My name is Steven Nielsen. I graduated from Caringbah Selective High School in 2017 and I’m currently studying Game programming at SAE Sydney. I am in the second trimester of my course, and will complete my degree in 2019 after which time I hope to be able to make a career developing games.
I am passionate about game design and my career goal is to work in game programming and develop games. I have experience in independent development of projects as demonstrated by my portfolio.
I'm proficient in the programming languages of C#, C++ and Visual basic.
Additionally I have experience in both Unity Engine and Unreal Engine 4. Examples of works developed in both Unreal Engine and Unity Engine can be seen in my portfolio.
My first major project was the digital board game Negotiate. During this I learned and practiced the fundamentals of programming in an organised and efficient manner. The project is an entirely self-contained 2 player board game based off a randomized dice roll for movement and attacking. This project was my first experience in game development where I learnt how to utilise and incorporate modular code and data structures such as arrays.
Later in 2017 I began my first large scale independent project, a 3D physics based educational game developed using Unreal Engine. Named Inertial Drift after the games mechanical focus on inertia and gravity. This project featured force based movement and gravitational pulls that varied with distance form the object. This project was much more ambitious than my last and required me to learn about more complex data structures such as vectors and how to manage and convert between multiple data types. An initial version of this project was submitted as part of my year 12 HSC but a revised and refined version was independently developed as a personal project.
My third portfolio project titled Crazy Van Racing was developed using Unity Engine and the C# programming language. However due to my transferable skills from working in Unreal Engine and Visual basic I was able to develop this project much faster than previous projects. This project also acted as a learning experience as it was one of my first attempts at using the Unity game Engine. Additionally I learnt how to use data constructs such as time values and how to use multiple 2D GUI elements in a single 3D space.
Overall I have learnt many things form my previous projects including but not limited to learning multiple programming languages and practices but also how to work autonomously and independently and how to manage my time effectively to meet a deadline. I hope that my portfolio exemplifies these lessons along with my desire to learn new skills.