SFML community forums

General => General discussions => Topic started by: Ricky on September 01, 2011, 07:50:03 am

Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Ricky on September 01, 2011, 07:50:03 am
I've just been curious lately and I often find myself off daydreaming while I'm supposed to be programming or studying..
but I wonder who all of you really are. This has to be the most diverse forum I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of
and I want to know the background of the many skilled programmers we have here, like how did you learn programming
and what made you get into it? Did you go to school to learn or are you an autodidact?
What country are you from and what languages do you speak?

I'm a 19 year old hispanic highschool drop out :? (left school but got diploma and going to college, no worries :wink:)
I program as a hobby and have been studying all programming languages on and off for about 6 years now.
I myself am an autodidact, I've taught myself C and "enough" C++ but am always learning new things.
I regret not knowing more languages since there are people from all over the world here.. everyone in my
house speaks at least 3 languages (English, Spanish and French) with the exception of my uncle and I. He speaks Latin, Greek, Spanish
and French and only knows how to say "Hello" and "My Friend" in English. I know English and Spanish
and a few* words in Dutch but I'm still studying

I want to know.. Who is Laurent Gomila?
Why did he decide to make SFML?
What is his preferred compiler?
What got him into programming in the first place?
Why do I keep saying "he" what if Laurent is a woman? :shock:
How long have you been programming Laurent?
Who taught you? (who ever it was think he can give me some tips?:wink:)

I'd love a detailed "story" reply from you Laurent, the curiosity has been killing me for some time now and I really want to know your background more <3.

And I want to get to know about all of you too :)
A bit of an awkward place to be doing a social activity but if you don't mind tell me a bit about yourselves.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Groogy on September 01, 2011, 09:10:16 am
Hi!

I go by three different names. Groogy, SirVogelius and my real name Henrik. I got hooked on computers when I was about 5-6 when my mom bought me a Amiga 600. But I'm very curious at nature and this weird plastic thing did these amazing stuff on the TV and I just had to know why. I kept asking my mother which only had basic knowledge in Visual Basic... Anyway it stood still until the time when we got a PC with Internet and I could google "how to make a game" and my search for knowledge begun. This was somewhere around when I was 10. Going from C++ to C, Java, PHP, Objective-C and finally to Ruby.

Now I am 20 years old and I attend the second year at a professional university called The Game Assembly in Malmö, Sweden. Already made a few games and I can say this is the one I am proudest of:
(http://thegameassembly.com/images/577.jpg) (http://www.thegameacademy.dreamhosters.com/games/10/TGA10_MoustacheChronicles.exe)
We were 2,5 programmers, 4 artists who worked together for 8 weeks along with our studies. So maybe 2-4 hours each day or something like that. The game is pretty short but our requirement was only 30min of gameplay for an average player. I recommend this school for others! What it does is build up teamwork and communication skills which are #1 skill needed when developing bigger games.

I speak Swedish, English and Danish. I'm half danish and my middle-name Vogelius is an old family name from nobility which only my family is allowed to wear in Denmark. There's a Swedish family with the same thing but don't know if there's any relation.

Interests: Games, Computers, Politics, Ideologies and Norse Mythology.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Haikarainen on September 01, 2011, 09:46:14 am
Might as well, could be fun to hear what kind of people you other guys here are :P

I'm a 21 year old dude who also lives in Sweden, but unlike Groogy, I live up in the north. I share a 3-room apartment with my pregnant gf and a cat. Do a lot of webdevelopment as well as general C++-programming. Currently working on a game with 3 other people, it doesn't have a name yet but it will be a multiplayer sidescrolling RPG/adventure game. Not massively multiplayer, but like groups of 4 that explore an awesome world of quests and puzzles. Also working on my own data-library for packing files into archives, check file consistency etc.

Other than that, my keywords of interests would be; network, linux, pot, tv-series, gaming etc.

Games; CodMW2, BFBC2(preordered BF3), LoL, WC3 and C&C Zero Hour.
TV-Series; Chuck, Modern Family, The Middle, Falling Skies, Southpark, Family guy, American dad and used to like weeds(before it got all girly).

History for the bored:
Quote
My interest of general development started when I was around 6 or so, my father teached me how to create a website using HTML and CSS. From there on after I was blasting around the interwebs on our awesomely fast 28.8K modem, learning Javascript and such.

~2 years later(about 8yrs old), I got the knowledge that my brother was creating his very own game in an app called "The Games Factory". I was amazed and did VERY many unfinished games in it.

Fastforward to ~15 years of age; I had recently mastered PHP and I was really proud of my awesome skills, through the years I had also played around with stuff like Basic and other "programming languages". My interest of gamecreation got to my attention again and I decided it was time to give C++ a try. I had a hard time learning it since of its steep learningcurve, and my social life didn't really help either since(not been a fullblown geek all my life, comes in waves kinda). So it took some attempts and huge efforts, and a few years later I had grip of the basic concepts like classes, functions, hierchary etc.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Laurent on September 01, 2011, 10:08:04 am
Ok, so... I'm not a girl :lol:

Nothing fancy about my private life : I'm french, I'm 27, I'm married, I own a ferret, and iPad and I'm planning to have a baby next year.

I discovered programming at 9 at school, but I truly started to write my own programs at 15, after I rediscovered Visual Basic on my father's computer. I have a master degree in computer science, but almost everything that I know about programing languages and software design, I learnt it myself from forums, blogs and tutorials.

After my master I went to Singapour to work for a small video game company. The company was a big mess but it was fun and I learnt a lot. Then I came back to France and got my current job, which is unfortunately not related to video games anymore (but I still have a lot of fun).

The story of SFML is simple (and fast!). After realizing that SDL 1.2 was so old (both in its design and its miplementation), and lacked so many "modern" features, I decided to give it a try and created my own graphics library, with the idea that it could be simpler and faster than SDL. At that time I was in France but still working remotely for the Singapourean company, so... it only took me a few weeks to complete a first version :lol:.
I showed the result on a french forum, and people said "hey, don't limit your library to graphics, make it a multimedia library by adding audio, network, etc.". I was less interested in these things than in graphics, but I never say no to learn new stuff. A few months later SFML was born... :P
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Haikarainen on September 01, 2011, 11:21:20 am
Quote from: "Laurent"
I showed the result on a french forum, and people said "hey, don't limit your library to graphics, make it a multimedia library by adding audio, network, etc.". I was less interested in these things than in graphics, but I never say no to learn new stuff. A few months later SFML was born... :P


Interesting stuff, you dont happen to have the link to the forumthread? That would be awesome to see, SFML at babyage :D
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Laurent on September 01, 2011, 11:45:37 am
Quote
Interesting stuff, you dont happen to have the link to the forumthread? That would be awesome to see, SFML at babyage

I found the thread, but... it's a private one. I wanted to have limited feedback of experienced users (the forum admins) before making SFML public. So basically nobody can see this discussion.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Silvah on September 01, 2011, 12:53:42 pm
I wonder if anyone at all really reads this topic :P


So, I'm German, though I live in... no, not Shayol Ghul (http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Shayol_Ghul), but in Poland (not that there's much of a difference between Shayol Ghul and Poland), I'm 27, I'm married (my wife is French), I love playing soccer... yadda yadda yadda, this stuff is so effing boring, isn't it?

Contrary to what I might have made you think, I'm actually rather calm and quiet, I don't really like having arguments and stuff. Then again, I can't stand when I see somebody being wrong (as in "incorrect"), that's probably why I end up arguing anyway, at least on this forum :oops:

I dunno how old I was when I started programming. 17? 18 perhaps? Ditto for what made me get into it. Most of what I know I learnt either myself when reading code, documentation and help, or from friends of mine. I was never interested in writing games, I always liked being very close to the metal: in one of my previous jobs I was writing code for embedded devices. Lots of fun. I assure you. :D

I also think that the infamous quote "premature optimization is the root of all evil" is in vast majority of cases misinterpreted as "any performance gain is the root of all evil", so people use it as an excuse for writing sloppy code. And they also don't know, or don't want to know, that optimization, in majority of cases, is the same as YAGNI, KISS and DRY. Last time I checked, these were regarded as a Good Thing.

As for languages: I know English (of course), Polish, some German. I used to know German very well - well, I'm (I was?) a native speaker, after all - but I haven't used it for years, so I have forgotten much of it, mainly der Wortschatz, er, the vocabulary was affected. I'm also a conlanger, that is, a person who's creating her own languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language).
Programming languages? Many of them.

Oh, and for whoever was wondering: my signature means "may your future be happy" in Japanese.

Did I forgot something? ;)
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: easy on September 01, 2011, 04:11:13 pm
Quote from: "Laurent"
... I own a ferret, ...


Hmmm a ferret! I'm planning on buying one too... Comes handy in the rush hours! 8)

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Ferret-Scout-Car-18EA24.jpg/300px-Ferret-Scout-Car-18EA24.jpg) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferret_armoured_car)
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Ricky on September 01, 2011, 07:05:32 pm
Quote from: "Groogy"
Hi!

I go by three different names. Groogy, SirVogelius and my real name Henrik. I got hooked on computers when I was about 5-6 when my mom bought me a Amiga 600. But I'm very curious at nature and this weird plastic thing did these amazing stuff on the TV and I just had to know why. I kept asking my mother which only had basic knowledge in Visual Basic... Anyway it stood still until the time when we got a PC with Internet and I could google "how to make a game" and my search for knowledge begun. This was somewhere around when I was 10. Going from C++ to C, Java, PHP, Objective-C and finally to Ruby.

