Based 2D multiplayer game hosted via LAN, built within MonoGame.
• A Windows-based 3D video game developed in XNA Game Studio 4.0 where the player took control of a cube and had the task of seeking out various coloured cubes to increase their score before the time limit expires.
• A Windows-based recreation of the college's Games Development floor, designed within Unreal Engine 4 which served as a tour guide for people interested in viewing the site and provided information about the course when the player navigated towards the relevant areas within the in-game world.

In the third and final year of college, I developed:

• A video game for Android and Windows built within Unreal Engine 4 where the player took control of an angler fish in the dark depths of the ocean and had to avoid incoming sharks, using only the light attached to their head as guidance to see what lurks ahead.
• A Windows-based first-person-shooter and racing game developed for my dissertation which was built in the Unity Engine. The purpose of my dissertation/project was to compare the benefits of using a controller vs mouse and keyboard as a user's chosen input device by having users play through two levels twice each; one using their mouse and keyboard and the other on their controller.