Brord van Wierst
Clearly-not-a-web Developer
Organized - Initiative - Enthusiastic
Clearly-not-a-web Developer
Organized - Initiative - Enthusiastic
The best thing about me is my enthusiasm in learning and designing new software. I like acquiring knowledge and then sharing this with those who want to know. It is helpful that I am a quick study. Having me around is another plus, because I am easy- going and like to crack some puns to cheer up the mood. I can be very serious and work hard on the other hand.
Despite the fact that I do not
have a lot of professional field
experience, I do show persistence
with my jobs. This shows that I
am willing to work hard to
achieve my goals.
On to the more informal part; I am
the employee who pushes quick fixes at 10PM;
The one who wants to do something else during a break;
The person who never considers something impossible.
Delmor is a free roam RPG game written in Unreal engine 3 using UnrealScript. (A modification of C++) The game features a player who possesses magical powers which he uses to fight of enemy mutants. The project was made in a school term called "GAME". I was part, and leader, of the programming team in which I was responsible for the HUD. This included everything from pause menu to the GUI inventory. Some tasks being the leader are communication with other teams, integration, management meetings and concept design.
As my graduation came closer i started my graduate internship at a company called Utomik.
Utomik is a gaming platform which offers a subscription based gaming experience at which you pay a monthly amount to play unlimited games. Utomik is based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. They currently offer a Windows only client. Creating a client for OSX is difficult because one major part, the virtual file system, cannot easily be created due to differences in the operating system. The virtual file system, or VFS, provides an alternative downloading method to allow a game to be played with only a small portion of its required files.
I have been given the assignment to research and create a prototype for the VFS on OSX. This is done by finding methods which allow function hooking with 100% safety, without elevated rights/permissions. A solution has been found by looking at Apple's file strucutre, Mach-o.
Developing the solution required me to learn more about assembly and binary code. It taught me how to find solutions for problems which nobody else has conquered before. I have also become more proficient in using Mac OSX and XCode.
More information cannot be given due to the NDA I have signed.
Public community server hosting multiple games.
During my time as administrator I learned a broad aspect of skills including advertisement, customer service and server management
At a certain point the server ran with an average of 100 players online overall. Due to the enormous time required and a decreasing interest in the game itself the servers have been shut down medium 2014
The servers ran on Centos 5 and were hosted at home. They were managed using ssh and teamviewer
In my spare time, I have been developing numerous plugins for Minecraft.
Every plugin is uploaded at a site called Bukkit.
These plugins can be installed in a server and used in-game.
This started of as a small project for my own server, but certain people have contacted me to be their developer as well.
Some of these plugins are made public if the client allows me to, others stay private.
The size of each plugin was different every request. I have made small plugins like a firework show at New Years eve and a block which gives rewards once touched. Some plugins on the other hand were enourmous; for example a plugin which mimics Activision's game Call of Duty complete with Guns, maps and killstreaks. Or a pvp arena style featuring multiple modes and rewards.
All these plugins tought me a lot about Object Oriented Programming and the design around that. Some plugins required me to get more knowledge about SQL or Web integration.
Another thing I learned from this is that your clients (almost) always mean things in a different way and that it is important to make guidelines/rules to prevent miscommunication
Proun+ is a great combination of art and a racing game, inspired by paintings by Mondriaan and Kandinsky.
In Proun+ you guide a ball racing along a pipe while dodging obstacles.
five different speeds from Relaxed to Speed of Light mean this game is suitable for both casual and hardcore gamers, so anyone can enjoy it.
The levels are accompanied by great jazz-rock music specially written for Proun+.
My task for this game was writing the Android and Apple TV Version. The game framework was thus already made for the iOS. I was also responsible for updates to the current iOS version.
To accomplish this task I had to learn about an enormous amount of new tools. from makefiles, build systems and automated scripts to the amazing xcode settings page.
During this project I used C++, Java and Objective-C++ for cross platform compatibility.
Due to the fact that I made this for a game company, I have also learned a lot of things accompanied with game development like game releases, publications and production workflow.
Also, the only developer of the company, which allows me the freedom to decide my own tasks and teaches me to handle the responsibility.
I have been tasked with improving/fixing their bike ride tracking app and creating a website with back-end which can import data from various tracking apps and then incorporate it into challenges/badges/overviews.
The bike ride app is called Toury. It is made with Ionic.
By updating this app I not only learned more about app development; I have also had the need to learn more about Apple and Android app distribution.
The back-ends of the app and the website are NodeJS/MariaDB. Which is my preferred back-end solution since it is flexible and has a large community.
Current app integration for the website is limited to Strava and Toury.
This required Toury to have a fully functional API.
Adding new app integrations is very easy because all segments of a ride are made modular. It will only require the new data format and an API key!
Pangea is a project which aims to integrate google translate with a messaging client. Each user selects a language he wants to learn and a (although optional) language he will speak from. Using the messages send by the user, the app will provide small "games" to practice your target language. Think of it as Duolingo with Whatsapp/Telegram and Google translate
