Welcome to my website !

Hello, I am Max-Martin Sherie, a full stack gameplay programmer specializing in 3C systems, UI, crossplay infrastructure, and shader development.

I have always been passionate about video games and technology, which led me to build a career spanning AAA production at Ubisoft, indie studio co-founding, and university-level teaching. Along the way I picked up a broad set of skills across C++, C#, TypeScript, Python, and worked across Unity, Unreal, and custom engines.

I also studied shaders and 3D art to move fast through the prototyping phase. When I'm not working I enjoy team-based sports and playing video games.

Below you will find projects I have worked on, both professional and personal.

Here's a quick interview I did at ESMA Montpellier if you want to know more about me : https://youtu.be/o38Nbbb8FSY?si=VcfICmpjGGnSnAjX

Contact Info :

Professional Projects

Morbid Metal

A single-player action game by ScreenJuice with fast-paced combat and cyberpunk aesthetics.

Ballshot Arena

A crossplay competitive sports game for Mobile, PC, and Steam Deck - Rocket League meets explosive arena combat.

Beyond Good & Evil 2

A large-scale AAA open-world action-adventure by Ubisoft Montpellier, sequel to the cult classic Beyond Good & Evil.

Experience

Co-Founder & Lead Programmer — DontGiveUp Interactive

2024 – Present

I co-founded DontGiveUp Interactive, a remote-first indie studio currently building Ballshot Arena, a crossplay competitive sports game for Mobile, PC, and Steam Deck.

On the technical side I designed and implemented all core 3C systems, the crossplay networking infrastructure, and the cloud save systems in Unity. I also authored the asset integration and technical art pipelines that let a distributed team work without stepping on each other.

On the production side I built the team, set up the agile workflows, and manage the full development cycle from pre-production through active development.

Advanced Gameplay Programming Professor — LISAA Bordeaux

2025 – Present

I design and deliver an advanced Unity programming curriculum for final-year game development students, targeting professional industry standards.

Beyond the curriculum I mentor students through their end-of-year shipped projects and portfolio development, covering gameplay architecture, optimization, and the kind of practical problem-solving that doesn't show up in textbooks.

Game Development Instructor — Freelance

2023 – Present

I work with a client base of seven, providing tailored one-on-one instruction across the full stack of game development, from Python fundamentals all the way through to full 3D Unity production.

One of the more interesting projects: I guided a blind student through building a custom sound-based engine with integrated 2D graphics, which meant rethinking Unity's architecture around entirely non-visual interaction design.

Freelance Gameplay Programmer — ScreenJuice

Oct – Dec 2025

Two-month contract on Morbid Metal (shipped). I came on to overhaul boss fight mechanics and push through a backlog of critical bugs during live playtest conditions, the kind of work where you're fixing and iterating in real time while players are in the build.

I also integrated the Steam and Discord SDKs (social features, rich presence) and developed and tuned several character control and combat mechanics from design spec to final feel.

Gameplay Programmer — Ubisoft Montpellier

Jul 2022 – Feb 2024

My first industry role out of school, working on two successive projects at the same studio.

I started on an unannounced Rabbids mobile project, working full-stack: a complex multi-tier currency equivalency system (Euro to Hard/Soft currency), two arcade mini-games I built independently, and a collaboration with an economy designer to build the frontend and proceduralized backend of an in-game shop, all in C# and TypeScript.

I then moved to Beyond Good & Evil 2 where I produced gameplay elements from scratch in C++ and nodal scripting, and built and owned the asset integration pipeline for everything I produced, including models, rigs, shaders, and animations. I also spent time helping debug the engine's experimental tooling.

ESMA Toulouse

2019 – 2022

I started out making 2D games in JavaScript and HTML, which is where I got my footing in object-oriented programming. Second year moved into Unity and C#, culminating in a two-month solo project where I was the sole developer. By the third year I was leading a team of seven over eight months on Makina, a cross-platform PC vs VR asymmetric multiplayer game set in an open world city.

On Makina I engineered a custom network bridge linking two separate Unity projects by reworking the Mirror networking library, handled all PC player mechanics, built a procedural facade placement tool to populate the city, and wrote a custom HLSL lit shader that simulates pen-drawing shading. The project won the Student Project Award at the Montpellier Stream Show and was presented at Paris Games Week two consecutive years, TGS Montpellier, and the Influencer Conference in Toulouse.

