[ButchDean]

ButchDean

I'm a computer science graduate and professional programmer with most of my experience from the games industry, accumulating five years' of experience. I have a real passion for all things game programming including graphics, AI, audio, etc, as well as writing my own routines to improve the already present debugging environment for all types of software. I'm also working on my own home brew project using C++ and DirectX, and porting an old 3D game (the first ever game I wrote) to Linux.

I on the rare occasion code in other languages but C++ is by far my favorite that I use for almost everything I code. Under Windows I code using Visual Studio, and under Linux my preference is NetBeans C++ IDE.

Gaming is another passion of mine on the PS3 and PC, but that's another story.


stayscrisp

Like most people my age, I'm 27 years old. I have a BSc(hons) in Game Design and Development. I have always had a huge interest in computer repair and technology but only began programming around 5 years ago. I usually spend my free time adding to my existing code base and game engine to enable fast and efficient development. My main strengths lie in class design and fast gameplay code although I'm quite proficient in 3D maths.

Football (soccer to some of you) and videogames are my two main interests and nothing breaks up a coding session like 90 minutes of the beautiful game

Photoshop is a new hobby of mine and I spend a lot of time just practising using the tools and messing with effects.

Blog: http://www.dreaminco...he-crispy-blog/


SixOfEleven
AKA Jamie McMahon

At the time of this posting I'm 42. I'm an IT professional who programs games with XNA as a hobby and is working on a title for Windows and the Xbox 360. I've also been studying web programming to make online games as well.

I've been working with computers since I was 10 when my brother brought one home from school that hooked up to the TV, a TSR-80 color computer. I played a few of the games that he had and absolutely loved the text based adventure game. That sparked my interest in computers and game programming. I learned how to write simple games for that computer and others over the years. The interest in games continued all through my schooling where I studied math and computer science. I kept making games in my spare time in many different languages including Pascal, C, BASIC, Visual Basic and C++. When I discovered C# I fell in love with the language and it is the main language that I work with now. It is just beautiful language and a joy to work with. I started with XNA when 2.0 was released and I instantly fell in love. I've worked on many games over the years and have written many tutorials on game programming with XNA, including tutorials on creating role playing games.



Serapth

As of writing I am 36. When I graduated University my first job was creating a major Canadian online bank. Let's just say, I personally didn't trust my money in an online bank for a very long time. Considering the majority of coding was done in C++, you can tell how much web development has changed in the last 15 years! Since then I've worked in games, tools ( 3D Studio Max plugins used to be big business! ), worked in banking, automotive and just recently created a start up of my own.

Like many of you, I got into programming because I loved games. I think it was about 8 years old that I wrote my first few lines of BASIC code on my 8bit Atari. The rest is pretty much history, although having worked in the industry I found my passion for it pretty much faded. Games were simply too big, too poorly managed and I simply didn't find it all that rewarding, at least where I was. In those days, Canada was a pretty horrible place to be when it came to games. Some days I even *gasp* found myself thinking about becoming an artist!

Lately though, everything changed! With the rise of mobile phones and new indie markets like Steam, XBox Live, etc... It is now viable for someone to self publish their own games on a shoe string budget. It's like the heydays of the Commodore 64, where a guy in his garage can create Ultima and make millions as a result! To say nothing of the simply amazing tools available and unheard of ( or even free! ) prices, the barrier of entry to create games has never been lower. These days you can use an Engine like Unity or UDK for a few hundred dollars, along with free art tools like Blender and create a high quality game. Even tools like Softimage or Maya are a literal fraction of the price they were. As a frame of reference, where I worked at over dozen years ago the artists were extremely excited about the SGI Indy being released, as you could get into 3D for a mere 15,000$! Yes, the world has changed. These exciting changes have drawn my interest back towards creating games.

Over my career I've used C++, Python, Assembly, C#, Java and a handful of other languages on all kinds of platforms. In the end though, C# is the language that I like working in the most. Since those early days of contemplating giving in to the dark side ( becoming an artist ), I have had a hobby interest in 3D graphics, which continues to this date.

This post has been edited by Serapth: 06 January 2012 - 11:49 AM
Reason for edit:: Added Serapth's bio