Intro
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| "In which lies the true question, that is the question." |
| software engineer, game developer, researcher, investor |
©2023 Erich Erstu
About
This website serves as a formal publication of both the professional and social information about the living soul known as Erich Erstu.
| Contact Info | |
|---|---|
| E-Mail: | mail@ |
| Online: | LinkedIn, Facebook, GitHub |
Biography
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| Photo of Erich Erstu, September 2022 | |
| Date·of·Live·Birth: | 15th of February, 1989 Anno Domini |
| Ethnicity: | Estonian |
In his professional life Erich Erstu is a software engineer and a computer game developer who often challenges the mundane world of dogmas with his novel approaches and unconventional thinking. Although he has spent a fair share of his working hours devising BitCoin and online gambling related projects, his favourite software engineering challenge is the creation of a horizontally scalable game server for a massively multiplayer online role playing game.
He wrote his first computer program at the age of five in QBasic. At the age of 12 he developed his first video game using the GameMaker software. He learned the C programming language on his own while modding a multi user dungeon (MUD) server. At the age of 16 he started learning C++ which also became his favourite programming language. Although he used the Windows operating system up until the year 2012, he switched to Linux due to security concerns when buying his first BitCoin.
Over the course of his life Erich has created dozens of video games and a multitude of software projects, albeit none of these endeavours has brought him any long-lasting fame or fortune. His ability to see the future and to make good speculative investments on the other hand has abundantly compensated him the time he has spent on developing software. That said, he does not necessarily see any of his discontinued projects as a failure.
In his private life Erich enjoys lifting weights in the gym as a hobbyist bodybuilder and often times innovation strikes him exactly there when he is taking a resting break between sets. When at home he spends much of his computer time on research of various (mostly controversial) topics. He is convinced that in order to gain a competitive advantage in front of his fellow man he must discard the mainstream beliefs and hold a mindset that the majority of "well educated" people are wrong about virtually everything.
Being experienced in so many different arts and sciences Erich considers himself more of a multidisciplinary problem solver than a mere software engineer. While programming has indeed been his primary task he has also been in the role of a game designer, software architect, software tester, computer hacker, conscript, truck driver, warehouse manager, investor, day trader, BitCoin miner, artist, creative director, composer, lyricist, drummer, shaman, nutritional advisor, fitness coach, holistic doctor, parasitologist, alchemist, evangelist, exorcist, carpenter and a plaintiff, to name a few.
Curriculum Vitae
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| Click here to open the CV in PDF. |
Academic Degrees
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| M.Sc in Engineering | B.Sc in Engineering |
| University of Tartu, 2014 | University of Tartu, 2012 |
| THESIS | THESIS |
Professional Certifications
Portfolio
As this website concentrates on the software engineering aspect of Erich Erstu's doings, in the following sections some of his video games and other software projects are listed and briefly described.
Games
Over the course of his life Erich Erstu has authored many computer games. While the full list is not fit for public scrutiny some of the more notable titles are listed below.
Slice&Dice Dungeon
Slice&Dice Dungeon (SnDD) is a multi user slot machine, backwards compatible to Telnet. It is inspired by MUDs and it incorporates aspects from typical role-playing games. In addition to the Text User Interface, S&DD comes with a browser based client written in HTML5 and Javascript. The latter is responsible for making this game much more convenient for the vast majority of the target audience as the client aims to resemble a slot machine.
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| Title: | Slice&Dice Dungeon |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2017 — 2022 |
| Target·Platform: | Web browser |
| Tech·Stack: | C++, JavaScript, PixiJS |
| Status: | Discontinued |
Sohni
Sohni: Second Visit to the Underworld, based on a chapter of the Estonian national epic "Kalevipoeg", uses traditional adventure gaming elements to offer a simplified yet still engaging artistic experience. The player guides the protagonist Sohni through gloomy forests, murky bogs and eerie caves, where every obstacle and decision might sway his will to push onward.
