The Mandarina Mod for Slay the Spire was an opportunity to combine my passion for game design with practical programming skills. It features a new playable character, custom mechanics, visual and sound FX, and innovative card interactions designed to expand the game's strategic depth.

This project got me started with Java (never too late, I guess!) and "old"-school tools such as Dragonbones for animation and Krita for art design. I focused on object-oriented design, game-specific architecture, and algorithm optimization for dynamic card effects. Working with the Slay the Spire modding API honed my ability to quickly adapt to complex frameworks while balancing the creation of something both engaging and functional. The project was very demanding in terms of art design too, requiring custom visual and sound effects as well as over 80 unique illustrations. All in all, this two-month-long experience deepened my understanding of contributing to complex projects and rewarded me with my very own character in a well-loved game.

Developed a VR simulation environment used as a virtual meeting space. Focus was put on realistic physics and intuitive interactions, f.i. when moving, grabbing objects, teleporting, receiving haptic responses. Some other areas this project allowed me to explore were multi-user development and voice-chat. Especifically, Unity's Netcode for GameObjects and Vivox were used, along with Lobby and Relay to handle the different user rooms and connection.

A Unity-integrated tool enabling real-time mesh deformation, vertex painting, and procedural geometry generation. Ideal for developers and artists aiming to create dynamic, interactive 3D content.

A hybrid environment merging Unity and CARLA for autonomous vehicle testing. Simulate realistic traffic, sensor feeds, and varied driving conditions to safely prototype and train self-driving systems.

A bridge between Unity and ROS, enabling real-time simulation and control of robotic systems. Test, iterate, and visualize robotic behaviors within a flexible virtual environment.

This project originally started as a gift for my sister—a cross-stitching tool that allowed her to plan her designs digitally. I later expanded the project, turning it into a fully functional drawing app that I used as a (needed) substitute for Microsoft Paint to create sketches and diagrams. With this project, I revisited and applied the command pattern, used interfaces extensively, tinkered around performance (f.i. used the flood fill algorithm for the ink tool) and built a basic undo/redo system that would later be incorporated in my professional development.

Where did you leave your keys? How many red cars have you seen today? Met these people before... but what was their name?! What if even the memories you don't remember could explain themselves? That's the question that sparked the creation of this project after the release of ChatGPT Vision. I imagined a system that combines large language models (LLMs), image recognition, and a camera that captures what you see, transforming visual input into a comprehensive, AI-driven memory bank. Sounds familiar? The "Black Mirror" episode The Entire History of You describes something similar, yet obsolete in comparison. By leveraging image description capabilities, this "second brain" not only stores visual data but also enables navigation and "understanding" of it. This prototype is intended to demonstrate that building such a system is feasible for about anyone today, even more so if using programming AI tools. Possibly too a good time to ponder where we are headed.

My first Google Play submission. Tap to zigzag across the increasingly challenging levels or challenge yourself for a new highscore in endless procedurally generated runs. LiveOps through the use of Microsoft's Playfab, backend with LootLocker, monetization, skin customization and engaging level design were new areas I could dive into and enjoy while developing this project.

Swarm Intelligence models the collective behaviour of self-organized systems, usually following the paradigm that set natural swarms, such as ants or bees. Developing this project was the core of my study at the Master of Game Technology at the Breda University of Applied Sciences. The use of Fuzzy Logic Controllers optimized through a metaheuristic (PSO) was studied to efficiently conduct a dynamic swarm deployment, a fundamental task in swarm applications.

This project was the core of my bachelor's thesis. The goal was to reproduce complex behaviour reported  by different gut bacteria communities in various scientific papers. For that, we used cellular automata in a closed environment. The main variables explored were survival rate, food absorption efficiency and antibiotic resistance. The use of maths and complex systems theory for physical system's modelling is definetely fascinating to me.

Playing board games with friends can make for the best afternoons. During 2020 however, lockdown and restrictions complicated things for our group of friends:  keeping on playing one of our favourite games was no longer possible. This is where I decided to team up with a fellow programmer friend to make an online replica of Cacao. Having a well-defined game design, I also used this opportunity to further improve my knowledge in object-oriented programming, particle systems, animations and tile interaction.

Remaking this classic flash game allowed me to go through many layers of game development. Areas such as UI, art, game physics, game flow and the shopping system were developed while following the original game's structure. Sprite design, procedural race generation and believable movement controls were features I could experiment with, with satisfying results.

After giving up on a 9-colour snake cube I was challenged to solve, I realized I could make a computer work for me. The rules were straightforward: build the cube without having two sub-cubes of the same colour in any side. With the help of my laptop the tides turned quickly. With a rather simple algorithm for parsing the tree of possible cube configurations, trying hundreds of thousands of configurations was reduced to just 70 ms! And the one and only solution was found.

My first big project in video game development, a turn-based civilization game based on the popular Hexonia. It's hexagonal grid map allowed me to apply mathematical knowledge outside of academia for the first time, as I used algebraic operations to quickly work with the geometry of the world. The development of this project introduced me to pathfinding algorithms, simple game AIs and random map generation with Perlin noise, among others. The character models come from a 3D printing repository I used at the time.