Skills

Languages :

C++
C#
TypeScript
JavaScript
Python

Engines & Tools :

Unity
Unreal Engine
Custom Engines
Git
Perforce
Jira
Confluence

Specialties :

3C Systems
Crossplay Networking
Economy & Backend
Shader Optimization
Steam SDK
Discord SDK

Soft Skills

Team Leadership
Curriculum Design
Technical Mentoring
Production Management

Character Controller Study - Github

For this project I set out to make a highly customizable character controller for Unity 2020.3 to fully understand the various ways to handle movement in a first person game. Further down the line I hope to make the character controller work in third person to then move on and to experiment with more specific and niche movement mechanics.

This is still an unfinished project that I am working on in between classes to push forward my passion for character interactions in video games.

Demo

ZQSD or WASD to moveSHIFT to sprintESCAPE to show cursor

To get the full experience and to play around with the values you can download the project on Github

Acceleration and Deceleration

This character controller's acceleration works through four different states : idle, accelerating, sustaining, and decelerating. The speed at which these states will be treated also differs depending on the character's grounded states : grounded, mid air, or sliding.

All of these accelerations depend on user defined times to accomplish (the time it will take the character controller to accomplish what it is doing i.e. accelerating or decelerating).

These metrics are then applied to user defined curves to define how the character controller will handle the states of acceleration.

These curves are customizable so that the user can design the game feel of the character controller so that it may pander to the desired experience for the game.

For example, if you want a snappy first person shooter experience you would make the curve accelerate very quickly at first then have a slower rate of acceleration towards the end.

Alternatively, for a walking simulator or a horror game you would invert the previous curve to give the character controller a more unsettling and unsure feel.

Roadmap

Input detection
Simple movement
State-based acceleration
Acceleration and deceleration curves
Camera Smoothing
Jump & gravity
Slope & slide handling
Sprint
Air control
Edge safety
Jump tolerance
Counter strafing
Crouch
Third person camera
Camera transitions
Third person animation

Custom Lighting in Unity

My end of 3rd year project : Makina needed a custom lit master material where the shading would imitate that of a pen drawing to add a creepy/oppressive atmosphere. I set out to make this shader in urp using hlsl coded custom nodes for the shader graph.

This shader will also be responsive to the player's circumstances.

Getting the Luminence

Through the use of hlsl I was able to make a custom node for the Unity shader-graph that would fetch the color values of each lit pixel.

Using different vectorial equations I was able to get the radiance, the diffuse, and the specular values.

I then cross referenced the result of these values with the relative luminence equation to get the luminence (level of light) of each pixel.

Setting up the Custom Shading

Having fetched the level of luminence, I then created threee tilling scribble patterns that, when pilled on top of each other, generate an RGB map.

As the level of luminence descends over distance the rgb layers will smoothly appear as shading patterns to create a gradient effect.

I have found through experimentation that using a thinner brush for the first shading layer and then larger ones as the luminence level descends really sells this hand drawn shading style that we were going for.

The master material I generated based on this logic is also compatible with RGB map-based texturing.

in game view of the custom lit master material — *An in game view of a scene using the custom lit master material*

Procedural Building Tool

My end of 3rd year project also required the creation of an open world city which would take a lot of time for the integrators to put into place. This is why I set out to create a procedural facade placer tool for Unity where the user would simply have to place primitive shapes of buildings that will then be automatically covered in facades.

The system works by navigating the mesh horizontally based on the height of a facade element and dividing it into floors. These floors are then split vertically based on the width of the facades to place them with a slight horizontal rescale to fill in the gaps and to avoid overlap. Corner elements can also be placed to fill the gaps at the corners of each floor.

To accelerate the integration process even further I also made it compatible with Probuilder meshes.

School Projects

Makina

A cross platform game where a normal sized pc player hides from a giant VR player in a city. On this project I coded a network link that works between 2 different Unity projects by reworking the Mirror IDE. I also handled coding the mechanics for the PC player.

Yuggoth

A first person puzzle game where I was the developer. During the 2 month long project I learned to make easily iterable mechanics.

Shoot Shoot Boom

A side scroller action game made in 1 month. This solo project helped me discover the basics of Gameplay programming and the concept of min-maxing movement mechanics.

Game Jams

Max-Martin Sherie