Now I am 20 years old and I attend the second year at a professional university called The Game Assembly in Malmö, Sweden. Already made a few games and I can say this is the one I am proudest of:
(http://thegameassembly.com/images/577.jpg) (http://www.thegameacademy.dreamhosters.com/games/10/TGA10_MoustacheChronicles.exe)
We were 2,5 programmers, 4 artists who worked together for 8 weeks along with our studies. So maybe 2-4 hours each day or something like that. The game is pretty short but our requirement was only 30min of gameplay for an average player. I recommend this school for others! What it does is build up teamwork and communication skills which are #1 skill needed when developing bigger games.

I speak Swedish, English and Danish. I'm half danish and my middle-name Vogelius is an old family name from nobility which only my family is allowed to wear in Denmark. There's a Swedish family with the same thing but don't know if there's any relation.

Interests: Games, Computers, Politics, Ideologies and Norse Mythology.

Groogy that is amazing :shock:
I'm also fascinated by politics and ideologies.
You could say when it comes to politics I'm a revolutionary but since I live in the US where people seem to just "take it"
I don't see anything happening soon xD and as for ideologies I am a firm believer in that all men *and women are created
equal and that anything you can do I can too. Because of this belief I don't believe that there is such a thing as a race or
different types of man. A technique often used to get soldiers to kill innocents is to make them believe that the people they
are killing are not human because they speak a language they don't understand or because their culture is "strange" and different.
I believe different culture does not make a different type of human, after all it is not genetic. Another ideology of mine I hold
on to firmly is that everything can be learned anything can be taught. What is a Swedish man? (for example ;))
a man who lives in Sweden, who speaks Swedish, who eats Swedish food and listens to Swedish music. What would happen
if we take the man as a child, same "Swedish" DNA and put him in I don't know lets say Canada. Now the "Swedish" boy is eating
Canadian food, Speaking French and doesn't have a drop of Swedish culture. I ask you Groogy and readers
What is the man now? Canadian or Swedish?
ahh this is an important question, anything can be learned, cultures especially ;) and what makes a man.. what you know ofcourse!
I don't think I'm a philosopher or anything but its just some stuff I've thought of and I think it feels right you let me know friend. xD
It just feels right because I'm not much of a nationalist but then again I just don't see the point in a whole country taking credit
for what one man did.
Quote from: "Haikarainen"
Might as well, could be fun to hear what kind of people you other guys here are :P

I'm a 21 year old dude who also lives in Sweden, but unlike Groogy, I live up in the north. I share a 3-room apartment with my pregnant gf and a cat. Do a lot of webdevelopment as well as general C++-programming. Currently working on a game with 3 other people, it doesn't have a name yet but it will be a multiplayer sidescrolling RPG/adventure game. Not massively multiplayer, but like groups of 4 that explore an awesome world of quests and puzzles. Also working on my own data-library for packing files into archives, check file consistency etc.

Other than that, my keywords of interests would be; network, linux, pot, tv-series, gaming etc.

Games; CodMW2, BFBC2(preordered BF3), LoL, WC3 and C&C Zero Hour.
TV-Series; Chuck, Modern Family, The Middle, Falling Skies, Southpark, Family guy, American dad and used to like weeds(before it got all girly).

History for the bored:
Quote
My interest of general development started when I was around 6 or so, my father teached me how to create a website using HTML and CSS. From there on after I was blasting around the interwebs on our awesomely fast 28.8K modem, learning Javascript and such.

~2 years later(about 8yrs old), I got the knowledge that my brother was creating his very own game in an app called "The Games Factory". I was amazed and did VERY many unfinished games in it.

Fastforward to ~15 years of age; I had recently mastered PHP and I was really proud of my awesome skills, through the years I had also played around with stuff like Basic and other "programming languages". My interest of gamecreation got to my attention again and I decided it was time to give C++ a try. I had a hard time learning it since of its steep learningcurve, and my social life didn't really help either since(not been a fullblown geek all my life, comes in waves kinda). So it took some attempts and huge efforts, and a few years later I had grip of the basic concepts like classes, functions, hierchary etc.

Haikarainen how do you find time to program you have so much to keep you busy :D
You really are an inspiring person when I look at this, if I could ever learn to multitask like you I'd actually get something done for once :)
I'm also on the same path but started like this, since I wanted to make games and didn't care for the other stuff
I started with Gamemaker when I was 12 (weak I know) then I learned a bit of C and Assembler and how to use debuggers.. made a simple hack for an online game
then I stopped studying reverse engineering and focused mainly on C. From time to time I do some C++ but I don't know enough C++ to feel
comfortable enough to use it as my main language. I've taught myself HTML, CSS and I want to learn PHP and MySQL but I can never find time xD
you really have to give me some pointers friend :)

lol I wanted to make games and for some time I was studying cracking and hacking xD
so stopped that and went back to studying C

Quote from: "Laurent"
Ok, so... I'm not a girl :lol:

Nothing fancy about my private life : I'm french, I'm 27, I'm married, I own a ferret, and iPad and I'm planning to have a baby next year.

I discovered programming at 9 at school, but I truly started to write my own programs at 15, after I rediscovered Visual Basic on my father's computer. I have a master degree in computer science, but almost everything that I know about programing languages and software design, I learnt it myself from forums, blogs and tutorials.

After my master I went to Singapour to work for a small video game company. The company was a big mess but it was fun and I learnt a lot. Then I came back to France and got my current job, which is unfortunately not related to video games anymore (but I still have a lot of fun).

The story of SFML is simple (and fast!). After realizing that SDL 1.2 was so old (both in its design and its miplementation), and lacked so many "modern" features, I decided to give it a try and created my own graphics library, with the idea that it could be simpler and faster than SDL. At that time I was in France but still working remotely for the Singapourean company, so... it only took me a few weeks to complete a first version :lol:.
I showed the result on a french forum, and people said "hey, don't limit your library to graphics, make it a multimedia library by adding audio, network, etc.". I was less interested in these things than in graphics, but I never say no to learn new stuff. A few months later SFML was born... :P

I thought as much, not saying there aren't programmer girls out there but I did get the dude vibe from you xD
I'm really happy for you that you are going to be a father soon!
I was going to do computer science as my major but I'm too much of a nerd xD
I decided on engineering (I want to make the chips you guys program :twisted: ) I thought of it like this
the computer science stuff I want to learn I can already teach myself why not learn the bare metal :)
Congratulations Laurent on SFML its a huge success and I'm sure its popularity will grow into an industry standard someday.
Keep up the awesome work friend.

Quote from: "Silvah"
I wonder if anyone at all really reads this topic :P


So, I'm German, though I live in... no, not Shayol Ghul (http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Shayol_Ghul), but in Poland (not that there's much of a difference between Shayol Ghul and Poland), I'm 27, I'm married (my wife is French), I love playing soccer... yadda yadda yadda, this stuff is so effing boring, isn't it?

Contrary to what I might have made you think, I'm actually rather calm and quiet, I don't really like having arguments and stuff. Then again, I can't stand when I see somebody being wrong (as in "incorrect"), that's probably why I end up arguing anyway, at least on this forum :oops:

I dunno how old I was when I started programming. 17? 18 perhaps? Ditto for what made me get into it. Most of what I know I learnt either myself when reading code, documentation and help, or from friends of mine. I was never interested in writing games, I always liked being very close to the metal: in one of my previous jobs I was writing code for embedded devices. Lots of fun. I assure you. :D

I also think that the infamous quote "premature optimization is the root of all evil" is in vast majority of cases misinterpreted as "any performance gain is the root of all evil", so people use it as an excuse for writing sloppy code. And they also don't know, or don't want to know, that optimization, in majority of cases, is the same as YAGNI, KISS and DRY. Last time I checked, these were regarded as a Good Thing.

As for languages: I know English (of course), Polish, some German. I used to know German very well - well, I'm (I was?) a native speaker, after all - but I haven't used it for years, so I have forgotten much of it, mainly der Wortschatz, er, the vocabulary was affected. I'm also a conlanger, that is, a person who's creating her own languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language).
Programming languages? Many of them.

Oh, and for whoever was wondering: my signature means "may your future be happy" in Japanese.

Did I forgot something? ;)

I agree!
I am one of those people that optimize everything, and if I learn a new way to do something
I go into all my old projects and implement it to keep things clean and simple.
My mother and her sisters made languages and codes to communicate with each other when they were little
so I don't know if this is the same but I'd love to know more :)
thanks for sharing friend

Hey I know there are more of us out there lurking the forums, post about yourself here

This thread makes me feel like the world is big but small at the same time, strange right?
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Hiura on September 01, 2011, 07:12:50 pm
Great idea, Ricky.

My turn!  :)

I'm a Swiss, French-speaking student at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne ( http://epfl.ch ) in computer science. I'm currently doing my bachelor. I've been learning English for several years – but as you can see I still do.. herrr! make some mistake! At one point of my childhood I was able to speak a little bit of German but without practice everything was forget too quickly.

When I was a child we had a Apple computer (OS 7, 8 and 9 I think) but it was not my favorite activity and it was only at the age of 14 we got a PC with access to the Internet. First, I used to play some RPG games but got bored quickly and turned to web development (very basic stuff in PHP/MySQL/HTML/CSS). PHP was cool but I was not very interested in making web site so I went to learn C/C++ mixup by reading tutorials and following forums. After realizing that my knowledge of C/C++ was not very good I decided to buy AC++ (great book btw). So to speak I am autodidact when it comes to programming stuff. I also learnt about the existence of the UNIX world and broke a few time the OS on the familial computer. ^^'

In 2007 I discovered SFML and it immediately replaced the old, C based, SDL library in my (very) small project. At the time I was learning more and more about Object Oriented Programming so it was a logical choice. (Well, there are other arguments for switching from SDL to SFML but that's not relevant here, isn't it ?)

Two years later I did my "Travail de Maturité" with a friend of mine – a project we are told to do during our last years of high school. It was a mathematical software written in C++ capable of solving most (in)equalities of any integer degree with a web interface (wtf were we thinking??).

