Power Engineer, Musician, Designer, and AI Dev create a Game
What do you think? If you took a power engineer, a musician, a designer, and a programmer and let them create a game, what kind of game or application would they create? What if all these people were actually one and the same person? Hello, Damian here with several skills and experiences trying to combine them all into one.
Music
The longest activity I have been involved in in my life was probably music, playing the bass guitar and going through various genres of music, from funk and fusion jazz to independent rock and metal. I started playing in my hometown in Poland, then moved to Berlin in Germany, where I played for the next 10 years.
Web Design & Development
Apart from music, I have always liked modern technologies, sci-fi, futuristic films, this moved me towards internet technologies and website design. I guess I can say I was the designer of some part of the Internet.
I developed further and, in addition to designing, I started programming more complex things, creating web applications and taking on the role of a Front-End Developer. But the time has come when frontend frameworks for JS began to multiply: Knockout, Ember, Angular, React, Vue, Svelte. Everything started to get too complicated.
Power Engineering
The time has come when I decided to return to Poland, and I always promised myself that when I return, I will finish my studies, which I interrupted when I went abroad. Before leaving, I studied Physics with Computer Science, but I decided that since I already had quite a lot of experience with IT, I should start something else. Especially since I reached a certain level in IT that I couldn’t get past. I had a very good understanding of data structures, but it was very difficult for me to advance to a higher level of programming. This confirmed to me that I had to choose a difficult engineering field that would stimulate my brain and force me to be more mentally active. I chose engineering studies in Power Engineering, specializing in Electrical Power Engineering. And I was indeed right, my studies, apart from entering the world of power plants, mechanics, thermodynamics, turbines, generators, electrical engineering and automation, allowed me to further develop in the IT direction, this time it was time for AI.
Artificial Intelligence — The Beginnings
These were the times without ChatGPT and in order to start immediately with an AI project without spending a year learning how to program AI with Python and train the LLM models, I chose Nanodegree from Udacity. There was AI Product Manager specialization, where, using solutions available on Google Cloud, I could train an AI model, which was able to recognize X-ray images of the lungs and detect signs of disease in them. I managed to get it sorted within a month and started wondering what to do next.
Game Development
I’ve always wanted to program games. I am the generation that was the first to have access to games, first through arcade machines, then through Atari and Commodore C64 and load games from tape recorders and cassettes. Later, the first PCs and games such as Quake, Mortal Combat, and Diablo appeared. I thought that to acquire the skill of game programming you need special mental powers, because it is coding at a higher level. But I finally decided to try to enter the world of games from a programmer’s perspective. I was doing quite well, but I realized that games require full concentration and time, and there were a few things that I had to finish first, and these were studies, which became more advanced with each year, and a startup, which after two years of concept development, it received funding.
Startup Time, EdTech and AI Continued
The startup’s idea was an LMS platform with many innovative features with AI elements. The platform was a solution to the problems students encounter during tests and exams. The startup got into incubation, where we were advised to focus only on AI features, and so the idea emerged to move from a huge LMS platform to a mobile learning application using artificial intelligence, which received funding for its further development. There was still no ChatGPT, but while working on the application it appeared, maybe it was better because it was finally possible to explain what Generative AI was about. The application was completed within the project schedule and is available in the App Store and Google Play under the name Sovo — AI Learning App.
The startup adventure was great, I managed to learn the full process of implementing a mobile application on the market, I was also involved in prototyping scripts in Python in the Google Colabs environment, where I used Open AI Function Calling to generate content for interactive educational materials, in a format that I defined myself . I also learned about vector databases, similarity search and working with various LLM models.
At the same time, I also managed to finish my studies and immediately the thought of returning to the world of games came back, which seemed to me the only field in which I could use all my experience without wondering which direction to go.
Game Development Reloaded
I’m starting my adventure with game development again, this time fully prepared and motivated. My dream is to become a game programmer and work in a studio where I can develop further. But for now, I’m going back to basics and starting the journey of becoming a software engineer.
I wonder what application a bass player, electrical power engineer, designer and AI dev would make if he were a highly skilled game creator :)
