Hi I'm Julian or Cookie.

I am currently finishing my masters degree in Game Engineering and Visual Computing. Meanwhile I have been working as a software developer for over five years by now, first as a working student, later as a part time employee.

For my master thesis I am writing a city builder tool with the intend to create realistic cities in real time, based on player actions.

My interests are besides programming, in story telling and world building. As my bachelor thesis I created a tool for creating stories and managing assets, like characters, locations, etc. in the story.  Also I am working on a Pen and Paper universe with its own rule set.

Master Project: City Builder

For my masters thesis I am creating a city builder with the goal of achieving a realistic city structure in a real time application. The idea was born out of playing Cities Skylines. As the game only allows for rectangular plots it is hard to make good looking cities with curved streets. So I am programming a more flexible plot system, which creates more realistic structures and places assets based on the surrounding context inside the city. The goal is to have that system running in real time without the player noticing any hitches while generating the city. Also it should consider player actions and adjust to them.

Bachelor Project: Story Writing Tool

My Bachelor thesis was to create a story writing tool. This tool is based on the ideas of the Hero's Journey as described by Campbell in his book "The Hero with a thousand faces" and the works of Vogler in "The Writers Journey". Those works were focused on linear media like books and movies, but also can be applied to game development. The resulting tool allows users to create stories as a hierarchical system, with the meta story being the topmost layer, being refined in the layers beneath. Also assets like characters, locations, items, etc. can be created and linked to certain plot points and archetypes.

Godhunter

This project started as an idea for one shot Pen and Paper adventures. So create a character, go out into the world, fight some gods, maybe survive and have a great time. But then it became more, as the players wanted to play another round. Suddenly a whole universe was emerging with background story, a own rule set and much more. The Godhunter universe is a grim one. The gods created humanity for their amusement, just to be overthrown by their former subjects. After the ensuing wars only few humans are left, but also the gods numbers are greatly diminished. Now the Order of the Godhunters sets out to hunt the remaining gods down, to ensure humanities survival. The Hunters themselves are superhuman beings, drawing their power from artifacts and knowledge stolen from the gods.