Taking Initiative
Disclaimer:
This is a personal blog and as such contains opinions that are entirely my own and in no reflect those of my employer or their holding company.
Downloads:
Short Version:
Ugh, I always hate these “about you” sections since they tend to be a bit mundane no matter how hard you try to spice them up. I’ll try keep it short, here’s some bullet points.
- I’m a GEEK and proud of it!
- I’m a game programmer at IO Interactive
- I have completed a masters degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Pretoria.
- I used to teach graphics programming at a University of Pretoria.
- I used to be a Karate Instructor once upon a time but work and life got in the way of that.
- I did web development for the better part of a decade
- I love FPS’s and RPGs
- I love C++
- I used to play counterstrike competitively
Now for the long version:
I’m a Bulgarian living in South Africa, I moved to SA when I was 5 and have lived here ever since. My dad is a math professor and my life change in 1990 when he brought home a PC from his university. He showed me how to play “sopwith” on it and since then I’ve been hooked! I spent most of my childhood finishing every PC game I could get my hands on to, the later part of which was spent playing counter-strike professionally. I’m a huge RPG and FPS fan and I even though I like strategy games I tend to really suck at them. 
My favorite games list is pretty much dominated by Bioware/Black Isle: Fallout 1/2 (NOT 3), Baldur’s Gate 1/2/TOB, Mass Effect 1/2, KOTOR, Dragon Age, The Witcher, TOEE, STALKER SOC/CS/COP, Counter Strike, Battlefield, Max Payne 1/2, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Need For Speed: Underground series, Call of Duty 2/4, GTA 1/2/3/San Andreas/4.
Academically, I completed 3 years of computer engineering before I got bored. I kinda realized that there was a lot of electronic engineering and very little computer science, not to mention the fact that I wasn’t too fond of staring at oscilloscopes all day. I swapped my major over to computer science and completed my BSc. and a BSc. Hons. degrees. Swapping my major to CompSci was the best thing I ever did. I love video games and I’ve always wanted to make them. The more I learn about game development the more I’m sure that I want to do it and so I decided that no matter what I will work for a game company one day and I wont stop till I achieve that goal.
Work wise, I started working as a software consultant while still in high school and spent a few years doing a bit of everything from embedded development to ERP systems to POS systems. I developed an interest in web development and ending up designing and implementing customized portal sites for various companies. I then worked at the department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria as the web master. Over the years I’ve written my own template based framework for the rapid development of custom portal sites ( in my opinion what CAKE/Ruby on Rails should have been) in PHP. The current CS website (http://www.cs.up.ac.za) as well as the departmental postgraduate management system are both running on my framework. I am was charge of the computer graphics courses and modernized the syllabus to include DX10 and shader programming on undergraduate level.
I’m a huge geek and I’ve spent a massive amount of time in front of my PC over the years. I tend to get bored and look for new challenges, so over time I have amassed experience in most things PC related: video editing, music creation, modding, overclocking, graphic design, shell development, etc. I guess you can chalk all that down to an inquisitive nature. If I had to list all the shows, movies and books I like this page would be insanely long, pretty much if you think of a geeky cliche thing to do I have done it!
So thats pretty much me…
I’m trying to learn basic NN, and your tutorials are helping a lot. You explain things simply, so that when (if) it’s necessary to get into the hard stuff it will be easier.
I’m an engineer, with MS in mechanical engineering. Mainly play with robots for a hobby, which is why I’m interested in NN for relating sonar readings to current postion using a solved network from a priori maps.
Posted by Gary L. | May 13, 2008, 1:55 amI’m really glad i could help. What you’re doing sounds very interesting. I’d love to see it when its done
Posted by Bobby | May 13, 2008, 11:50 amVery nicely written c++ code for NN.. Have u tried to implement convolution neural network? I wrote code for that but not able to achieve the result properly…
Posted by saravanan | July 24, 2008, 10:32 amI too enjoyed reading your ANN explanations. I am using ANNs for general time series forecast. As for code design, I have classes for the net, layers, and nodes! Maybe I did overengineered (I worked at Microsoft for 10+ years so maybe that’s why)…
Posted by gaykiller | August 16, 2008, 1:00 amwow, I’m starting my CS undergrad and it’s shocking to see how far I have to go. I can’t quite speak at the level of others here, but I at least found your post about FO3 quite spot-on.
