About me
My journey in IT
While I have always enjoyed worldbuilding and being creative in the videogames I played, my interest in game development itself began when I was in high school. During that time I had my first exposure to various elements of game development such as building levels using game engines, making games with GameMaker, programming my first Minecraft plugins, and creating my first 3D models.
As soon as I had the chance I started studying Game Development. In my new school I learnt to create games by making 3D game assets using Blender and Substance Painter, programming game logic using C#, and putting it all together in the Unity game engine. While I enjoyed creating game art, I ended up focusing mostly on the technical side of game development.
In school we worked a lot in self-organized project groups, tasked with making videogames. There were a lot of problems to run into, and thus a lot was learnt about how not to do things. These are lessons that nowadays I attribute more value to than I may have done back then ;-).
During this period I worked on a variety of different games and their mechanics. My favourite topic that I explored during this time would be procedural generation of dungeons for a Dungeon Crawler.
Other interests
Besides programming and learning about IT, I also have a few other interests to take my mind of of the technical problem solving.
I occassionally pick up either my guitar or bass guitar, or practice some piano. I started playing the guitar after seeing Slayer live some years ago. I like to play a bunch of different types of music but my biggest inspiration when it comes to the guitar would likely be Mark Knopfler.
As for bass my big inspiration currently is Larry Graham. Though Les Claypool would also be good to mention there.
I have got much to learn when it comes to playing music, but it is a lot of fun already.
I also go outside! I quite enjoy going hiking. So far I have hiked most of the Eifelsteig in Germany. This year, together with some friends, I have occassionally been walking some shorter trails that are closer to home.
This year I have also started bouldering, a form of indoor rock climbing. If there is such a thing as having too much fun, this is it.
I effectively did a year long internship at a small company working on a project more akin to serious games and simulations for training. My main responsibility for the project was to create tools that user could utilize to set up certain assets for the trainings. This would also include developing a tool which utilized an algorithm for calculating ray intersections in 3D space which I found surprisingly interesting!
Nowadays I have started my career in IT as a software developer at a machine manufacturer. There I am a part of a team which focuses on platform and architecture related projects. The software we develop serves as the base package which handles a lot of the user interactions and communication within the various machines which are developed at that company. Our challenge and purpose is to develop tools which serve all these different use cases. I find it very interesting!