About Me
Here, I will tell you more about who I am, my hobbies and interests, and my goals and aspirations as a game developer.
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Who am I?
Goals & Aspirations
Interests & Inspirations
Who am I?
I’m Pepijn Luchtmeijer! I’m 20 years old and currently studying game development at HKU (University of Arts Utrecht). I was born and raised in Apeldoorn, a city in about the middle of the country. I started getting into game development after learning about the field of study in late 2022. I submitted my university application not long after, and received the news that I got accepted early 2023. That year, I graduated high school and started my journey at HKU.
As a developer, I’m most proficient in working with the Unity game engine in C#. Most of my projects have been made using this and I have experience with multiple libraries and API’s like UnityTransport (in this project) and NetcodeForGameObjects (in this project). I have basic experience with C++, Java and php, and because of my C# experience I’m able to pick up and get a grasp of new languages quickly.
I finished my first year at HKU with a full 60/60 ECT’s (study points), and I’m now wrapping up my second year to hopefully start an internship next september!
Below, I’ve written about my goals and interests when it comes to game development, so if you’re interested, scroll down and have a look!
Goals & Aspirations
As a student game developer, I think it’s important to always have goals to work towards and new things you want to learn. Here are my current goals and aspirations:
Internship
Right now, I’m looking for an intership position as a developer in the gaming industry in The Netherlands. The period for the intership will be from ~September 1st - March 1st. If you’re looking for an intern who is well-experienced in Unity and C#, has some basic knowledge of C++, Java, and php, and is willing and ready to learn more along the way, feel free to contact me here!
Unreal Engine / C++
The vast majority of my projects have been in Unity with C#, and while I’ve done some coding in C++ (see here), I’m almost completely new to Unreal Engine. I’m working on porting atleast one of my smaller projects over to Unreal to learn the engine, and I also would love an opportunity to work on a bigger Unreal project, I’m very willing to learn along the way!
Bigger Projects
The modules we get at the HKU are a maximum of 8 weeks long, so those 8 weeks is the longest we get to work on a single project. While you can get a lot done in 8 weeks, I would really like to see what it’s like to work on a bigger project, one that spans over multiple months. I would learn a lot more about building something for scalability, instead of just working on getting a prototype out there quickly.
The teams we get to work in are usually around 6 people, which often means I’m the only, or one of 2 developers in the team. With 2 developers it’s pretty easy to communicate and coordinate, but I would like to see and learn how this is done in bigger teams.
Interests & Inspirations
Space
I’ve always been intrigued by space and the mystery it carries ever since I was a kid. Black holes, exoplanets, potential wormholes and alien life is all super interesting to me. That’s why one of my favorite games of all time is Super Mario Galaxy. I used to walk Mario to some cool place, go into first person mode, and just stare into the nothingness while the ethereal soundtrack played.
When we got the assignment to make a top down shooter, I knew I wanted to set it in space. I really wanted to create my own space skyboxes, as I always loved Galaxy’s skyboxes. I made these by using SpaceEngine, flying to a cool place and exporting the skybox. I also exported the planet textures of planets I thought looked cool.
Another one of my big insipirations that fits here is Outer Wilds. Outer Wilds is purely about space exploration for the sake of exploring and unraveling the mysteries, and is the best example in gaming that I’ve experienced of making you feel so small in the vast and brutal expanse of space. This was the main inspiration for my end of year 1 project, Cog in the Machine. Analyzing Outer Wilds and games like it to make a cool experience of my own was super fun and interesting, and I’m really glad with how the project turned out.
Creative problem solving
My favorite thing about programming is finding creative and efficient solutions to the problems you encounter while developing a game. One of my favorite examples of this is in the above mentioned game Outer Wilds, where they encountered the problem where planets that were far away would clip outside the camers range. To solve this, they would spawn “proxy planets” in closer to the player, but made them smaller in size, which gives the illusion that the planets are actually far away where they should be. While programming, I always try and think of if there are any new ways of solving a problem that maybe hasn’t been done before, but is actually more efficient, and that challenge to me is always super rewarding.
Simulations
The cool thing about computers is that they can do calculations a lot faster than us humans. Harnessing this power is very fun. An example of this is recently playing Blue Prince, and in the game were little puzzle boxes you could solve for a reward; you had to make each corner a specific color, and each different colored tile would do something different to the tiles (move, rotate, etc.). After being stuck on one of these puzzles for a bit, I realised I could code a program that would simply try all possible combinations and return the steps it took to get there, faster than I could ever solve the puzzle myself. Click here to view the project!
