Max Litvinov's Portfolio

02. Where I've Worked

Senior Gameplay Engineer @ Archetype Entertainment

February 2026 to Present | Exodus (PS5 / Xbox / PC)

Rebuilt the player recoil system alongside another engineer and a combat designer, moving from a state machine model to an accumulation and recovery model driven by designer-authored curves.
Owned the control scheme rebuild across gamepad and keyboard/mouse, including the radial and directional weapon menus, ability binding, and a context layering system that lets input modes cleanly suppress one another.
Owned weapon selection and switching: direct select, quick swap, persistent loadout state, and the rules governing what can and cannot swap while another weapon is active.
Own the weapon reload system. Rebuilt it around montage sets and wired it into the RPG stat systems, so reload speed responds to a player's stats and varies per weapon mode.
Drove 3Cs and combat feel across cover, camera, evade, and animation, with a focus on making aiming and transitions in cover as responsive as the genre expects.
Owned reticle, crosshair, and weapon bloom, including targeting states, aim obstruction handling, and the feedback that tells a player where a shot will actually land.
Built the companion player targeting system, letting players open a radial to direct companion abilities and flick between targets mid combat.
Built the tooling that lets design work without an engineer, including a keybinding editor that surfaces and reorders every binding in the game outside of PIE, plus extensions to the project's debug menu and console command suite.

Senior Gameplay Engineer @ Atomic Arcade

May 2024 to January 2026 | G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes (PC / Xbox / PS5)

Primary engineer and owner of player-facing combat on an unreleased console action title in Unreal Engine 5. I took features the whole way: prototype the ability in Blueprint, build whatever engine-side C++ it needed, then hand it to design and support them once they owned it.
Became technical owner and subject matter expert for the project's combat frameworks after the lead who designed them moved off implementation. The ability system was custom built on top of Unreal's Gameplay Ability System rather than vanilla GAS, and the damage pipeline was written from scratch. I extended both as new combat features demanded it.
Authored the ADS and cover systems, including a custom movement mode with cover zones, edge peeking, corner transitions, and motion-matched transitions, with aim state published so any system could react to it.
Built the melee strike system alongside another engineer and a combat designer, which tells a target a strike is coming and when, before it lands. Without that, parry, blocking, and reaction windows are not possible.
Owned grenade and rocket ballistics, including the math for leading a moving target, handling throws that can't reach, and previewing a throw's arc through multiple bounces. Also extended the projectile and hitscan systems.
Owned equipment, inventory, loadouts, and armor, including the handoff where equipping an item grants and revokes the abilities that item provides.
Built debug tools into every combat system I touched. The rule was that a system should tell you what went wrong and who caused it, so a blocked action names exactly what blocked it instead of just failing quietly.

Senior Gameplay Engineer @ Ubisoft

January 2019 to May 2024 | Multiple AAA Titles

Tom Clancy's The Division Heartland (2021 to 2024)
Gameplay engineer on a PvPvE extraction shooter with 30+ concurrent players, built on the Division 2 codebase in Snowdrop.
Took over the mission system when the game changed direction and re-architected it for extraction. Missions run in a player's own session while other players are live in the same world, so mission state had to stay private to one player without breaking the shared world around them.
Defined how designers authored missions and connected that to everything a mission touches: mission volumes, server-side scripting, UI, and save data.
Built the authoring tools that went with it, including custom polygon mission volumes, dynamic prop spawning, highlighting for key objects, difficulty settings, server script object spawning, and support for running several missions at once.
Owned and helped design player abilities including the healing field, loot scanner, and assault turret.
Owned the damage pipeline on the server, including modifiers and weapon damage.
Assassin's Creed Nexus (2020 to 2021)
Key member of the combat team adapting Assassin's Creed for Quest 2, released to strong reviews and a Meta Game of the Year nomination.
Built the player dash and the logic for which enemies can attack and when: attack tokens, positioning, and navmesh work.
Helped build a combat conversation system in Unity, a hybrid combat director with its own scripting language for authoring how encounters play out.
Standalone Quest 2 is an unforgiving performance target and almost everything blew the budget at first. Cut frame cost with async spawning, UI optimization, garbage collection management, and object pooling, especially for weapons.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (2019)
Designed and built the trading system that became the vendor feature at launch, including the server-side handshake that keeps both sides of a trade in agreement so items can't be duplicated or lost if someone drops mid-trade.
The system had to be authoritative on the server, so a client couldn't misreport what it was offering, and had to hold up when a trade was cancelled, when inventory space ran out, or when an item stopped being valid mid-trade.
Embedded with Massive Entertainment, integrating trading across inventory, UI, and backend.

