8 February 2007

By: Filip Truta, Games Editor
Celebrating the Launch of Battlestations: Midway
iGames offers Eidos support in their journey to WW II gamers' hearts
Leading game center organization iGames will be hosting the release of Eidos Interactive's innovative WWII strategy shooter, Battlestations: Midway, beginning with a 2-week showcase at about 100 game centers across North America for both PC and Xbox 360 platforms, between February 12-25, giving fans one free hour over a two-week period to try out the game. The game has been available in North America on both PC and Xbox 360 platforms since January 30th.The end of the celebration will be followed by an Xbox 360 game center Launch Tournament, February 24-25, where teams of 2 compete in a Saturday pool play tournament for the right to advance to the Sunday single-elimination final tournament and win great prizes such as TVs, MP3 players, the Battlestations: Midway Xbox 360 game and other gaming accessories.Why not go? You'll have the opportunity of playing for an hour free and build your strategy with a teammate, compete in the Launch Tournament for your shot at over $2K total prize pool in prizes which consist of:-Top prize: 19" LCD TV and Battlestations: Midway Xbox 360 game.-Finalist prizes: MP3 Players, Razer gaming accessories and Battlestations: Midway Xbox 360 game.-Prima game guides for all competitors who advance to the final tournament.Battlestations: Midway brings a totally new combat experience as you fight massive air, sea and undersea battles in direct command of multiple warships, planes and submarines in this epic solo and online tactical action game. Large scale aerial and naval combat in an unique mix of direct action and tactical play, all for highly detailed warships, aircraft and submarines, all to bring a 'free-control' sensation as you design and execute the best plans of attack.Battlestations: Midway is the true story of naval recruit Henry Walker, whose first assignment as a gunner at Pearl Harbor was the starting point of an incredible career at the heart of the US Pacific Fleet in 1942, in what became one of the most inspirational military campaigns in history.
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Kornl Lehcz

klehocz@scarablabs.com

Objective

I am seeking contract work as programmer/consultant. Graphics R&D, optimizing, porting, development of Windows/Mac applications, iPhone apps, games, 3ds max, Adobe Photoshop and AE plug-ins, tools, programming shaders, visual effects, etc

Skills and Experience

I am fluent in C++ (10+ years experience) and have good knowledge of OO design patterns. I also use the STL and Boost libraries. I have excellent knowledge of image processing techniques and algorithms. I have a lot of experience working on 3D rendering code, engine architecture, shaders, and visual effects for games. In depth knowledge of Xbox 360 programming, basic knowledge of PlayStation 3 architecture. Experience with cross-platform development. (PC/console video games and Windows/Mac application software.) Experienced with developing GPGPU applications and good knowledge of OpenCL (very similar to CUDA). Good knowledge of OpenGL / OpenGL ES. Thorough knowledge of Direct3D. I have over 6 years of professional D3D programming experience. I also have experience in implementing software rendering engines using textured polygon rasterizing (for the Amiga and Gameboy Advance), as well as ray-tracing (for PC). I am adept in profiling and optimizing games and applications. I know how to identify and resolve various bottlenecks on the CPU and GPU. I have a lot of experience in multi-threaded programming (using POSIX threads, Windows API, and OpenMP). Application GUI programming experience using.NET/WPF, MFC, wxWidgets, and the Windows API. Experience with the Adobe Photoshop SDK and the development of plug-ins. Working knowledge of Photoshop. Experience with the Adobe After Effects SDK. Lots of experience with the 3ds max SDK. I also know how to use 3ds max at a basic level, and have some experience with MAXScript. I have experience working with Microsoft Visual Studio, SourceSafe, SVN, CVS, XCode, WiX, PIX, Intel VTune, NVPerfHUD, TTPro, Mantis, JIRA, Bugzilla, and many other tools. I have great experience in assembly programming. I programmed for MC680x0, x86 (including SSE), ARM processors, in Emotion Engine VU microcode, and pixel/vertex shader assembly. I also programmed in other languages, such as C#, C++/CLI, Objective-C, plain C, Java, Clean (functional language similar to Haskell), Pascal, and Clipper. I have rudimentary knowledge of Python. Basic knowledge of AI and network programming (TCP/IP sockets), with some practical experience in both fields. Basic knowledge of relational database systems and SQL.

