Photos

Photos, screenshots and demos will be uploaded to this website in the very near future.

Please come back then, or contact me now, so I can send them to you personally.

Welcome to my portfolio!

I’m Abel Corver, a technology enthusiast and programming fanatic, among other things.

My first “programming experience” was when I was 11 years old, and was using GameMaker to make some games. I have been programming ever since.

My interests are really broad, and I’m still trying to catch up with the industry, only in the reverse order: from GameMaker, to Java, to C++, to Assembly, and I’m currently in the process of teaching myself electronics and computer hardware design.

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My Portfolio

This website is currently under construction !

Looking for something in specific? Click on any of the links below to navigate to the corresponding slide.

  • Biography
  • Skills
  • Projects
    • Game design / Game development
    • Web design / Web development

I’m currently in the process of creating this website, so some things may not yet work for everybody, and things could be improved regarding the user-friendliness.

If you experience problems, please let me know, but be aware that the issue will probably be fixed in the near future.

This blog was made using Wordpress, a free and open source publishing system, that has helped me greatly by providig a graphical front-end for my home-written PHP back-end, which has wordpress support integrated. Want a wordpress blog and design that suits your needs? Just contact me.

I completely designed this website from the ground up, and implemented it using XHTML, PHP, Javascript and CSS. Completely valid of course.

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Contact

I’d love to hear from you! If you want to know more, do a project together, hire me, or anything not listed here, please let me know.

I love (constructive :P ) comments!

Click on one of the buttons below to contact me using respectively Facebook, e-mail, and Yahoo IM .

A direct contact form is coming soon…

My Passion

I’ve always had a genuine interest in science technology, and still love the feeling of amazement that

… amazes :) me … every time a new technology is announced.

The way people can love things of their interest, strive to achieve their dreams and give it all they’ve got, has always been one of the true beauties in life, at least in my opinion, and that’s something I really recognize in my own personality. I’m really interested in science in general, but especially admire the ways in which generic and abstract ideas and concepts can be turned into actual technologies, and add value to at least someone’s life, by helping them physically, mentally, or just by showing them that wonders are yet to leave the world…

My opinion on Technology

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

I really love that quote. For me it represents what life really is. A perception of an otherwise abstract world. For me,  the interesting part about life is its self-defining nature, the way two abstract things can be truly concrete when made relative to each other. When you’re familiar with the concept, you could imagine these conceived worlds to be transformation matriced, or rather the result of them. Transforming the world we live in by the inverse of that matrix, would give us the basis for all self-defining things, the true “identity matrix”.

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My Skills

I’ve been programming and designing for five to six years now, and I’ve discovered

that my strongest ability is in the analysis of a problem, and in finding a suitable solution.

Click on one of the links below for more information on my skills regarding that specific field or topic:

  • Game development
  • Web development
  • Programming languages
  • Technologies and APIs

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Sometimes people convict virtual worlds and games for being unrealistic and “childish”. I do not agree, and I would like to remind everyone who does, to first think about what these games are really trying to achieve, and think about what the inverse matrix of this world would be. Because if you would know the inverse matrix, you would know the truth, and you would probably come to the conclusion that you’ve entered a world, which you do not understand. A world, a matrix, full of “imaginary numbers”, that, combined with the imaginary numbers from our world, the world as we perceive it, will form a perfectly simple rectangle with numbers that we can all understand. So was the truth, the basis of life, made to be comprehensible for human beings? Probably not. No, we made our own truth, by providing that transformation matrix for our own benifit.

But then, how can we think about our own truth ? This matrix still contains imaginary numbers, doesn’t it!

Yeah, that’s true. However, think about how we define our set of all natural numbers? You say each number is defined as the sum of the previous number + 1. This creates a recursive definition for all natural numbers.

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Biography

This website is currently under construction. It’ll be finished in the very near future, so check back soon!

Where does that ‘1′ come from? Well, think about the basis of our mathematical system. A ‘truth’ on its own. Take a number, divide it by itself, and you end up with 1. I would argue that 0/0 equals 1 as well, although some people may say otherwise. So when we’re thinking about our own truth, our own transformation matrix, we’re dividing it by itself, leaving us with the identity of our own truth. This way, our own truth is self-defining in nature!

So, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Some might answer that we don’t know. But in my opinion it depends on your transformation matrix, your “truth”. As long as your ideas define themselves, it all makes sense.

My personal opinion on this matter is that it doesn’t matter. There’s no one around! :) This is a great philosofy when creating games I think, because it tells you not to write useless code, and remember that you’re creating yourownworld now. The sky is the limit… well, not even the sky actually.

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I think people view me as a developer, more than a designer, and I would agree with them, only if …

…they would say I’m a developer more than an artist, though I do that as well. I think designing plays a major part in the development process, and I love working on things such as game engines, and application frameworks, because of there generic and abstract nature, making them hard to design, but extremely rewarding once they’re completed.

My artistic skills are not as good as my programming skills. However, I’m quite comfortable using artistic tools, and I’m getting better and better at graphical designing. This website is completely designed by me, without making any use of other people’s images and designs.

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Current Projects

I’m currently working on a game for the XBox using the XNA framework.

