Sean Menzies
Senior Unreal/C++ Programmer
Project Showcase
Ealond
An indie project on a 4-person team that was a third-person, multiplayer, base-building survival game. I was responsible for combat, AI, networking.
Creature Animation
Player & AI Combat
AI Task 1
AI Task 2
Shoni Island
Leading a 12-person team on an AI-driven, city-building god game inspired by Black & White and the Sims. I was responsible for all areas of programming (AI, systems, gameplay, optimisation), as well as technical animation and technical art. I have mentored several team members in programming and Unreal Engine.
Cinematics
God Hand Movement
God Hand functionality
Camera
AI
Systems
Sachi
Senior role in the social casino industry leading a team of 3 programmers and acting as the principal project coordinator, syncing DevOps, Art, Marketing and Engineering departments in targeted sprints. In addition to gameplay and architectural responsibilities, I also set up a CI/CD pipeline with nightly automation tests, pre-merge AI code reviews and version control management.
Pixel Streaming
Integration and optimisation geared towards a pixel streaming setup from plugin integration, WebRTC communication with front-end and maintenance of online builds.
Networking
Fully responsible for well-designed, bandwidth optimised multiplayer integration both on the Unreal Engine side and Azure virtual machine setup. I wrote scripts to automate uploads, cache server-side logs, forward reports to Slack via webhooks and ensure minimal disruption to player experiences.
Integration
Worked closely with backend engineers to ensure tight integration with our dev and prod databased, writing Unreal plugins to abstract API calls into small helpers. Recently, I have even been maintaining the backend myself ensuring layers of protection remain in place and subject to regular stress testing.
CI/CD
Set up the company's CI/CD pipeline using Horde, designing integration and unit tests as well as pre-merge reports flagging any issues for review before code integration. Integrated testing across the whole tech stack for nightly health reports and optimisation opportunities.
Profiling
As we moved towards native-browser deployment, I was responsible for building device-specific profiles to ensure users from mid-range mobile to high-end desktops could run the game smoothly. Using both Unreal Insights and HUD tools, I heavily optimised texture streaming, LOD, lighting, physics, tick-rates as well as managing CPU overheads on a per-device basis.
Metahumans
Created a metahuman pipeline that merged with our CI/CD and device profiles. Using LODSync components and other arcane tricks, I managed to permit up to 15 metahumans on screen on mobile devices without noticable hitches. I also built a tool to automate retargeting of base animations to our various metahuman characters. Worked very briefly with LiveLink facial animations.
Common UI
Set up common UI including streamlined widget switching via activatable widget stacks, UI-only input configs, styles and reusable/repurposable widget classes.I've also worked with slate and the widget library in cpp to optimise UI and create custom functionality for the team.
Leadership
Set up a mentoring programme for all programmers, created an education channel and held weekly code review meetings where we would discuss best coding practices (KISS, DRY, SOLID) and deep dive into Unreal source.I also led tech meetings with potential clients to explain the tech stack and its affordances with individuals of varying technological expertise.
Code Examples
A one-day bowling game challenge made in Unreal 5.4 and C++. The project was an exercise in writing clean code based on SOLID principles, implementing a logical execution flow and demonstrating strong UI/UX design.The repo includes a README and auto installer batch file for non-programmers.
After seeing my large project suffer from Unreal's out-of-the-box significance manager, I decided to write my own multi-threaded version. It uses pre-allocated containers to reduce memory allocation calls, includes an ignored classes list, runs at modifiable intervals and is fully async. It also harnesses a custom interface to efficiently communicate with its managed objects.
As my project required frequent object searches based on a number of parameters across a large map consisting of thousands of objects, I wrote a custom Octree manager that self-organises when updated. It permits "class buckets" that allows users to access an array of a specific class of objects at 0(1). There are other customisable features such as maximum objects per quadrant and in-built tree-querying.
Non-gaming.Written in native C++ using std, boost and cmake, this project aimed to simulate a multi-threaded system to manage a number of sensors - temperature, movement and sound - and allow users to manage logging protocols and sensory response functionality using a listener-observer design pattern.