Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
Monday, August 29th, 2011
Since I’ve got my Bachelor diploma I’ve released my bachelor thesis and the practical solution as binary and source code here. Please be aware that the source code is released under GPL, but the written thesis may only be used for personal education. If you want to publish my thesis in any way please contact me first. The thesis handles displacement mapping in Direct X 11 using hull and domain shader. It makes use of almost every new Direct X 11 feature (Tessellation, Compute Shader). If you have any questions concerning my work please don’t hesitate to contact me or leave a comment. I’ll be happy to explain or help with you work if I can.
 Tessellation Demo |
 Tessellation Demo low tessellation |
 Tessellation Demo wireframe mode |
 Tessellation Demo low tessellation wireframe |
Tags: C++, Development, Games, Microsoft, Personal, Project
Posted in Development, Game Development, Gaming, Personal, Projects | 2 Comments »
Thursday, August 18th, 2011
I’ll be attending GamesCom this year again (on Sunday). I hope to get some insights and also perhaps get some contacts and maybe a chance to find my next Job ;o). Last years GamesCom was more or less disappointing as there where most continuations of game series and a lot of browser and casual game stuff. I hope that it will be a bit better this year but I don’t have a lot of hope. For us hardcore games it more and more looks like our favorite part of the industry is falling into the hands of console gaming and ever repeating of the same stuff. Soon enough the old days of new genres and ideas around every corner will be nothing more than a distant memory. Something we will be telling story’s about to children with tears in our eyes :-P. Its sad to be living in this times. But we have to make the best of it and work towards making the industry realize that we won’t accept it and buy their crappy ever-same-stuff.
Posted in Game Development, Gaming, Personal | No Comments »
Monday, May 9th, 2011
Finally my childhood dream has come true. I’m a professional game developer ;). Ok… ok I’m a game development intern… but hey.. I’m going there step by step. My first week as intern at EA Phenomic has come and passed and I’m loving every second of it. I can now do what every (crazy) child is dreaming of. I create the games that we love so much and have so much fun playing. What better job there is ;)?
Tags: C++, Development, Games, Personal
Posted in Development, Game Development, Gaming, Personal | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 1st, 2010
Well its that time of the year again isn’t it? Where the snow is falling, everyone is lingering around fireplaces and.. oh yea.. Christmas presents. Its always the same problem. What in gods name should I get for XY. The worst choice of all is of course: what to get your geek? Be it a friend, your boyfriend, brother or whatever.. geeks are hard to satisfy! Most of the times they will get that strange look in the face after opening your present. You know.. that look that says: thank you but WTF should I do with that piece of s****. So be at ease, because I’ve got just the tip for you ;-). Take a look at http://www.getdigital.de/ . Most of the stuff there will make your geek happy. OK you’ve got to know him at least a little bit the make a decent choice. But hey.. life can’t be THAT easy :-P. After all getDigital has introduced a nice wish-list feature (just in time for Christmas). If you can convince your geek to put some stuff onto it you’ll just have to choose and buy. I love technology at work :-P.
P.S. I’ve got myself quite some stuff from getDigital.de. Some was a gift (like my 30cm plush tux that is following me to every amarok booth). Some I gave to myself (I’m a heavy tea drinker and the frozen tux mug is my best tea cup).
Tags: Gift, Personal
Posted in Personal | No Comments »
Sunday, October 17th, 2010
Yesterday I “Making Games Talents” finally was held in my area (at least near enough to attend it) and the company set that was presenting itself contained all the company’s I ever wanted to work for: Related Designs, Crytek and Spellbound. First of all I’d like to thank Game Star (and IDG) and especially Heiko Klinge for making this event possible. It means a lot to us crazy devs, designers and artists to have the possibility to actually shake some hands instead of just writing one application after another and get ignored. This way we can show the company’s why we matter and why we stick out of the crowd. It was a quite rainy day yesterday and the first hard thing was to find the place ;o). Honestly guys.. next time a better description would be nice (or was this the first test?). However during my search I met some people who where also looking for the right place and so we made a team effort out of it. We sticked together for a while and met again later on. What will become out of this group is uncertain, but we exchanged e-mail addresses and you might here from us again (On this blog or maybe even on a bigger scale) ;o). I first attended some lectures. After that I tried to get started with shaking hands. Getting to someone wasn’t really the easy part. Because the company’s like Crytek, Related Designs and Spellbound where all but overrun. I took my place in the line and finally had the chance to shake the hand of the CEO from Related Designs (if that isn’t already something ;o) ). Sadly though they don’t have a position open for a junior programmer at the moment. He took my portfolio and wrote some infos down. To bad. I’d really enjoyed working for them! The Crytek booth was badly crowded, but I tried my luck. When I was finally in front of the booth I met Cortney. He’s talent manager at Crytek. He took the time to look at the game I developed together with the GDIG at FH-Trier and listen to my explanations. I found him to be quite patient and friendly (considering what he had to all day). Last but not least I went to the Spellbound booth to present my case. They also where very patient (considering my notebook crashed before I could start the game and they had to wait on it for quite some time) and especially very friendly. All in all my hopes have somewhat risen (concerning GamesCom they have rocketed). Now comes the hardest part: wait and see. In the meantime I’ll look for more opportunities to get into the gaming industry. Keep your thumbs crossed!
