Summary

Hello, I am a game developer with a focus on game programming and design.I have used Unity for 6 years and Unreal Engine for the past 3 years to make a variety of games and tools. I have released 6 games on various stores as well as successfully finished 17 game jam games. These have been released on PC (Windows, Mac, Linux) and web.I have a passion for creating and learning new things both mechanically and aesthetically. I wish to be able to develop these skills further to create fun and engaging experiences.

Featured Projects

Daybreak

May 2024 - presentWorked in a team of 7 to create a top-down isometric action roguelike in Unity for mobile and PC. In it, you explore an island while fighting back the darkness and gaining upgrades to become stronger.

  • Programmed the player's isometric movement and shooting that could be impacted by upgrades and status effects.

  • Created and implemented the timed wave-based enemy spawning system and AI to allow for control of how long certain enemies spawned, along with their spawn rates and variations of these enemies.

  • Created the upgrade system to allow for upgrades to be easily created and added to the upgrade list used by the game to display upgrades on level-up. This includes basic stat upgrades as well as the ability to apply statuses to enemies.

  • Created the enemy logic with the change to drop different types of exp. This was to help with adding more randomness and chance to the game.

Project Theseus

September 2023 - April 2024
https://ace-savaid.itch.io/projecttheseusWorked in a team of 6 to create a third person 3D isometric roguelike in Unreal Engine 5. In this game, you switch your limbs to customize your build while clearing rooms and fighting bosses to progress through floors.

  • Needed to add a source of challenge and enjoyment for players to make their progression more enjoyable. Programmed the boss AI for all 3 bosses. This ranges from melee bosses to ranged bosses and has aspects such as enemy spawning and varying bullet patterns.

  • Designed all 38 Rooms in the game, starting with greyboxing to adding the environmental assets and textures before passing it off to the VFX artist for post process.

  • Created concept art for the 3D modellers to use as a reference for their models as well as 2d sprites used in the menus and UI

  • Created spreadsheets and documents to detail and keep track of the various limb options, upgrades, environmental assets and enemies that the game would need, their features, and what state of development they were in.

  • Assisted in bug fixes and added quality of life features to the game, increasing positive reviews for the game by 50%.

Day System Unity Package

January 2024 - June 2024
https://ace-savaid.itch.io/day-system-unity-package
Repository:
https://github.com/AceSavaid/Unity3DDaySystemWanted a system that would handle many aspects of day progression such as UI updates and lighting changes. Worked on a personal project to make a 3D daytime system for Unity that can be easily implemented into other projects as a unity package.

  • Created the feature to easily create your own custom phases of the day that can have names and colour themes attached to them.

  • Added the feature to toggle the speed, looping and duration of the day.

  • Can choose whether the day system affects the lighting or UI elements

  • Created an additional addon of a dialogue system that allows the text box and dialogue that certain objects say to vary based on the phase of the day it is.

  • Additionally created tooltips, comments and documentation to help anyone using the plugin to easily be able to implement it and navigate the various option.

Rock Bottom

September 2022 - April 2023
https://ace-savaid.itch.io/rockbottomWorked in a team of 7 to create a 3D action roguelike game in 8 months in Unity. In this game, you use a variety of abilities and upgrades to power through foes and move through rooms.
This game was selected to be showcased at Level Up 2023, Toronto along with 100 other top university games from around Ontario, Canada.

  • Programmed the HUD of the player consisting of the health bar, icons to display what weapon is currently selected and a hurt overlay that displays temporarily when the player takes damage.

  • Programmed menu functionality including the transitions from scenes and to other sub-menus with added sound effects and visual changes. This was then passed on to the UI artist to polish.

  • Optimised enemy AI and particle spawning so that the game could run from 30 fps to 60+ fps.

  • Programmed the weapon swapping ability that takes in the player's input as well as factors in the current number of weapons and availability of these weapons and changes the weapon based on either the direction the player scrolls in or the button input selected.

  • Programmed the keyboard keybind display used to show what input is needed to swap between weapons. This system was also used by the other programmer and internal play-tester for bug fixings and testing.

Experience

Game Design Teaching Assistant - Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, ON, Canada (September 2023 - present)Created and taught tutorial course content. Graded students’ assignments and answered any questions or problems that arose. Held meetings with the professor and other Teaching Assistants to ensure that course content was translated into the tutorials as intended.In Basic Introduction to Game Design, helped students understand the fundamentals of game design and aspects to consider when designing a game.
In Digital Game Design, helped students build upon the knowledge gained from the previous course. I assisted them with learning how to create various design documents and structuring their game's design.