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| Title: | Sohni — Second Visit to the Underworld |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2012 |
| Target·Platform: | Windows XP |
| Tech·Stack: | C++, Lua, Allegro5 |
| Status: | Completed |
| DOWNLOAD |
CatFight
CatFight is a brutal cat fighting game. The basics are similar to Mortal Kombat except that there are street cats fighting instead of ninjas. Single player consists of 10 levels. Two player mode is available.
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| Title: | CatFight |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2007 |
| Target·Platform: | Windows XP |
| Tech·Stack: | C++, Allegro4 |
| Status: | Completed |
| DOWNLOAD |
Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea is a single player real time strategy game where the player has to keep order on the Baltic Sea. The game was created with Gamemaker 5.3a in the year 2007. This game was mainly developed by Erich Erstu, graphics were drawn by Ivo Visak and background research was conducted by Allan Trukits.
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| Title: | Baltic Sea |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2007 |
| Target·Platform: | Windows XP |
| Tech·Stack: | GameMaker 5.3a |
| Status: | Completed |
| DOWNLOAD |
Arion MUD
Arion is a text-based role-playing game and a multi user dungeon (MUD) based on the Rivers of MUD engine. Erich modded and maintained it for fun and to teach himself the C programming language.
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| Title: | Arion MUD |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2005 — 2015 |
| Target·Platform: | Telnet |
| Tech·Stack: | C |
| Status: | Discontinued |
RedEgg Adventures
This game is an arbitrary side-scrolling role-playing game where the player takes the role of an abstract character named RedEgg who looks like he came out of Pac-Man. Killing everyone who comes at him he slices and dices his way through a fictional world that seems to be progressively turning into excrement.
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| Title: | RedEgg Adventures |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2001 — 2005 |
| Target·Platform: | Windows XP |
| Tech·Stack: | GameMaker 5 |
| Status: | Discontinued |
Troll
Troll is a platform adventure game developed in the spirit of Prehistorik 2. In this game the player is a troll named Thog who embarks on a quest to warn the king about the sudden madness that has occurred in the animal kingdom.
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| Title: | Troll |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2004 |
| Target·Platform: | Windows XP |
| Tech·Stack: | GameMaker 5 |
| Status: | Completed |
| DOWNLOAD |
Marko
Marko is a simple adventure game named after its protagonist Marko who has to raise money for a cool motorbike. The events of this game take place in the parish of Kambja, Estonia. It was made in 2003 with Gamemaker 5.0. The game is in Estonian.
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| Title: | Marko |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2003 |
| Target·Platform: | Windows XP |
| Tech·Stack: | GameMaker 4.3 |
| Status: | Completed |
| DOWNLOAD |
Software
While a more extensive list of software authored by Erich is available under his GitHub account, some of the more noteworthy titles are also listed in the following sections.
Markdown Assembler
MarkDown Monolith Assembler is a command line tool designed for building elegant browser-based books using the Markdown markup language. When given a markdown document as an input, this program produces a monolithic JavaScript-free HTML5 application as an output. For example, this very website has been generated with MarkDown Monolith Assembler.
| Title: | MarkDown Monolith Assembler |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2023 |
| Tech·Stack: | C++, HTML, CSS |
| Status: | Completed |
| SOURCE CODE |
Sockets
This is a single-threaded and signal-compatible header-only C++ library for the creation and acceptance of TCP connections. The library makes use of the epoll Linux kernel system call to achieve a scalable I/O event notification mechanism.
The library started out from the Arion MUD server in 2012 and has been revised and rewritten several times ever since. It was intended to be used as a networking module for a MUD but is also used by other software such as TCP Herald and TCP Nipple.
| Title: | Sockets |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2012 — 2023 |
| Tech·Stack: | C++ |
| Status: | Completed |
| SOURCE CODE |
TCP Nipple
This Linux program is a proxy client that joins together pairs of outgoing TCP connections. It connects simultaneously to two hosts (supply and demand) and exchanges data between them.