Education

I studied at the University of Debrecen between 1999 and 2007 while also working full time during most of this period. I obtained a Programmer Mathematician BS level degree in 2007. I also have a Computer Systems Programmer postsecondary certificate from the Neumann Jnos Vocational School for Informatics in Gyr, Hungary, which I obtained in 1997. Earlier I lived in South Africa for 3 years, where I attended an English high school.

Language Proficiencies

I speak English (fluent), Hungarian (native), and German (needs practice).

Employment History

Scarab Labs::Principal Programmer (self-employed)
Budapest, Hungary December 2007 present Scarab Labs is my own venture in the field of image processing software. I am developing a digital camera raw converter and photo editor, and various Adobe After Effects and Photoshop plug-ins. I wrote the majority of the code of Scarab Darkroom (roughly 50.000 lines of code), while also relying on several libraries (such as Adobe XMP and Intel IPP). My proprietary image processing algorithms are world class in terms of image quality/speed. I also researched noise filtering algorithms, and adapted a suitable technique for my program. I have a GPU accelerated version of it under development. The application's user interface is built using wxWidgets and my own OpenGL based GUI framework (modeled on WPF). I also have a mobile (iOS and Android) game side-project.

Indaba Bt.::Senior Programmer
Budapest, Hungary January 2008 April 2008 I did contract programming work for a game development company called Atomic Motion. This work involved improving an existing PC / Xbox 360 3D engine. The tasks included implementing light space perspective shadow maps, modifying the engine to work with predicated tiling on the Xbox 360, and profiling, optimizing. This was for a game called Raven Squad.

Stormregion::Programmer

Budapest, Hungary July 2007 November 2007 This was Budapests largest game development studio at the time, known for the Panzers series. I was on the Codename Panzers: Cold War project. I worked on shadows, video playback while loading (using XviD and FMod), fixing bugs, profiling, and optimizing.
Eidos Hungary::Programmer
Budapest, Hungary April 2006 July 2007 I worked on Battlestations: Midway. My tasks included improving existing visual effects, as well as implementing new ones. I also fixed many bugs in the game and resolved frame rate issues. The Xbox 360 version of the game became about 15% faster thanks to my optimizations. I was also in charge of maintaining a Lightwave export plug-in. This involved dealing with various nVidia libraries NVDXT, NVMeshMender, and NVTriStrip. Later I worked on the prototype of Battlestations: Pacific. I wrote shaders, and implemented new features in the 3D engine (eg. HDR rendering). I also wrote an exhaustive coding standards document as a guideline for future projects.
Bizarre Creations::Graphics Programmer
Liverpool, UK September 2005 March 2006 I worked on the companys proprietary 3D engine and on special effects specific to The Club. I implemented HDR rendering and many other features in the engine, and was in charge of post-processing effects such as depth of field, bloom, tone mapping, and colour curve controls. I integrated the Bink video player into the system. I also resolved issues related to anti-aliasing and predicated tiling on the Xbox 360.

Indaba Bt.::Programmer

Debrecen, Hungary (worked from home) May 2003 July 2005 Our family company provided custom development services to t5 labs. I worked on their game streaming technology, mainly on the server side low latency video encoder. I also dealt with synchronizing threads, programming and maintenance of a tool (which used MFC), and small applications for demo purposes. Eg. capturing sound output and streaming it over the network.