Research Assistant - Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, ON, Canada (February 2023 - present)Assisted the User Experience Research Lab with tasks and projects.

Education

Ontario Tech University, Oshawa, ON, Canada (September 2021 - present)Bachelor of Information Technology - Game Development and Interactive Media
Some Courses Studied include: Math for Games, Programming for Games, Algorithms and Data Structures, and Game Engine Design and ImplementationPresident of Rhythm Game Club (September 2023 - present)
Executive of Game Programming Club (September 2023 - April 2024)
Vice President of Game Programming Club (September 2024 - April 2025)

Harrison College, Bridgetown, Barbados, WI (Sep 2014 - Jul 2021)Achieved the Regional Merit List, placing 7th in the Caribbean region in Building and Mechanical Engineering Drawing Unit 2 in the school year 2020-2021

Skills

LanguagesSoftwareMicealaneousSoft Skills
C/C++UnityFigma & MiroProject Management
C#UnrealWord ProcessingTime Management
JavaScriptVisual StudioPowerpointCommunication
React NativeGitTrelloPublic Speaking
HTMLGitHubPhotoshopOrganization
OpenGLBlenderGoogle workspaceTeamwork
RRPG MakerMicrosoft WorkspacePresentation Skills

Contact

Other Past Works

Dice Descent

August 2022 - August 2022
https://ace-savaid.itch.io/dice-descent
Repository:
https://github.com/AceSavaid/Dice-DescentSolo developed a 2D turn-based combat game in Unity for the GMTK 2022 game Jam
with the theme "Roll of a Dice"

  • Programmed a turn based system factoring in transitioning to the next enemy and moves missing.

  • Programmed and implemented the player and Enemy health bar and hurt and heal effects

  • Programmed damage scaling based on RNG (Random Number Generation) and chance of attack success based on a percentage.

  • To assist with keeping the player updated with what is happening in game, programmed a status window that updates with information from the battle as it happens.

  • Created the various player, enemy and UI sprites and implemented these assets into the game

  • Created the pixelated sound effects and soundtrack and implemented these sounds into the game

Unity Shader Showcase

January 2022 - April 2023
https://github.com/AceSavaid/ComputerGraphicsProjectWorked in a team of 3 to create and showcase various shaders coded in Unity ShaderLab throughout the semester. This ranged from visual effects and shading to post processing.

  • Coded various shaders in both ShaderLab and ShaderGraph such as a toon shader that factored in normal mapping, textured and coloured stylized shadows, holographic shaders, outline addition to shaders and stylized toon shaded water displacement that moves based on time. All of these shaders included exposed parameters to allow for customization of the material they were applied to and easy alteration.

  • Coded system to change the lighting and colour correction of a scene based on the area of the level the player is in.

  • Coded and implemented the menu systems as well as the debug systems to easily showcase all implemented shaders. This was aided by the fact that I created those shaders with functions and parameters that can be called in other scripts to change aspects of the shader easily.

Magical Girl Mayhem

October 2022 - October 2022
https://ace-savaid.itch.io/magicalgirlmayhemWorked in a team of 10 to create an arcade styled bullet-hell game in 1 week using Unity.

  • Programmed and implemented the animation system for the player character and enemies

  • Programmed and implemented the UI and menu systems

  • Assisted in programming the base enemy system

  • In depth programming knowledge in C, C#, Unity HLSL and R

  • Ability to Brainstorm and Create Game Design Documents

  • Knowledge and use of HTML and Markdown to create websites for my game page.

  • Knowledge in JavaScript and React Native libraries to create application and prototypes for productivity applications and tools

  • 5 Years experience in Unity working in both 2D and 3D to make several different styles and genres of games and applications.

  • 2 Years practicing Unreal to make games, shaders and special effects.

  • Use of version control (GitHub) with knowledge of how to use packages, documentation and commit ettiquete to ensure that changes are well documented and easy to track.

  • Coding shaders to fit different aesthetics using ShaderLab and visual scripting. Such shaders included a toonshader with outlines with the ability to apply a normal and displacement map to it as well as a shader that allows you to customize the colour and textures of both an object and the shadows casted upon that object. I have also created some post processing shaders from scratch using shaderlab and C# scripting such as a bloom filter, a depth of field with optional coloured fog and a pixelation shader.

  • Use of several art and animation programs such as Photoshop, Medibang Paint, Krita and Blender

  • Well-versed in Google Docs, Slides and Sheets and their Microsoft Alternatives

  • Presentation Skills in presenting to an audience in both regular presentations as well as continuously at showcases to hundreds of persons

  • Teamwork and team leadership

  • Time Management and Planning skills

  • Communication skills with team members, executives and potential players of the game being developed.