Then I started my studies at EPFL and at the same time I started developing SFML 2.0 for Mac. It was a real challenge because at that time I didn't know anything about Objective-C, Cocoa API and more generally OS X development – I just got a MacBook for a few weeks only!

Currently, I'm beginning my second year at EPFL (I had to redo the first year..  let's say that learning how to learn FAST was hard). I'm lucky because I have a "student assistant" job at my university : it consists in answering some of the life science students' questions about C++ programming and helping them in their semester project (last year they had to simulate a spread of a virus with basic gene mutation and to simulate a boids (http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/) in 3D).

I currently have some knowledge in various C-like languages and Java; basic knowledge in VHDL (heurrK), asm and Scala (http://www.scala-lang.org/), a language developed at EPFL based over the JVM – I'll be learning this language next semester and it will be teach by its author – what an honor!  :D

Beside computer stuff, without being too personal, I love climbing, snowboarding or cycling on a casual basis. I also got a lazy fat cat and go voting. Two word about my personality before letting you go (I should have written less I agree!) : I consider myself conscientious, sometimes a little bit to perfectionist I have to admit, but also lazy, open minded to new or different ideas and concepts, and have a generally calm temper.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Sui on September 01, 2011, 09:36:09 pm
I'm new to SFML (and the forum). It was recommended to me by a fellow indie (Brendon - of Atom Zombie Smasher fame).

I started out writing games at the age of 9-ish on my Vic-20, mostly text adventures and little action games. I also spent a lot of time in English seaside arcades playing a variety of games - my fave arcade game of all time is Ikari Warriors (two player Commando with twisty sticks).

I'm 38 now and still haven't lost interest in making games. Currently I split my time between contracting (database stuff), game dev and looking after my 7 month old son (who's crawling and into everything!)

I banged out a retro arcade game (Gravity Core) in 2007. It sold quite a few copies but certainly not enough to quit the day job (a lot of people found it too hard - even after several difficulty setting updates).
You can get the demo from here if you want a challenge:
http://www.suisoft.co.uk/gravitycore/

I knocked up an article on my development experiences:
http://www.suisoft.co.uk/gravitycore/postmortem.htm

At the mo, I'm using SFML as a basis for a new game. It's a straightforward vertical shooter. I'm using it to get a codebase I can use as a basis for other more complex games, so it will be free (probably with a donation option for anyone who enjoys it and wants to PayPal me a few dollars).

Other interests:
Movies, fiction, Rock/Metal music, hiking.

Cheers,
Gary
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: OniLinkPlus on September 02, 2011, 02:20:29 am
I go by OniLink++ on the internet, but you can call me by my real name (Kody). 16 years old, mildly autistic, born and raised in Portland Oregon. Home of the legendary Linus Torvalds.

I got interested in game development at the age of 10, and started out with Game Maker. Never finished anything in it, unfortunately. From there, I learned about Multimedia Fusion 2 and pirated it (not proud of this decision, but I swear I would have bought it if I had the money). Again, never finished anything in it.

For a while, I was quite popular on Youtube for making a pathetic video showing off a gameshark code in SM64. From there, I learned how to make my own gameshark codes, and learned about C++ from YoshiElectron and Frauber. When I heard it was used by most video game companies, I thought, "I have to learn how to use it!"

Started out with your traditional hello world program, learned about SDL, used that for a while using LazyFoo's website as a guide. While I was working with SDL, one of my "friends" (more like acquaintances), Retriever II, who created the Taloncrossing Content Management System, suggested I use SFML. Looked it up, saw that the newest version, 1.5, was just released, and tried it out.

Then, around the end of summer 2009, I stopped programming altogether for a LONG time to do Let's Plays on Youtube. I eventually began to slide back away from LPs towards programming again. By the time that happened, SFML 1.6 was out, and I had an ATi graphics card. Upon discovering that dreadful ATi bug, I moved to SFML2, and have stayed there ever since.

It's almost scary how I can remember virtually all of this. :S

Anyways, right now I'm working on a game engine. I'm currently working on the level editor, which is turning out to be quite a nuisance (mostly because I'm lazy). After that, I'm going to look for people to develop a game with me, probably based on LHC conspiracy theories.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: eXpl0it3r on September 02, 2011, 03:00:07 am
Quote from: "Groogy"
(http://thegameassembly.com/images/577.jpg) (http://www.thegameacademy.dreamhosters.com/games/10/TGA10_MoustacheChronicles.exe)

Nice game, untfortunatly too short. :D


I'm 20, from the Swissgerman speaking part of Switzerland and speak Swissgerman, German, English and a bit French (only if it has to be). In about a week my first semester in Computer Science will start.
I've many many acronyms in the internet, but eXpl0it3r is rather new and I haven't used it often. It doesn't have any connection to anything, I just wanted a fancy nick that isn't used often when at all.

I've always been around PCs and loved them. At about the age of 5 (the time of Windows 3.x and many many Shareware DOS games) I started using them too, to play games or trying to look like playing games. So I can actually also say I've always been around games and loved them even more!  :wink:
(Need a gamelist? Captain comic, Jetpack, Commander Keen, King Quests, Robot, Maniac Maison, etc.)

Inspiered of all those games I wanted to make my own. But I think it wasn't that motivation that brought me at the age of about 12 to programming, it was more the curiosity and ability to create something on your own.
Visual Basic 6 became my first programming language, because we had a book and the software. The jump to VB.NET was hard, but it started to be like just writing a point and choosing from the dropdownmenu the right class/object etc. I also didn't/don't like dotNET...
With the internet getting cheaper and fast I started make some websites with PHP, HTML and at last CSS.
But I still wanted to make games and searching the internet made it obvious C++ was the language, so I started learning it with books, tutorials, video tutorials, podcasts etc.
With the years and many failures I gained more knowledge about it and how it really works, not how it's written in the books. The books can't teach you to programm, they only show some syntax...

For my final assignment at highschool a friend and I wrote a small physic simulator with C++ and DirectX. I finished highschool and had some freetime and started to search for better ways to implement stuff like the physic simulation. I also wanted to search for FREE and corss-platform possibility. I first found SDL and really liked it, but there was nothing for sound, for image support you needed an extra 'plugin' and it seemed not really organized. So I searched further mainly for free, cross-platform audio libraries until... I found SFML, it is organized in a proper C++ way, can handle audio and I was stunned how many image format are supported! Everything that I didn't like with SDL was gone with SFML. :wink:
SFML did give a big boost to my knowledge about C++ and game development!
I have already some game ideas, but first the basics!

Okay enough tales about some guy from cyberspace...

Any questions feel free to ask. (forum, PM, e-mail)
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Grimshaw on September 02, 2011, 03:15:35 am
What a marvelous topic to read :)

I am a little too fresh blood to have anything good to tell, but i will try !

So, first of all, a big UP for all you guys for being such inspiring people, and another big UP for communication, which makes these community a little better every day!

I go by the name of Artur Moreira, usually known as DevilWithin, like a programmer/gamer nickname, taken from somewhere in the Tekken series, which i loved since ever (probably one of the first games i played was Tekken 3).

I was born and live in Portugal, in a really confortable city near Porto. I love to learn languages that are way outside my confort zone, but i am only proficient with english and portuguese! I love to discuss religion, some politics, human behaviour, and i like to answer every question that pops in my head, i have huge creativity strikes, and really void periods, but i guess thats normal! Anyway i love to find a justification for why people act the way they do, how racional are we?

 I am 19 years old and unlike you guys, i didn't start early to program. Actually, until i was like 15, i didnt know how programs were made, at all.


But, at age 15, i started for good, and its been an intense ride so far! I picked up C language, old school and learnt it good. I took a little high school course about programming basics and general computer stuff. In the day i was learning the boring stuff i wouldnt look for on my own, reinforcing my knowledge and in the night learning way more advanced concepts in C and then C++, testing myself constantly by writing programs from all kinds. Also making side projects with new languages at all times.

So, in those three years i was learning a lot about everything, made a lot of software and then started on games and never stoped again! I used to play with OpenGL and basic stuff, making little demos, putting in PhysX physics, etc etc it was a bit overwhelming, but i kept going, learning from everywhere and those skills got better with time.

After those three years, i felt good about my knowledge, but also that it wasnt near my ambition yet, so i entered a Computer Science course in "Faculdade de Ciencias da Universidade do Porto" which i currently attend in the second year of my studies. Since then, i really went for top skills in programming, so i try to understand everything really good, to become an amazing programmer.

Like an year ago, i started a little engine to assist me in my games, using a few libraries like SFML and it simply evolved into a bigger project, with a really nice concept, my Parabola Engine, which i am really proud of, even tough its not done yet. Concurrently, i also program the games i really feel like doing! About this engine, i plan to release it completely free, to REALLY help people make their games, that would be the face of my company, a little like SFML community and then there would be the games i make for sale! I'm really trying to have a decent build for a first release these days, but there so much to do and so little time :)

While i do all these things, i also work full time in a Phone Store to make some cash!

Along the way i learnt how to play the guitar quite well, which was one of the best decisions i have ever had. I also developed my skills with visual arts as far as i could, learning to paint, model and other things!

My dream is to keep going in indie game industry, opening a small company, with a home-office, a website and my games for sale! This should be one-step away, as soon as i make a good-selling game.

I would love to have a team to make these games, but i am just waiting for the right people to show up, since most teams dont have what it takes to suceed as a group. For a reason i've tried to master the different areas of game development :)

I still have to find time for my girlfriend in themiddle of all of this, and i love to make long training sessions with my boxing bag :)

I would really like to get to know you people even better, by talking and sharing ideas more often. I wouldnt even mind to speak to each one of you every day in any IM software, as it would be a rich experience! I know like one person that makes games besides me! Some feedback about our projects is always welcome!

