A brief self-biography,

My name is Tim. I live in Adelaide, South Australia. I'm a lead programmer for a local game development company called Ratbag Games. In my spare time I enjoy photography, mountain biking, driving, live music, movies, yoga, and working on hobbie game projects.

I was born in Renmark on August 15th, 1978. In the 5th grade my family moved to Loxton. I learnt violin, but at some point decided I didn't enjoy it enough to continue. I attended scouts for several years. During my early teen years I often tinkered with my Dad's commodore 64 using BASIC, which was my first taste of programming. I learnt piano and guitar for a while. In '94 I started attending Sacred Heart College in Adelaide, as a border, and completed my high school education in '95. My parents helped me fund an IBM 486DX, which allowed me to experiment further, mainly with the ray-tracer POV-Ray. I learnt some Karate and got to yellow belt (one above white belt).

The following year I began a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology and Telecommunications at the University of Adelaide. I purchased a somewhat more powerful computer - an AMD K6-2 300, and got hold of Turbo C++ 3.0. Using these and knowledge garnered from a game programming book, I learnt how to use mode 13h. My first real game was a side-scrolling 2D shooter called Blowup. I made a nice level editor for it, and created 4 levels. I practiced Tai Chi for a while.

My university degree reinforced and broadened the programming I had learnt at home. Network programming in particular interested me. During a summer scholarship I was exposed to OpenGL, which I started learning in my own time.

In 1998 Ratbag toured the local educational institutions to recruit some talent. I attended and was interested, so applied, using Blowup as a demo. I received an interview and was happy to hear that they wanted to hire me straight away. I deferred my degree for a year while I worked on Dirt Track Racing, reimplementing their networking using a client-server model.

I returned to finish my degree in 2000, and graduated with second class honours. At around this time I started working on a new game in my spare time called Airlock. It started as a very ambitious project - a massively multiplayer space trading game in the vein of Elite. It uses OpenGL to render the graphics, can import models from 3D Studio MAX, and actually does have some nifty networking. However, after working on it on and off for over 3 years I don't think it will see the light of day in that form; it's too much work. I'm considering reworking it as a real time strategy game. I get a kick out of implementing special effects for it.

I went back to work for Ratbag, and worked on Ikon, a first person shooter for the PS2. This project was cancelled by the publisher. Some time later I was offered the lead position for the PC port of Ratbag's only PS2 title so far, World of Outlaws: Sprint Cars. The major risk of this project was the addition of the multiplayer aspect, since it was entirely absent from the PS2 release. The project was successfully completed in 2002 and is now selling around the world.

I have continued to work as the lead programmer on another racing title which we are developing for PS2 and PC in parallel.

Recently I've entertained myself with a couple of other home projects, which are not yet ready for public exposure. Airlock still gets my attention now and then.

In early 2002 I bought a Peugeot 206 GTi, and I love it! As of 2002, I've had an active interest in photography, especially of nature and insects. I bought a Canon G3 digital camera, and use it frequently. Please peruse my photo gallery. I visit pubs in Adelaide, most notably The Jade Monkey which is fast becoming the hub of live music. Watch out for Hello Minnesota, and The Laybacks - they rock. I live with my sister and our cat Molly. I have practiced Yoga for over a year.