A Little About Myself

Hi, I’m Justin from Germany. I’m a self-taught game developer with over 9 years of experience creating mods for games like CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, and Left 4 Dead 2.

My experience comes mainly from working with the Source SDK, Valve’s development toolkit for the Source Engine. This gave me direct access to some of these games' code and let me create mods that go beyond the usual scope.

 

How It Came About

At 14, I began learning how to mod and develop plugins for Counter-Strike 1.6 on the GoldSrc engine. I found the creative process so fulfilling that I knew it was more than just a hobby for me; it was something I wanted to pursue as a career.

Between those early days and 2016, I also spent time developing cheats for games like A.V.A (developed by NEOWIZ) and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which gave me my first exposure to game internals, memory manipulation, and reverse engineering.

 
 

FAQs

  • I’ve always been drawn to zombie games and the zombie theme. I’ve also been a fan of The Walking Dead for a long time. My first exposure to the Left 4 Dead series was when my brother brought it home for the Xbox 360, and it’s still one of the best zombie games! Even back when I played CS 1.6 and CS:S, I would always search for zombie servers to play on, so I guess this interest is something rooted in me.

    That passion carried over to Left 4 Dead 2, and I even ran my own servers from 2016 to 2021. This gave me plenty of opportunities to learn game development and create mods for the game.

  • My favorite project was when I was contracted to create an AI system for a client in Garry’s Mod. It’s by far the largest and most complex project I’ve worked on, and it’s really special to me because it demonstrated just how much is possible when modding a game.

    In this project, I didn’t just script behaviors. I had to go deep into the game’s memory and engine structures. For example, I modified class memory layouts so I could add new attributes for the AI bots, hooked core functions in the engine, and even replaced – this is for the nerds – virtual tables to customize behavior more efficiently than scripting would. This let me implement features that were impossible with standard scripting alone.

    I was able to do things like optimize trace filters for AI detection and extend navigation meshes, which really showed how far you can push a game engine when you understand it at a low level. The beauty of it is that under the hood, it’s essentially no different than if the developers had built those changes themselves – it’s just a different approach. That’s why this remains my favorite experience in game development so far.

  • I’m a programmer who specializes in gameplay engineering, which means I focus on building the gameplay side of a game or mod. I provide services to both gaming communities (hobbyists) and businesses — for example, developing mods for Garry’s Mod as well as games that support SourceMod, such as Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, CS:S, and No More Room in Hell.

    For communities, I create unique mods that make their servers stand out and give players new experiences to enjoy. There’s nothing better than being able to play on your favorite servers without them shutting down due to technical debt. For businesses, I contribute to their game projects by handling the game and gameplay programming, building robust gameplay systems that last and are easy to maintain, so they don’t cause headaches down the road.