Also, im a boring guy because i wrote all this stuff ahha :)
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: MorleyDev on September 02, 2011, 04:28:47 am
Sure.
Gender: Male
Age: 19
Nationality: English

I'm currently a student attending the University of Brighton and about to start my second year studying Computer Science. It's a bachelor course but with the option to do a masters (which I'm considering), and afterwards maybe even a PhD ( entirely so I can make people call me Dr), but not sure yet.

I know a wide variety of programming languages and can pick them up pretty fast, but I started when I was about 13 with QuickBASIC (gasp, shock horror disgust) and quickly switched over to FreeBasic (gasp, shock, horror, outrage) before moving on to C++. Since then I've learnt others obviously, though I haven't touched a BASIC variant for more than five seconds in awhile (not exactly complaining).

I can also work with Databases and Websites, but I don't tend to enjoy it.

Socially, well I like drinking and dancing and it turns out there are these buildings called "Night Clubs" which permit you to do both of those in a relatively socially acceptable manner.

Fashion Sense: Ranging from the usual to the odd. I have a not-so-secret love for the waistcoat, and have been known to don a trilby from time to time ^^ (I believe I am wearing both in my profile picture xD)

Relationship status: I'm single, but that's more through choice than ineptitude.

Dream job? Programmer for an indie game developer or even founding my own company, though really I'll accept anything that presents me with enough problems to keep my interest ^^ "So long as it's not boring" is basically my mantra xD
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Ricky on September 02, 2011, 09:58:14 am
Wow this thread is far more popular than I thought it was going to be. :o
I'm amazed to see how much I have in common with people that live miles away and come from all walks of life.

I wouldn't be able to reply to every comment in this thread because of the speed of you guys posting but I'll try my best to keep up :)
I'm currently working on something big but I'll try to check in on this thread once in a while to see what other friends we have out there.

@Hiura
Stay ontop of school friend and never lose sight of priorities.
My brother also learned this the hard way in college unfortunately..xD
Hope the same does not go for me. I would love to hear more about Scala
pm me if you have time ;) Thanks for sharing

@Sui
Wow 38 and started since 9. You probably have lots of experience to share with us youngsters :D and I hope you do share it!
I downloaded GravityCore by the way, awesome game! Its very well presented and you can feel the professional detail that was put into
this small indie title, demo was short but enjoyed every second of it. If you put this amount of detail into this game I can't wait to see if you
try something bigger what that would look like :o Thanks for sharing friend.

@OniLink10
Started with GameMaker just like me xD
Autism seems to become more common everyday but the people I know that have it
I don't even notice it, only thing I notice is that they can concentrate like crazy :o
I don't know the brain is an amazing thing. You may have trouble with some things but for other things
you are a genius. Did you guys know that Beethoven, a musical genius of his time (or any) did not understand
how to multiply or divide? Like his brain could not grasp it. But I believe that even Beethoven could have learned
multiplication and division if he tried harder ;) anything can be learned., thanks for sharing!
I'm probably among the few coders in this forum that never actually learned SDL xD
I came straight from the console and curses to SFML :D a little GL here and there but most of my knowledge
is console based (I am a huge Linux guy but thats the hackish me xD)

@eXpl0it3r
I agree, the books can't teach you how to code you learn by coding yourself.
Theory and Practice are two different things, you learn faster with practice than with theory,
but then again everyone learns differently for some they prefer theory than practice but I'm very hands-on ;)
I too was inspired by the video games I grew up with. When I was young we owned a Sega Genesis and several games
I had Sonic and Sonic 2, Altered Beast, X-Men and a few more I don't remember but then a few years later we got a Nintendo
with Mario/Duck Hunt soon after we got a Sega Saturn then a PlayStation. Around this time is when I started to wonder how
these things were made. I was about 12 when we had that PlayStation, only games we had were Tekken 3(shouts to DevilWithin!)
and Crash Bandicoot. I think for most of us what inspired us to start this journey is the games and electronics that we had as children.
Thanks for sharing friend :)

@DevilWithin
You aren't as new blood as you thing, friend!
I started back at the age of 12 with GameMaker but knowing full well that software was programmed in C and C++ but feeling it was too much for me to chew on
at my age I decided I would learn GameMaker now and then later on after I mastered it move on to C and C++, what a stupid idea no? XD so much time wasted
I didn't actually start coding C until the age of 13-14 and ever since I've been on and off but recently I've decided to stick to it and finally finish one of my many
projects xD... btw I did master GameMaker, only to never use it again after I learned C.. what a mistake! I don't think it matters at what age you start as long as
you have dedication and determination you will learn fast :) I also love tekken 3 and the tekken series (favorite character is Yoshimitsu  :twisted: )
and you guys are all welcome to add me on msn instant messenger if you'd like Azurekite.hack@gmx.com I'm online 24-7 most of the time since I also do some web dev on this computer and use it as a server. Thanks for sharing :)

@MorleyDev
Lots of 19 year olds like myself :)
Wow you have to be the most social nerd in the world :D I'm mostly a shut in but I do like to walk around like in parks and ride my bike
But I feel so awkward at a party :o... One time I tried to get drunk as a learning experience (in the name of science!) couldn't do it so never tried
again.. Hmmm got to talk to DevilWithin and find out why humans are so self destructive xD
Thanks for sharing!
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Lo-X on September 02, 2011, 11:44:22 am
Hello,

I'm Loïc, I'm 20 and I live in France, in a town not so far than Laurent's (I spy him but he don't know that, shh !) But I study computer science in another city, far, far away : Clermont-Ferrand. I'ts only my second year in that school.

I started programming with games websites, or an Harry Potter fansite ( :/ ). I was 12 ! As a game website is anoying I decided to learn other languages that's why I started to learn C/C++ and a little Java (but I don't like this one).
I was making some apps with QT but the codes were very very dirty... And I think my code still is, sometimes... I programmed an Audio Player, some Notepads, ...

I started making games with SDL, but in C and I prefer object oriented languages.
And I discovered SFML. Jackpot ! It was one year a half ago. I started making some simple games not completely terminated like a platform game, a 2Diso game.
I started my first "big" and advanced project 5 or 6 mounth ago : Galaxy. This project make me learn a lot of things, more than the 2 before. But the more I code, the more I see that the code is not strong in some parts and I'm discouraged when I see what I've to change. So I asking myself if I don't have to change my project or to finish it before.

Sorry for english mistakes :D
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Hiura on September 02, 2011, 12:19:29 pm
Quote from: "Ricky"
@Hiura
Stay ontop of school friend and never lose sight of priorities.
My brother also learned this the hard way in college unfortunately..xD
Hope the same does not go for me. I would love to hear more about Scala
pm me if you have time ;) Thanks for sharing
My problem at that time was that I didn't know how to work because until high school I didn't really have worked – not that I'm smart but because teachers didn't ask us much to do so it was perfect for a lazy guy like me haha . And in fact, failing this first year happened to be a good thing : with a light schedule during my second first year I could have this job at EPFL and have time to learn a lot of different stuff! I now consider it as a good opportunity.

I don't have a lot of experience yet in Scala – I only read the author's book (http://www.artima.com/shop/programming_in_scala_2ed) which is very good I think. I will really start learning this language during the next semester. In a few word Scala is a mixin of functional and object oriented idioms (that's its main strength), based on the JVM so it can be run anywhere, when you begin it turns your brain upside down but then you're able to write very few lines of code to do what you want.... There is much more to say. You can find more information here (http://www.scala-lang.org/) and if you want to discuss more about it you can send me an email. If you want, try to do some of the problems of the Euler project (http://projecteuler.net/) in Scala.   :wink:
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: omeg on September 02, 2011, 03:04:59 pm
Right, I guess it won't hurt to write something here. ;)

I'm 32 years old antisocial guy living in Poland. Currently working for a small consulting company specializing in information security. Previously worked for a few years for Symantec, but big corporations turned out to not be my thing. ;) Even before that, I was a contractor for the biggest Polish game distributor (and now developer), CD Projekt (http://www.cdprojekt.com/) (you may have heard of The Witcher (http://thewitcher.com/) ;)). I did technical side of localizing games for them, that is extracting all localizable (translatable) resources and importing them after they have been translated. May sound easy, but I was working on games that did not have any SDKs most of the time, no documentation of game file format etc - needed to analyze them myself, write tools to unpack/repack game data, find all translatable stuff (not only text - also images containing text, voiceovers, fonts if they lack diacritic marks specific to Polish language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_language) etc). It was very fun, but unfortunately they didn't pay much, so I moved on. :P

I'm a sort of hybrid of a "logical thinking" person and a "creative" one. I love programming, math, modern physics and science-fiction, but I also love creative writing, classical literature and music. I was always fascinated in computers and how they work (or how all things work I guess ;)). Unfortunately Poland was a poor country back then so I didn't have access to such hardware.

My first contact with a computer was a friend's C-64 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64). What a great machine! We played games of course, but I also started to dabble in BASIC. C-64 didn't have any "operating system" proper, all it has was a BASIC command prompt. So I learned it and wrote some simple programs, but soon it was not enough. BASIC was very limited and slow, and if you wanted to do something really cool, you needed to do it in assembly. So I learned 6502 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_6502) assembly. :D Compared to todays CPUs it was a beautiful machine code in its simplicity. I coded some silly "demos" (more like intros), and also learned how to debug machine code to hack games. Those were my first steps in reverse engineering - it's this curiosity that drives you to take things (and code) apart to see how they work, and to change them.

My biggest achievement back then was a "code interpreter/debugger" that could take two C-64 binary programs and execute them "in parallel", taking one machine code instruction at a time alternately from both of them. That was an 8-bit CPU, there was no multithreading back then. ;) Of course it only worked for simple programs that didn't use conflicting registers and all that, but it was nice.

