projects

Hybreed Framework (2009-2011)

Research project at the chair of Interactive Systems and Interaction Design

From April 2008 to April 2010, and then again from December 2010, I have been a student research assistant at the chair of Interactive Systems and Interaction Design at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. There, I was heavily involved in the Java-based development of several prototypes of context-adaptive recommender systems. The latest system I have been working on under the supervision of Tim Hussein is called Hybreed, a modular framework for rapid prototyping of context-aware, hybrid recommender systems in web applications.

Visualization of swarms in large spaces (2009)

Software project at university

In the summer term 2009, I was one of 11 students that participated in a practical software project of my study course dealing with the visualization of swarms in large 3d spaces. The scenario that we students chose was about bird swarms that are spread over the entire globe, and everything had to be implemented within a time frame of 13 weeks. My role in this project was the development of almost the complete visualization component, which utilizes the OpenSceneGraph library that we integrated into a user interface based upon the Qt4 framework. One big challenge of the project was the question of how to handle the precision issues caused by the large space in which the visualization is taking place. What I also found interesting was the idea of developing a platform-independent application that makes heavy use of multi-threading to achieve a decent performance. Finally, I also learned a lot about project management and realized once again how important it is to communicate when working in a larger team and under a lot of schedule pressure.

Sorades – Die Befreiung 1.3 (2008)

2D real-time strategy game that was released on the German market in autumn 2008

After the freeware version 1.0 of Sorades – Die Befreiung had been downloaded more than 50,000 times, we decided to put some finishing touches on the game and started working on a new, completely overhauled version in a team of four. In about three months worth of work in total, we redesigned the entire graphical user interface, made the game compatible with Windows Vista, improved the behaviour of the artificial intelligence and so much more.

Although the game’s story has basically stayed the same, the improvements in comparison to the original version are impressive — at least impressive enough to catch the attention of a publisher: Sorades – Die Befreiung 1.3 was released on the German market by magnussoft® (in cooperation with rokapublish) in September 2008. The game is currently on sale at major online stores like Amazon, but will soon also be available at local retailers. Personally for me, it is the first commercial title in the development of which I played a major role.

Like in the freeware version, as one of the two lead developers I was once again responsible for a huge amount of the now approximately 110,000 lines of C++ source code. For example, the new in-game user interface was completely programmed by me, as well as the part of the AI that now allows the computer player to use troop transporters. Other features implemented by me include the player’s ability to set gather points for the barracks and armory, support for higher screen resolutions or the game’s installer (using NSIS).

Besides that, I also did some work on various game graphics. Apart from the graphics of the new in-game user interface, I reworked the trees and cliffs as well, added animations for some buildings of the Loaders and polished the visuals of the outro and company intro.

“Abi-Zeitung”: Yearbook of the final years at secondary school (2006)

A recollection of the final years at my school, the Franz-Haniel-Gymnasium

In Germany, there is the habit of high-school graduates creating some sort of “yearbook” before their final secondary-school examinations. The so-called “Abi-Zeitung” is meant to be a memento of the final years that the students of one form spent together. Most of the work on our Abi-Zeitung was done by a group of four people, including me.

As the chief editor and designer in one person, I was not only responsible for the looks of the book’s 150 pages, but also had to make sure that all of the articles were handed in on time. Despite all initial concerns, we luckily managed to finish everything in a timely manner. In total, 400 copies of the yearbook were printed.

Sorades – Die Befreiung 1.0, German Freeware (2003-2006)

Winner of the Newcomer Award at the German Game Developer Award 2006

In 2003, Holger Meisel of Black Chronos had the idea of developing a 2D real-time strategy game on his own using OpenGL. About three months later, I joined him and from there on, I was responsible for parts of the code and most of the graphics. As the project evolved, the team started growing and finally consisted of five persons.

Sorades – Die Befreiung is set in a science-fiction scenario, where the player takes the role of a military general whose duty it is to save Earth from the invasion of a malicious alien race, the Loaders. In 13 exciting campaign missions, the player gets to know more and more about the motivations of the Loaders and the structure of the universe. In the so-called skirmish mode, on the other hand, you can play against up to three computer opponents on a map of your choice.

At the end of development, the game’s source code (written in C++) consisted of about 100,000 lines. About 40 to 50 percent of that were written by me. Examples of my work range from major parts of the map editor and the pathfinding algorithm to things like the fog of war or the code for the game’s intro and outro.

In addition, I also created various graphics of the game. The 3D renderings of the human buildings were made by me, as well as many intro images, the graphical user interface or most “gaia” objects (cliffs, trees etc.).

Sorades – Die Befreiung 1.0 was released as freeware in February 2006. Up to now, the game has been downloaded an estimated 50,000 times, maybe even more. In December 2006, the team won the first prize in the category “Newcomer” at the German Game Developer Award. In the famous cinema Lichtburg in Essen, the team was praised for its level of professionalism by a jury of members of the games industry and game magazine journalists, and was then awarded the Gamesload Newcomer Award.

Flight Assistant (2002-2004)

A virtual co-pilot for users of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator

Flight Assistant is a tool for flight simulation enthusiasts which uses the Microsoft Speech SDK 5.1 to provide the pilot with a virtual co-pilot. This co-pilot is able to react to spoken commands of the user, delivering appropriate actions and an acoustic response (synthesized using text-to-speech). For example, the user might instruct Flight Assistant to lower the gear by saying “gear down!”, resulting in the corresponding key stroke being sent to Flight Simulator and the co-pilot responding “gear is down, Sir!”.

The free tool was entirely written in Visual Basic 6. Being listed on several major flight simulation web sites (e.g. AVSIM.com), Flight Assistant was probably downloaded more than 15,000 times.