With this tool it is trivial to host any TCP server locally rather than on a cloud or on a third party commercial server. This may turn useful if a hosting provider charges based on CPU usage because then the computation heavy part of the service could be executed on concealed and privately owned hardware. Please refer to TCP Herald to get an idea how to set up such a server.
| Title: | TCP Nipple |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2021 — 2023 |
| Tech·Stack: | C++ |
| Status: | Completed |
| SOURCE CODE |
TCP Herald
This Linux program is a proxy server that joins together pairs of incoming TCP connections. It listens simultaneously on two ports (supply and demand) and connects any new client on the demand port with a client waiting on the supply port.
An example use case would be running this program as a public server in order to provide access to a private server which cannot accept new connections by itself but can connect to the public server when needed. See TCP Nipple for a good example of such a private server.
| Title: | TCP Herald |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2021 — 2023 |
| Tech·Stack: | C++ |
| Status: | Completed |
| SOURCE CODE |
CryptoGraffiti
Bitcoin's block chain is a decentralized database which main purpose is to secure and hold all Bitcoin transactions. It can be used to store other data too. For example, lovers might want to "scratch" their name letters into the block chain where they will remain forever. CryptoGraffiti allows people to read and write such block chain messages.
Unfortunately, the project had to be discontinued because its continuation would have required renting a datacenter. The potential revenue that such a peculiar service would have generated simply did not balance out the costs associated with a datacenter.
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| Title: | CryptoGraffiti |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2014 — 2021 |
| Tech·Stack: | JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Bash, C++, BitCoin |
| Status: | Discontinued |
| SOURCE CODE |
Research
From time to time Erich has ran into non-trivial problems that he needed to have a solution for. In these circumstances the process of working out a solution has required enough effort to be qualified as research. In this section some of the more noteworthy research results are presented.
Wave Function Collapse
Wave Function Collapse is a method devised for procedural generation of images based on a sample image. The produced images are locally similar to the input image which makes this method highly convenient for pattern generation.
Unlike the original method, Erich Erstu's method operates on an unbounded area. Also, his method tolerates contradictions. This variant of the Wave Function Collapse method was initially implemented to generate random dungeon maps for an online role-playing game.
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| Title: | Random Dungeons with the Wave Function Collapse Method |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2021 |
| Tech·Stack: | C++ |
| Status: | Completed |
Fluid Morphing for 2D Animations
This study investigated the possibilities for image morphing that could be applied to animations used in computer games. The motivation was to take advantage of fluid dynamics in hope of achieving more natural looking interpolations.
As a result of this research, a C++ library named AtoMorph was implemented. The library is accompanied by an explanatory thesis and it also earned Erich a Master's Degree in Software Engineering.
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| Title: | Fluid Morphing for 2D Animations |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2013 — 2014 |
| Tech·Stack: | C++ |
| Status: | Completed |
| SOURCE CODE |
Random World Generator
The aim of this work was to find an easy to use solution to a common problem — generating random world maps that could be used in computer games. As a constraint the desirable maps were meant to be of an Earth type planet including its heightmap, bodies of water and biomes.
Using Perlin noise, water droplet simulation and Whittaker’s biome diagram a C++ library named RWG was implemented. The library is accompanied by a humble thesis written in Estonian as it also earned Erich a Bachelor's Degree in Informatics.
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| Title: | Random World Generator |
| Time·of·Focus: | 2012 |
| Tech·Stack: | C++ |
| Status: | Completed |
| SOURCE CODE |
Links
As in the good old times when people first started making personal websites for themselves, the tail of this site is composed of a list of domains that we wish to share with the world wide web.
People
- CraigWright.net — professional website of the Creator of Bitcoin
Software
- ElectrumSV.io — deterministic Bitcoin wallet for desktop
- Simply.cash — simple Bitcoin wallet for a smartphone
News
- CoinGeek.com — trustworthy source of Bitcoin news
Community
- MetaNet.icu — exclusive membership club focused on Bitcoin