I've seen a PC for the first time somewhere at the end of elementary school. I've learned Pascal and Logo (Logo is awesome for one-liner fractals ;)). Later I learned basics of C and C++ (strings? pointers? what the hell?). I started to take interest in inner workings of Windows - gaining reverse engineering knowledge on that platform. I got my own PC only a year after I started a technical university, believe it or not. It was also the time of more prevalent Internet access and knowledge became easier to acquire. I've learned a great deal about software protections - how to break them and how to create them.

At Uni I started playing on a private server of Ultima Online (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online). Maybe some of you remember the first popular graphical MMORPG. :) Later I became a developer and an admin of the server. Even later I became involved in another UO server project, this time based around RunUO (http://www.runuo.com/home/) - an emulator written in C#. That was my first contact with C# and the .Net platform.

This is a good moment for an interlude. As you can see I'm a guy with a pretty low-level background. I know assembly of several CPUs. I know how Windows works under the hood. I'm also kind of a performance freak - I like profiling code, analyzing compiler output and the like. And now I'll almost always choose C# for a new project if it doesn't require much low-level OS access. What gives? "C# is slow, bloated yadda yadda!!1one!" If you say that in front of me, I'll rip your head off. ;)

For me the biggest gain in using C# and .Net is productivity. Yes, it is a little slower than C/C++, although not much and mostly only in specific circumstances. Yes, it does have higher memory overhead - but again, not by much. So what do you get in return?
People argue that you can't write games in C#. Is that so? RunUO server team did a stress test once, the server could handle nearly ten thousand online clients at once. Take a look a Magicka (http://www.magickagame.com/), Terraria (http://www.terraria.org/) or Space Pirates and Zombies (http://spacepiratesandzombies.com/), some very popular and fun Indie games (at least I'd recommend playing them all if you didn't). Thay are all written in C# (well, SPAZ uses Unity, but its core scripts are in C#). OK, rant over. :P

What else can I say... Along the way I also learned a bit about electronics. I have a mini-lab with lots of stuff but lack time to do something bigger with it. :( I have an Arduino (http://arduino.cc/) (AVR based microcontroller prototyping board) and like to do some fun stuff with it. If only a day had 50 hours or somrthing...

One of my biggest interests is in complexity, chaos theory and self-emergence. Artificial life, artificial intelligence, fractal geometry, cellular automata, all these things fascinate me. My master thesis was about artificial life and genetic algorithms - it was something similar to Avida (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avida).

So, why the hell I'm using SFML in the first place? :D Basically, I needed some .NET-compatible 2D gfx library for a game client for my project. I'm creating an isometric MMO engine similar to UO, mostly out of nostalgia and for the learning experience. A lot of the basic things are done and now is the time to actually create a graphical client instead of console one. :P Currently my focus is on porting Gwen (http://code.google.com/p/gwen-dotnet/) to .NET - this will be my GUI library. Again, why the day is so short...

As for the games - I'm mostly a fan of good cRPGs - here, Planescape: Torment is the king. Baldur's Gate 2, Morrowind, The Witcher (2), Fallouts, and of course Deus Ex (need time for the new installment...) I also like to play a shooter every now and then (Bulletstorm was awesome). Mass Effect (2) was good for the "movie-like" experience. Maybe some arcade shooters like Beat Hazard or good old Crimsonland (man, that was insane). Used to play a lot of Heroes of Might&Magic 3 back in the days. Also spent a lot of time getting killed in various ways in ADoM (http://adom.de/) - an awesome roguelike (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike) game. Managed to beat it a few times, felt good. :)

 :shock: Didn't think this will be such a wall of text. :lol: I've also recently created a blog (http://omeg.pl/blog/), so if you are curious, you can have a look at that. ;)
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: eXpl0it3r on September 02, 2011, 03:27:17 pm
Phew... That text just fit my screen, one line more and...  :lol:

I wish, I had a low-level background or even some knowledge about it, it probably would be a big help for my CS study and understanding of applications.  :(
Interessting interlude! I'd probably also be a headless guy around you, didn't consider C# as a 'proper' language, but I think you started to change my mind, although I won't switch to it (yet?)...  :?
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Haikarainen on September 02, 2011, 04:58:12 pm
Quote from: "Ricky"

Haikarainen how do you find time to program you have so much to keep you busy :D
You really are an inspiring person when I look at this, if I could ever learn to multitask like you I'd actually get something done for once :)
I'm also on the same path but started like this, since I wanted to make games and didn't care for the other stuff
I started with Gamemaker when I was 12 (weak I know) then I learned a bit of C and Assembler and how to use debuggers.. made a simple hack for an online game
then I stopped studying reverse engineering and focused mainly on C. From time to time I do some C++ but I don't know enough C++ to feel
comfortable enough to use it as my main language. I've taught myself HTML, CSS and I want to learn PHP and MySQL but I can never find time xD
you really have to give me some pointers friend :)

lol I wanted to make games and for some time I was studying cracking and hacking xD
so stopped that and went back to studying C


Hehe, priorities my friend, priorities. Also; Never forget the act of daydreaming! Visualize what you want to achieve by the age of 40, and attempt at all costs to achieve it in 1 year! Something i've learned recently that i value hugely. I think about how i can optimize code and create the coolest thing of my imagination when im;


Really visualise it, see the final result in front of you, literally on your retina, and use the willpower you grow by doing so on achieving it. Set up goals/steppingstones and on every goal achieved; reward yourself!
Embrace all good, never even focus on negative thoughts like "I could never achieve this; Microsoft worked on a similiar result for 5 years!". Well microsoft sucks and they work for money, not spirit ;)

Now I'm starting to sound like some selfhelpcoach or something ,so ill just skip to the technical; If you wanna feel comfortable with C++, get a grip on;
Objectoriented programming[/list]

Also, experiment with other libraries! Create your own personal helperlibrary![/list][/b]
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Groogy on September 02, 2011, 05:30:35 pm
Ah the old "managed languages are not as good blabla".  I've gotten a few of those as well because I use Ruby. That's why I'm working on a project to prove it's worth once for all. My teacher(Old lead programmer for Ground Control and World in Conflict.)  said that Ruby is only good for small fun or playing around. Got to show him :P

Also Haikarainen, I recommend that you apply for studies at my university. The teachers come from the industry and it have a strong connection and cooperation with the local companies. Our students have gotten jobs over the whole world.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Grimshaw on September 02, 2011, 06:36:15 pm
Quote from: Haikarainen
Quote from: "Ricky"


Hehe, priorities my friend, priorities. Also; Never forget the act of daydreaming! Visualize what you want to achieve by the age of 40, and attempt at all costs to achieve it in 1 year! Something i've learned recently that i value hugely. I think about how i can optimize code and create the coolest thing of my imagination when im;
    taking a shit
    about to sleep
    wake up
    taking a shower
    space out and overanalyze stuff


Really visualise it, see the final result in front of you, literally on your retina, and use the willpower you grow by doing so on achieving it. Set up goals/steppingstones and on every goal achieved; reward yourself!
Embrace all good, never even focus on negative thoughts like "I could never achieve this; Microsoft worked on a similiar result for 5 years!". Well microsoft sucks and they work for money, not spirit ;)



You are the man, cannot tell how much i identified with your point of view!

I work all day, and i always try to find willpower to work everyday at night in my stuff! All the time i cannot be coding, i try to visualize what i want, so im pretty focused when i start to work on the things i planned all day! I am 19 and i expect to be a known developer in the next 5 years, but i do just my best to become that as soon as possible, who knows i will be able to publish something good in less than one year and become sucessfull!

Something i've concluded from indie teams/individuals way of working, its not about quantity, its about quality.
You may NOT have the resources to invest in big time code, but you learn to do it in a clever and beautiful way in a small time and a low budget. Indies tend to achieve things that people with the corporate experience would never do alone.

Thats the key, WILLPOWER!
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Haikarainen on September 02, 2011, 06:43:18 pm
Quote from: "DevilWithin"
Thats the key, WILLPOWER!


+1, Kudos man!
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Haikarainen on September 03, 2011, 07:17:10 am
Quote from: "Groogy"
Also Haikarainen, I recommend that you apply for studies at my university. The teachers come from the industry and it have a strong connection and cooperation with the local companies. Our students have gotten jobs over the whole world.


Oh really? If i'd do that i'd had to do it on distance though.. not in the position to move right now :P
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Groogy on September 03, 2011, 04:35:18 pm
Quote from: "Haikarainen"
Oh really? If i'd do that i'd had to do it on distance though.. not in the position to move right now :P


Actually trough the course of the school's life(4 years or something) there has been 3 people with the same situation as you. Wife/fiancee/gf and a baby. Doing that education on distance is impossible. The programmer education is worse than a special forces training. :P They have to force in years of knowledge into you under only 2 years. Because of how the school regulations they can't extend the education longer than that. But it's actually what defines the programmers here. We naturally get an insane will power because we are pressed so much. Every student that has gotten out to the industry that comes back to hold a lecture tells us how much softer it is to work in the companies than the school.

Also this school has stolen a few students from BTH(Blekinge Tekniska Högskola) so I got a programmer and a few artists from there that felt this one was better. Also Skövde have a live stream of games they've developed two times a year and we always laugh hard when we see that and is puzzled how that can be called an education. The projects there wouldn't even pass at The Game Assembly. Of course it's not the students fault but there has even been investigations as of why game developers from schools don't cut it(from where The Game Assembly was born) and they still do nothing about it.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Haikarainen on September 03, 2011, 05:32:23 pm
Quote from: "Groogy"
Quote from: "Haikarainen"
Oh really? If i'd do that i'd had to do it on distance though.. not in the position to move right now :P



It would be hellafun, but i live in Umeå, you know like 1000-2000km away from there.

