Alexander van der Zalm
Game
Development, Game Design, Web Development,
Yogi, Entrepreneur, Business Analyst
Web Development
Full Stack: Java, Angular, Dev-Ops, Spring, Docker, Javascript, HTML
and CSS
Game Development
Unity3D, C#, Game Programming, Editor Programming and Game Design
Yoga
Educator, Lecturer,
Yin Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, Meditation, Lucid Dreams, Permaculture
Business
Scrum, Entrepreneurship, HR, Legal, Finance
and Excel (VBA, PowerPivot)
Areas of Interest
Some topics I have been recently exploring and am very interested in.
Programming Design Patterns
- Event Pub/Sub Variations
- Data Driven Design with E.C.S. (Entity Component System)
- Test Driven Design in Unity3D
Enterprise programming
- Scrum Master and Scrum
- Dev-Ops
- Clean code
Experience
Freelancer
Unity Developer
Jan 2020 - Present - Netherlands
Open to work for hire!
Worked on creating a tool set for authoring a narrative driven art installation. The application sends its output to an Arduino controlling various motors and the content can be edited via a dialogue tree.
Bol.com
Software engineer
Oct 2018 - May 2020- Netherlands
Full stack DevOps. Java and Angular. Scrum Master.
Worked on several micro-services focused around two different CRM applications: BLUE, a web interface for bol.com customer service experts and the Cases swap, a web interface for bol.com partners. One of the highlights of my time at Bol.com was working as part of an autonomous new team that set up many new micro-services including a smart telephone routing system.
Yogi Dream Retreat Center
Founder and Owner
Jun 2015 - May 2018- Spain
Organization of Yoga and Meditation Retreats in southern Spain. Teaching yoga theory and meditation classes. Creating and editing of the website, writing programs, marketing of events and taking care of correspondence with participants.
Website design wise this was the first time that I started using WordPress. I have spent much time getting familiar with general optimization strategies, basic design and basic SEO.
Brasserie De Joffers
Management/Directorate Assistant
Sep 2008 - Present - Netherlands
A broad range of office experience working on management level.
HR, legal, financial administration, marketing and general management level decision making.
Worked on (financial) strategies and improving and modernizing administration (HR, legal and financial).
I generally enjoyed doing systems thinking and excel work, which included doing various financial analyses, presenting data, making financial strategies and creating/programming various automated solutions for a higher everyday efficiency (such as an automated contract maker).
More recently I have been working mostly on the web presence (review & reservation websites), various web integrations and the back and front end of the website.
FedEx
Courier/Driver
Jun 2008 - Sep 2008 - Netherlands
Lots of road experience driving vans and learned to navigate efficiently. Stopped working early due to an injury.
Developer Showcase
![[OneLineFields]](https://alexandervanderzalm.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/OneLineFields-188.gif)
![[OnChangedCall("methodname")]](https://alexandervanderzalm.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/OneLineFields-188-lossy.gif)
Github
Over the years I have publicly worked on various game prototypes in game jams and personal projects to various stages of completion ranging from platformers to silly party games.
Gitlab
My most recent game project repositories are private, unfortunately private contributions are not shown publicly.
It does contain my latest revisions of my Unity3D framework.
Gist
In the past I have started sharing useful little files via Gist. The property attributes above are both on Gist.
Education
Utrecht University
Computer Science (Game Technology)
2011 - 2013
Activities and Societies: Teaching Assistant (TA) Graphics, regular at the DGDARC (Dutch Games Development And Research Commission) production dungeon.
One and a half year of intense and enjoyable study. Did both first, second and third year subjects out of pure interest and curiosity (a degree was not the aim of this study). Some of my favorite subjects were game programming, graphics and image processing.
Qantm - Middlesex University UK
BA (Hons), Interactive Animation
2008 - 2011
Maya (animation and modelling), ZBrush, Photoshop (texturing), Project Management, Social Games Research.
Leiden University
Philosophy
2007 - 2008
Fueled by my love for spirituality and wisdom I enrolled for Philosophy. I really loved some of the subjects (logic specifically) and got good grades, however in the end I decided that I wanted to switch to an education with better job prospects.
Certificates
Yoga Alliance
RYT 200 - Yoga Teacher Training - Yin
2016
Completed my yin yoga teacher training with Jo Phee & Joe Barnett. Since then I have been teaching yin yoga classes on our own yoga retreats on YogaYetreatSpanje.nl and for my good friend Amwo Wolfs his WolfsYoga.nl. See my teacher profile here.
Permaculture Research Institue
Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC)
2013
I love Permaculture for its system design approach to working with nature. Studied with Mustafa F. Bakir. Incredibly intense weeks of being exposed to a huge variety of methods to systematically work harmoniously with Nature. Since then I have done a few design consultancy projects (see Homes Nepal). See my profile here.
Recommendations
Volunteer Experience
Game Programmer and Producer
2011 - Present
Done a lot of smaller game development projects till various stages of completion. First year I worked with GameMaker and in the years after we switched to Unity3D, which I am still happily using.
Did all the programming work for both 2D and 3D projects and have developed several Unity3D extensions (such as a custom Behavior Tree editor, a custom input manager and other basic framework related extensions). The work I did included working with unity physics, editor programming, custom serialization, shader work and working with the animator.
Homes Nepal
Permaculture Consultant
Summer 2013
Did some consultancy work on the Bishnumati river cleaning project (main river through Kathmandu Nepal). Worked closely with Andrew Jackson.
See their website for more information about Homes Nepal: http://homesnepal.org/
Abbey Games
Startup Volunteer
Oct 2011
Helped during the inception of Reus. Did some game design, wrote a blog and did a little tool programming work. Worked with Bas Zalmstra, Adriaan Jansen, Jacco Krijnen en Maarten Wiedenhof.
Mystics
Exhibitor
Aug 2009
Exhibitor on Spiel Essen, the largest board game exhibition.
Daily distribution of a large amount of board games, setting up and designing the booth, presenting and explaining Day&Night the board game (International Gamers Award 2009) and networking with international board game publishers and distributors.
Blog
Extending the Unity Editor for the Observable Pattern
Recently I have been on a quest to discover and understand as many programming design patterns as I can. This happened after I had a huge light bulb moment where I realized that programming design patterns could actually dramatically shift my thinking, especially with regards to game design.
One of those patterns that I really like is the Observable pattern or a reactive pattern. It felt like a massive paradigm shift to be able add this to my conceptual programming framework. It allows for a much simpler and cleaner integration for events, such as leveling up or achievements.
Unfortunately while trying it out in Unity3D I realized that C# properties, which is a pretty straightforward way to implement this pattern, does not play nicely with the Unity3D Inspector Editor. Hence I developed a neat little property attribute to address the issue.
Contact
I would love to hear from you if you are interested in working together! You can reach me via:
info@alexandervanderzalm.com
Or via the form below!