Older work

By Ward Dehairs, January 1, 2008

Even before any of my serious projects I had some experience with programming, game design and 3D modeling. This page serves as a quick summary of that history.

Game design in age of empires 3

I got my first experience in game design making custom maps for Age of Empires III. The map editor that came with the game offered a simple trigger based programming system, which could be exploited to make nearly any kind of minigame. I made several single and multi player maps when I was around 14 years old. As far as I know, all those maps have been lost to time.

This image does not come from my work.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about, a good point of reference would be the map editor of SC2. Which (at the time of writing) is still being used to make all kinds of custom games.

3D modeling in redfaction 1

I got my first experience with 3D modeling making custom maps for redfaction 1. Like age of empires, this game came with a map editor, which was a basic 3D modeling program. I was part of a small community of players who used the editor to make platforming maps, and shared them on the factionfiles website. I was around 16 years old when I made several of these so-called "run maps".

Similarly, there is a better known point of reference in the "deathrun" communities that exist in Team fortress, counter strike and garry's mod.

Programming in Java

I got my first real experience in programming during my first bachelor year, when I took a course about basic programming in Java. For this course, I had to make the star trek game, a well known text-based classic.

Afterwards, I tried making a game in Java with simple graphics. It was a 2D puzzler, similar to chip's challenge. Unfortunately, I lost the code for this game, and cannot recover any screenshots, so I do not have anything to show for it.

This image does not come from my work.

The game was far from finished. additionally, the game was coded using a java applet system, which at the time was very difficult to get running as a stand-alone program. Because of this, I would have been forced to rewrite most of the game's code. I decided to move on to another project instead. This next project was Planar.

In conclusion

I have a long history with game development and looking back on it all, I am dissapointed that I did not notice my own passion for it, a lot earlier than when I did. I had not considered making it my career and if I had I may not have gone off to study physics at all. Still, I believe it is never too late to chase down your passion. Today I am happy doing the work that I do.