Ben Nash Game/Software Programmer Portfolio

My name is Benjamin Nash. I am an aspiring software/games programmer. I graduated Computer Games Programming at the University of Derby in 2019. This is a collection of the work I have produced. I am most experienced with C# and C++, and also have a good understanding of Unity. I have begun using Unreal with a mixture of blueprints and C++ but have only developed one project in it so far so I am still getting to grips with the engine.

Fire Man

Made as a group as part of the GMTK 2023 Game Jam. The theme was roles reversed so we came up with this little game where you play as a fireman turned arsonist who then had to put out the fire he started. I developed many of the underlying gameplay systems and mechanics as well as implemented the particle systems. The game was made in Unity and C#. You can play it here: https://joeybull.itch.io/fire-man 

Devil's Diner

This game is available to download from the Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.TeamNahh.ProjectHellstorm&hl=en 

Devil's Diner is a game that I was involved in developing for my Team Project Module. It is a top down twin stick survival shooter for Android built in Unity. On this project, I was the programmer who developed the main gameplay, which involves movement and shooting as well as the health system. I was also responsible for managing builds for the game and porting it onto Android. Ryan Ashley and Joe Harrison were my fellow developers for this project and Joshua Hawksworth was responsible for the art assets. Music is by Kevin MacLeod and is sourced from incompetech.com under creative commons 3.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

Rock Bottom

Rock Bottom is a Hack and Slash game developed in Unreal for my Games Development Module at the University of Derby. It was developed in Unreal using blueprints with C++ used for a few scripts. While the project had a lot of issues at the start of development with a change of leadership after 3 weeks, we were able to see it to completion. This is also why a lot of it is in blueprints as we used them to get a product out quickly for the MVP and some of our programmers got comfortable with them.

I was a game-play programmer and AI programmer, I developed the base combat system for the game which was further expanded by myself and the project leader, and also built on the AI code created by another programmer allowing the enemies to attack and implementing a Token system for the enemies to decide which enemies should attack the player rather than swarming. 

The other programmers were: our project leader Ryan Ashley, Kallum Hinks, Steel Morris and Daniel Godfrey. Our artists were: Ben Hand, Alex Wilkie, Joe Bull, Daniel Brooke and Ben Jervis.

Augmented Reality Chess

An app that I created to demonstrate an Augmented Reality version of Chess for my dissertation. The dissertation was a study on using augmented reality on a mobile platform for the purpose of creating a potential digital replacement for the traditional board game experience. The app was created in Unity using Google's ARCore and was tested on a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.

Physics and AI Demo

This is a demo level that I produced for my Game Behaviour Module. It was built in Unity, but all of the Physics and AI on show in the demo were built by me as opposed to using Unity's inbuilt physics or imported AI, in order to show off my understanding of Physics and AI. This includes rigidbodies and applying forces, collision detection and resolution, simple behaviour and A* pathfinding. All of the programming work was done by myself, using basic unity assets for the graphics.

3D Graphics Terrain Demo

Here, I created a piece of software that generates terrain from a height map and allows the user to move around it. It also has other moving models to show how objects look alongside the terrain. It was written in C++ and used DirectX11 in order to render the graphics. This piece of software was produced for my Graphics 2 module at university and was an independent piece of work.

3D Graphics Model Demo

In order to show off my understanding of 3D graphics and C++ I created his piece of software that displays a rotating 3D model and shows it off in several stages of rendering. It shows off a wire-frame model, back face culling and simple lighting. I also wrote my own fill polygon function to replace the existing one. This software was written in C++ for my Graphics 1 module at university and was an independent piece of work.