Josh Malmquist

Gameplay Programmer

Smite 2

Smite 2 is a sequel to Smite, a 3rd-person action MOBA using mythology, built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5.

_____________________________________________________________

Position: Senior Gameplay Programmer

Company: Titan Forge (Hi-Rez Ventures)

Duration: Feburary 2023 - Present

Technologies: Unreal Engine 5, C++

Released Platforms

Windows PC

PlayStation 5

Xbox Series X/S

Steam Deck

Contributions

Created the foundation for several of Smite 2’s Gameplay systems, including Inventory Manager, Ability System, Gameplay Abilities, Targeting, Asset Management, Familiar System, Movement, Characters, etc.
Established an Ability framework to allow designers to easily script and design abilities with little programming assistance needed.
Utilized Unreal Insights to analyze performance optimizations to help reduce gameplay systems load to achieve specific tick times on the server and improve client performance.
Worked with Production and Design to plan out and create the Character Pipeline and manage Gameplay team tasks
Provided daily direct support to designers, helping teach blueprints and assist with gameplay implementations

Notable Gameplay Mechanics & Features

Inventory Manager/ Equipment System:

Created an inventory system that could be added to any actor via a component. The inventory manager was able to dynamically add new slots and was easily configurable to design and able to be modified per character. This allowed a designer to easily equip equipment to grant effect, stats, or abilities. The Equipment also used a component system to allow the designer to grant specific functionality dynamically to abilities such as ammo, refiring, firing instance tracking, Stacking, etc.. Through this Inventory system, designers could easily remove, swap, store, add, and modify a character's equipment through blueprints without needing programing.

Ability Framework:

Using Unreal’s Gameplay Ability system plugin, I created base template abilities with a strong C++ foundation to allow for quick iteration while also being easy to maintain and stable. These abilities establish a clear flow and pattern for designers to work in and operate safely and have a variety of settings for easy config with minimal blueprint scripting needed.

Aladdin

Aladdin was one of the many gods I got to be lead gameplay programming on. The main feature I worked on for Aladdin was his Wall Run Tech. I created tech to allow characters to path up and along world geo dynamically in the game. It uses collision traces to generate a path along the world geo that it forwards to a spline, which the character travels along. His Wall run required a lot of iteration on the wall run generation formula to get it to feel intuitive for players to use.