About me

Niels Ulrik Gajhede

My name is Niels Ulrik Gajhede and I am a 33-year-old multi-talented developer.

I am currently open to work.
– and work on my Indie game Mysteries in Orthoxis in my spare time.

My combined experience is a mixture of a lot of after hour projects, work experience and education. Since childhood, I have had a great passion for creating and designing and I have rarely had a period in my life without a project in the works. I love to work on projects where I can carry my passion with me and work with people where projects can grow beyond just my ideas and capabilities.

Niels is a happy and outgoing colleague who fits in well in virtually all social contexts, and he was therefore also very well-liked among his colleagues on the team. – Morten Christensen, Tech Lead at IT-Minds

Education-wise I have a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a 4-year graphical design education from NEXT in Copenhagen. When I studied as a graphic designer I chose the digital electives which harmonize well with my Computer Science degree. As I thereby have a lot of experience with subjects often omitted from the Computer Science projects at AAU due to time constraints.

Below in the next section, I have made 3 presentations of the skills I have found most relevant for a future employer.

For more information, write me a mail at niels@hrgajhede.dk.

I will also gladly show my recommendations in their entirety, game code and send a demo of my game for inspection of my skills. Find more information about my game at hrgajhede.dk

Project management
System development
Graphics and UI

My project management skill is one of the skills I have the most experience with. I have used this skill in a variety of after hour projects as well as in my work at IT-Minds as lead Unity developer.

When I manage projects I enjoy and appreciate good team collaboration and the value it provides a project. As a manager I like to hand out responsibilities to the team members to achieve better estimations and systems, as I am well aware the team members have a better understanding of their own tasks. This also provides me with more confidence and time to make sure the overall progress of the project is running smoothly, making sure collaborations between individual members are done at correct times to ensure systems are developed in the right phase and will work together. I have also found this approach lowers merge issues and provides more accurate estimations.

From day one, Niels has been a close sparring partner for me, and in addition been the manager for the entire Unity development part of the project. He has a good overview, with an eye for detail, and is very well-grounded in his considerations. – Morten Christensen, Tech Lead at IT-Minds

Despite having been lead unity developer on a successful video game for a big client at IT-minds – that was delivered on the estimated time. The project I am most proud to have managed is my video game project Mysteries in Orthoxis, which has now been in development for 5 years. This is because of the challenges that have been overcome with this long time project and the quality of both the current version of the product and the management with volunteers that have enjoyed being part of the project for 5 years.

The Mysteries in Orthoxis team has not been suffering from burnout or departments being unable to progress due to a lack of systems or material. This has been achieved by prioritized planning with integrated user testing, department feature requests and continuous sorting to keep the project on track.

Niels is always passionate and deeply committed both in tasks he sets for himself and in tasks he is responsible for handing out to others on the team. His goal is at all times to create quality in his projects, which he achieves with focus and willingness to work. – Mathias Ditlev, Sound development team on Mysteries in Orthoxis

I have also from the beginning of the project been very focused on department feature requests. The idea of this focus is to make elegant scaling solutions fit for continuous development, and as the game and developers have grown this approach has been proven very successful. Especially when it comes to the challenges of different IT experience and knowledge within the development team.

System design is a skill I got passionate about after a couple of years of game development. This happened when I realized the potential and the benefits gained from sophisticated system design. Ever since then, I have always strived to go the extra distance to obtain high polished systems, which has led to systems I am really proud of. A list of these and their features can be found in the bottom of this section.

My main experience with this skill has been obtained while making my own game and polished at the time I was lead Unity developer at IT-Minds. The game developed at IT-Minds was part of a complicated infrastructure which gave a unique set of requirements for the system design. I have experience with writing complicated systems from scratch as well as building atop of already established system such as the Unity Engine.

