Hammad Fozi

01

01 / Flagship Case Study

Maelstrom — reviving a dead live game

A free-to-play multiplayer naval-combat title on Steam that had gone dormant on UE 4.19. As the sole engineer, I brought it back to active development, modernized every layer — engine, gameplay, storefronts, servers, live-ops — and prepared its expansion to the Epic Games Store.

UE 4.19 → 5.7 · custom source build Multiplayer naval combat · PvP / PvE Free to play · Steam C++ · Blueprints · PlayFab · AWS “Very Positive” · 2,500+ reviews

Maelstrom — naval combat, in-engine capture

Maelstrom · in-engine capture

Maelstrom — live naval battle, in-engine capture

Live combat · in-engine capture

5 major engine versions

Migrated incrementally 4.19 → 5.7 onto a custom engine source build — gameplay, plugins, SDKs and content resolved at every step.

60+ FPS

Up to 50% frame-cost reduction on heavy maps — scene-capture streaming, cloth & particle LODs, replication tuning.

+50% match density

Three server processes per machine instead of two, after game-thread and bandwidth optimization.

30 cultures

~22,000 phrases through the full Unreal localization pipeline — Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Thai, CJK writing systems.

1,329 live items

Full operational control of the live catalog: rotations, bulk grants, 25+ virtual currencies — no client updates needed.

17 clients / lobby

Custom lobbies scaled 12 → 15 players + spectators, with region-optimal server allocation via AWS Lambda.

Guilds & Guild Wars

Persistent guilds with six permission-based roles, emblems, strongholds and quests — plus scheduled 8v8 best-of-three Guild Wars on PlayFab Groups, Leaderboards V2 and DynamoDB.

Custom lobbies & spectator mode

Private matches with join codes, team assignment, bots, map votes, lobby chat and a purpose-built spectator camera — allocated directly through AWS Lambda, bypassing matchmaking.

Cross-platform via Epic Online Services

One player population across Steam and Epic: cross-platform matches, parties and guilds, EOS↔Steam account linking, full developer-portal setup across Dev/Stage/Live.

Steam Deck & full controller support

Every menu, popup and list navigable on pad — focus handling built as a system, Deck-legible UI at 1280×800, per-device glyphs, runtime input switching.

Hybrid dedicated-server infrastructure

GameFabric baseline + Gameye surge capacity, servers shipped as Docker images, Agones health/allocation, one unified fleet for every mode — dramatically cheaper than the old setup.

Multi-region matchmaking

US-West + EU-West with deterministic lowest-ping selection, party-level ping aggregation, and high-latency warnings — spanning GameFabric, Gameye and GameLift.

In flight right now: Epic Games Store launch preparation · Android port with full PC crossplay · TikTok Live integration where viewer gifts trigger in-game events.

Delivered as Senior Unreal Engineer, Forthright Entertainment Inc. (remote) · Oct 2024 – Jul 2026

Play it on Steam ↗

02

02 / Selected Work

Shipped across AAA, VR & live services

A decade of production Unreal Engine work — gameplay, networking, platform ports and the systems that keep games alive after launch. Clips are real, in-engine captures of systems I built.

▶ Real system capture

AAA VR Metaverse · PC + VR

Sensorium Galaxy

Avatar Customization System — architected & built end-to-end

Contracted to design and deliver the complete avatar system for a AAA VR metaverse: proximity-activated customization terminals, gesture-driven hand-swipe browsing, and asynchronous loading pipelines that keep frame rates smooth while streaming asset-heavy, high-fidelity characters. Backed by persistent color/loadout saves and Mutable-driven dynamic skeletal meshes; earlier gameplay & 3D-UI work on the same title at TLM Partners, with AccelByte backend integration.

UE · C++ & BlueprintsVR + PCMutableAccelByte3D UI

STEAM ↗ CLIP: TUTORIAL ↗ CLIP: APPLY ↗ CLIP: PROXIMITY ↗

▶ Simulator demo

Professional Training Simulator · PC · VR · Sim Rigs

Sanitation VR Training Center

Multiplayer architecture & simulation systems

A supervised truck-driving simulator used for real workforce training. Engineered its supervisor–trainee multiplayer from scratch (LAN, Steam, dashboard-joined sessions), vehicle-specific interactive cabins, dynamic plowable snow, live voice chat, shared replays saved to the supervisor's machine, and automated scoring that lands in a live database — across keyboards, VR headsets, motion trackers, professional rigs and triple-monitor setups.

“Trainees stopped watching slides and started doing the job in a simulator. Instructors watch live, scoring is automatic, and results land in one database.”— Program Director, US training provider

UE · PCVR + Motion TrackingP2P MultiplayerVoice ChatReplay System

▶ Launch trailer

AAA VR Boxing · Meta Quest 2 → Pico Neo 3

Creed: Rise to Glory

Platform port engineering — TLM Partners

Ported the hit VR boxing title from Meta Quest 2 to Pico Neo 3: engine upgrade from UE 4.19 to 4.24, dependency and regression fixes across the stack, and Simplified Chinese localization for the target market.

