STATUS: Currently unavailable for the foreseeable future, and details of this post may be outdated. But please feel free to reach out anyway, I’m always happy to have a chat and stay in touch for future opportunities. Also happy to help out with some free advice as much as time allows.
About Me
39, German, currently located in Germany. I’m a full-time freelancer primarily offering gameplay programming, design, and general consulting services. I’m extremely passionate about what I do, and what I do is help make your projects a success by any means possible! 
My approach to development is very much focused on the user experience, which means that I always look for the path of least resistance rather than getting lost in technical details. I believe that one of the keys to a successful (game) project is to identify opportunities to make the largest impact with the least amount of investment. I also care about the experience of my fellow developers and always make sure to keep my code clear and easy to maintain.
Development Skills
• C++ and Blueprint Development
• UI / UX Design
• Game Design
• Comfortable with Source Control (Git / Subversion / Perforce) and other common project management software
• Shark taming*
Experience
• Over 20 years of general experience as a self-taught programmer with a large number of languages, frameworks, and toolkits
• About six years of full-time experience as a freelance developer on Unreal Engine 4 (Blueprint and C++)
• Several years of experience as an independent game developer (Adobe AIR / Flash)
• Several years of experience working on open source projects (including work on the graphical aspects of a mobile operating system as a contractor for Nokia)
• Extensive knowledge about UI and game design principles as well as practical experience designing projects ranging from the former default theme of Ubuntu to complete games
Work Samples
As a fan of classic multiplayer shooters, one of the first things I did to familiarise myself with Unreal Engine 4 was to port Quake-like movement physics to the Shooter Game demo:
Unlike some other solutions floating around, this is implemented with pure C++ code which is cleanly integrated into the existing Unreal movement component, so it takes full advantage of Unreal’s advanced movement features and efficient multiplayer replication.
I also joined the Urban Terror project as a volunteer to help port the former Quake 3 total conversion mod to Unreal Engine 4. You can read about my contributions on my blog on the site, but this video showcases a lot of what I have been working on:
I have implemented classic arena shooter movement (strafe jumping, bunny hopping, etc) for several projects now and I’m extremely familiar with the ins and outs of it. So if this is something you are interested in, you should definitely contact me.
For Islands of Nyne I have created much of the UI, designed and implemented a rather unique and effective rating system for Battle Royale style games, and among other things worked on gameplay mechanics and lag compensation. One of the things people universally praised about the game were the responsive controls and gunplay, I dare say that I can take some credit for that.
Multiplayer FPS in general are a specialty of mine and I have a lot of experience with best practices regarding lag compensation, movement, gunplay, etc. But I’m just as comfortable working on any other genre. For other clients I have worked on RTS mechanics, survival game mechanics, space flight mechanics, and more.
Previous Work
Before working with Unreal Engine, I have been an independent Flash game developer. Battle Scribes and Wisp are two mini games I have released, but most significantly I have spent several years working full time as part of a two-man team to develop Fearless Fantasy which was eventually released on Steam and for mobile devices. Aside from all of the programming, I have also done most of the UI design as well much of the game design specifics.
The game has received quite positive reviews, especially on mobile devices:
Prior to that I got some experience with corporate environments and agile development inside Nokia’s headquarters in Helsinki, where among other things I’ve worked on the software for the Nokia N9:
Rates and Services
I am currently looking for contract work with secured funding. I can work fulltime for a fixed monthly rate with flexible hours (which is ideal to combine predictable billing with unpredictable crunch times) or standard hourly rates. I try to keep my hourly rates reasonably low despite my level of experience, but the exact amount depends on many factors like duration of the contract, revenue share arrangements, and other specifics of your project.
I cannot unfortunately work for revenue share alone at this point, but feel free to reach out if you are still in the funding process. I am always happy to provide advice and to discuss options for the time after.
I can work remotely from Germany (best option) or temporarily relocate anywhere within the European Union.
Contact
If any of this sounds potentially interesting to you, then I’d love to have a chat with you so we can informally discuss your project and how I may be able to help you out!
You can best reach me by email to daniel.borgmann@gmail.com, or on Discord (Zenity#1435). Forum messages and thread replies are also welcome.
Many thanks for reading all this, and have a great day!
