Marc Meijering

Steam page

Game Description
Védelem: The Golden Horde is a real-time strategy game, set in 13th century eastern Europe. Where the player is meant to repel the golden horde. They will attempt to sack the player’s keep which is at the heart off their territory. The golden horde is a dominantly mounted invasion force, successfully pillaging through Eurasia and they have now reached the player’s walls. The player safeguards last hearth between them and central Europe. As the last line of defense, the player has to expand their reach and fortifies their position. In order to do so the player must gather resources and build the necessary structures for training and sustaining new troops.

Project Type
RTS Base Defense game
Team Size
2 Producers / 4 Designers
7 Programmers / 5 Artists
4 Outsource
Duration
10 Months
(01/09/2020 - 01/07/2021)

Role
Game AI Programmer
Software
Unity Engine
Perforce
Monday.com
Jenkins
Language
C#

My Contributions:

Close Combat
Ranged Combat
State Machines
Formation Decisions
Building Avoidance
Command/Combat Audio

Project Description
This student project is being made in my 3rd year and utilizes Unity DOTS. Because of this, we can run a lot of units simultaneously while also holding 60 fps.
My main responsibility on this project was the behavior of the formations and units . This included the different states they can go in, how to react in certain situations and the combat between formations. I've also worked on the unit avoidance towards buildings and implemented the command and combat audio.
The main things I've learned from this project are: How AI state machines work; How to handle combat with units in formations ; How to work with experimental code with few documentation; How to work on a project through development phases; How to work in the Unity Engine
The game was awarded for best 3rd year programmed game at our school.

Biggest Contribution: Formation Combat
Definitely one of the biggest and complicated system that I’ve ever worked on till now and also the system I’ve been working on most of this project. How it works is as follows: A formation can engage another formation in 3 conditions: Either by being ordered to attack another formation; Another formation is inside the formation engage radius while the current formation is in Idle State; or the formation is being attacked by another formation while in Idle State. If the formation starts engaging another formation, it will walk towards the targeted formation until the targeted formation is inside the attack radius. There are also 3 ways to make a formation stop engaging; The targeted formation lost its last unit; the current formation is ordered to move somewhere else; or the targeted formation is outside of the engage radius and the current formation wasn’t ordered to engage the targeted formation. This it the part that is the same for both ranged and melee formations, but after this they split in functionality. As long as the targeted formation is inside the attack radius, all the archers in a ranged formation will attack as one group at once and they will target a random unit of the other formation to shoot at. A melee formation works very different, as each melee unit will walk towards the closest enemy unit they can find. The part where the unit can react to a unit in front of them is done by someone else and we called it Unit Perception. When a unit finds an enemy unit in front of them, they will start doing damage at a time interval, until the other unit dies or is out of range. If the formation engages a building the archers will fire towards the building’s location with a slight offset and melee units will walk towards the building's location. The Unit Sense system will cast rays to see if the unit is in front of the building to start attacking the building until it is destroyed.

Github

Project Type
Personal School Project
Team Size
Alone
Duration
5 Months
(14/02/2022 - 01/07/2022)

Role
Game AI / Gameplay Programmer
Software
Unity Engine
Github
Trello
Language
C#

Project Description
This project was meant to explore any unknown territory and my focus was pointed towards AI related topics I haven't yet worked on. The project is divided between two parts: One is creating a pathfinding system using an optimized flowfield, the other one is a crowd movement system using steering behaviours. The project is made with the Unity Engine and uses DOTS for the systems that runs the agents.
The main things I learned from this project are: How to implement a Flow Field ; How to optimize a Flow Field; How to implement Steering Behaviors ; How to implement Grid Indexing ; How to test agent movement.

Game Description
Gangstars is a turn-based strategy game focussed on heists. The goal of the game is to finish missions with the most objectives completed while keeping most of your team alive.
The game was cancelled before being released.

Project Type
Programming Internship at Warcave
Team Size
2 Designers
3 Programmers
9 Artists
Duration
5 Months
(06/09/2021 - 21/01/2022)

Role
Game AI / Gameplay Programmer
Software
Unreal Engine 5
Perforce
HacknPlan
Assembla
Language
C++

My Contributions:

AI System
Mission System
Saveable Settings
Cheat Manager

Project Description
First time working as an intern at a company. Had the main responsibility over the AI in the game and also worked on some other systems. Used the Utility-based AI architecture with weights for the decision making of the AI and simulated actions before actually performing them.
The main things I learned from this project are: How to make a Utility-based AI architecture; The usefulness of debugging tools for AI; How to work with C++ inside the Unreal Engine .

itch.io page

Project Type
Strategy Heist game
Team Size
1 Producer / 4 Designers
5 Programmers / 8 Artists
Duration
8 weeks
(06/05/2020 - 26/06/2020)

Role
Tech Lead / Gameplay Programmer
Software
Unreal Engine 4
Perforce
Jira
Language
Unreal Blueprints

In Streamlined Mastermind, the player is in charge of planning bank heists. With only limited information at the start, they can spend money to gather additional information about the building and guards, acquire better crew members and equipment, and create distractions. Using this, the player can plan the crew’s actions to navigate them towards the vault and back out again while circumventing the guards. And your plan better be solid, because getting caught is not an option.