UE4VR PortingEngine UpgradeLocalization

STEAM ↗

▶ Gameplay preview

Open-World Creature RPG · UE 5.2

Pixelmon

Senior Unreal Generalist Engineer — LiquidX

Built gameplay for an RPG on the Pixelmon IP with the Gameplay Ability System at its core, plus the title's dedicated-server setup, chunking & patching systems, and Wwise audio integration.

UE 5.2Gameplay Ability SystemDedicated ServersWwise

PIXELMON.AI ↗

FPS / RTS Hybrid Remake · UE4

Heroes & Generals

UI programming — HQ demos & RTS architecture, TLM Partners

Prototype remake of the WWII MMO blending boots-on-the-ground FPS with an RTS command layer — I built UI systems for the HQ demos and supported the hybrid FPS/RTS architecture in C++.

UE4UI SystemsFPS + RTSC++

2017 – 2022 · VR · AR · Mobile · Desktop

The first five years

Big Immersive (Team Lead) · Vanilla Arcade

Led a team of five engineers at Big Immersive — building the studio's onboarding, architectural standards and delivery processes from scratch while shipping UE4 projects across desktop, mobile, VR and AR: gameplay, networking, DLC & patching, backend integration and UI. Before that: projection-mapping, VR and AR experiences in UE4, Unity and Kinect v2 at Vanilla Arcade.

Team LeadershipUE4 · UnityVR / ARDLC & Patching

03

03 / Beyond Gameplay

I don't stop where the game ends

Shipping is the halfway point. I build the server infrastructure, live-ops tooling and pipelines that keep a multiplayer game profitable and stable in production.

⬢

Server infrastructure

Hybrid GameFabric + Gameye fleets with Docker-image server builds, Agones lifecycle, AWS Lambda allocation, multi-region matchmaking — engineered for cost as much as for latency.

◳

Live-ops CRM, built from scratch

Retention cohorts and revenue analytics synced from PlayFab, GameLift fleet scaling, Guild War season control via CloudScript, GM & moderation tools, Sentry crash triage — secured with RBAC (26 granular permissions) and a full audit trail.

✦

AI-assisted content R&D

ComfyUI + n8n pipelines on RunPod cloud GPUs generating art assets and in-game-usable video content — plus Docker-containerized tooling for reproducible local deployments.

PlayFabAWS GameLiftCloudScriptGameyeGameFabricAgonesDockerAWS Lambda · S3 · DynamoDBEpic Online ServicesSteamworksPhotonSentryWwisePerforceGitSVNPlasticSCMComfyUIn8nRunPod

04

Game Development Projects with Unreal Engine — book cover

Elevating Game Experiences with Unreal Engine 5, Second Edition — book cover

04 / Publications

I literally wrote the book on it. Twice.

Co-author of Packt's project-based Unreal Engine titles — teaching engine development in C++ and Blueprints from first principles through complete, shippable games. If you hire me, you get the engineer other engineers learn Unreal from.

Elevating Game Experiences with Unreal Engine 5PACKT · 2ND ED · 2022 ↗ Game Development Projects with Unreal EnginePACKT · 2020 ↗ Author page on AmazonAMAZON ↗

05

05 / Experience

Nine years, remote-first since 2020

OCT 2024 – JUL 2026

Senior Unreal Engineer

Forthright Entertainment Inc. · Remote

Sole engineer on the end-to-end revival of Maelstrom — engine migration ×5, EOS crossplay, hybrid server infrastructure, live-ops CRM, and the full feature slate above.

JAN 2024 – OCT 2024

Senior Unreal Generalist

Tensei Games · Remote

Led multiple project teams across Digital Twin, Metaverse and Pixel Streaming demo builds — UI, multiplayer, server deployment and gameplay.

AUG 2023 – DEC 2023

Senior Programmer (Unreal) · Contract

Sensorium · Remote

Architected and delivered the complete Avatar Customization System for VR and PC with production-quality code and documentation.

JUL 2022 – JUL 2023

Senior Unreal Generalist Engineer

LiquidX · Remote

Pixelmon RPG in UE 5.2 — Gameplay Ability System, dedicated servers, patching, Wwise.

OCT 2020 – JUL 2022

Game Software Engineer

TLM Partners, Inc. · Remote

UI, Gameplay and Framework squads on AAA UE4 titles: Creed: Rise to Glory VR (Quest 2 → Pico port), Sensorium Galaxy, Heroes & Generals remake.

OCT 2018 – OCT 2022

Unreal Game Developer & Team Lead

Big Immersive

Led a team of 5 — built onboarding, process flows, architectural standards and KPI-driven delivery tracking from scratch; shipped UE4 projects across desktop, mobile, VR and AR.

JUN 2017 – JUN 2018

Game Designer, Developer & Prototype Specialist

Vanilla Arcade

Projection-mapping, VR and AR experiences in UE4, Unity and Microsoft Kinect v2.

2014 – 2018

BSc Computer Science

FAST-NUCES

06

06 / Remote, Solved

Built for distributed teams

Fully remote with distributed US and EU studios since 2020 — the process, the overlap and the hardware are already in place.

Timezone overlap · Dubai (UTC+4)

LONDON

FULL DAY

BERLIN / CET