About me CV Skills Game Prototype (WIP) Contact

About me

Hello, visitor!

My name is Petr Bálek, I was born in 1988 inside the middle of Europe, now we call that place the Czech Republic. I am a programmer by profession, who has gone through several worlds of software development. Mostly as a freelancer. I started as a desktop / web developer, who fell in love with game development. I gained my first small experience as a developer in Unity3D. From which I left because I fell in love with development in Unreal Engine, then still in version 4. As part of development, I went from Blueprints, through materials, c++ and now I am exploring Niagara VFX.

Now I specialize in UE5...

CV on timeline

2020 - 2024

Since 08/2024 working on solo UE5 project

Senior developer in team of 7 developers - UE5 project

  • Application for client in the Czech Republic.
  • Development of industrial application in UE4 and later in UE5.
  • Development and optimization of rendering for thousands of datamodels (tens of thousands of meshes) at approximately 120 FPS.
  • In scene actions related to data models on the scene.
  • Creation of materials and material functions, materials for instanced static meshes, where it was necessary to solve rendering on a per instance basis - WPO, stencil masking, etc.
  • C++ plugin for Autodesk AutoCAD that solves data exchange from a drawing in AutoCAD to the application being developed and back. The plugin was based on ObjectARX libraries.
  • Implementation of snapping for external drawings (2D and 3D).
  • Cooperation with team on parts related to MVC architecture and other related features (Undo/Redo, etc.).

Frontend developer in team of 3 frontend developers.

  • Application for client in the USA.
  • International team.
  • Cca 4 months.
  • Angular, HTML5, SCSS.

2019

  • Learning UE4 materials and blueprints.
  • Connecting to team of another 3 developers as a junior for UE4 (industrial project).

2017 - 2018

  • Several intranet C# (desktop, Asp.NET MVC, MSSQL, MySql) applications for various clients.

2015 - 2016

  • Employed as a Senior Developer in team with another 2 junior developers in company focusing on projection and development of things related to kitchen industry.
  • Three Asp.Net MVC (c#) applications - where was used MSSQL and Entity Framework.
  • Three .NET (c#) applications where two of them were working with barcode reader through virtual COM port.

2014 - 2015

  • Employed in Nuart o.p.s.
  • First touch in game development (Unity3D) - unsuccessful Android game with microtransactions, game results shared on Facebook through GraphAPI.
  • Desktop C# application directly connecting to MySql database.
  • REST server.

2011 - 2013

  • Master's degree - Security Technologies, Systems and Management.
  • Several websites created in PHP (Nette) as a freelancer subcontractor.
  • Part-time employment (4 months) in the Bosch Company - PHP (Nette), ASP.NET.

2007 - 2010

  • Bachelor's degree - Computer sience and technologies.
  • The education was based on learning .NET (C#), Java, Prolog, Databases, PHP, Adobe Flash, Cinema4D, Math, Discrete Math, etc...

Skills

UE4 & UE5 (Preferred range of job offers)

  • Blueprints Components, Actors, Characters, Pawns, Interfaces, BFLs, Macro libraries, Macros, Events, Enums, DataTables, ...
  • C++ Subsystems, Base classes, MVC architecture, Datamodels, Structs, Enum classes, Interfaces, Delegates, Async nodes for blueprints, Exposing for BP, BFLs, Macros, ...
  • Materials Material functions, dynamic materials, stencil masking, WPO, materials working with ISM via custom data, ...
  • Niagara I am newbie in VFX, so I created just several effects for my personal project. For example visualisation of hacking, glowing projectile followed by heat distortion or dissolving out/in effect for teleportation.
  • UMG In scene widgets, screen space widgets, ...

Web Development

  • HTML5
  • CSS, SCSS
  • Angular
  • Tree.js
  • Asp.NET MVC

Databases

  • MS-SQL
  • MySQL

CVS

  • Git Bitbucket, Pull requests, Branching, ...
  • P4V We were using it mainly for locking binary assets to avoid collisions between editation by different team members working on UE4 in UE5 project.
  • SVN Same as perforce, we were using it mainly for locking binary assets to avoid collisions between editation by different team members working on UE4 project.

Languages

  • EnglishReading 85%, Writing 75%, Listening 68%, Speaking 50%.
  • German Basics
  • Czech Native speaker

Game prototype (WIP)

Since I'm facing the problem of non-disclosure agreements for most of the projects I've worked on and at the same time I've had a long-held desire to create my own game, I decided to start creating my own portfolio, which will be in the form of a single-player combat strategy.

What is working.

  • Selection through LMB click + Rectangle + "toggling" variants with pressed CTRL or CTRL + SHIFT
  • Movement in formation
  • Movement on defined path
  • Abilities (hacking, healing, mining, guarding, unit spawning, firing landmine, firing paratrooper, attack by firing projectiles, self destruction)
  • Targeting system
  • Hovering system

What am I currently working on?

  • Tuning of decision system for AI based on fuzzy logic.
  • And another bucket of fun...
Firing

Screenshot of a flying and glowing projectile moving along ballistic spline, followed by VFX visualizing heat distortion. The distortion is visible most before the cylinder.

Rectangular Selection

Yeah, the game will have selection through rectangle! Also the hovered units have changed material. The look of hovered material can be different per targeting of ability. Currently it is set to be yellow players units, red enemies units and green resources.

Teleportation

In the screenshot is visible the first phase of teleportation, the unit is dissolving. In second part of effect, is the effect inverted.

Firing Paratrooper

Some units can spawn another units to some location by shooting them away.

Firing Landmine

Firing Landmine on spline.

Hacking

Hacking in progress...

Contact

petr@balek.dev