Martin Tilo Schmitz

About Me

Hi, my name is Martin Schmitz and I’d like to welcome you to my Portfolio.

I’m a Programmer and Designer Hybrid (or a Technical Game- and Level Designer, think Tech-Artist but for Design) and currently working as a UI Developer for Unity Technologies in Copenhagen. I have +12 years experience in the games industry as UI Developer, Gameplay Programmer, Unity3D Teacher, Game Designer and Level Designer. (For more details, see my LinkedIn Profile or contact me to receive a full CV).

Work Preferences

As a Technical Designer I strive to align great designs with their technical feasibility. I communicate between the fields on how gameplay features can be implemented by programmers, as well as whether and how the implementation fits the purpose the designers had aimed for. I also extend, improve, create or design tools, workflows and gameplay building blocks for myself or other designers while staying within the technical limitations.

So I am a full Game Designer first and foremost, I also like to get and talk technical. I like to work in an environment of fluidly interchanging tasks and roles, where I can constantly challenge myself to adapt and improve my existing skills and learn new ones in the process.

Professional Experience

I’m currently working as a UI Developer for Unity Technologies in Copenhagen, working with the Core:Kernel team on the Profiling tools. My mission is to help visualize and inform the users as to where and how they can improve the performance of their game, right from within the editor.

From 2014 to 2017 I’ve been working as a Unity3d Gameplay Programmer for TreasureHunt on the companies first two games Boomie Blast and Pet Paradise.

In 2014 I worked as a freelancing Technical Game- and Level Designer, e.g. writing commissioned pitches and GDDs or teaching Unity3D and scripting.

I’ve been working as Junior Level Designer at Noumena Studios on the Action RPG The Dark Eye: Demonicon, based on the German Pen ‘n’ Paper RPG The Dark Eye (German: Das Schwarze Auge), which released on October 25. 2013 for PC.

Before working for Noumena, I worked on the turn-based, browser strategy game Iron Dawn at Zombiefood for 9 month as a part-time Game and Level Designer as well as VFX-Artist. I also programmed in C# to create e.g. Unity editor extensions to improve the Level Design workflow.

See Projects for more info on these projects (some details might not yet be visible for unreleased titles).

University

Armed with my A-levels and an open mindset I enrolled at HTW Berlin right after finishing school. During my studies my focus naturally adjusted towards Game and Level Design where I honed my skills during the practical, grading relevant, projects that accompanied most courses, as well as 3 semesters of focused project work. The bigger ones are listed under Projects along with professional projects I worked on. I finished my studies with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2013.

My Background

Games in general and computer games in special, as well as designing such, have accompanied me for most of my life. I’ve redesigned existing boardgames and created my own since I was about 8 years old and with 16 I created my first prototype, a top-view naval battle scenario as a mod/expansion for Clonk a 2D side-view, jump-‘n’-run, genre-mix.

As I did everything by myself (from Game and Level Design, over Scripting to 3D Art and Animation that resulted in 2D sprites) I got a taste of all mayor fields during my endeavor, teaching myself as I went. I therefore had to learn of the importance of a reasonable scope the hard way.

I pulled off a fully playable, prove-of-concept, multi-player naval battle mod with an estimated 10% of content finished, before realizing there was no way I could finish it with my sanity intact. While I was sad to admit I had overextended myself with the project in general, lost myself into details (e.g. crafting) and set myself a ridiculous bar with my first 2 ships (over-detailed 3D models, bogged down to sprites at a max of 30 x 90 pixels), I learned a lot about what I can and can’t realistically do on my own, as well as what I liked to do the most. Even though I kept my broad horizon ever since by dabbling in all fields and informing myself, I began focusing mostly on Game Design and Level Design.

in short: It got canceled by real-life, but I learned a lot. Especially about scope 😉

Better fail hard and early, I guess.

Tools and Processes I’ve Used

Below are some of the tools I’ve used so far as well as a short info about where and what I used them for (in brackets). This list is not comprehensive, but representative and I’m always keen to get to know new tools, frameworks and processes so it is very likely to grow.

  • Unity3D (university and for private projects)
  • C# (in conjunction with Unity3D to implement game-play and extend the editor)
  • Havok Vision Engine (at Noumena Studios)
  • Lua (at Noumena Studios)
  • Java (school and university projects)
  • C/C++ (self taught before learning Java at School)
  • Scrum (at Zombiefood, at Noumena Studios and in a lightweight way for CatWalk)
  • Photoshop/Gimp (e.g. level concepts as top down sketches of game-play and layout)
  • Blender 3D (fast gray-box modeling in e.g. Noir)
  • Maya (university)
  • yEd (at Noumena Studios and for personal projects as mind-mapping/flowchart/graph tool)
  • Microsoft/Open/Libre Office (e.g. documenting, writing, (balancing) spread charts … etc.)
  • TortoiseSVN/HG (all professional/personal projects)
  • Bitbucket.com (personal projects)
  • ScrumDo.com (at Zombiefood and for CatWalk)

Looking for someone like me?

If you have a freelance- or full-time offer, please feel free to contact me.