About Me

General Information

My name is Daan van Eijl, I am a game developer living in Tilburg (Netherlands). Ever since I was a kid, I've had a passion for games. I grew up playing lots of different games on a lot of different consoles. This made me love a lot of different types of games. This applies to making games as well. Furthermore, I love all kinds of sports. I watch everything that has to do with football or cycling. I've played football for 17 years now at RKSV Sarto in Tilburg.

Game Design wise, I'm quite all-round. My first few project I primarily did things like 3D modeling, level design and implementing it in games in Unity. I chose to do this on purpose being a software student. This helped me to build my range of game design knowledge to include more than just programming.

The skill I find most important in myself is my ability to be very flexible. I don't have 1 preferred way of doing things and I always like to adapt myself to fit the situation and company I'm in.

I like most aspects of making a game. Coding, level design, but also things like animating and creating visual effects are very fun to do in my opinion.

Studies

I graduated secundary school on "senior general secondary eduction (HAVO)" level. I finished it with a "Nature & Science" profile. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Mathematics for scientific studies (Wiskunde B)
• Science
• Physics
• Computer science

Next, I chose to follow the "ICT" study. This with an eye on the specialty: Game Design. Firstly, I chose ICT & Software as my main study course to hone my programming skills. In the second year, I started following the game design courses alongside the programming classes.

In the 3th year of this study, I had a game design internship at MindLabs. And I worked on my graduation internship for Eindhoven University of Technology, finishing the study Cum Laude.

Personal skills

Some of my personal skills that I think are most relevant for a developer.

Communication

Communication is really important when talking to colleagues or stakeholders, especially when the colleague or stakeholder does not have the same technical background as I do. It is easy to talk past each other when your technical skills do not match and because of this, I always try to adjust myself and explain things in terms the other person understands. This way, they can understand me even without any technical knowledge. This is a skill I improved a lot on a lot as a freelancer.

Adaptibility

I like to change the way I work to fit my surroundings. I find it a waste of time to do something from scratch when someone else already started it, just because I'm not familiar with their way of working. I'm not selfish and am willing to throw everything I know out of the window to learn it anew, if this benefits the project. 

Game Design & Software skills

All of my relevant game design & software qualities.

Unity

Almost all of the games I have made, are made in the Unity game engine. I have been doing this since 2019 and over time, it has given me quite a bit of knowledge about all the tools and possibilities. I've worked enough with Unity to be able to solve most problems on my own even if I need to use tools/techniques I have never used before.

I have worked on projects from scratch on my own or with 1 other person. Because of this I have not limited myself to 1 skill. I have done concepting, programming, modelling, UI, animating, audio, testing and many more things.

C#

Almost all games I made, are made using C# programming language. Because of this, it is by far the programming language I'm most experienced in. I first started using C# at software classes creating complex backends which I made using, among other tools, the Dotnet framework. I then went on using C# scripts for my games.

Typescript

I used Typescript for a few software projects. I primarily used ASP.NET core C# as backend and Angular Typescript as frontend. I've come to known Typescript for among other things:

• Processing and using backend data in frontend
• Bind functionalities to user actions.

Typescript could also be replaced by Javascript for me, but I'm more experienced with Typescript and I prefer it too.

Unreal Engine 5

I have gotten interested in Unreal ever since Unreal 5 was released. Since then I have worked on projects made for product marketing video's with a key focus in Visual Effects. These effects include realistic gas fires, water leakages and gas leakages.

Other Tools

• Git
• WebGL
• Unity VR
• Agile / Scrum
• Trello / Version One / Azure DevOps
• MVC Pattern
• Dotnet Framework
• HMTL / CSS
• Javascript
• Java
• Python
• Audacity
• Blender
• Visual Studio (Code)
• Docker
• Jenkins
• Microsoft Teams / Discord / Zoom