{ Ciarán McCann }

Ciarán McCann, is an extremely passionate and motivated Irish games developer, who has been programming for over 6 years now. He is currently attending Carlow Institute of Technology studying Computer Games Development and currently working at Demonware , previously worked as a Software Engineer at Ericsson. He has experience in many different programming languages, with emphasis on graphics, maths and physics programming. He has also developed web, Android, iPhone Apps and previously worked as lead developer on the Flax HTML5 game engine. Ciarán is an entrepreneur at heart: he co-founded the Flax Project. Ciarán has also tutored classmates, and taught classes on game development and programming.

More About Ciarán McCann

My love for technology:
At the age of 5, I was introduced to my lifelong obsession: computers. My aunt, in her infinite wisdom, bought  a computer which ran Windows 3.1. I immediately found the computers’ capabilities fascinating, and everyday I would visit my aunt and get lost on the computer for hours at a time. From that point on, I knew I wanted to be an “inventor”; in other words,  to create amazing technology with computers. Over the next 16 years or so I began to learn more about computers. I started to learn things like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and then PHP/MySQL. This all culminated, in acquiring my first job as a web developer, when I was 17.

My love for games and their development:
I always loved playing games, and over the years have become addicted to certain games, playing them for hours on end and into the early hours of the night. Yes I’m looking at you Runescape, Age of Empires and more recently Battlefield Bad Company 2. Though what I love most is creating games; there is something so magical about been able to write code and see it come to life on a screen – being able to dream it, and then create it, is amazing.

The Future and my road map for life:
So where do I hope to be in the future? That’s a hard question to answer really, I would love to do many things. My short term goals involve finishing my degree at IT Carlow  with a first class honours in Computer Games Development, and then hopefully to do the Computer Game Development masters in Trinity, eventually specializing in area’s like AI and Real-time Rendering. I would like to forward my knowledge and eventually acquire a Phd. Then at some point, I would like to be a lecturer, as I love to teach and talk about my passion. It’s hard to say where the future will lead;  for all I know, I could be the CEO of the next big games studio – Flax LTD :D. Only time will tell.

My Technologies & Skill area

• C++
• Python
• Linux
• Java
• GWT
• C#/.NET
• JavaScript
• PHP/MySQL
• HTML5
• CSS
• OpenGL
• Ogre 3D
• SDL
• Agile & Iterative Development
• 8086 assembly language