The project had to be hosted and operated in an Azure cloud setup, from which the game had to be streamed to a projector, on-premise, at a large customer. – Morten Christensen, Tech Lead at IT-Minds

When designing systems my approach is to always begin with a short analysis and strategy plan for the system. I rarely find it useful to begin making fully fletched diagrams in the beginning, as I find that it is essential to be able to swiftly adapt to new requirements or discoveries during development. My main concern at the beginning of development is to make sure the system has the right responsibilities and interacts with other systems in a meaningful way. I want the system to be reliable and scalable from the very beginning and then add complexity and simplifications later as requirements evolve and discoveries are made.

When diagrams are not dictating the development from the very beginning it is faster to reevaluate system responsibilities and scalability capabilities. Oftentimes I will expand and divide responsibilities to better suit new requirements or ideas. In my opinion this will in time lead to better, more readable and reliable systems. I find that this approach creates great systems but requires good project management and a well aligned team.

Niels is approachable and easy to talk to. You can clearly see that he wants good communication and a good relationship with those he works with. – Mathias Ditlev, Sound development team on Mysteries in Orthoxis

Save system

A system build from scratch that saves game data to the device in use.

Asynchronous execution to allow the game to run while saving
Saving queue that ensures correct save data no matter what state the game is in while saving or waiting to save
Generic save methods to ensure reliable and reusable code
Divided responsibility classes to allow different scenes to save slightly differently while reusing the core system

Automated text and voiceover importer

A system that allows text editors to develop and make changes to texts and voice lines in a blink of an eye, and without any knowledge of programming or Unity.

One click text import from shared Google Docs documents
One click voice over generation by the use of Eleven Labs AI

Generic puzzle system

A system build from scratch used for creating and managing puzzles within Unity.

Ensures reliable and identical behavior for puzzle interactions
Uses game state to figure out if completed instead of internal states, for a more maintainable and reliable behavior
Allows for fast implementation of new unique puzzles
Puzzles are fully customizable and can have an unlimited amount of steps before completion

Animation state management

A system developed to simplify animation management and allow for customization to achieve fully reusable animations.

Extension to the Animator in Unity
Makes it possible to save and load the Animator without any additional setup, for faster implementation and a more reliable system
Powerful animation state and animation trigger system, with customizable method calls during an animation for better reusability of animations

Disclaimer: The list of systems I am proud of only contain systems from my own game, as I will be able to showcase those. Additionally the systems are not exclusively designed by me but rather designed in collaboration with the game development team.

I have made a lot of graphical work and publications during my graphic design education and at my job as a graphic designer at Viborg municipal. My latest professional work was art assets for the game project I worked on at IT-Minds. I am skilled both in digital and physical publications, but in the last couple of years, I have been working almost entirely with digital. My latest graphical journey is 3D where I have made a 3D printed figurine of the main character in my video game Mysteries in Orthoxis.

he [Niels] also has a lot of skills in graphic design, which has been used extensively in the development of new gaming assets in the project. – Morten Christensen, Tech Lead at IT-Minds

When I make graphical work I strive to bring story into my visuals to enrich the work in an immersive and interesting way. I almost always make my graphical work from scratch and rarely use templates as I find that it limits the scope of possibilities too much. Instead I use feedback loops and references a lot to ensure quality. Some examples of my previous work can be found on my Behance page.

Niels has a strong eye for detail, is very persistent and bites into an issue until it is solved in a good way. – Marianne Thingholm, Head of Communications Viborg municipal

For my game Mysteries in Orthoxis I have made all the graphical work myself. I have drawn all the characters, environments, graphical user interfaces and icons. I have also designed all the animations, rigs, and interactions between the player and the graphical user interfaces.

The game is a mystery and puzzle game, where the player collects observations later used to solve mysteries, and as a consequence the game contains a lot of information. One of the challenges has therefore been to develop a system that challenges the player but still remains intuitive and easy to navigate. After many iterations and continuous feedback from the game’s community, the system is now in a state where this has been achieved.