Indaba Bt.::3D Engine Programmer
Debrecen, Hungary October 2000 October 2002 I was a contractor at Invictus Games. I worked on the companys proprietary 3D engine and on the PC racing game Street Legal. I wrote all Direct3D specific parts of the games 3D engine, and implemented support for features such as real-time car painting. I also was involved in designing the art pathway, and in making technology decisions. I created several plug-ins for 3ds max, including a feature packed export plug-in, a unique UV mapping plug-in for max 4 (like Flatten UVs introduced in max 5), and a convex hull plug-in. Before Street Legal I worked on a PlayStation 2 project, which got canceled. I was also involved in creating Invictuss earlier game, the critically acclaimed off road racing game 1NSANE. I did optimizations and improvements to its 3D engine.
Deepcore Games::Programmer
Budapest, Hungary based company (worked mainly from home) August 1999 December 1999 This was an attempt to start up a game development studio by a few friends. We worked on a racing game called Time Riders, and I wrote the AI. We managed to finish a playable prototype. Unfortunately we could not find a publisher for the game, so the project was abandoned. (unpaid / royalty)
Mindmaker::Software Engineer
Budapest, Hungary July 1998 July 1999 I worked on the animation engine of Prody Parrot 2.0, its editor, and unit tests. The program and the tools were written in C++ and used MFC. Some of my other tasks included sound engineering, testing, and evaluating various bug tracking systems.
Coding demos and games has been my main hobby before I got a job in the industry. I started learning programming around 1987 with the dream of one day becoming a game programmer. I wrote my first 3D engine in pure assembly in 1995. I became involved in the Amiga demoscene, and was a member of the groups Frame18 and Scoopex. I also enjoy playing video games, and still play when I find the time. One of my recent hobbies is photography. This inspired me to take an interest in the image processing algorithms used to make the most out of digital camera images.

Softography

Scarab Star Filter for Adobe After Effects (released in 2011)
A plug-in for applying a star filter effect to highlights in video footage. http://www.scarablabs.com/star-filter-after-effects
Scarab Darkroom (Beta released 2009 - 2011)
A digital camera raw file converter and photo editor, which excels with its speed and ease of use. http://www.scarablabs.com/scarab-darkroom
T-Seps 2.0 (released in 2010)
A Photoshop plug-in for making colour separations for T-shirt printing. http://t-biznetwork.com/t-seps/nsp/
Scarab Star Filter 1.0 - 2.0 for Adobe Photoshop (released in 2009, 2010)
A filter plug-in for applying a star effect to highlights in an image. http://www.scarablabs.com/star-filter-photoshop

Raven Squad: Operation Hidden Dagger (released in 2009)
A tactical shooter for Xbox 360 and PC. http://www.ravensquad.com
Codename Panzers: Cold War (released in 2009)
A real-time strategy game for the PC. http://www.atari.com/games/codename_panzers_cold_war
Battlestations: Pacific (released in 2009)
A WWII action strategy game for Xbox 360 and PC. http://www.battlestations.net
The Club (released in 2008)
A 3rd person shooter for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. http://www.sega.com/theclub
Battlestations: Midway (released in 2007)
A WWII action strategy game for Xbox 360 and PC. No.1 hit in the UK. http://www.battlestations.net
t5 labs Instant Gaming technology
A technology enabling people to play PC games on their existing set-top-boxes. http://www.t5labs.com
Kaleidoscopic Screen Saver (released in 2004)
A simple screen saver for Windows.
Street Legal (released in 2002)
A racing game published by Activision Value. http://streetlegal.invictus.hu/
1nsane (released in 2000)
An off-road racing game published by Codemasters. 'Best Off-Road Game Ever' PC Gamer http://1nsane.invictus.hu/
Prody Parrot 2.0 (released in 1999)
An intelligent assistant for Windows with speech synthesis, voice recognition, and many other features.

Water Effect Demo

Entry for the August '99 programming contest on www.flipcode.com. Achieved 2nd place out of 23.
Scoopex - Pulsar (released in 1999)
An Amiga 64k intro. http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1347
Frame18 - Atmosphere (released in 1997)
An Amiga demo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV7URFzNSno

Frame18 - Kernel '97

Party invitation intro for Amiga.
Frame18 - Cyclotron (released in 1997)

An Amiga demo.

Resolution - Entropy (released in 1996)
An Amiga 40k intro. Achieved 2nd place at the Amiga intro competition at Scenest '96.

Publications

Raymond Chandlers Philip Marlowe - Hungarian publication (published in 2004)
I translated this book together with my father. It features a collection of short stories by various authors, paying homage to Raymond Chandler. Published by Indaba Bt.