Edit; Btw id have to study up my grades as well since the shitty schools here forgot to send me my grades, and they dont have them stored either = 3 years wasted.
Title: my turn
Post by: asdatapel on September 08, 2011, 04:35:34 am
yay! my turn.
Before I start, though, I wanna ask: why are their so many indie game programmers? Mojang, you guys, alot of people on the internet..

Anyway, about me: I'm 15 years old in high school. The reason I started programming is because of a calculator. Seriously. Theres this brand of calculators called TI-84s(I dont know if u guys have them where ure from), and a nice feature in them is the ability to code. They have their own language called TI-Basic, and its pretty cool, Anyway, I had to do a project for school and I had to take a bunch of numbers and do things to them, like multiply and subtract and add and stuff. It wouldve taken forever, but my partner put a code on my calulator and made it so that i only had to type the number, and it would output the result. Afterwards, I tried to find out how it worked, so I looked online and there was a nice little website for that. I made a few of my own programs. This was my first programming, ever.

It's been about ten months since that. After ti-basic, I went to liberty basic, mostly because it had a really nice set of tutorials. When I finished the tutorials, I tried c++, for about 10 minutes, and then java. I couldnt do that either, so then I tried VB. Thats about the best programming language ever.Seriously, its really nice. Just a little slow. I used that for a while, and it really clicked for me. I tried making my own browser, and got pretty far, but then there was this one bug that i just couldn't fix. That made me stop programming for a few months. After that i learned the basics of java, and  then c++.That was about 3 weeks ago. I looked for a graphics lib, found sfml. C++ has rellay good for me, because ive been learning it practically using sfml. Ive probably learned more in the last three weeks than in the past year.

So, thats it. :lol:
Title: Re: my turn
Post by: OniLinkPlus on September 08, 2011, 05:25:51 am
Quote from: "asdatapel"
so then I tried VB. Thats about the best programming language ever.Seriously, its really nice. Just a little slow.
Oh god that's depressing. Virtually every programmer despises VB with a passion. With most languages, if you learn one, it becomes easier to learn every other language. With VB, it makes every other language seem far harder. Djikstra, one of the programming gods, has said "...the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery." VB is a "modern" version of BASIC. So yea, ditch VB and avoid it at all costs.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Groogy on September 08, 2011, 09:28:35 am
If he thinks that language is nice... we are too late to save him :(
Save yourselves! The Basic Zombies are back! They want our brainz!
Title: Re: my turn
Post by: Haikarainen on September 08, 2011, 12:30:46 pm
Quote from: "OniLink10"
Oh god that's depressing. Virtually every programmer despises VB with a passion. With most languages, if you learn one, it becomes easier to learn every other language. With VB, it makes every other language seem far harder. Djikstra, one of the programming gods, has said "...the teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery." VB is a "modern" version of BASIC. So yea, ditch VB and avoid it at all costs.


Hahaha, made me laugh, +1.

Seriously tho, you should really try and understand C++, SFML is also really great for that (since of its simplistic API)! Look at how to create c++ classes and Object-Oriented Programming as well ;)

Edit; Oh right, if you really really try and fail hard; Try BlitzMax! Personally I dont like it since im pretty good at C++, but every other guy that have tried C++ and failed always recommend BlitzMax. Basic-like syntax but way more powerful than basic.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: asdatapel on September 08, 2011, 07:44:01 pm
wow.... so many languages
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: asdatapel on September 08, 2011, 11:07:04 pm
really? is it that bad? I like it. Its pretty easy and stuff...
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Haikarainen on September 09, 2011, 12:05:59 am
Quote from: "asdatapel"
really? is it that bad? I like it. Its pretty easy and stuff...


Yes well.. For starters, BASIC is.. basic. Nothing you should regurarly use, but something you could look at as a beginner to get a perception of how code can be. Also, Visual basic is managed by Microsoft, wich limits a lot of things in a lot of ways.

C++ is not so hard once you get the syntax and standards,
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Deftwun on September 09, 2011, 03:22:21 am
Hey there cool thread.  I'm 24 and live in upstate New York (not many yankies on the thread it seems lol) I've been interested in computers since I was about 10 when my dad brought home an old computer that used the old 8 inch floppy disks to play games. since then i was hooked. Always interested in learning about electronics and programming.

I started programming around 16 when i got a copy of visual basic 4.0. wrote a couple simple games and got my feet wet. Also got real into music, songwriting and guitar around the same time. Didn't do much anything else with programming for a few years. Finished high school and went to a technical school for electronics.

Started working at a company that builds mass spectrometers and gas chromatographs working in the repair department. Was in a rock band for about a year or 2 playing gigs in my area. Made some money had some fun and some crazy parties. Got into music recording with Reaper (a DAW like Pro tools)

Then my daughter was born about a year and a half ago. Didn't have much time for the band so In my spare time when the baby was asleep i figured I'd try my hand at some C++ just for kicks.

Didn't realize I would end up diving in head first and absorbing anything i could. looked at a couple different libraries and SFML caught my eye. It's taught me a TON about C++ and Programming and general. Just looking at Laurents code and implementation has helped me immensly.

Lately I've been working on a little side scroller (think Zombie Smashers with guns) Its been fun for sure (after several complete engine re-writes) although I think I might be a programming addict now lol...
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: OniLinkPlus on September 09, 2011, 07:01:34 am
Quote from: "Deftwun"
i got a copy of visual basic 4.0.
Rawr damn you Visual Basic and your ability to infect the minds of our children!
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: asdatapel on September 09, 2011, 11:07:14 pm
lol I dont get whats so bad about it. I used it for quite a while, and now I do C++.I havent been "fected"(i think)
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Deftwun on September 10, 2011, 03:33:23 am
Yeah Its not so bad if you plan on making some simple GUI programs.. granted its not great either.  Games though... thats outta the question. Possible but the language kinda fights you the whole way lol... learned the hard way but I still learned from it... here I am right?
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: denismr on September 13, 2011, 12:07:59 am
Hi!
My name is Denis.
I'm Brazilian, 20 years old and I'm coursing the 6th semester of Computer Science at Universidade de São Paulo.
Currently, I am in a scientific initiation, doing research about a subtopic of machine learning (multilabel knn) and I am participating in programming contests like ICPC.
Before the university, I was in a 2 years technical course at Instituto Federal de Educação Tecnológica de São Paulo. During this course, I was a Microsoft Student Partner by one year.
I started to learn programming when I was 11 with Visual Basic, Delphi, Game Maker Language and Multimedia Fusion (that improves logic and creativity).

My favorite topics in CS are algorithms, graph theory, data structures, evolutionary programming, computer graphics and I have some experience with hardware design, hardware description language, algorithms, data structures, vertex and pixel shaders, among other things.
Although I am researching about machine learning, I don't love this area.

I've made some games in my life, but all of them were "incomplete". They were just prototypes, some of them for university classes. But I'm sure that all of them were very unique.

I'm making a real game by now, and I plan to use SFDL in this project.

I speak portuguese (my native language) and I understand english, but I don't write in english very well.

Nice to meet you.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Laurent on September 13, 2011, 07:48:23 am
Quote
SFDL

Arghhhh :lol:
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: gsaurus on September 13, 2011, 01:22:47 pm
My name is Gil, I'm portuguese, 24 years.
I started with a game maker called "The Games Factory" when I was 14, then learnt Pascal, C, VB at college, then C++ and Java at uni (and some other languages and scripting langs but those are the ones I know better).
I didn't finish my masters in Computer Science yet, it's jammed since 2 or 3 years due to a health problem - brain exhaustion or something like that. I left research work at uni due to that. I had (and have) some personal projects too, like EvE (http://eve.exofire.net/forum/index.php), but everything is stuck because of that.
I have videos of some works of mine here (http://www.youtube.com/user/GilDuarteCosta) (some really old in Pascal and C). I haven't been doing much stuff lately as you can imagine (though I think Pluma (http://pluma-framework.sourceforge.net/) is ok)

My university is Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia), Portugal. I'm progressing very slowly now, but still having good marks.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Haikarainen on September 13, 2011, 04:44:17 pm
Quote from: "Laurent"
Quote
SFDL

Arghhhh :lol:


This made me laugh so hard now that i actually noticed it :D
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: slotdev on September 13, 2011, 11:42:36 pm
I might as well have a go at this too!

I'm Ed, just turned 30 (ouch) from Oxford, England, and Technical Director of a company that designs and develops mechanical and video slot machines.

In my spare time, I do a LOT of running, teach rowing occasionally at Oxford University and sometimes do a bit of kayaking too. I'm not married, but I'm working on it...

I've been into computers and slot machines since I was 13, as I was always fascinated with any machine you can put a coin into and some magic happens, be it pinball, video games or, more interestingly for me, gambling machines.

I started programming when I was 12, on an old 386 with DOS 6 or something, and GWBasic/QBasic, then switched to C a few years later. After leaving school I managed to get a job just play testing slot machines all day, but with my knowledge of programming, I soon started helping the dev guys do the boring parts of their work - coding the lamp animation sequences. Not long after I graduated to programming my own games and then moved up through that company to be a senior programmer at 21 :D

I left a few years later and started my own company...

There are 5 of us here, a small but very hardworking team, and we love our work. Our games aren't quite the same as you'd see in Las Vegas, but we're not far behind. We don't have $1m development budgets (yet :))

We used SDL for a few projects but found it slow, inflexible and hard to use. A bit of Googling resulted in me finding SFML and, I must say, we have not looked back. I would gladly consider funding SFML development as it's been so important in the development of our company.

