Hi! Welcome to my technical portfolio.
In here you'll find out who I am, what I do and what's going on in my world.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.
about me
My name is Maksym, but friends call me Max. I live in Ireland although originally I'm from Ukraine. I've had an interest in games and computers since a very young age when I got my first 8-bit game console Dendy, which was a Russian clone of the Nintendo. It came with a keyboard and cartridge that let you create your own basic games in BASIC. It wasn't anything serious. You couldn't even save it because it was all in RAM and as soon as you pulled the cartridge out it was all gone. But still, the first "piece of code" I ever "wrote" was on that console. It was just a simple example from a booklet that animated a sprite running across the screen. I had no idea what I was doing, in fact everytime I saw the word "sprite" I thought it had something to do with Coca-Cola's soft drink called Sprite, :) but I certainly thought it was fun!
When I was at school I developed an interest in character modelling and animation. This new hobby helped me to identify the area I want to be engaged in, and my college and personal projects is the reflection of that.
In 2009 I became an honours graduate from Cork Institute of Technology (CIT), where I've earned a bachelor's degree in software development. In college I got addicted to software design. I love to design software as much as I love to code it, strongly believing in agile methodologies and applying them in my new project.
I'm currently working as a Software Developer on Eclipse based products at Pilz Ireland. The company specialises on industrial safety and automation tools. My particular role in this company, at the moment, is to automate regression testing with WindowTester Pro and intigrate it into a nightly build.
In my spare time I like to learn and work on games and development tools, use my experimental mathematics skills to find patterns in various problems (like taking a problem from TopCoder contests to find a single equation alternative to a top solution, which usually involves a lot of loops), and I love sports. Jogging, swimming, cycling and doing weights is my gang of four!
To get fuller details on my qualifications you can download my C.V. under the Links section above.
projects
Spritey [postponed] - is an open source sprite sheet creator. This is an "in progress" project that I'm working on with my buddy Alan Morey. It is implemented in Java on top of Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP). You can find out about its progress, functionality and implementation in the project blog, pivotal tracker or github. Links can be found in a side bar.
Splat 'n Blot - is a prototype for a third-person platform shooter with fantasy landscape as the backdrop for characters' world. The hero named Splat must undertake a mission to save the dream-world. Armed with a paintball gun he must fend off the nasty Blots who are determined to destroy the world.
It was implemented in C++ using Ogre for graphics rendering, Bullet for physics simulation and OpenAL for sound effects. Character modelling and animation was done in 3Ds Studio Max.
This was probably the most challenging project I've ever worked on. I had to learn all aspects of game development starting from initial game design to actual implementation and testing. I gained a good understanding of Ogre framework and physics simulation, and how the two systems are integrated.
It started out as a full game but, unfortunately, due to the time constraint I was given and to the ad hoc approach I've taken it hasn't been completed. Nevertheless, this is one of the project I'm hoping to restart in the near future. Details on this project will be provided on request.
CAMS - College Attendance Management System (CAMS) was a team-based project that was part of 3rd year B.Sc. in Software Development curriculum. CAMS is a flexible standardised environment, with a nice user-friendly interface for lecturers and students to monitor attendances. Some of the features it provides include taking and monitoring student attendance, e-mail notification of bad attendance, aggregate attendance statistics and more. It was implemented in PHP on top of Zend framework.