Senior Developer For Space Flight Simulator 2

I help bring the cosmos to life by bridging high-fidelity visuals with hardcore performance for Space Flight Simulator 2. My core focus includes advanced physics, custom shaders and effects, translation systems, and aggressive optimization to keep the universe running smoothly.

Senior Developer for AI League: FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™

Really excited to be part of this great team in AlteredStateMachine making a really innovative AI game for FIFA

Developed the official AI-driven soccer experience for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, focusing on a "managerial" gameplay style where users customize and deploy AI teams. The primary technical challenge involved implementing a decentralized AI architecture where every player on the pitch operated as an independent agent with unique traits and real-time decision-making logic.

To ensure global accessibility, I led a rigorous optimization effort to port these complex AI calculations and physics-based interactions to mobile devices without compromising frame rate or battery life. I managed the technical transition from an initial company demo into a robust, commercial-grade product capable of handling the massive traffic surge of a global sporting event. This project demonstrated the successful marriage of cutting-edge machine learning frameworks with high-performance mobile game development.

Tech & Lead Developer for Rokoko

I joined Rokoko in 2020 as lead developer in order to setup a new software department, recruit members and lead on the architecture, schemes and coding guidelines for their new motion capture and animation software. Rokoko is leading in motion capture, democratizing and providing the access to everybody to create animations.

I was mainly involved into building their new software from the very beginning which went out of beta in Jan 2023

Senior Developer for CastleSiege: War of Legends

Tasked with a critical architectural intervention for a mobile strategy title to replace a costly and inefficient real-time networking system. The existing architecture relied on constant frame-by-frame synchronization, which led to high server costs and latency issues during large-scale unit spawns.

I designed and implemented a deterministic grid-based simulation system to solve this. By ensuring the game logic was perfectly synchronized across all clients, the network requirement was reduced from constant position updates to a single "spawn command" packet containing a timestamp and coordinates. This shift not only improved the gameplay experience by eliminating "rubber-banding" but also significantly reduced the client's operational server overhead. This project highlights my ability to analyze a business's technical pain points and engineer high-impact, cost-effective solutions through smart system design.

Global illumination system for Unity

Continuing on my ray tracing engine I made a tech demo of a custom CPU based global illumination system in Unity. The system can handle diffuse, specular, transparent and refractive materials - with caustics too. The solution is utilizing sets of rays that are bouncing into the scene and storing the light data into textures. In addition as an optimization step I used Monte-Carlo method to approximate light coming in each bounce. This method doesn't give an absolute light result as would be in our real world, but is often used in many engines to speed things up while giving a close approximation of the real world lighting. At least but not last i embedded Nvidia's Denoiser as a final step to smooth and clean up the final result.

Developed Ray Traced shader for valuable gems and diamonds

Developed a custom set of shaders that internally do ray tracing and tracing multiple light bounces for reflection, refraction and internal reflection.

Simple ray tracing engine

I was always passionate about 3D rendering techniques so i a made a tech demo of a custom CPU based renderer in Unity. I implemented some basic lighting models like diffuse and phong. I also added reflection and shadows support.

A little research on AI and ML-Agents

Really exited to research a little bit on AI and play with ML-Agents! I made a simple demo where agents are trying to keep the ball bouncing off the floor. Both groups are doing almost the same thing, except group (A) trying to reach the ball the highest, while group (B) trying to maintain a minimum speed for the ball

Unite 2016 Conference

Attended a three days conference where Unity helps you to power up your development and get the most out of our engine, as well as get a sneak peek at upcoming product features, new services and future plans.

Tech Lead Developer - VividlyApp startup

In July '16 I joined VividlyApp start-up as tech lead developer and co-founder member. The team's vision was to empower 3D designers and architects with interactive and immersive experiences using VR and help them better understand and iterate through their designs. Our main goal was to develop a web platform, so they can upload their 3D models and experience them from any device in VR.

Game Developer for mobile game "Connectum"

Developed Connectum mobile game for GemCraftGames.com which launched for Android. Connectum is a simple turn based multiplayer PvP puzzle game where players compete against each other for the best score.