My Contributions:
- Information Board
- Information Catalogue
- Character Movement Planning
- Interactable Heist Objects
- Buying Equipment
- Saving Data
- Burner Phone

This student project took place in my 2nd year and was quite the challenging one. As it was the first time for me to lead others and it was the first time a project was fully remotely due to the corona virus.
I was more of a general gameplay programmer in this project and was responsible for the process of the game as I was the programming lead.
The main things I've learned from this project are: How to manage things effectively between the group of programmers I led and the other leads; Effective use of flow control to reduce operations and increase performance in Unreal.
The game was awarded for best 2nd year programmed game and best 2nd year designed game at our school.

Biggest Contribution: Information Gathering
The player can buy information for the current heist level they’re in. They can select a certain type of information in a catalogue and buy it if they have enough money. A card with the level, type and number will spawn when bought and can be picked up. The information that the player has bought can be placed on the pinboard. The pinboard shows a blueprint of the current heist level. When info is bought and placed on the right placeholder, it will show the corresponding info on the blueprint.

Github

Project Type
Personal Project
Team Size
Alone
Duration
60 hours

Role
Gameplay Programmer
Software
Visual Studio
Github
Trello
Language
C++

Project Description
Always wanted to create pacman and I wanted to create a project in c++ without the use of an engine, so this was the perfect opportunity to do so. The project is made with use of the SFML library to take care of the visuals.

The game is almost the same as the original pacman, the only difference is that the AI of the ghost is a bit harsher on the player in that they will try to surround the player to make it easier to catch the player. This is done by gathering all the cells in the map that contain more than 2 directions characters can move to and finding the cells that are the most close to the player. Then each of the ghost will try to move to any of these cells that are the closest to them, but not the same as the other ghosts. When they've reached that cell they will move towards the location of the player to get the kill. When the player picks up a power pill, they will try to run as far away from the player, while also trying to keep a certain distance from the other ghosts.

Project Type
Bullet Hell game in custom ECS engine
Team Size
2 Engine Programmers
1 Gameplay Programmer
1 Graphics Programmer
Duration
8 weeks
(03/09/2019 - 01/11/2019)

Role
Gameplay Programmer
Software
Visual Studio 2019
Perforce
Language
C++

This game is made to resemble the game Raystorm, where the player has to shoot enemy ships while also dodging incoming bullets from the enemy.

My Contributions:
- Steering Behaviours
- Wave System
- Shooting Bullets
- Background Asteroids
- Player Movement
- Collision

This student project took place in my 2nd year and only consisted of programmers. The goal of this project was to create a reference game in our own custom made engine.
My main responsibility was the gameplay part of the project, so this includes everything playable
The main things I've learned from this project are: AI steering behaviors; How to structure code to an ECS; How to work closely with the people who provide systems for you;

Biggest Contribution: Steering Behaviours
As our game has different entities, which move following different sets of rules, I used Steering Behaviors to make the movement off entities look more alive and not so static. For our game, the main purpose of the steering behavior would be to make the enemies move around in a way that it will look like they're spaceships and move in a certain path. Also, some of the bullets of the enemies are directed towards the player location. The steering behaviors that I implemented are Seek, Arrive and Path Following.

Project Type
Strategy heist game in custom engine
Team Size
2 Engine Programmers
4 Gameplay Programmers
2 Graphics Programmers
Duration
8 weeks
(12/02/2020 - 13/04/2020)

Role
Gameplay Programmer
Software
Visual Studio 2019
Perforce
Jenkins
Language
C++

This game was made to resemble a heist planning game.

My Contributions:
- AI Pathfinding
- Inventory System

This student project took place in my 2nd year and was made with only programmers. The goal was to create a game with our own custom made engine that could be used for another project later on.
The main things I've learned from this project are: How A* path finding works with associated algorithms; How to work close with the people who created the systems I use.

Biggest Contribution: AI Pathfinding
Making the AI pathfinding is by far my most significant achievement of this project and it was also something I really wanted to make. The path find algorithm that the game uses is the ‘A*’ algorithm. Which is a combination of the ‘Breadth First Search’ and ‘Dijkstra’ algorithms. The initial idea of the algorithm is that a node is put into a search list. The search list will investigate any neighbors the current tile has and put those tiles into the search list according to the total cost that comes from both the Breadth First Search and Dijkstra algorithms. The next tile the search goes through will be the one with the lowest cost and the process is repeated until the target tile is found. Learning how the different path find algorithms work and implementing them was incredibly interesting.

Project Type
Party Game
Team Size
2 Designers / 3 Programmers
3 Artists
Duration
8 weeks
(06/05/2019 - 28/06/2019)

Role
Gameplay Programmer
Software
Unreal Engine 4
Perforce
Language
Unreal Blueprints

Sea of Slaps is a fast paced local multi-player experience in which ships on a rollercoaser must collect a unique coin on the map, hold it and defend it from the adversaries until they reach the required score to win the game. In a form of a hovering hand on the map, the players can slap each other to stop the hand movements, slap the trains to push them backwards on the railroad or slap the arrows on the junctions to rotate their direction. While they cannot control the ships directly, they can use all these elements to control their own ships, but also the ships of other players.

My Contributions:
- Spawn/Pick-up System
- Game Over UI
- Score Board

This student project took place in my first year and it was also the first time for me making a game in Unreal Engine 4.
The main things I've learned from this project are: How the basics of Unreal works; How to work on a project as a team; How to prioritize important things first.

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