The main challenges for me are in the required accurate physical simulation, AI, high number of polygons, mostly dynamic ones, forcing me to use spatial partitioning techniques, among other things. Furthermore, mathematical calculations are key to this project, due to the high number of possible collisions and things such as the constantly changing physical forces working on all objects.

So, in short: extremely challenging, dauntingly complex, probably too much, but most importantly fun! :)

Moreover, this also matches my opinion science and belief are exactly the same. They’re both perceptions of the truth, and that’s basically all we have, and it’s more than enough, in my opinion :P Don’t simply belief a scientist  research or religious text, because they too are perceptions, opinions if you will,  of the world around us.

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Programming Skills

I love programming. It’s my way of expressing my ideas, and I’d like to take a moment to list some of the languages and technologies I’m most familiar with. If e.g. your language, API or framework is not listed here, I might still be familiar with it, or I might have used it a few times, but not on a daily basis, so feel free to contact me if you’re interested in working together or hiring me.

Programming Languages I (have) work(ed) with on a daily basis:

C / C++, Java, C#, Visual Basic, Assembly, Lisp, Perl, PHP, (X)HTML, XML, Javascript, ASP.NET, …

Technologies and APIs I (have) work(ed) with on a daily basis:

DirectX, Win32, .NET Framework, XNA, Silverlight, Java2D, Java3D, Swing, <list not finished yet>

Favourite Sites

Over the years I’ve found websites which proved to be extremely useful to me. I’d like to list some of them here.

GameInstitute: This is one of the most amazing sites I’ve ever visited, or should I say, the one with some of the most amazing people! I’ve successfully completed two of their courses so far, and I’m currently studying for two other ones.

Gamedev: A great resource for articles, screenshots, and last but not least: help. For me though, it’s more a place to relax an browse through a lot of eye candy.

MIT Open Courseware: An amazing place and resource for educational videos on a variety of topics. They’re really cool and fun to watch.

I’ll write more of them down in the future.

Computer Books I read

This is a selection from the books I read regarding computer programming, web design, mathematics, and some other topics:

  • Game Development Essentials: An Introduction (2nd ed, Jeannie Novak)
  • The C++ Programming Language (Stroustrup)
  • Pro Javascript Techniques (John Resig)
  • Pro CSS Techniques (Jeff Croft, Ian Lloyd and Dan Rubin)
  • Filthy Rich Clients (Chet Haase and Romain Guy)
  • Programming from the Ground Up (Jonathan Barlett)
  • Killer Game Programming in Java (Andrew Davison)
  • OpenGL Programming Guide (6th ed, OpenGL Architecture Review Board)
  • How to Think about Algorithms (Jeff Edmonds)
  • Essentials of Programming Languages (3rd ed, Daniel P. Friedman and Mitchell Wand)
  • Programming Perl (Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen and Jon Orwant)

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Extracurricular Activities

In the past I have been fortunate to be able to take part in a number of activities. I haven’t yet finished writing, so they’re a little short as of now. I’ll list some of them here:

The Hague International Model United Nations (THIMUN)

This was an absolutely amazing experience that I will always remember. I represented Canada in the General Assembly 6th Committee (legal).

Student Council

I recently became a member of my school’s student council, which is really interesting and fun.

Software Developers Conference

I went to the Software Developers Conference (SDC) last year, which was an incredibly cool event. It’s actually an event for business people, but the administration made me a deal, and I was allowed to enter at reduced cost. A lot of interesting speakers were present, and I visited talks on topics ranging from C# 4.0 to MS Office Extensions to software layering and partitioning, and a lot more. The sessions lasted untill late in the evening, so it was a tiring, but extremely rewarding week.

School Theatre Group – Publicity

I’ve developed websites on a number of occasions. One of them was for our school’s theatre club. I was a member of a small group of people responsible for the publicity, and I implemented an system for people to by tickets on-line.

Dutch:

  • En dan is er … Java (Gertjan Laan)
  • Datastructuren in Java (Gertjan Laan)
  • Softwareontwikkeling met UML en Java (Gertjan Laan)
  • Basisboek Wiskunde (Jan van de Craats and Rob Bosch)
  • Vectoren en Matrices (Jan van de Craats)
  • Webdesign met PHP 5 (Ward van der Put)
  • Joomla!-templates ontwerpen (2nd ed, Jisse Reitsma)
  • Handboek Pc-hardware (Peter D’Hollander)

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Working Experience

Over the years I’ve worked on several (paid) projects:

  • Webdesign / Webdevelopment
    • Beekvliet MUN Website (Gymnasium Beekvliet, 2010)
    • Educational Publisher (Malmberg, 2009)
    • Art Group / Event (4dekunsten, 2009)
    • School Theatre Group (Gymnasium Beekvliet, 2009)
    • Linguistic Conference Website (2009)
    • Linguistic Conference Website (2008)
  • Gamedesign / Gamedevelopment:
    • Game for Educational Publisher (Malmberg, 2009)

Game Institute:

  • Game Mathematics
  • C++ for Game Developers (Textbook and Workbook)
  • Graphics Programming with DirectX – Module I (Textbook and Workbook)
  • Graphics Programming with DirectX – Module II – Book I (Textbook and Workbook)
  • Graphics Programming with DirectX – Module II – Book II (Textbook and Workbook)
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