Kinima - A sports analytic tool using Kinect

 [Under Development] Developing a sports analysis tool using Kinect and Unity for Daniel Juddernaught. The software will be tracking your body and will advise you, on how to improve your exercises. See more on Kinima.fit

Game Developer for mobile game "BLiTS"

Developed BLiTS mobile game for GemCraftGames.com and was launched for Android and Windows platforms.

Simple flock simulation for exhibition

Developed a simple fish boid system for the needs of a friend, which would be placed on screens sideways stations showing the fish gathering and while people passing to go away.

Pipeline Director & Lead Game Developer for commercial game "ToumpaWorld"

Developed and directed the pipeline of the 3D game “ToumpaWorld”, which was made for the commercial purposes of AmitaFun (Coca-Cola Hellas) and was launched for Web, Android and iOS platforms.

MSc Individual Project - Pacman 3D

A Complete Game including Multiplayer for the purposes of the Individual Project module during my MSc. The game created within 3 days using Unity Game Engine and Photon Network.

ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Motion in Games

Attended a three days conference where there were presented many novel researches on the relevant area. Some of the covered areas were Animation Systems, Character and Facial Animations, Particle Systems, Crowd Simulation, Path Planning and many more.

1st Place at Hellenic Game Jam

Game Jam is a game development competition that lasts 48 hours and all participants (in teams of up to 4) must create a game according to competition’s guidelines. My team completed a third-person action 3D game which could be played either with a keyboard and mouse or with Mirosoft’s Kinect sensor. It is worth mentioning that I formed my team the same day of the competition with individuals that were unfamiliar with one-another.

The main theme line of the competitions was an "extraordinary" story. Whereas we wrote a short story of 2 twin sisters being cursed by their fellow villagers which led the their (2) souls to be combined; as their bodies are apart, the twin soul is in pain seeking revenge on villagers and trying to finally fuse with its other half. The game is played using Kinect sensor and your body while you try to control both of twins. Using your right hand you launch a fireball, while using your left hand you turn and aim around you. More over you are able to move around by moving your foot respectively and finally switch between twins by clapping your hands. Below you can get the game we've created during the competition. Keep in mind that was initially created to be played with Kinect; this version is playable just with keyboard and mouse. The aim of the game is to reach one witch with the other.

Movement: W, A, S, D
Fire: Mouse Left Click
Swap Witches: 1, 2

Kinect Recording Interface

Since I have started to develop desktop applications using Kinect, I had to test my code by standing-up in front of the sensor. At start it was funny, but as soon as I had to do it tens of times within a day it was starting to be annoying. So, I decided to create an application-interface that could record and playback any moves!

The project is written in C# and Visual Studio 2010.

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/467938/Kinect-Recording-Interface

Screenshot Application

I was in need of getting screenshot frequent so i decided to wrap it up and publish it. This is a simple application for automatically saving screenshot by the press of a button or every interval (s).

https://www.codeproject.com/Tips/409540/Screenshot-Program

Extending Thesis Project

About a month later of my thesis submission, I have attempted to create a second version of my original project. This time I decided to migrate my project to Unity game engine. The second attempt was focused in more realistic graphics design and also improving the movement of the fighting models.

Thesis Demonstration

I've just completed my thesis' project on game development.
The project meant to be a fighting-style game (like Tekken, Mortal Kombat etc..) written in XNA 4.0 and combine the power of Kinect. The aim of the project was to create a mechanism to handle appropriate the fighting models. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to focus on graphics design.

Thesis

Hello, roughly a year later I decided to upload my Thesis report, project source and binaries, because in the meantime some people asked me for. Please excuse me for any mistakes in my project as I don't have the time to clean it up before posting it. I am doing this because I hate reinventing the wheel; so if anyone find it useful I will be glad to see a better solution and/or a different approach/project; even a 'thnx' would be great :). If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me via email at a.semertzidis(at)gmail.com.

Below you can download my report and my project files:

Report	Source Files	Binary Files

* Please keep in mind that in order to run the binaries files you should have installed XNA 4.0 Framework and running Kinect on v.1.0.0.45 Beta 2 drivers, otherwise application will crash on start.