So you are interested in finding out more about the freak who is responsible for all this? Well ok… where should I start? Hm the basics sounds good. So my real name is Matthias Specht but on the internet I’m know. as Sylence (the history of this name is something too personal so you won’t find anything about it. Sorry) I live in the city of Hagen (wikipedia) in Germany. So please forgive my mistakes when writing English as it’s not my mother tongue. I was born on August 21, 1989. I work as a software engineer for a medium sized German company. We are developing LIMS (Laboratory information management systems) but video games have always been a passion so in my free time I’m working on all kind of video game related software.

This is the reason why I’m hosting this site. I wanted to have a place where I could upload my software so other people can use it. After running this site for some years only as a place to store my software on I switched to WordPress in May 2010 and from this point on I decided to use this site as a blog as well. I don’t have of world interest to write so basically you can describe this blog as “just another blog”. However I really started to enjoy blogging and I’ll keep it this way.

So how did I find my way into computers? Well it all started when I was around 5 when my parents bought an old Amiga (don’t know which one it was any more). And of course being a 5 years old boy I only used it for playing games. I really started to like computers and so I found out very early that I wanted to do something with computers. Having the big dream of making my own games I started to look deeper into the things behind all the fancy windows. How does everything work? Around 2000 I started with HTML. Not knowing that you can’t make real games with it. (Yes I always wondered how the hell these professionals manage to make games with HTML ) Then for some years I kept playing around with HTML, making some static web pages. Then in 2003 I found out the difference between a markup language and a programming language. This was the time when I got my first broadband internet connection. So I did some research and found out that C++ was “industry standard” and bought a book about it with my pocket money. Well from there things always gone by themselves. I made some trips to PHP, jumped from one framework to another and collected knowledge. Then I found the “Irrlicht” Engine (at this time it was version 0.5 or something like this) and started gaining experience in graphics. Well around this time I realized that making games is some *real* work. So I never really made own games. Yes some mini-games like Tetris but nothing bigger.

Later I found out how beautiful C# is and now I’m at the point that I wouldn’t call me a “C++ Programmer” anymore but a “C# Programmer”. Yes you should always take the tool that fits your needs best but C# has become my favorite language. And finally I’ve come to the point where I’d say that I’m able to finally fulfill my dream and make some real video games. Well let’s see what the future will bring.

As a conclusion here are some boring facts you might find interesting if you want to stalk me

Favorites:

• Drink: Burbon / Martini
• Movie: The Matrix / The Lord of the Rings
• Book: Angels and Demons / The Lord of the Rings
• Song: Metallica – The Unforgiven

Spoken languages:

• German (native language)
• English (since 1999)

Programming languages:

• JavaScript (since 2002)
• C++ (since 2003)
• PHP (since 2005)
• C# (since 2008)
• JScript.NET (since 2008)

Other languages:

• (X)HTML (since 2000)
• SQL (since 2005)

Experiences with APIs/Toolkits/Frameworks:

• WinAPI
• Irrlicht
• Qt
• FmodEx
• RakNet
• IrrKlang
• .NET Framework
• DirectX
• SFML

Worked on the following btb-Software:

• Website: Webmaster / developer
• IrrSound: Programmer
• IrrIni: Programmer
• IrrKniffel: Programmer

Development machine:

• AMD Phenom X4 9950
• 6GB DDR2 800MHz RAM
• nVidia GeForce 8800GT
• 2 TB HDDs