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 currently live in Vancouver, Canada where I moved recently in search of new experiences both cultural and professional. Before the big move I lived in Ireland where my parents immigrated to from Ukraine when I was 15 years old.
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. The example just animated a sprite running across a screen. I had no idea what I was doing, in fact everytime I saw a word sprite I thought it had something to do with Coca-Cola's soft drink called Sprite, :) but I certainly thought it was fun!
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 projects.
After college I worked as a Software Developer at Pilz Ireland. The company specialised in industrial safety and automation tools. I've had a variety of responsibilities throughout my career in Pilz.
I worked on automation of regression tests at a logic layer through RPC server. I was later moved to a GUI test automation team where I designed and implemented a tester-friendly test framework written on top of Google Window Tester. Once the framework was ready to be used by testers I was put onto feature/plug-ins development for PAS4000 IDE implemented in Java on top of Eclipse RCP.
I also implemented communication layer in a visualisation runtime utilising OLE for Process Control (OPC) technology for communication between visualisations and programs running on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC). It was implemented in C++ and using Websocket (and Ajax in a more limited environment) to drive visualisations. The runtime was exhaustively tested with integration tests written in Ruby.
In my spare time I like to work on my personal projects, go surfing or skydiving when the sun is out and the winds are light!
projects
Spritey - is an open source sprite sheet creator. It is implemented in Java with SWT and JFace front end. This tool is one of the most efficient sprite sheet packers which can pack a large amount of sprites in less than a second. 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.