About Me
Accomplishments
Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environements and Bachelor of Mathematics
Professional programmer with formalised skills in many engines and languages
Experience with industry partners to help actualise their ideas
Numerous completed and published projects
Profficiencies
Voxel Sands
Solo | Engine : Unity | Timeline : 8 weeks
Built using Unity DOTS and compute shaders , for an optimised and performant, chunk based voxel interactive falling sands simulation.
Sunburn Railway
Team : 4 | Engine : Unity | Timeline : 7 weeks
VR project, built for the meta quest headset, using hand tracking, for a quick fun experience.
Turtle Island
Team : 4 | Engine : Unity | Timeline : 13 weeks
Developed with industry partner DES. Turtle Island educates young students about Australian turtle conservation via interactive mobile play.
No Confusing
Solo | Engine : Godot | Timeline : 3 weeks
Game Developed in a month for the Music Video Game jam. Using Godot, made a custom networked leaderboard with Google Firebase
Contact
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Turtle Island
As a turtle recruit, join Dr Shelly and help clean up the once forgotten turtle island.
4 person team
Darius Mclean (Programmer, Developer)
Jackson CC (Programmer)
Cody Barnett (Designer, Artist)
Johan Dantoc (Artist)
Role
Lead Programmer
Engine
Unity, C#
Platforms
Web Browser, Mobile
Status
Published
Project Overview
Turtle Island is an educational action game. Players take on the role of students on an expedition to a dilapidated turtle island, and must help Dr Shelly by completing various minigames whilst learning about the life cycle of turtles. This game was created in partnership with the Department of Environments Sciences (DES) for a course in university IGB200.The game was chosen to share to industry partners in a showcase at QUT, and is shown on QUT Student Games Showcase.
Contributions
Developed Expandable Tool System - In the three minigames the player has access to nine functionally unique tools, these were constructed using components and interface design, allowing for quick prototyping, implementation and tweaking.
Utilised Unity's New Input System - Ensuring optimised functionality and designer useability
Optimised For Mobile - Reduced script complexity, and unnecessary update calls, to maximise performance
Challenges & Lessons Learned
The biggest challenged faced in this project was designing for mobile resolutions, ensuring the ui and gameplay scaled correctly for the large variety of aspect ratios. A custom system was developed which involved working off of unity ui canvas' and anchor points, which adequately solved the problem. Being the first game I had developed for mobile, this really taught me the importance of optimisation and utilising the built in profiler to maximise performance.
Sunburn Railway
Work as a good ol' track switcher in the Australian outback, but watch out for mother nature.
4 person team
Darius Mclean (Programmer, Developer)
Lucas Sampson (3D Artist, Designer)
Daniel Lowe (Designer)
Brenten Ewards (Sounds)
Role
Lead Programmer
Engine
Unity, C#
Platforms
Meta Quest
Status
Published
Project Overview
Sunburn Railway is a unique VR game that transports players to the vast, sun-baked Australian outback. From the vantage point of a watchtower, players take on the role of a laid-back rail track controller. The core gameplay revolves around controlling the tracks, ensuring the trains run smoothly through the arid landscape. Amidst the challenging logistics of railway management, players can also enjoy a few virtual beers, adding a lighthearted and immersive element to the experience.This project focuses on creating an engaging and authentic outback atmosphere within a VR environment. Key gameplay mechanics include interactive elements such as levers, wires, and various sandbox toys, all designed to take advantage of Meta Quest hand tracking.The game was chosen to showcase the degree at QUT open day, and is shown on Immersive Festival 2025 Showcase
Contributions
VR Optimised Code - Reduced dependence on update, by utilising the observer pattern.
Hand tracking with dedicated hand poses - Developed systems around the use of Meta Quest hand tracking as the primary input.
Developed and Implemented Gameplay Systems - Quick prototype and refinement of designed ideas into a functional game.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
First time developing for VR, definitely a learning experience. The choice of hand tracking was difficult to implement from detecting hand poses and optimising the scripts involved. Overall the implementation turned out very well.
No Confusing
Play as a small guy on a table collecting orbs whilst avoiding falling objects
Solo Development
Godot development
Shader Coding
Networked Leaderboard
Role
Sole Developer
Engine
Godot
Platforms
Windows, Mac, Linux
Status
In Development
Project Overview
a game created for the Music Video Game Jam. A game designed around a provided song. The main focus of this game was designing a vibe and atmosphere. This was achieved with the use of custom shaders, the main visual style comes from a custom kuwahara shader.
Also a fully networked leaderboard was made using google firebase as a backend cloud storage and simple API calls to save and retrieve leaderboard data.
Contributions
Godot - Worked using GDScript within Godot engine.
Shader Coding - Developed custom shaders, kuwahara shader, vertex displacement, light beam.
Networking - Utilised firebase as a cloud storage solution for a fully networked leaderboard.
Challenges and Lessons Learned
Connecting with firebase api was a new and uniique challenge.
Voxel Interactive Falling Sands Simulation
A simulation experience, using voxels to create a 3d falling sands interactive simulation.
Solo Development
Unity ECS
Compute Shaders
Ray Marching and Cellular Automata
Role
Sole Developer
Engine
Unity, C#
Platforms
Windows, Mac, Linux
Status
In Development
Project Overview
Designed as a high-performance, real-time physics sandbox. This application will bring the classic "falling sands" genre into a fully three-dimensional, voxel-based world. The core of the project is to create a dynamic system where every single element is an active participant in a physics simulation, enabling players to interact, build, and destroy with complete freedom.
This project's primary objective is to serve as a demonstrative portfolio piece showcasing deep proficiency in Unity's most advanced, performance-oriented technologies. The simulation's demanding computational requirements necessitate performance first consideration, making it ideal for demonstrating skill over the Unity Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS), including the Entity Component System (ECS) and the Burst Compiler. Furthermore, the project will leverage the power of Compute Shaders to handle parallelized visual and computational tasks, ensuring a smooth and responsive experience even with millions of active voxels. This document outlines the project’s concept, technical foundation, and key learning outcomes, positioning it as a significant demonstration of modern game development skills.
Low-level programming and optimization in languages like C++ or highly performant C#.
Graphics Programming the creation and management of visual elements in a game. Proficiency in technologies such as OpenGL or DirectX
Mathematics knowledge, help handle graphics programming and physics calculations efficiently.
GPU-based programming with Compute Shaders for visual effects or simulations.
Debugging skills, ability to create custom data structures and solve performance bottlenecks.
Experience with profiling tools to identify and fix performance issues.
Contributions
Unity DOTS - Gain a deep, practical understanding of ECS, the Jobs System, and the Burst Compiler, and learn how to apply them to solve complex, performance-intensive problems.
Proficiency with Compute Shaders - Learn to write and optimize parallel code for the GPU, a skill that is valuable in various fields beyond game development, including data science and scientific computing.
Data-Oriented Design - Transition from traditional object-oriented thinking to a data-oriented mindset, a skill that is increasingly relevant for modern, high-performance applications.
Performance Optimisation - Develop a toolset for performance optimisation, and learn to profile and optimise code to achieve maximum efficiency.