About
The systems a game runs on, and the tools that open them up.
In my own words
I am a gameplay and AI programmer in C++ and Unreal Engine 5. Twice technical lead, which meant owning the architecture, the repository and the scope calls that decide whether a project ships.
What I keep coming back to is the point where a system stops being mine. The Miasma took second in tools and systems at GradEX 2025, and not for the effect on screen: a designer could configure all of it from a data table without ever opening the C++.
The other half is performance. Multi-agent simulation gets expensive fast, and most of what I know came from sitting with Unreal Insights working out which of my own ideas was costing the frame.
I have not yet held a salaried engineering role at a studio. Everything here is academic, self-directed or client work through my own business. What it does show is that I finish things.
What I do
Gameplay Programming
C++ and Blueprints in Unreal Engine 5. Player mechanics, combat, interaction and the systems layer that designers build levels on top of.
Game AI
Behaviour trees, the Environment Query System, A* pathfinding, hierarchical state machines, utility scoring, swarm behaviour and perception.
Tools and Systems
Editor tooling, procedural generation, spline-driven geometry and data-table configuration, so designers can work without waiting on code.
Performance
Profiling with Unreal Insights, holding a frame budget under load, spatial partitioning, scheduling expensive work off the tick.
Technical Leadership
Twice technical lead. Owning architecture, repository and workflow, and making the scope calls that decide whether a project ships.
VFX and Audio
Niagara, custom materials and audio-reactive systems, integrated as part of gameplay rather than dressed on afterwards.
Work and education
Work
October 2025 to present
Game Programming Teacher
Impact Academies and Camps
I teach GCSE and A-Level Computer Science alongside game development, using Roblox Studio, Unity, Python and JavaScript, to students aged 5 to 17. I manage and mentor teaching assistants and rewrote the lesson procedures the team works from. Explaining a state machine to a twelve year old is the best test of whether you understand it yourself.
March 2026 to present
Founder and Web Developer
Zoltrack
I run a small web studio in parallel with teaching, shipping production sites for clients. It keeps my rendering and optimisation practice sharp outside the engine, and the real-time 3D work sits close to what I do in games. That side of my work lives at zoltrack.com.
Education
September 2022 to June 2025
BSc (Hons) Computer Games Development
University of Staffordshire
Specialised in C++, Unreal Engine 5, game AI, procedural content generation and game systems. I achieved 95% in Senior Collaborative Development as technical lead, and my dissertation on adaptive boss AI is one of the projects on this site.
2017 to 2022
GCSE and A-Level
Carshalton Boys Sports College
Computer Science, Product Design, IT and Physics. An architectural project during A-Levels is where procedural generation first got my attention, and Physics is why vector maths has never been the hard part.
Before this, 2021 to 2026I worked through my A-Levels and degree, ending as store manager at Gourmet Coffee Bar and Kitchen, and coached tennis at the Sutton Tennis Academy as an LTA-qualified coach. Neither is game development. Both taught me to explain things clearly to people who did not ask for a technical answer.
Away from the engine
I build the machines I develop on
Ten or so custom PCs so far, mine and other people's. It is a practical education in where performance actually goes, which turns out to be useful when you are staring at a profiler wondering why a frame costs what it costs.
Three languages
Lithuanian at home, English everywhere else, Russian well enough to hold a conversation.
I teach, and it changed how I write code
Two years of explaining programming to children has made me much less tolerant of code that needs a paragraph of explanation. If I cannot describe what a system does in one sentence, it is usually doing two things.