Jack de Wilde – Programmer & Game Developer

About Me

Hi, I'm Jack! I'm a programmer and game developer, passionate about creating fun games and interesting mechanics. I specialise in Unity and C#, but also have experience with a range of other tools, languages, and engines. I especially enjoy working on procedural generation and other rogue-lite game mechanics that make every experience unique.

My timezone: AEST (UTC+10:00)

Projects

Geared Fate

2025 / Unity / C# (Itch.io)

A game where players explore a steampunk-style factory and fight a series of bosses. Made in a team for Boss Rush Jam 2025, with the theme "Spin".

Details

Four unique bosses. Boss AI switches between various states (chasing, retreating, shooting, etc.) using state machines.
I implemented the first boss, who moves orthogonally, tunnels underground, throws bombs, and shoots lasers, getting more erratic as its health gets lower. I also contributed to various other parts of the game.

Lil Dudes

Ongoing / Unity / C#

A mobile game where players send their Lil Dudes on adventures to battle and gather resources for their town. Battles are automatic, with Lil Dudes having varied stats, abilities, and synergies. Successful battles may recruit new Lil Dudes and provide materials to improve the town with buildings and decorations.

Details

Responsive UI designed for mobile and tablets of varying sizes. Juicy animations and interaction feedbacks, powered by Feel.
Procedurally generated adventures, composed of modular scenes, varying in length and difficulty based on the player's level.
Automatic, turn-based battling, with each creature having different abilities that interact with each other and activate in varying ways.
Custom editor utilities to sync game data with Google Sheets, allowing designers to easily change parameters without needing to use or understand the engine.

Veterans in a Dangerous Spacetime

Ongoing / Unity / C#

A spiritual successor to the game 'Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime', where players explore procedurally generated levels containing enemies and procedurally generated structures and challenges, by manning stations of their spaceship in local co-op.

Details

Rogue-lite mechanics for endless replayability.
Procedurally generated levels and structures, using a Minimum Spanning Tree to connect rooms within structures.
Local co-op using Unity's new Input System package.
The appearance of the ship's structure is generated based on its composite collider, making it easy to change its layout by moving rooms around in the editor.
Players can run around on the ship while the ship is controlled by physics.
Physics-based enemy AI.

Roguelands Mods

2019-2021 / Unity / Harmony Library / C#

Many mods for the game 'Roguelands', available via the GadgetCore mod browser.

Details

Minimap: A mod that draws a pixel art minimap of the current planet. By default works for vanilla terrain, but also exposes an API that allows other terrain generating mods to interface with it.
ItemFrames: A mod that adds a custom Item Frame tile for players' ships, used to store and display items. Includes multiplayer support (items are visible to other players and update across the network) and saving the item frame and the item's data to the save file.
Dresser: A mod that adds a custom Dresser tile for players' ships, allowing them to change their character's augment and uniform at any time. Instantiates custom menus and hooks up all the buttons via code. Uses GadgetCore's extended Augment/Uniform registry to also display other mods' augments and uniforms.
TerrainGenerators: A mod that completely overhauls vanilla terrain generation with custom generators created for each planet. Each terrain tile's textures connect to adjacent tiles by procedurally generating texture variants from 4 base textures for each planet. Works in multiplayer. Put on hold after implementing 3 of 14 planet types due to the amount of effort it was to design, implement, and test unique terrain generators for each planet, as well as ensuring compatibility with other mods.
Many smaller mods: AggroOnHit, BetterItemHoming, GearSwap, HealthRegenRework and ManaRegenRework, MultiplayerScaling, NoBlackBars, and PermanentNuldmg

Hellbird

2017 / hyperPad (visual coding) / PHP / MySQL

Flappy bird with a twist (the pipes shoot lasers). At the time of uploading had an online leaderboard, but that's no longer running.

Details

Used a MySQL database for the highscore list, accessed via PHP, hosted for free on 000webhost (now shut down).

Santelmo

2018 / hyperPad (visual coding)

An educational game where you complete spelling and grammar puzzles to progress. Created in collaboration with an English teacher who used the game in his class.

Glider Game

2020 / hyperPad (visual coding)

A casual arcade gliding game with procedurally generated terrain. Created for the Sports2020 challenge. Features custom physics for the gliding mechanics. Some performance issues due to engine limitations.

Apple Tree

2023 / hyperPad (visual coding)

A fast-paced, arcade, procedural puzzle game made within 48 hours for the 2023 Global Game Jam.

Paladins Stats:

Ongoing / C# / PostgreSQL

A program that runs in the background as a Windows service, gathering all match data for the game 'Paladins' via their API, storing it in a PostgreSQL database. Uses SQL queries to export summary stats to csv files for formatting and further analysis.

Details

Manages large volumes of relational data, storing over 4 million game matches, each with 10 players, each with a champion, talent, items, cards, etc.
Uses advanced query techniques such as multiple joins, unions, and nested queries.
Implements the Elo rating system to estimate player skill levels.
Statistical analysis and heuristics are used on exported stats using spreadsheet software to find both popular and well-performing characters at various skill levels.