About Me -- A Brief History of Nic

Disclaimer: If you're not interested in my life's story, feel free to follow the links on the left of the page to get to my programming projects and lessons.

I am a 26-year old student attending Westwood College in Denver, Colorado. I graduatied with honors in December 2007. I've created this site to showcase my portfolio of projects, and I've started a "Lessons" section in order to help other programmers get started or interested in gaming.

I've been interested in computers and computer games for as long as I can remember. I'm sure every industry professional has heard this story before, but it is the truth and as such it must be told! When I was about 5 years old my father showed me how to load up and play games with a Commodore 64 (shown in the picture). We also had a Mattel Intellivision, and an Atari 2600. When I was 6 we custom built an Intel 8088 with Dos 3.0, which I still have. A couple of years later, around the time I was 8, we got an Intel 486/DX and I began programming with the free QBasic compiler that was included with DOS. I fiddled with the full QuickBasic for years as that was all we could afford, and when I was twelve I finally got ahold of Borland C++ and started experimenting with C++ for the first time. I made simple graphical programs. When I was about 15 I made some small projects, like a graphing calculator program from scratch in C++; however, it wasn't until I started college at Westwood that I actually took a real programming class for the first time. I'm currently studying mostly C++, and C# (through a mentorship project).

So, what makes me any different than the millions of gamers out there that wish they could make video games?
1.) I think about code more than I think about playing games.
2.) I would rather code games more often than play them.
3.) I think about the way a game works even as I play them for recreation.
4.) I stay up until 2am every night.....not playing video games however, coding. Even when I have work or school at 7am.
5.) I will sometimes have dreams where I am programming.
6.) I will sometimes wake up having the answer to a programming issue I couldn't figure out the night before.
7.) I think of programming as fun, not a task or a chore, and thoughout my life I've programmed small games of my own, for free. How enthusiastic would I be getting paid to do something I already do for free?!
8.) I'm curious about everything in life, the meaning of life, how gravity is possible, why we exist, all kinds of stuff. I'm always striving to learn something new. I've already made a promise to myself that I will always have a gaming project in the works, or be reading a new programming book, or be taking a new programming class, or I will have a job in the industry. I guarantee one of those things will always be true.

That's about it, and if you've read this much....then you are probably the only one who has. Anyhow, enjoy my site.

For a copy of my resume, download here...(under construction)
Please feel free to download any of my programming projects by following the links on the left of the page.
If you would like to contact me you can email me at nfoste82@gmail.com.

------------------- Extra Info ---------------

Programming language experience:
C++ - 3 years college-level. 1 year selt-taught, 1 year professional/industry.
C# - 9 months self-taught.
Lua Scripting - Occassional use at professional level.
Assembly - 3 months college-level.
QBasic/QuickBASIC - 3 years self-taught, when I was young.
Pascal - Only a small fraction of time, just for fun and practice.
Some very basic HTML.

Game engine experience:
GameBryo - Occassional Professional Use.
Ogre - 1 project, 6 months (in progress) .
Unreal 2004 Engine - 1 project, 2 months (project cancelled due to mentorship).
Irrlicht - 1 project, 2 months.
Torque - 1 project, 2 months.
XNA (more API than Engine) - Several projects, 9 months.

Physics engine experience:
Havok - Occassional Professional Use.