Aaron Tasker-Lynch

As an experienced IT professional with recent Unity development experience, I would love to be considered for the role of Intermediate Unity Developer at Aura Digital Studios.

During the past two years I have completed PGCert and PGDip courses in Games Technology at Queen’s University and plan to commence a further year of study to complete the Games Technology Masters (Part Time). I have really enjoyed my time working with Unity and associated games technology applications such as Blender and have received distinctions in all course modules.

During my studies I have proved myself to be an effective learner and have been able to apply learnings quickly to deliver work of a high calibre. I led the development of AccessCSB, a group project that was created to simulate the Queen’s University Computer Science Building. In this project I implemented the XR framework, AI Navigation, GUI implementation and the Audio controller as well as numerous other features. In addition, I set up the GIT repository and reviewed code check-ins to ensure the repository remained in a good state.

Some of the learnings I gained from implementing the VR version of AccessCSB is that early user testing is very important. Our testing highlighted various issues with our GUI and calibration implementation that we were able to address early to improve the product. Some of the challenges I encountered were ensuring the GUI was displayed effectively for users and that the control system was intuitive and adaptable for different user’s needs. To that end, I implemented teleport and continuous movement control options as well as vignette support to ensure users could configure their set up to reduce motion sickness issues.

The AccessCSB project was submitted to the Serious Games Society’s Games and Learning Alliance Conference in 2024 (GALA 2024 – Berlin (Germany)) and was successful in being selected as one of the 30 papers to be presented that year. The WebGL and Quest 2 XR versions of the AccessCSB application can be found below:

WebGL: AccessCSB (unity.com)

XR apk file: AccessCSBVR

I also recently volunteered to work on a tour of the Clark Clinic facility at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. Here, I assisted with general coding, implemented a NavMesh solution, implemented baked lighting, as well as contributing numerous 3D models to the effort (e.g. incubator, cots, chairs and bins). I found this project very rewarding as it will help new patients and their families acclimatize to the ward and hopefully make their stay more comfortable. I was awarded a Student Recognition Award for Community Contribution from the School of Arts, English and Languages for my contributions to this effort. A link to the current version is detailed below for your reference:

ClarkClinic (unity.com)

I continue to work on a personal project that I hope to release independently when complete. It is a top-down arcade-style racing game called Oilslick. The reason I chose to develop a top-down racing game is that this is a style of game I have always enjoyed, especially the local multiplayer aspect of such games. It is inspired by Amiga games such as Super Cars II and Nitro as well as the more obvious Micro Machines. It has been developed using the Unity URP pipeline and utilizes Unity’s AI Navigation, GUI, Eventing, New Input System among other features. I am currently working on updating Oilslick to utilize particles for weather effects and the Cinemachine camera system to enhance the current camera system. A link to the latest version of Oilslick can be found below:

OilSlick (unity.com)

I spent some time analysing the performance of Oilslick using the Unity Profiler and Profile Analyser as part of the PGDip course. I created the below tutorial to assist other users as part of that effort:

Profiler Tutorial - Aaron Tasker-Lynch.docx

I spent most of my career working as a Senior Middleware Consultant at Allstate Northern Ireland. Here, I led the integration of a multitude of disparate systems to support claims processing. I gained extensive experience integrating external APIs to enable communication between these remote systems. As these systems supported highly critical claims processing functionality, I had to ensure that they were robust, secure and that data could be recovered in the event of failure. I have worked with REST and SOAP APIs as well as implementing numerous queue-based integration solution (via Async and Sync patterns). I believe this experience would be extremely useful for implementing cloud-based integration of PostgreSQL and MongoDB databases.

I have always been a well-liked and respected member of all the teams I have worked in. I received very positive feedback from my QUB peers in both years of study and won various peer-feedback related awards at Allstate Northern Ireland.

I would welcome the opportunity to bring my Unity and XR development experience, along with my enterprise integration background, to Aura Digital Studios.

Yours sincerely,

Aaron Tasker-Lynch