It's a great bit of software, and the community here is fantastic and so much more helpful than SDL. It just needs a few bug fixes and it'll be perfect :p


Ed
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: TeLMo on October 10, 2011, 08:13:17 pm
Well, my name is Telmo Henrique Valverde, but you can call me Telmo. :) I'm a brazilian 15 years old guy that's learning how to program C++. I'm reading some e-books, I don't really have someone to teach me, but some friends and forum guys help me out to solve some problems with code and stuff. I'm trying to develop my own indie game, so I started to use SFML.  :lol:
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: David on October 10, 2011, 09:47:06 pm
I'm David, which is fairly obvious for the lot of you. I've always been fascinated with game development, but never really got into it until I came across Scratch, a UI version of Java, back in 6th grade. I actually didn't find it on my own, my computer teacher kinda mentioned it one day, and I was hooked to it right when I got it. It was okay, kinda messy in its ways, but it did its job. My best friend and I were making games left and right until I moved to a new place. From then on, I was just interested in making animations in Flash at home and Powerpoint at school. I tried to learn how to program using Flash, but the whole thing just went over my head. I did enter this iD Tech camp during the summer, but they barely "taught" us much and used UI-based programs such as Multimedia Fusion (this isn't really surprising since they only teach for 5 days). This continued for a couple years until 9th grade. I was bored one day in the middle of Spanish class when I'd decided to check out HTML for once. From there, I've made some websites, even if they fall under the eye-killer category. Overall, HTML, CSS, and Javascript only took me a couple weeks to learn, and I knew that I have some sort of talent with programming. I actually took honors programming in my freshman year in high school, but the teacher didn't really "teach." The farthest we've gotten to was making a maze in VB using like 10 lines, and the whole class kinda fell apart (she was fired by the end of the year, unfortunately). I started to master AS2, and made some pretty fun games in the process. After half a year of scripting, I've finally got to the point where my games start to reach the limits of AS2, creating lags and whatnot. I ended up forcing myself to learn AS3, which was very similar to Java. I never liked Java in the first place even though I'd used Scratch, and learning AS3 was a pain. I finally gave up and decided to learn C++ just because it's the most efficient language that I knew of. It only took me a couple days to learn how to program in CP, and I'd thought that I was ready for graphic programming. I was wrong. Very wrong. Programming graphics in C++ was nothing like scripting in AS2. I was overwhelmed by the amount of failure that I was faced with just to get a simple code to work. The farthest I've ever gotten to was collisions with squares, and even that had some issues. So I took a break over the summer, which is why I wasn't active at all. I did some scripting in the meantime.

I came back to C++ a week ago after seeing that my favorite game closed due to "financial problems" (it's in quotes because the company that made the game is extremely rich). I was determined to make a game with similar components, and decided to wipe the slate and relearn C++. Turns out I'd missed a lot of key points due to the fact that I did the same with AS2 and was fine with it. Now I know how the syntax works and now I'm trying to use CP for a month before using SFML (school is making me extremely busy). By the way, if you were to ask me anything about programming a year ago, I would be extremely clueless.

Other than all that, I like to draw using Paint Tool Sai (I have PS, too, but I honestly don't like that and I only use it for "professional graphics"). I also like to listen to the randomest music, ranging from Lady Gaga to Vocaloid to chiptune in general, and play Earthbound as well as other RPGs. I hate Microsoft (something is terribly wrong with their computers and softwares), anime, JPEGs, Family Guy (but I love American Dad), Java, AS3, and C# (I think I said that), and yaoi as well as other disturbing stuff out there. I'm trying to study really hard this year and go to a good physics/IT college such as MIT.  Enough of that, check out my deviantart here for more info (lots of goodies and stuff): http://davidscript.deviantart.com .

Now that I look more closely, it seems that everyone had a nice background when it comes to programming. I feel... left out :lol:

EDIT: Holy crap, I wrote a lot. I really should be starting my paper for history due tomorrow
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: OniLinkPlus on October 11, 2011, 01:42:01 am
Quote from: "David"
I came back to C++ a week ago after seeing that my favorite game closed due to "financial problems" (it's in quotes because the company that made the game is extremely rich).
May I ask which game?
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: David on October 11, 2011, 02:08:55 am
Quote from: "OniLink10"
Quote from: "David"
I came back to C++ a week ago after seeing that my favorite game closed due to "financial problems" (it's in quotes because the company that made the game is extremely rich).
May I ask which game?


PopTag, a version of Bomberman that Nexon created. Such a good game, kinda sad and a little weird that they had to shut it down.  :cry:
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Sargon on October 12, 2011, 09:23:09 pm
I am Ofer,
I am making games in my free time and work in university on 3D Scanners for my living.
That's it.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: pdinklag on October 12, 2011, 10:50:27 pm
I love these threads. :)

My name's Patrick.
I'm from Germany and have just recently went to the Technical University of Dortmund to study computer sciences. Before that, I had a 3 years training and may call myself a professional software developer. I have quite some things floating around the internet already.

I started hacking Goldeneye on the N64 in about 2004 using the Gameshark. I quickly lost track, but provided some tools that allowed you to edit game texts and multiplayer weapon sets.

I went on to hack Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, which would result in the RockPatch (http://modenc.renegadeprojects.com/RockPatch). Later on, I worked on a tool called "Syringe" that can inject any DLL code into any unprotected 32-bit application. This tool is currently in use in the Ares (http://ares.strategy-x.com/) project, which I left, but is still being developed. It's an advanced way to hack / mod C&C: Yuri's Revenge and makes some modders happy until this day. :)

From 2008 on, when my favorite UT2004 server moved, I volunteered to become a game administrator on the new server. I loved the job, started to build maps, and eventually took over development of the RPG mod that we were running. TitanRPG (http://titanrpg.pdinklag.de/) was born. I have stopped its development in June, but reserve the option to go back at it.

This year, I looked for a decent multimedia API for Java. There's lwjgl, but I hate the fact that you have access to the raw OpenGL / OpenAL / OpenCL methods only. There was no decent high-level Java library around, so I checked for them outside the Java world. I found SFML. :) It convinced me, and I started working on JSFML (http://www.sfml-dev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4938), which is in sleeping development (waiting for the new graphics API :P ).

I also established a Minecraft server (http://bigbattleservers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=3301) at the place where "my" UT2004 server ran at and also started developing minor Minecraft server plugins.

As a developer, there are loads and loads of little projects that eventually got cancelled, including several game ideas. If anybody wonders how it all started, it was when my big sister left me a Commodore 64 when I was 9. :D

Apart from nerdy coding, I do non-professional electronic music production: http://soundcloud.com/pdinklag The style is hard to describe...
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Ricky on October 14, 2011, 04:22:52 am
Quote from: "pdinklag"
I love these threads. :)

My name's Patrick.
I'm from Germany and have just recently went to the Technical University of Dortmund to study computer sciences. Before that, I had a 3 years training and may call myself a professional software developer. I have quite some things floating around the internet already.

I started hacking Goldeneye on the N64 in about 2004 using the Gameshark. I quickly lost track, but provided some tools that allowed you to edit game texts and multiplayer weapon sets.

I went on to hack Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, which would result in the RockPatch (http://modenc.renegadeprojects.com/RockPatch). Later on, I worked on a tool called "Syringe" that can inject any DLL code into any unprotected 32-bit application. This tool is currently in use in the Ares (http://ares.strategy-x.com/) project, which I left, but is still being developed. It's an advanced way to hack / mod C&C: Yuri's Revenge and makes some modders happy until this day. :)

From 2008 on, when my favorite UT2004 server moved, I volunteered to become a game administrator on the new server. I loved the job, started to build maps, and eventually took over development of the RPG mod that we were running. TitanRPG (http://titanrpg.pdinklag.de/) was born. I have stopped its development in June, but reserve the option to go back at it.

This year, I looked for a decent multimedia API for Java. There's lwjgl, but I hate the fact that you have access to the raw OpenGL / OpenAL / OpenCL methods only. There was no decent high-level Java library around, so I checked for them outside the Java world. I found SFML. :) It convinced me, and I started working on JSFML (http://www.sfml-dev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4938), which is in sleeping development (waiting for the new graphics API :P ).

I also established a Minecraft server (http://bigbattleservers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=3301) at the place where "my" UT2004 server ran at and also started developing minor Minecraft server plugins.

As a developer, there are loads and loads of little projects that eventually got cancelled, including several game ideas. If anybody wonders how it all started, it was when my big sister left me a Commodore 64 when I was 9. :D

Apart from nerdy coding, I do non-professional electronic music production: http://soundcloud.com/pdinklag The style is hard to describe...


Hi there! I have been really busy but I still pop in and read the new posts.
Nice to meet you all!

I commented on this post because I am working on an injector too and I named the project syringe too. I don't know if I should change the name or not. Do you care pdinklag if I use the same name for my injector project?
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: pdinklag on October 14, 2011, 03:35:57 pm
Quote from: "Ricky"
I am working on an injector too and I named the project syringe too. I don't know if I should change the name or not. Do you care pdinklag if I use the same name for my injector project?

Does yours work for 64-bit applications? Cause that would be cool. :)

Anyway, feel free to use the name, my Syringe was made and is used by one specific project only (well, another one uses it, but that's very minor), I don't plan on doing any public releases. In case you're interested, feel free to have a peek at its sources:
http://svn.renegadeprojects.com/listing.php?repname=Syringe&path=%2Ftrunk%2F&#a0b40758157c8f16fa703ca3be466fa8a
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Groogy on October 15, 2011, 02:43:25 am
Hope it fits into this thread but wanted to do some update on my information and tell everyone what I am working/employed/studying with/by/on at the moment.
To be frank, I just want to brag a little. :twisted:

Currently I am working in a group called Rimfrost Studios (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rimfrost-Studios/284061871611544)(Like us on facebook! :D) where we are a group of five programmers and five artists. I was voted to be the Code Lead because of my experience in that specific role.

