Brendon Smuts, Developer in Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
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Brendon Smuts

Verified Expert  in Engineering

3D Games Developer

Location
Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Toptal Member Since
September 7, 2016

While building games professionally for close to a decade, Brendon has spent his entire career focused on mastering Unity to deploy robust, high-performance applications on nearly every platform. He has worked on products both fun and serious, visions large and small, teams young and experienced. Ultimately Brendon loves solving the real engineering problems that arise when building products that have a high bar for both quality and performance.

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Git, Visual Studio, Windows

The most amazing...

...thing I've worked on was a mobile container for Disney's Imagicademy that delivered over 30 games across popular franchises such as Star Wars, Frozen, and more.

Work Experience

Founder | Developer

2019 - PRESENT
Sweet Digital Entertainment
  • Developed a real-time networking solution on the Unity ECS framework for high-performance response times on mobile devices.
  • Created a fully threaded engine and simulation logic built using the DOTS technology stack.
  • Built cutting-edge Unity systems: Entities, Hybrid Renderer, Unity Physics, Unity Transport, Input System, Addressable, and more.
  • Developed back-end web services using AWS microservices and real-time authoritative game servers with Amazon GameLift.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Networking, Unity, C#

Lead Developer

2018 - PRESENT
Trackosaurus
  • Architected a solution for hosting many small individually crafted games in a single Unity application running on Android/iOS.
  • Created games and tasks based off established skills assessment techniques for children ages 4 to 6.
  • Performed weekly testing with children to inform gameplay and UX-decision making.
  • Provided a technical knowledge base for a team of engineers and 2D/3D artists new to both Unity and game development practices.
  • Setup a continuous integration/deployment and asset pipeline built on UCB and GitHub.
Technologies: Maya, Unity, C#

Lead Developer

2017 - 2018
Call it Live
  • Took over product development with an established front-end and back-end codebase.
  • Optimized real-time processing of large data payloads for iOS/Android devices.
  • Improved resource management to handle loading and unloading of large numbers of dynamically acquired assets in memory-constrained scenarios.
  • Integrated cross platform in-app purchases.
  • Built out mobile engagement features using Urban Airship.
Technologies: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Unity, C#

Lead Developer

2015 - 2017
Sea Monster
  • Led a team of more than ten developers while working with multiple remote development houses on Disney's Imagicademy mobile game.
  • Created Bar Blitz, an iOS/Android/WebGL free-to-play game; it was developed in partnership with the IMVU social network.
  • Setup a continuous integration/deployment and asset pipeline for use with mobile/web projects developed in Unity.
  • Established production standards and technical requirements for the 2D/3D art team developing assets for use in Unity.
  • Provided in-depth technical direction/insight for developers migrating from application technologies to building with Unity.
  • Developed and guided engineering team focused on Oculus VR prototyping of simulation products,.
Technologies: Jenkins, Vuforia, HTC Vive, Oculus, Unity, C#

Senior Developer

2011 - 2015
RetroEpic Software
  • Developed Strangelings, a virtual pet breeding game, for iOS and web.
  • Developed Scorch Runner for the WRU, a free-to-play endless runner distributed on iOS/Android.
  • Contributed to the development of a mobile version of A Day in the Woods, a sliding puzzle game.
  • Developed Ginjah, a memory matching game for iOS/Android.
  • Developed Houzz-it, a property trading simulation game, for iOS/Android/Web.
  • Provided a technical foundation for experienced C++ developers moving to .NET/C#.
  • Created numerous virtual reality apps/games using Vuforia.
Technologies: StackMob, Parse, Vuforia, Unity, C#

A Day in the Woods

https://store.steampowered.com/app/526890/A_Day_in_the_Woods/
In A Day in the Woods—a stylish reimagining of the traditional sliding puzzle game—you play as Little Red Riding Hood’s wispy winged sprite friend. It’s up to you to solve each hexagon-tiled level in the shortest number of moves possible and get Little Miss Red safely to Granny’s house.

I worked on level design and gameplay systems.

Bar Blitz

http://www.seamonster.co.za/bar-blitz/
Bar Blitz is a mixology game where players test their skills in making cocktails. The game was developed in partnership with IMVU and leveraging their social avatar platform.

I led a team of six, including developers, artists, and designers; I was also responsible for all the core game systems.

I also developed an asset processing and deployment system that took high fidelity source textures from artists and produced device-specific quality variants. The variants were then packed into archives to be distributed to users depending on device performance capabilities.

Call It Live

Data shows sports fans spend the majority of their time watching live events focused on a mobile phone or device.

Call it Lives brings players back into the actions through their devices by allowing players to predict goals, shots and saves as you watch live football matches. Players are able to go up against rival fans and climb the leaderboard while earning in-game rewards in real-time for successful attack and defense.

Rewards can be used to train skills and upgrade equipment to gain an edge against the competition.

I took over the development of an existing code base with the intent of addressing performance and stability issues.

After positive results on the initial engagement, I built out additional game features, cross-platform in-app purchases, and mobile engagement features using Urban Airship.

Ginjah

I was the sole developer on a simple memory matching game with a focus on a polished game feel. I customized PBR shaders and performed extensive graphics profiling for optimization on very low-end mobile devices.

uBuild

uBuild provides an alternative to configuring build options without using Unity’s default player settings.

Build settings are created as individual assets inside the project structure, allowing for quick and consistent switching between different configurations without requiring error-prone hand tweaking.

Once set up, objects can be easily pushed to any source control system ensuring consistent build results between all developers, including those unfamiliar with the build process.

Build objects can also easily be run through the command line batch mode for easy integration with existing continuous integration workflows.

Scorch Runner

I acted as the sole developer of the project, performing both back-end and front-end responsibilities.

I developed a back-end console that allowed for configuration of game data in order to assist designers in balance with the gameplay without requiring updated builds.

I implemented the iOS/Android in-app purchases and authentication.

Houzz It

http://www.seamonster.co.za/portfolio/houzz-it/
Houzz-it is the first serious property-game created by Sea Monster. I acted as the primary developer for the project.

I built a data-driven system to allow designers to develop custom rules for changing gameplay behavior for different scenarios. The game rule objects were serializable to a database back-end that could be connected to in order to add and update game content without rebuilding executables.

Languages

C#, C++, JavaScript, Java

Frameworks

Unity3D, Unity, Unreal Engine

Tools

Microsoft Visual Studio, Git, GameSparks, AWS SDK, Visual Studio, Jenkins, StackMob, Maya, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), AWS IAM

Paradigms

Agile Software Development

Platforms

Mobile, iOS, Android, Web, Windows, Oculus, Vuforia, Parse, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda

Other

Freelancing, Virtual Reality (VR), Game Design, Extended Reality (XR), Mixed Reality (MR), Augmented Reality (AR), 3D Games, 2D Games, Optimization, Unity Networking & LAN, HTC Vive, Networking, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon GameLift, Unity Shaders

Storage

Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)

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