Tags: C++, Development, Games
Posted in Development, Game Development, Gaming, Personal | No Comments »
Monday, August 30th, 2010
So.. I finally made it to gamescom this year. Last times this event took place I was buried under tons of university work. This time I could shake myself loose. Not only for fun reasons as some of you might think, but because I want to become a game developer (yes I’m positive and yes I AM crazy). GameStar was hosting a career booth for all the crazy people to get some insight into game development. So this was the place I spend the most of my time. But I get ahead of myself. The first thing I did of course was looking around a bit to see what the industry has to offer this year. I was dismayed to say the least. Basically there are 4 genres which you can buy games from at the moment: Browser Games (boring), MMOG (even more boring), Casual Games (boring like hell) or the 1924739th continuation of the “new” whatsoever. There wasn’t a SINGLE NEW idea on that damn exhibition. OK OK maybe I missed something.. after all I wasn’t there to buy games.. I wanted to get into the Industry. So back to the GameStar booth. There I was.. sitting in the audience of one talk after another and trying to hold back on my tears. One Browser Game Company after another came forward to show how NICE and SPLENDID their games (which all looked and DID the same) where and why we should work for them. Excuse me? Where are the GAME COMPANY’S? I mean the ones that MATTER!?! That made the gaming industry the way it is today!? Guess what? They either make browser games now or are finished! To make it short: The gaming industry is nearly dead. Nothing new.. only titles which where successful in the last 21239 years are continued and the rest is just a pile of browser and mmog stuff. What have we come to :-(. Don’t get me wrong.. I understand the standpoint of the industry in this matter.. making browser and mmo games is much saver that spending millions on new stuff which might not work out. The problem is with the gamers! We have gone gaga! We let the industry feed us with ever the same content and still keep on using and buying this stuff! After this shock I was looking forward to the EA talk (imagine that). But guess what? This one gave me the death blow. De facto they told all people sitting in the audience that you can only work in the gaming industry if you work in the gaming industry.. a coterie! I always knew they would go mad some day! Now they have! That I’m disappointed is an understatement. Disenchanted is more like it. What have we come to?
Posted in Development, Game Development, Gaming, Personal | 1 Comment »
Friday, August 13th, 2010
One of the major problems society is facing in the age of connectivity is TRUST.
Whom do you trust? Would you trust me with your life? Certainly not. What about your computer and all the Data on it? I doubt it. Would you trust me with your music player? You may be surprised to hear that but to a small part some of you already do 😛 (I’m coding for Amarok).Now a Question to all of you Amarok users: whom of you did read ALL the source code and search for bad or dangerous parts someone put in there? I certainly didn’t (and I’ve already read a lot of Amarok’s source code). So in the end even here all comes down to TRUST.
So why am I writing about this anyway? As you may (or may not) have noticed the little “s” behind behind my “http” is vanished. I did this because some of my readers complained because their browser complained because their browser doesn’t TRUST me and my self signed root certificate. So there we are again.. now back to TRUST.
Back in medieval times man would trust other man by their word. But not every man.. just the ones who where rich like hell (or at least a little rich :-P). Poor peoples word meant nothing. Lets go ab bit forward in time. Say 20. century. you’d think humanity has evolved into a species of understanding and equal rights? You’d be disappointed. There is still a system of classes and still we trust people with money (gentleman) more or less by their word and those who are poor are not trustworthy. So what about today? Equal rights for all? Trust for the poor. I’ll have to disappoint you again. Today (at least certificate and IT wise which is the area my blog is about) we trust those who are buying (for quite some money, and thus are “rich”) a certificate from companys who do not much else then SELLING TRUST for money (And thus degrading certificates to a “certificate of having enough money to be trustworthy”).
So where does that leave us today? Back in medieval times I guess.
Tags: Development, Personal, SSL, Trust
Posted in Development, KDE, Personal | 5 Comments »
Monday, June 21st, 2010
This where an intensive few weeks. First the KDE Multimedia Sprint. It was awesome and a lot of fun. I met a lot of cool people and (hopefully) made a few new friends out there. We (me and my girlfriend) stayed 5 days longer in Randa / Täsch for some R&R. Every time I have to leave this place I feel like leaving home. And every time I come back there its just like I was never gone. I’ll miss it.. but in September I’ll be back ;o). Not even a week after I got home the next event was on the agenda. LinuxTag in Berlin. Helping Kuba and his Girlfriend at the Amarok booth. Winning new users, supporting present ones and convincing old ones to come back. I guess we had quite some success. At the end of the event my voice was gone, I had “cleaned out” the Google booth and had a wonderful time with old and new friends! Folks.. I’ll miss you!
Posted in Amarok, KDE, Personal | No Comments »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Finally Rooted my HTC Desire ;o). Using this tutorial it was really rather easy (Thx Paul for this quite fast work after coming back from the DomRep). After the process I finally got all the features I always wanted my phone to have! OpenVPN Support without any hassle (using “OpenVPN Settings” from the Market) and a running Mail Client by simply putting my own CA into the secure CA Storage of the device. Sure its not very easy to access the system partition of the Desire. But once you’ve got the files you need in place all is well. I’m a happy geek now (my girlfriend is not so happy with me using the new phone all the time :-P).
Tags: Desire, HTC, Mobile, Personal
Posted in Personal | No Comments »