Currently we are working on a Space Shooter in 3D and we are on our 3rd iteration which contain only tree things: Polish, Polish and Polish served with some more Polish as side dish.

One of these things to polish has been lighting and I looooooove those things. So I took it upon myself to implement physically based lighting and it looks really nice even with my artists work-in-progress models that don't even have all channels/maps/textures. (albedo, ambient occlusion, substance, roughness, environment and normal)

Also note being a Code Lead doesn't mean that you get to decide what happens. It is really the worst role you can get as it means you will do more boring stuff and be pushed away from programming anything fun. This lighting was the only thing I've done the entire week on the game :(

Tried to upload to sfmluploads.org but couldn't access my account for some weird reason. Anyway here's some screenshots:
http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/308399_241987609184247_100001190302490_603531_541211117_n.jpg
http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/291701_241987649184243_100001190302490_603532_1144327707_n.jpg
http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/307854_241987665850908_100001190302490_603533_597419032_n.jpg
http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/318659_241987692517572_100001190302490_603534_1702475788_n.jpg
http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/317178_241989329184075_100001190302490_603539_738142430_n.jpg
http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/s720x720/317787_241992152517126_100001190302490_603542_2088228342_n.jpg

This one is me playing around with some of the channels so it's VERY shiny, I lajk shiny things :D
http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/305122_241992169183791_100001190302490_603543_1570417850_n.jpg
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: CJ_COIMBRA on October 19, 2011, 03:00:22 pm
I'm brazilian, 27 years old, I'm also married. I have two cats and I am preparing to have a baby with my wife (I hope so :P) in the next 1 - 2 years. I live in Goiânia, capital of the state of Goiás, western part of Brazil.

I started programming at age of 12 with little DOS programs. I graduated recently in computer science at Pontifical Catholic University of Goiás. I am experienced in C, C++, a little Java, Lua script and C#.

I work as a programmer in a local gamedev company. We do small casual games and advergames for publicity. I like it, except that I can´t use C++ there.

I am currently deciding if I spend my free time with personal game projects or with my master degree... didn´t figure it out yet...
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Silvah on October 19, 2011, 06:47:06 pm
.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: capz on December 20, 2011, 01:33:10 am
Well, I'll say hi too, considering that I registered today :P

Haven't been much on the forums until now, really. But anyways!

Hi, I'm Leroy, 24, from the Netherlands.
I often found myself wanting to create websites as a young teen, and that was something that I pursued despite not having access internet connection until years later.

Then I got into console gaming, with a PSX, moved to Gamecube later, and Picked up Phantasy Star Online.
I then got involved with the Action replay gamecube hacking community, and learned how to use a debugger and create cheats for Phantasy Star. At about the same time, I had decided to go enroll at a game dev education, which was a super new thing at the time, where I first got in touch with Visual Basic 6 (..ugh). Oh and game maker (...uhhhggg).

I made some tools in VB for the Gamecube hacking community, before I picked up C++ (as in, they handed me a book on C++), and I taught myself C++ from the book, and online references.
Then they had an indie dev come in and teach us C++ game programming. But I had just bought my first Mac, and his homemade game lib would only support development on windows. A big no-go.

.. So I started messing with SDL, wrote my own SDL wrapper as a compatibility layer around the teacher's library, and learned so much doing that.

Graduated there learning most of the important stuff myself, off the internet, and enrolled at NHTV University of Applied Science straight after. I also did some work as a volunteer, for an online gaming lifestyle publication, where I worked as a columnist and CTO, before quitting to focus on my studies. I loved attending industry events such as GDC, though! Fascinating talks and people there : )

Then I picked up SFML as a friend of mine discovered it, after initially continuing work on my own (by then) 2D game engine in SDL.

So I'm now a 3rd year Indie Game Dev student, with industry and media contacts, and roughly 16+ games under my belt (property of past and present schools, sadly). But I'm also a web developer (your average html, xhtml, css, javascript, php, mysql stuff), know Adobe Flash/Flash Builder with Actionscript3, and picked up Python two weeks ago (good stuff!)

Switched over my latest personal project over from SFML to SFML2, and spent today going through API references, source code, figuring out why my 360 controller refuses to work in SFML2 on Mac OS X (I think I did).

I have to say though, I totally love SFML for it's clean API, and I'm learning interesting new stuff every day by solving problems as I go (which I think goes for a lot of people on here ^_^)
Cool forum by the way. I've never been into the whole mailing list thing that's so frequently used in the open source development community : ) And I'm curious if there's any other dutch guys around :)

Ok. Time to shut up now.
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Silvah on January 13, 2012, 06:45:32 pm
An update :lol:
Quote from: Silvah
my wife is French
That's not true anymore. I've divorced with her and married someone else. My new wife is from... or wait, try to guess :P
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: Ricky on March 07, 2012, 09:33:40 am
Quote from: "capz"
Well, I'll say hi too, considering that I registered today :P

Haven't been much on the forums until now, really. But anyways!

Hi, I'm Leroy, 24, from the Netherlands.
I often found myself wanting to create websites as a young teen, and that was something that I pursued despite not having access internet connection until years later.

Then I got into console gaming, with a PSX, moved to Gamecube later, and Picked up Phantasy Star Online.
I then got involved with the Action replay gamecube hacking community, and learned how to use a debugger and create cheats for Phantasy Star. At about the same time, I had decided to go enroll at a game dev education, which was a super new thing at the time, where I first got in touch with Visual Basic 6 (..ugh). Oh and game maker (...uhhhggg).

I made some tools in VB for the Gamecube hacking community, before I picked up C++ (as in, they handed me a book on C++), and I taught myself C++ from the book, and online references.
Then they had an indie dev come in and teach us C++ game programming. But I had just bought my first Mac, and his homemade game lib would only support development on windows. A big no-go.

.. So I started messing with SDL, wrote my own SDL wrapper as a compatibility layer around the teacher's library, and learned so much doing that.

Graduated there learning most of the important stuff myself, off the internet, and enrolled at NHTV University of Applied Science straight after. I also did some work as a volunteer, for an online gaming lifestyle publication, where I worked as a columnist and CTO, before quitting to focus on my studies. I loved attending industry events such as GDC, though! Fascinating talks and people there : )

Then I picked up SFML as a friend of mine discovered it, after initially continuing work on my own (by then) 2D game engine in SDL.

So I'm now a 3rd year Indie Game Dev student, with industry and media contacts, and roughly 16+ games under my belt (property of past and present schools, sadly). But I'm also a web developer (your average html, xhtml, css, javascript, php, mysql stuff), know Adobe Flash/Flash Builder with Actionscript3, and picked up Python two weeks ago (good stuff!)

Switched over my latest personal project over from SFML to SFML2, and spent today going through API references, source code, figuring out why my 360 controller refuses to work in SFML2 on Mac OS X (I think I did).

I have to say though, I totally love SFML for it's clean API, and I'm learning interesting new stuff every day by solving problems as I go (which I think goes for a lot of people on here ^_^)
Cool forum by the way. I've never been into the whole mailing list thing that's so frequently used in the open source development community : ) And I'm curious if there's any other dutch guys around :)

Ok. Time to shut up now.

Hoi mijn vriend! Waar woon je in Nederland?
*cough* gotta practice that dutch whenever I get the chance :)
Quote from: "Silvah"
An update :lol:
Quote from: "Silvah"
my wife is French
That's not true anymore. I've divorced with her and married someone else. My new wife is from... or wait, try to guess :P

Wow can I ask what caused that?  :o

Also I got to update, I've been studying electronics for the past bit and Lua. School stole my money :( and thats pretty much it. Still studying
and still spriting..
(http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/067/c/4/samus_sprite__original__by_ricardoantoniotejada-d4s3742.gif)
 ..still poor :(
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: eigenbom on March 14, 2012, 12:40:31 pm
Hi my name is Ben, I'm 30, married, have a PhD in computer science (graphics), and love to program and play games. I started when I was about 7 or 8 on a c64 my dad bought. I'm working on my first "real " game, moonman (http://moonman.io), and I'm using sfml because it is awesome. :-)

Hmm what else ... I live in Melbourne,  Australia which is pretty nice, and used to live out in the country in a town of only 500 ppl. My favourite language is c++, but i like others too like lua, python, or haxe.

And im looking forward to sfml2s API being frozen. :-P

Edit: link fixed. Stupid autocorrect!
Title: Who Are You? (the obligatory interview thread)
Post by: thePyro_13 on March 14, 2012, 03:06:46 pm
Quote from: "eigenbom"
Hi my name is Ben, I'm 30, married, have a PhD in computer science (graphics), and love to program and play games. I started when I was about 7 or 8 on a c64 my dad bought. I'm working on my first "real " game, moonman (http://milkman.io), and I'm using sfml because it is awesome. :-)

Hmm what else ... I live in Melbourne,  Australia which is pretty nice, and used to live out in the country in a town of only 500 ppl. My favourite language is c++, but i like others too like lua, python, or haxe.

And im looking forward to sfml2s API being frozen. :-P


Is that link correct? milkman.io gives me a domain not found error. But moonman.io (http://moonman.io) links to a pretty cool looking game. :p

I think the API is already frozen, unless something unexpected comes up. See this post by Laurent. (http://sfml-dev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=48084#48084)

Just realised I haven't made an introduction in this thread yet, so hear it is.

My name is Steven, I live in Australia(also near Melbourne :D), and I'm a fourth year student at University, studying Game Design and Development and a bit of Computer Science.

I'm 21 years old and have pretty much always wanted to make games(except when I wanted to be a train driver, because every kid wants to do that for a least some point in their childhood xD).

I've just recently started a blog(link in my signature) where I'm posting about projects that I've completed, mostly using SFML, and talking about game design. It only has one post, but hopefully I'll have enough free time to keep adding to it. It should become something of an online portfolio in time.