Best of luck with interviews in the future.
Posted by Eric V. | January 15, 2009, 8:25 pmM$ Fanboys in arms
Posted by Salem5 | January 18, 2010, 2:00 amjust dropped by to thank your for the neural network tutorial and source code, as they’ve helped me a lot in getting a head start on my final year project. I’ve worked with nns before, but in matlab, which made moving to a c++ implementation a bit harder than I’d like it.
books and articles and theory are all nice and everything, but I learn faster from seeing code written/compiled and run.
Posted by mike | March 9, 2010, 10:00 pmHello Bobby,
As I mentioned in my previous post, I working with nns for one of my projects and I’ve run into a small (read big) problem.
First of, the weights of the network do not update themselves. I mean, they update from the initial weights set when creating the network, but not after that. And I’ve just spent the last 3 days trying to understand why (not that it helped).
The c++ code I’m using is similar to yours, but condensed into a single class.
When you were creating your example, did you run into any such situations? Or would you have the time to glance over my code to see if you can spot my mistake?
Regards,
mike
Posted by mike | April 17, 2010, 2:55 pmI’m crazy busy at the moment but I could take a quick look at your code and see if i can spot the problem quickly. If it looks a bit more involved I’ll have to take a look at it in a few weeks time when things calm down a bit on my end.
email me the code at banguelov ( at ) cs.up.ac.za
Posted by Bobby | April 17, 2010, 3:18 pmHeya Bobby! I’ve been reading your blog for the last 2 days now and it’s been great. I’m currently working on my Bachelor’s Degree which emphasizes game and simulation-style programming. Your DirectX 10 tutorials are good, easy-reading with great explanations on how and why each step is performed. I noticed you like The Witcher….what a great game. Also, I too am a fan of the STALKER games – with the first being my favorite. I’m not real studied-up on A.I. yet. But, SoC had some interesting A.I., I felt – there were always random faction fights in each zone. Out-of-curiosity, have you played Left for Dead (first. I haven’t played 2)? It may be a little different genre ( zombie shoot-em up ) ..but, no game/level is ever the same in terms of the A.I.
Anyways, thanks. Your blog is great. Hit me up on Facebook is you want:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/profile.php?id=1519545539&v=info
Posted by George | June 22, 2010, 8:00 amHey Bobble!! i thought you were going to keep your “about me” short!?!?!? anyways, i love you and you’re the smartest Bulgarian i know (i haven’t met your dad yet)
keep up the code work….. and i’ll be stealing your pc shortly…
<3
Posted by Crabs McGee | January 25, 2011, 11:47 amhttp://foundation.igda.org/?p=27
Posted by Tom B | February 24, 2011, 8:27 pmGreeting form Bulgaria! I’m proud of you! In Bg we are trying to do some gamedev and we have some good games but there is a lot to lern. So keep going and good luck.
Posted by Kostadin Petkov | April 10, 2011, 9:17 amHello! I not so long time ago started directX10 programming and I have to say you have been of great help to me, you have done some of the best tutorials on this subject there is on the web but at this point I am kind of desperate… I’m trying to do a two windows application by creating one device and two swapchains I associate to each of the windows… I do manage to draw in the first window but I’m doing something wrong and I don’t manage to draw anything in the second one. I can’t find any sample code that would help me to find out what I am doing wrong… so I would be grateful if you could manage a simple tutorial, like tutorial 2 but with two windows at the same time. Thank you very much.
Posted by Olivier | August 10, 2011, 12:40 pmHello! You write i greate tutorials.
Some time ago i start to learn an programming with DirectX and your tutorials help me.
Now i have some idea. I’d like to improve my english. For this i’d like to create an translating on russian of your tutorials.
Can i post this translating in my blog with link to original?
Posted by rahuba | April 19, 2012, 11:50 amHi Bobby, I recently discovered this website and found it very interesting. While reading your About Me page I noticed that your hobbies are very similar to mine. I would love to pursue a job in video game development and I was wondering if you had any advice for a college freshman who shares your same passions.
Posted by Brendan Ryan | October 4, 2012, 6:18 am