Kalle Rustholkarhu Programming resume and portfolio
Most recently Lead Programmer for Still Running, shipping Morbid: The Lords of Ire in 2024
Projects showcased in this portfolio are written in plain C or C++ (Unreal Engine). Conversion for showcasing on the web has been made from C into Web Assembly using the Emscripten open source toolchain. 2D graphical library used is SDL2, with SDL2_image, SDL2_ttf and SDL2_mixer extensions. Projects are developed for and on the Linux and Mac environments but would be portable to the mobile platforms and Windows desktop as well, due to the cross-platform nature of SDL2. The web portability is showcased here.
Portfolio established during studies at Hive Helsinki, porting plain C graphics branch projects to the web platform for demoing purposes. For the sake of fundamental learning at Hive, our projects were restricted to CPU calculations only (software rendering). Projects that showcase the effective use of the GPU via OpenGL are missing - with OpenGL and GPU rendering, many of the optimizations and design choices utilized to increase performance with direct pixel manipulation would be obsoleted. GPU accelerated modern 3D rendering is a highly specialized and interesting field! Leveraging 3D rendering to the fullest capability require larger teams, investing a lot of resources into generating the impressive graphical end results.
Creating fluid, efficient and performant cross-platform graphical user interfaces is a prospective affair. I specialized into the graphics branch at Hive Helsinki because of the attractive potential of all the visual things one can perceive on the digital platforms, both as pure entertainment or as part of some other meaningful interaction. The fluidness, smoothness and joy generated of well made 2D interfaces and games is very attractive in my opinion. I enjoy strategy board games and games like chess. I grew up consuming a lot of 16-bit era console games, often frusturated by how far more graphically advanced games missed the mark on the actual gameplay experience. Thus I believe that well executed, functional ideas and polished designs will be always in fashion and demand. Knowing how to program fundamentally performant code that can be deployed onto the modern multiplatform digital space is a key interest for me.