Portfolio

Duped!

LEAD PROGRAMMER & DESIGNER

For 2022's Global Game Jam, I was the lead programmer and designer in a 4-person team. We produced Duped, a first-person puzzle game about duplication. Play it here!

This was my first time shipping a game as part of a full production team. Learning to communciate and collab with our artist, sound engineer and manager was super valuable, and provided something that solo work didn't. We brainstormed, drew up concept art, and managed in some playtesting. We shipped a three-level campaign with story, voice-acting & music, and multiple game mechanics.

Wonderbox

PROGRAMMER & DEVELOPER

I secured a partership with Sensorium Theatre, a Perth-based company specialising in interactive performances for neurodivergent youth. They wanted a VR accompaniment to their next show.

I won a competitive state art grant in order to afford the hardware. Over following months, I developed the project in collaboration with Sensorium's engineers and manager. I produced several demo builds, which were tested and approved of.

While Sensorium was ultimately unable to use the project due to outside factors, I'm proud of the work and what it taught me.

VR Physics Rig Toolkit for Unreal 5

SOLO DEVELOPER

As a personal passion project (hot on the tail of Wonderbox), I worked on making a full-body, physically-simulated VR avatar in Unreal Engine 4.

Using UE4, I worked on the project for 2 years. During that time, I published video devlogs which got over 40K views on YouTube. Check them out!

Hexagonal World Generator in C++

SOLO PROJECT

I wanted to practice barebones game dev. So I used the Raylib library, in conjunction with C++ in Visual Studio, to create a 2D hexagonal world generator, a la the later Civilization games. I learned how rendering works at its core, data management and retrieval for the many, many tiles, and how to consider performance.

About

I'm a 20yo Australian-American dual citizen. Currently I live in Sydney, Australia, but am open to relocating.

background

I was born in Oakland, and grew up in Perth (Australia), Berkeley (California) and Sydney (Australia again), in that order.

I attended Oberlin College in Ohio for three semesters; the last one was spent on exchange to the Universitat d'Alicante in Spain. Right now, I'm in the process of transferring to an Australian uni.

I've always loved stories and games. My first foray into game-making was booting up the Portal 2 SDK and breaking my 7-year-old brain on the Hammer World Editor. I later graduated to Minecraft modding, drawing up concepts with friends over recess, and since then, my love of game design was here to stay.

Writing and games always go hand in hand for me; their union presents fascinating possibilites and problems. Games are a unique fusion of art and play that really has no comparison--and that's exciting!

miscellaneous skills

I speak Spanish at an intermediate B1 level, plus Swedish & Norwegian at an advancer beginner's A2.

Personal interests: scuba diving, geography, puzzles, complicated sim games, linguistics, the indie web, ghouls, dramas with too many characters.

Game design & development

(See portfolio for specific projects.)

I've worked with all major modern game engines, and some older ones too. I have half a decade's experience with Unity and Unreal. My previous focus in game art & animation, now morphed into design & programming, has given me years of practice and university-grade study into each part of the game production pipeline.

But, I do have a set of more specific skills and strengths: programming, level design, & psychology of game design.

Engines & tools

Here's the engines, tools and software I'm skilled with.

Unity

5 YEARS EXPERIENCE

I have half a decade of experience in Unity, including a Certificate IV Game Programming course done at TAFE. Strengths: C# scripting, level design, art & environments, AI systems (as in NPCs, not LLMs)

Unreal 4 & 5

6 YEARS EXPERIENCE

Strengths: Blueprinting, C++, physics system, XR, procedural animation, Nanite & Lumen

Godot 3 & 4

2 YEARS EXPERIENCE

Growing my understanding of Godot is a current personal goal. So far, I've worked with GDScript (an in-editor, Python-style language), plus its C# and C++ integrations.

Source engine

9 YEARS EXPERIENCE

maybe not industry standard, but I first got into gamedev by modding Source games. I still do today! It fuelled my interest in game design and gave me the tools to deconstruct and learn about my favourite games. I learned so much from the resources it provided.

727 hours in Source SDKs, mainly in Hammer World Editor (mapping, scripting, level design)
1,080 hours in the Source Filmmaker (game art, environments & animation)

Programming

My programming skillset is T-shaped. I have the most experience with games programming in tandem with all industry-standard engines. I also have a solid foundation of low-level knowledge, and have applied myself to a variety of tasks and environments such as app and web development.

C#: 6 years' experience, mostly paired with Unity engine.
C++: 5 years' experience, mostly paired with Unreal and Source engines.
JavaScript: 3 years' experience, mostly related to web dev.
GDScript: 2 years' experience, within Godot engine.
Python: 1 year of experience.

Relevant Education

Certificate IV in Game Programming -- Technical and Further Education, Sydney
Certificate III -- Academy of Interactive Entertainment

Writing

Creative writing has always been an interest of mine, both as a hobby and for work.

Various online works of mine have accumulated over 40,000 total reads.

I recieved an Award of High Distinction from the University of New South Wales' ICAS assessment.

I've been published in a poetry anthology, and have published several game review articles in an online magazine.

Links

(More tba)

Email

oscarwhitkin@gmail.com