Hello, I'm Ash and I make games!

Thanks for taking the time to visit my website, here you can see some of my previous work and projects I've been involved in or contact me from the links below!

GameMaker

More info about my time at GameMaker and Opera and some of the work I have done there.

Project High Noon

Side project created during the pandemic within Unity as a collaboration effort.

Real Surface Generation in VR

Honours Project where computer vision is utilised to create virtual surfaces based off real surfaces for use in VR applications.

More Examples Coming soon

The site is very much a WIP so some pages are missing for the time being. If I've mentioned a project that interests you or you want to see more of please email me and I can upload some more info! Thanks for understanding 💜

About me

Hi so I'm Ash, an energetic crazy hard working South African living in sunny Scotland! I've spent the last 20+ years living in and around the capital Edinburgh learning and doing various jobs and meeting great and talented people both in and out the development industry.

Programmer Origins

Trained as a programmer since 2013, I first studied at Edinburgh College doing their computer games development course where from scratch I was taught and picked up a range of new skills covering many aspects of games development from programming to being hands on in the whole creative design process. It was here I learned I had a passion for programming and was actually quite skilled when it came to problem solving building a passion for working with people to make fun and exciting games. The experiences we created and collaborated on gave me my first insights into not only how exciting but also how challenging games development could be thus shaping my future career path.

Real World Experience

During this time I also sought out external opportunities for experience to work inside local games associated offices such as DeltaDNA (now acquired by Unity) helping them with collecting analytics on clients they had while learning some of their insights and processes they went through to generate important data for some large titles. I also was fortunate enough to be contracted by Rockstar North a few times help with some focus testing with their projects at the time, seeing a world class studio working on some of their biggest projects and being able to actively give feedback and learn how important their entire QA process is has given me an appreciation of triple AAA games I am never likely to forget.

University Education

After completing my time at Edinburgh College in 2015 I continued studying and refining my skills further into programming at Abertay University in Dundee. Completing their programming focused Computer Games Applications Development course and attaining a BSc Hons 2:1 degree. The skills learned and both in terms of myself as a programmer and my ability to work with others on more serious and scaled up projects were really enhanced during my time there. I built a confidence in myself with my abilities and gained experience with being trusted in more senior management roles in projects that required oversight and organisation. I have proven to the world that I am a capable academic who even under the pressures of studying and personal life I can produce quality work and can be taught any required skills that may be needed while being self motivated and determined to complete tasks required of me to impeccably high standards.

Personal Achievements

While a little personal a massive milestone that I should mention is personal success with my physical health when it comes to weight loss. In 2019 while studying my body began shutting down essentially and while struggling with mental health and stress and my weight unfortunately spiralled up to 186kg. At this time I gave up on most things in life and just focused on finishing my studies late that year and nothing more. Fortunately I began seeking support though dietary advice and began physio to learn how to exercise and train my body safely. With the start of the COVID pandemic I had already worked my weight down 20kg through the things I learned but faced with all support I had being gone and not wanting to lose the progress I made I began running daily and full focused on my health with all my new free time. I made great progress and with a slow work back to normality I kept working with health professionals and today I am now less than half my old body weight at less than 100kgs and I've never felt better!

Virtual Reality Focus

Beginning with seeing memes on the internet back in 2017 I sparked a fascination with VR and when given the opportunity to work with VR and XR during my honours project I sourced myself a headset and began researching all I could about it. It was a great introduction but it was only in 2020 when I acquired index controllers and the pandemic hit I began spending time with the headset for personal use. I seen the benefits of online communities that once felt so distant as a developer and talking and experiencing moments with players online opened up so many new opportunities to help work with people, learn from them, teach others, and then when the pandemic subsided meet with these new found friends internationally creating and developing communities and safe spaces for others giving them room for growth too.

Now and Beyond!

For the past year I have been working at GameMaker with an amazing international talented team on many different game templates to teach people from all skill levels the fundamentals and techniques we use and showcase the IDE these games are made within. It has been such an amazing experience to be fully apart of seeing what we have now started to make internally but the feedback and growth in the indie game dev community from what we have been putting out. While I'm now seeking new opportunities to continue my professional development, I am the kind of person who will always try to continue personal development and collaborate with others. I love teaching people how to fix issues that they might have on projects and giving any support or advice with things I can help them with. I am a developer and while the industry we work within can be rough in terms of gaps between roles I see myself contributing to the technology sector and games industry as a whole for as long as I can!

Contact Me

Feel free to message me for any reason if its from questions to opportunities I'm always happy to collaborate and help on projects big or small!