Gareth Falkingham
Verified Expert in Engineering
Game Developer
Belmont, New South Wales, Australia
Toptal member since February 24, 2020
Gareth has been making games professionally for a decade, with a core focus on building robust systems and maintainable architectures for Unity3D C# game titles. He has a strong understanding of C++, which has helped when working with native platform code and building plugins for Unity projects. Some of Gareth's notable work experiences include working on Disney projects such as Club Penguin and Rival Stars: Horse Racing, a successful mobile title.
Portfolio
Experience
- C# - 11 years
- Unity - 11 years
- Game Development - 10 years
- Git - 8 years
- Python 3 - 4 years
- C++ - 4 years
- Xbox - 2 years
- PS4 - 2 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
JetBrains Rider, Mobile Game Development, Mobile, Game Development, Git, C#, Unity, Lua
The most amazing...
...project I've worked on is Rival Stars: Horse Racing, a highly successful mobile multi-platform (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, iOS, Android) project.
Work Experience
Senior Engineer
Playmake
- Developed the core economy and progression systems (gacha, offers, missions, and battle pass) to improve monetization and engagement metrics.
- Analyzed the data of released features to determine their value and success for future products and decide whether to keep or cut them.
- Developed analytics collection tools to collate and present comparative analytics, comparing our titles to the top platform titles to see if our growth is better, worse, or equal.
Unity3D Developer
Curious Creators Co.
- Assisted the team in learning the intricacies of the Unity engine.
- Built a world-space mirror for VR so that players could see their avatars.
- Wrote an optimization guide and implemented optimizations, leading to a 50% performance increase and allowing the team to continue to develop optimally.
Technical Manager
PikPok
- Managed six members of the technical team from diverse backgrounds, seniority, projects, and skillsets.
- Designed and presented training materials for junior game programmers.
- Assisted in the interview process, candidate screening, technical screening, and onboarding of new staff.
- Managed the performance management for an underperforming member of the staff, leading to an improvement in engagement and performance.
- Supported under-represented groups and provided them with the tools to elevate issues and see their progress.
- Participated in a small task force working to improve agile processes across the studio.
Senior Game Programmer
PikPok
- Led a team of eight programmers to release Phar Lap: Horse Racing Challenge on Xbox One, PS4, and Switch, and continued to lead the team for its release on Android and iOS as Rival Stars: Horse Racing, with >100,000 DAU.
- Wrote a native voice chat plugin for PS4 that supported eight-player star topology peer-to-peer multiplayer. This is available on the Playstation developer forums and is being used by other Unity developers.
- Built a tutorial system for Dungeon Inc that is flexible and now exists in four projects. It was presented at the New Zealand Game Developers Conference on Tutorial Systems.
- Built a limited-time offer system for Rival Stars: Horse Racing that allows game designers to create custom offers on the fly and deliver them via server payloads.
- Designed a robust architecture for Rival Stars: Horse Racing in order to support offline builds for consoles and server-authoritative builds for mobile devices.
- Developed an optimized logging system that will produce zero allocations in release builds and allows different log levels per category, which currently exists in multiple projects.
- Developed a prototype augmented reality mode for Rival Stars: Horse Racing that is now a fully-featured part of the released game, increasing engagement across our social channels.
Unity Client Developer
Goodgame Studios
- Refactored the tutorial system in collaboration with the original developer to ensure its continued flexibility.
- Worked closely with VFX and SFX teams to develop a tool that allows them to add their effects quickly and easily. Both VFX and SFX teams used the same system.
- Optimized the skill system code by refactoring the third-party code for the Node-based editor to reduce frame delays.
Game Programmer
CerebralFix
- Built a Lua-based tutorial system for Primal Rivals in C++, allowing tutorial changes to be delivered to the client via content download. This allowed us to improve our new user funnel rate by 10% without deploying a new binary.
- Developed a C# TCP server for real-time asynchronous gameplay in Primal Rivals and deployed it to AWS.
- Developed a Club Penguin minigame for Disney in C++ that had good responses from user testing and the Club Penguin community.
- Optimized the scripting in The Good Dinosaur: Dino Crossing to completely remove noticeable frame drops due to garbage collection.
Experience
Murder Party
https://www.roblox.com/games/5611648039/Murder-PartyRival Stars: Horse Racing/Phar Lap: Horse Racing Challenge
https://pikpok.com/games/rival-stars-horse-racing/I was the technical lead on this project and was responsible for architecting the multiplatform nature of the codebase. I specifically worked on native console code for PS4/XboxOne, such as voice chat, multiplayer, and user management. For the mobile version, I worked on assorted features, from prototyping the AR mode now available in the game and building the limited time offer and tutorial systems.
Dungeon Inc.
https://pikpok.com/games/dungeon-inc/Heroes Realm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF0ovPiKQygPrimal Rivals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWQfZojGrNcGood Dinosaur: Dino Crossing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23BKLg7-LE4Pizzatron Mini-game for Club Penguin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H10hPHGcyQEducation
Bachelor's Degree in Software and Information Technology
Lincoln University - Christchurch, New Zealand
Skills
Libraries/APIs
SQLAlchemy, Google Sheets API
Tools
Git, Unity SDK, Subversion (SVN), JetBrains Rider, Mercurial, TestFlight, Perforce, Google Sheets, cURL Command Line Tool
Languages
Lua, C#, C++, C++98, C++11, Python 3, ActionScript 3, Flash ActionScript, Objective-C, Curl Language
Frameworks
Unity, Unity3D, Photon Unity Networking (PUN)
Paradigms
Agile, Mobile Development, Management, Mobile Game Design
Platforms
Android, Xbox, iOS, Oculus, Mobile, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Other
Game Development, Mobile Game Development, Games, Unity Game Assets, Unity Editor Scripting, Technical Design, PS4, Leadership, 3D, Game Design, Unity3D Native Plugin Interface, Mobile Payments, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), API Integration, Unity Networking & LAN, Plastic SCM, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Meta Quest
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