Dennis Vidal's Portfolio

About Me

I'm Dennis, a game developer from Bavaria in Germany. While I'm sort of a generalist programmer, my focus and expertise lie in the creation of immersive gameplay that is both intuitive and fun for players. I've always had a passion for games and have been playing them since my early childhood, which led me to pursue both a bachelor's and a master's degree in the field. Whenever I don't work on projects in my spare time, I mostly either play games with some friends or catch up on anime, manga, and novels.

Projects

Neon Coil

Research Ravine

DayZ Banking

DayZ Fast Travel

DayZ More Explosives

DayZ Breachingcharge

Cthulhu Attacks

Nonverbal Communication

Compulsive Hoarding

Skills

C# / C++

C++ and C# have been core aspects of my degrees, allowing me to gather substantial theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience with both languages. I constantly refine this knowledge further through personal projects, and consequently, I can not only write clean, performant code but also have the ability to debug code to resolve any issues that could arise.

Engine Knowledge

Unreal and Unity were the basis for the majority of projects during my academic studies, and since my graduation, Unreal has been the focus of my personal projects. Together with the experiences I amassed through creating mods with DayZ's Enfusion Engine, I am well-versed in working with game engines and able to quickly familiarize myself with any components that might be required.

Game Development

Thanks to my degrees and my passion for and years of playing games across many genres, I have an excellent understanding of game mechanics and other fields beyond just programming, such as game design, animation, modeling, networking, and UI. As a result, I can approach projects with a well-rounded perspective and design components in a way that is beneficial to the team as well as the player experience.

Teamwork

Working with people has always played a significant role in most of my projects, be it collaborating directly in a team to finish a game or giving and receiving feedback in regards to decisions and design. Supporting my mods over the years has been especially helpful in regards to further improving my team-related skills, as I got to work with people with vastly different backgrounds and skill sets. Combined with my general game development knowledge, I can work efficiently with teams across multiple disciplines.

Education

Master of Science

Game Engineering and Visual Computing

1.1 / 1.0

Graduated with distinction

Graduated top of class

May 2022

University of Applied Sciences

Kempten, Germany

Bachelor of Science

Computer Science – Game Engineering

1.5 / 1.0

July 2020

University of Applied Sciences

Kempten, Germany

Papers

Noise-based Generation of 3D Worlds for a VR Flight Simulation

April 2022

Master's thesis (German)

The focus of my master's thesis is the procedural generation of environments in games. The paper describes different aspects of procedural generation as well as the flight simulation I developed as part of the thesis.

Multimodal Influences on Perception to Increase the Immersion of VR Applications

June 2021

Seminar paper (English)

The general topic of this paper is immersion in games. It dives into what immersion actually is, the factors that influence it, and ways that can be utilized to increase it in the context of games.

Nonverbal Communication with Autonomously Controlled Characters in AR Worlds

June 2020

Bachelor's thesis (German)

The focus of my bachelor's thesis is communication with virtual characters through nonverbal means, e.g., gaze direction and distance to the character. The paper describes certain aspects of nonverbal communication and cues as well as the project I developed as part of the thesis.

Learning Analytics for Serious Games

June 2019

Seminar paper (English)

The topic of this paper is learning analytics and its application in serious games. It provides general information about learning analytics and gives an overview of its components.