Well this is awkward... My name is Matthew (DevilsD) Boatswain and im a Freelance Gameplay Programmer, I had no idea that my Imposter Syndrome would extend even this far. Perhaps its because this is my first ever blog and also my Introduction Post!

I became aware of the Steem platform (and the wider cryptocurrency market) through another Gamedev friend of mine @thecastle. Im quite interested to see this community up close and personal and im certainly going to take this opportunity to do that with this blog :)

#include "HelloWorld.h"

AHelloWorld::AHelloWorld()
{
   UE_LOG(LogTemp, SteemLog, TEXT("Hello World!"));
}

#if !INTRODUCED

Im a Freelance Contractor who has the pleasure of working from the safety of his home in a small rural town just West of Sydney Australia. Most of the time I find myself struggling to explain what exactly it is I do to the friends, family and acquaintance I talk to everyday around the town that I live in. Being rural and not extremely urbanised means its not quite common to find people that hold the same interests in their day jobs as I do. The internet however is a different story and is somewhat of a relief for me as I can connect across great distances with the people that learn and preach the same words I do. This blog will be an extension of that and I hope to connect with many more people who share this feeling :)

I have worked (and still do) for many different individuals and companies writing games over the years. With the advent of Unreal Engine 4's "Set It Free" philosophy 4 years ago, Ive moved exclusively onto working with it and Clients that want to utilise it to bring their products to life.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/ue4-is-free

Ive been working with Unreal Engine 4 since it was released to the public in 2014. Prior to that id been working with the Unity 3D engine creating small mobile games and demos, unfortunately none of which ever saw the light of day, but such is life :) 

Ive always held a strong and passionate love for Programming. My interest starts 15 years ago in 2003 when the first Call of Duty game was released that October. I was only 12 at the time and already keenly addicted (my mothers words haha) to PC games. Id discovered that it was trivial to look through the scripting interface for the game from the files on disk and to be able to modify them to cause magic to happen ingame. This opened up a new world for me, I could make cool changes to the game and then share it with my online buddies. This segued into my interest in Programming at High School and further on into other games where I was keenly creating Mods and Maps for others to play and enjoy.

After a period I was introduced to a cool C# library called XNA where me and a friend tried our hand at creating our own game with procedural generation. Although we were still learning and didnt really get anywhere I certainly look back on those days with fondness. After XNA support was dropped by Microsoft I decided to move on Unity as it had great appeal and I could leaverage all that id learnt with C# immediately in Unity. After id finished school I started putting myself out there and trying to move toward a more professional work experience. Getting jobs where I could that would accept a rookie into their project to bring what little understanding about Game Development I had to offer.

I have no formal education in Software Development or Game Development and am completely self taught, I believe this has been a help and not a hinderance to me at all (something I will discuss in another post). Ive taken this journey at my own pace and its certainly been a blast, I cant wait to share my experiences, my many years of knowledge in the Game Dev industry and my opinions with everyone here :)

https://discord.gg/unreal-slackers

With my move to Unreal Engine 4 ive taken up a larger role in the community as a whole. I love talking about Unreal, I love helping people develope on Unreal and I want people to succeed on Unreal. I joined a Discord Server dedicated to Unreal Engine 4 and its community called Unreal Slackers. It offers a massive community geared towards answering all Unreal questions and helping others. Not long after joining the Server I applied to be a Moderator and I now help manage the Unreal Slackers Discord of ~18k Members.

I love giving back to the Unreal community as its given me so much over these years, being there for others, answering questions and helping people with their developement issues has given me an outlet to do that. This blog is another way for me to extend that into a new platform im getting invovled in, the Steem blockchain!

I dont know how long I should keep rambling on and I feel this has been enough just to get my feet wet.

My future content will be centered around Game Development, Software Engineering related to games and also my interest in how I think Cryptos and Games can coexist for great benifit to all. Basically anything about Games really :)

Until next time!

#endif // !INTRODUCED

I am not an Epic Employee or affiliated with Epic Games or Unreal Engine in any official capacity, the opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not reflect that of Epic Games or the Unreal Engine trademark.

Unreal and its logo are Epic’s trademarks or registered trademarks in the US and elsewhere.

https://www.unrealengine.com
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/branding
https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/fan-art-policy