1. About Me

About MeSwitch to German

Hello, my name is Simon Burchert, born in late 1992 and I'm from a beautiful town in Germany. I'm a computer nerd who played a lot of Nintendo games (mainly Nintendo 64) in the past. Creating my own stuff was what I always liked, and that's how I got into developing (programming) my own stuff. But let's start with the beginning...

The beginning

When I was younger, I loved playing with Lego bricks, drawing or painting stuff and "inventing" my own games on paper. Later, when I've got a computer, I started doing stuff with a simple rich text editor on Windows, creating my own documents. Eventually, I searched the internet about how to make my own games... that's where everything began.

Creating my own software

2007 was the year where it all started. First, I encountered the homepage of Game Editor, a program that allowed anybody to create games for the PC. I thought you had to pay to get this software. As a German young child my English was not very well yet, so I didn't figure out that there is also a free (but limited) version of the program. When I asked my dad for buying Game Editor for me, he said no, so I was looking for an alternative.

Later I found Game Maker, and there was a free download for Windows. It was very user friendly and I started to create a lot of stuff with it, almost all games being unfinished. Most of them contained the graphics, that were bundled with Game Maker or easily found on free graphics websites.

Thus, my very first computer game I ever created is "Trigger". It is a very simple game where you have to activate a switch (the "trigger"), which opens the level's exit that leads to the next level. I used the graphics that were bundled with Game Maker (only a few graphics created by me), so there was only the Pac-Man sprite I could use for the character. If you are looking for the download of that game, don't worry, there is no download.

Another original game of mine created with Game Maker is Collect the Coins, which is a game of skill.

Eventually, I changed to the Linux operating system, which however was not supported by Game Maker. I went back to Game Editor (I finally found the free download), as it also provided a Linux version, and started using that. I did not create as much stuff as I did with Game Maker, but one of my most notable creations made with Game Editor is Caveman, a platformer based on the graphics by Ari Feldman. These graphics were bundled with that program.

Music

In year 2008 my interest in music composition increased. I started playing the keyboard, learning soundtracks from my favorite games. I started making my own music using an audio program only, later using my keyboard for compositing.

And even more Programming

Over the years, when I was already programming assiduously with Game Editor and Game Maker, I also acquired more languages. No, I'm not talking about Spanish or Japanese, I mean programming languages, markup languages and all their friends. Amongst them were HTML, CSS, PHP and C++. In C++ I wrote terminal applications in the beginning. I didn't know yet how to create windows with graphical output.

In October 2009 I discovered the development library Allegro, which makes game development in C++ easier. I got to understand gradually the concept of libraries in C/C++, with those I could finally develop impressive programs in C++. My very first visual program written in C++ is a clone of Pac-Man, although there are a few differences from the original arcade game.