Hi, I’m Ashraf

Game Developer | Creativity Enthusiast

I am a passionate game developer from Bangladesh and working as such for about 7+ years currently running Wiseman Studio Limited with a small team. I hope this page can give you some idea about myself both as a developer and a personal being.

Also, please keep in mind that I am constantly learning and evolving. I cannot share my current projects due to NDA, however, I have given approximate timing of these projects below in title. The projects that are shown here are done from my early years, I think I have grown a lot, both as a person and a developer since then.

Projects

My Projects So Far . . .

Eller's Algorithm [July, 2020]

Last 2 months I was so wrapped up with my work. Finally got 2 days of free time to continue my maze generation learning further. Learned a lot and still so much to look forward to. Among the most efficient maze generation algorithms out there, it is considered to be one of the bests, that's why I wanted to make from ground up. Thanks to Jamis Buck for his awesome blog which helped me a lot understanding the concepts. Thinking of starting a bi-weekly programming challenge. Every 2 weeks, I will try to post and create something new. This is challenge number #1! Click here to see demo!

Random Maze Generation [April, 2020]

Learned about various maze generation algorithms. It was part of a coding challenge I faced. I did the whole demo in ~4.5 hours. (Maze Generation with single entry-single exit + shortest Path-finding A*). I felt so overwhelmed and nervous at first, but slowly I regained momentum and finished the project. I wish I could finish it within 3 hours, in my defense, I am not used to with this kind of challenges unfortunately. However Click here to see demo!

Dependency Inversion ZENJECT [March, 2020]

Here I learned about dependency injection, SOLID principles and an amazing DI library called Extenject(formally known as ZENJECT). Thanks to infalliable code and a pretty good documentation of Zenject in github. I learned a lot about DI programming patterns and fell in love with it.

Simple Procedural Mesh Generation based game [January, 2020]

Here I made a game using the things I learned from Mesh Generation lessons from Freya Holmer's videos. Most difficult part was mesh-pooling. Click here to see demo!

Procedural Wave Mesh Generation [December, 2019]

I am following Freya Holmer's youtube channel, I learned so much from her channel about procedural mesh generation. This is just a video demo of the project. I will upload the github link once I complete the basic gameplay I have in mind. Click here to see demo!

Ez Audio Manager [November, 2019]

This library turns all your audio files into C-Sharp Enums in a scriptable object. This is targeted towards casual games which has a low number of sound assets. Full project on github is given, click above image to browse.
Click here to see demo!

LAN Chat w/ Raw C# Socket [July, 2019]

An interesting study on raw c# socket programming. Wanted to learn the very basics of Socket networking. Learned a lot in this study. Click here to see demo!

Pathfinding (A* vs Dijkstra) [August, 2018]

Wanted to visualize the difference between these two algorithms. So i made this. Thanks to quill18 & Sebastian Lague. I learned a lot from there tutorial videos available on youtube. Click here to see demo!

Mukticamp [July, 2017]

I was part of an excellent team with this project. It was a very ambitious project right from the start. Its a strategy + RPG game made for android, targeted towards Bangladesh people because its based on our Liberation War of 1971. I have given the link of the project on playstore. I worked on various things in this project like UI, 3rd party library integration, Optimization, game-play features etc. As I was included from the very start, I often had to play different roles to make the project work. This project started on late 2016 and lasted for about 18-20 months. I learned a lot during this time, huge thanks to my mentor Arifur Rahman.

Basket2D [April, 2016]

Clone of Facebook's Messenger basket ball game. Done very early on my game dev journey!

Color Box [March, 2016]

Hyper casual game made very early on my game developer journey. Simple game with lots of room for improvement.

Strategy/RPG Ongoing prototype [2017]

I grew up playing Strategy games like commandos/desparados. Always wanted to prototype a similar thing. This is a ***very*** early try on that. I will continue it once I have some good amount of free time in my hand.

My Journey . . .

Start of my game dev journey
I graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in computer science in late 2016. During the first two years, I was very confused about what career path to pursue as I spent those initial two years doing web development. But I knew I have a creative side that I want to embrace.
Plus, that year in 2015, I got the first prize in a logo competition. That was a huge moral boost for me. So I wanted to work on a more accessible platform where creativity meets technology. Then one Friday morning in 2015, at 11:47 AM (Irony is I don't remember the date!), I bumped on to a video suggestion. When I finished the video, I instantly thought to myself I want to pursue that. That's why I always feel an obligation to thank Rami Ismail for making me see a life in this amazingly interesting world of game development. So that was my start on the Game Development journey!

Professional Career
I have been working professionally in game development since July 2016. Throughout that whole year, I worked heavily in game development making casual games. Then I got a permanent job in December 2016. After about 6-7 months working there, the company merged with another small indie studio. Together we formed a new company named Mindfisher. But our project remained the same. So I worked with the same group of people for about 2 years. In mid 2018, I moved to Ulka Games (subsidy of MoonFrog).

Birth of Wiseman Studio
After working 3 years in Ulka games, I finally had the courage to do something of my own. Hence the birth of Wiseman Studio Limited.
At first our focus was in Steam game market, but an accident changed the direction of our studio. I had to get a new job in Thunder Games just so that I can run my studio.
Even though I had a great time mostly in Thunder Games, I thought to revamp my studio in hyper / hybrid casual market which felt like a more sustainable way to run the company. Since then, we have been doing hybrid casual games with foreign publishers looking for a hit!

Technology
I mostly worked with Unity, but also have significant experience with Cocos2d. I also worked with Game Maker Studio way back. I am pretty comfortable to switch platforms if needs be.

A bit about myself
I was born on 18th September, 1994. I am the youngest in my family. From my childhood, I am a bit introvert. I had a band when I was in school. I miss that life very much. I love all sorts of music and admire every genre. Among computer games, I LOVE Dota 2. I mainly like strategy based games like age of empire, commandos, shadow-tactics, desparados etc. I am also very fond of story driven games like Telltale's Walking Dead, Mafia 1 & 2.
Also, I have a cat. I love him more than I can express. :)

Last Words
I love my work as a game maker. I believe that I still have a lot to learn, but I am trying my best to get there day by day. I am very confident in my diligent work ethics and my capability of learning new things. I am a constant learner. I know my strong suits as well as my weaker ones. I don't shy away from new or unknown technology as long as it is related to games.

I don't work to be in my comfort zone, I work to enhance it!
I hope one day, I will make my loved ones (specially my maa, my wife and my family) proud of me. Cheers!
Thank you so much for your attention.

--- Ashraf