Alex Fullarton

My Portfolio

This is a list of all of my current and completed programming projects.

Portfolio Website

Project Date: 2022

Custom made website that you are currently viewing using HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript. Initially developed as part of a first-year university module and then extended and updated after I gained improved web development skills on my placement year. Includes integration with a database system using SQL and PHP.

AI Comparison Project

Project Date: 2022

Created as my deliverable for my Masters Dissertation, this project focused on creating, comparing and contrasting custom built AI systems in Unreal Engine. I created a custom Behaviour Tree model, and a custom State Machine model, then implemented identical enemy controllers using these systems. Performance data such as CPU usage, Memory Usage, FPS data and more, was recorded and used to determine the most effective AI method for an Adventure-RPG style game with a large number of enemies present on screen at once. The final deliverable allowed manipulation of spawn conditions, changing of enemy and player health values, varying the number of enemies spawned into the level, and changing between the two different AI implementations. Using these AI implementations, I was able to create "enemy" units that would patrol randomly throughout the game world, chase the player on detection (using UE4's AI Perception system), go back to patrolling upon losing sight of the player, as well as being able to engage the player in both melee and ranged combat dependant on a variety of factors.

Stealing Stuff

Project Date: 2021

This project was created as part of my final Masters year project at university. Working in a team of 3 programmers and 3 artists, we chose to update an already developed game that was created the previous year by one of our artists and their team. The aim of the assignment was to add a large new feature to the existing game and polish the game to as high a standard as possible ready for commercial release. Upon starting the project, our team realised that a lot more work was needed to improve the game due to some of the techniques used to develop the original version being complicated and very difficult to understand, as well as a large amount of bugs and issues that carried over from the original version to this project. We at first attempted adding networked multiplayer to the project via Steam, however we ran into many issues with replication of the large amount of moveable items present in the game world, and eventually settled on converting the local cooperative multiplayer game mode into a competitive multiplayer game mode. We also optimised many aspects of the game to increase performance, as well as creating a variety of new levels. This entire project was carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic and the entire team worked from home and never met face to face. This presented unique challenges, especially when testing a local multiplayer game, and we ended up using some software called Parsec, which allowed other team members to remote-player on each other's PC's for testing purposes.

Legend of Gus

Project Date: 2020

This project was developed as the final piece of work for a third year module at university. This project involved working with artists from other courses to develop a game of our choice. The team consisted of 2 programmers and 4 artists. Legend of Gus is a dungeon crawler game that features randomized dungeon layouts that differ each time you play, as well as a loot and inventory system. The dungeon randomizer was first developed in a pure C++ environment outside of Unreal Engine as a proof of concept, and once working was then implemented into UE4. The aim of this project was to finish the game to a very high standard and possible publish the game through the university's studio, however the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic happened half way through this project, and everyone was forced to complete the remainder of the project from home, meaning it wasn't completed to as high a standard as I would have hoped. This was my first time using Unreal Engine, and I strove to try and use as little of the Blueprint system as possible in order to try and get used to the coding practices and new syntax that are required for writing games using Unreal Engine.

Tower Defence Game

Project Date: 2018

This game was developed as part of a Professional Development Project module in my second year at university. I worked as part of a small team of 2 programmers and 2 artists to develop a game of our choice over a period of 2 weeks. The structure of this project emulated a game jam or professional environment, in that this was the only project that I worked on for the two weeks, and it was worked on from 9am - 5pm each day. Scrum meetings were held each morning and the development of the game was organised into a series of sprints which was managed through Trello. We completed the majority of the game in the given 2 weeks, and were then allowed 2 more weeks to finalise for submission. Unfortunately due to the small team size and illness of one of the artists during the project, this project was unfinished.

Primary Prototype

Project Date: 2017

A third-person-shooter game developed from a skeleton program as part of a university module. This was my first game developed in one of the more established and popular industry game engines. The brief for this project was to produce a "zombie horde" style game, with endless enemies which ended when the player was overrun. This project involved importing and applying animations to a skeletal mesh as well as implementing sound effects and music.

Space Invaders Remake

Project Date: 2017

This was my first project as part of a cross discipline team, involving other programmers as well as Game Art & Design students from other university courses. We were assigned teams and had a 4 week block to develop a remake of the classic game "Space Invaders". We chose to create a 3D version of the game and implement an upgrade store.

Sneaky Game

Project Date: 2017

This was developed as part of an "Introduction to DirectX" module in my second year of university. I worked in a small team of programmers to develop a minimalist DirectX based game engine. This was a very difficult project as we had done little work using DirectX before this and were expected to learn the basics on our own during the project. This project gave good insight into the complexities of the popular engines used today and how to better optimise code for use in games. Pair programming was used for this project as a way for group members to better learn about DirectX.

Steamhead

Project Date: 2016

Steamhead was my final year project in my first year of my degree. It was my first fully completed game and included custom animations on a custom made character. This was a short platformer style game with a few levels and a variety of hazards and mechanics, such as jumping and crouching, moving platforms and enemies.