Software Engineer @ Jam City

October 2017 to December 2018 | Cookie Jam Blast (iOS / Android / Samsung)

Generalist gameplay engineer focusing on characters, game modes, asset optimization, and internal tooling (level editor, asset editor).
Assisted with live ops and live config pushes for a mobile title with millions of players.
Collaborated with artists and designers to ship content updates on a regular cadence.

Unity Developer @ ArchieMD

January 2017 to September 2017

Built emergency medical training simulations in Unity3D with haptic, XR, and AR device integration for government contracts.
Took products from prototype through to client-facing presentation.

Interactive Developer @ Relative Scale

January 2015 to December 2016

Sole programmer on 5+ interactive installations in Unity3D for museums and universities including NC State, Emory, and the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library.
Lead programmer on a large-scale interactive cornhole game installation at Reynolds Coliseum, NC State.

03. Games I've Worked On

Archetype Entertainment (February 2026 to Present)

Exodus

A new AAA sci-fi action RPG for PS5, Xbox, and PC. I'm a core gameplay engineer on 3Cs and combat. Controls, weapon handling, and how the game feels to play.

Featured In Game Informer Exodus cover story, August 2026 ↗

Atomic Arcade (May 2024 to January 2026)

G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes

An unreleased console action game in UE5. I was the primary engineer on player-facing combat. I also became the technical owner of the ability framework, a custom system built on top of GAS, and the damage pipeline.

Ubisoft (2021 to 2024)

Tom Clancy's The Division Heartland

A PvPvE extraction shooter, 30+ players, built on the Division 2 codebase in Snowdrop. The mission system got handed to me when the game changed direction and I re-architected it for extraction. Missions run in your own session while other players are live in the same world. I also owned server-side damage and built player abilities: healing field, loot scanner, assault turret.

Snowdrop
C++
Networked
PvPvE

Ubisoft (2020 to 2021)

Assassin's Creed Nexus

Assassin's Creed on Quest 2. Strong reviews and a Meta Game of the Year nomination. I built the player dash and the logic for which enemies can attack and when, and spent a lot of my time on performance.

Unity3D
C#
VR

Ubisoft (2019)

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

An open world action game in Snowdrop. I built the player trading system, which shipped as the vendor feature. Server logic, inventory, and UI.

Snowdrop
C++
Networked
Co-op

Jam City (2017 to 2018)

Cookie Jam Blast

A mobile puzzle game with millions of players. I worked on characters, game modes, and asset optimization, and built the level and asset editors the team used.

Mobile
Live Service

Other Noteworthy Projects

Personal UE5 Work

Where I explore Unreal systems on my own time. World streaming, save and progression, engine plugins, and editor tooling, plus the usual combat and UI work on top. Good practice for writing systems other people have to use.

UE5 C++

NCSU Library Walk of Fame

An interactive installation for the NC State University library, built as sole programmer at Relative Scale. One of 5+ interactive installations delivered in Unity3D for museums and universities.

Unity3D C# Interactive

Project Renegade

A deep dive into first person shooter architecture. I bought the Low Poly Unreal Shooter pack and converted the entire Blueprint project to C++, rebuilding the weapon, movement, and combat systems from the ground up to understand how FPS games are put together.

UE5 C++ Blueprints

Max Litvinov.

I build gameplay.

01. About Me