Welcome to Ed Roman's Web Site
Game Developer, Author, and former CEO
Phone: 512 - 773 - 5555
Email: ed AT ed-roman.com
Resume: Click here
Thank you for coming to this page to find out more about me. Here is my story -- I'll try to keep it brief and interesting.
What I do
I am a game developer,
with a passion for both playing and writing
games. I live, eat, and breathe games. I am truly lucky to have my passion
also be my work.
I am currently seeking to start or co-found a startup company in the game development industry.
I am evaluating a variety of business plans at the moment, and am seeking team members with similar
interests to launch a startup in the Austin TX area.
I am qualified for both technical, managerial, and leadership positions, and can adapt to the role necessary, as I have experience with a wide variety of aspects of game development. Feel free to contact me to get together over lunch to brainstorm. My contact information is at the top of this page.
My unique experience
For the last year, I've been doing indepdendent contracting in the mobile game space. Specifically I've been making casual games for mobile phones, including a Poker game and a Dance Dance Revolution style game.
Prior to doing games, I was the CEO of my own startup company, called The Middleware Company (http://www.middleware-company.com). We trained programmers how to program using the Java programming language, and also performed Java consulting.
I grew this organization from one employee (myself) to 20 employees in roughly 3 years. This was all achieved with no outside funding. Through this experience I learned a multitude of skills in all areas of running a business, including sales, marketing, training, consulting, recruiting, back-office operations, and (most importantly) how to grow a business profitably.
During this time, I envisioned an online community, where server-side Java programmers could share best practices and learn from each other, to help increase the success of Java projects. I recruited a team to build this portal and called it http://www.TheServerSide.com. Today, this web site is the #2 Java web site in the world (Sun's own Java site is #1), with over 300,000 registered members, and millions of page views per month.
I also wrote a
best-selling book on server-side Java programming, called Mastering Enterprise
JavaBeans, published by John Wiley & Sons. You can download an
electronic copy of the book for free in PDF format
here.
Through my experiences, I became a well-known figure in the Java world. I was invited to speak at numerous conferences, as well as deliver keynote addresses. The largest crowd I spoke in front of was 3000 developers. I was also invited to be on the technical advisory boards of Java software companies, and to CEOs of software startups in the Austin TX area.
After 3 years of hard work, I sold the business in June 2002. The
business is still in existence today
under its new owner, and is thriving quite nicely. The Austin Business Journal wrote an article
about the sale of the business that you can read
here.
About my game development history
After I sold my business, I was in a good position to pursue what I've always dreamed of doing -- programming games. I've actually been programming games since I was a boy, copying BASIC source code out of books! To get real knowledge of game programming under my belt, I pursued a degree in Game Design from Full Sail, which I think is the top institution in the country for learning how to program games.
I also have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Cornell University. Now after hearing that, you might ask why I pursued a degree in Game Design if I already had a CS bachelor's degree from Cornell. The reason is: I wanted to gain the knowledge to be the very best game developer I could be. I am not in this industry to just get by -- I am in this industry to produce the best games out there. Looking back at the knowledge I have gained, I believe that I made the right decision.
I then began to publish several independent open-source games, which are available for download at the bottom of this page. Some games were written alone, while others were written by teams, where I served as the producer and lead programmer. All of these games are open-source.
SoftWars
SoftWars is an open-source 3D Real Time Strategy Game. I was the producer and lead programmer of a team of 4 programmers, 2 part-time artists, and 1 sound designer. My responsibilities were to code the 3D engine in OpenGL (including scene management via an axis-aligned bounding box quadtree, a renderer, collision detection and response, and some simple animations), to code the skeleton game framework, and to code all of the units and buildings, including special abilities and finine state machines. The other team members handled the game design, networking, graphical user interface, particle engine, and artificial intelligence. I also played a role of producer, in which I advised team members on their tasks, performed general project management, and kept the project on schedule.
You can download the SoftWars Installer program here.
Note: After installation, navigate to the folder you installed into, and double-click the SoftWars.exe program to run it.
You can download the complete code for SoftWars from http://www.sourceforge.net with project name RobotRTS. Note that you need to be familiar with CVS and SourceForge to do this.
Tank
Tank is a 3D Tank Simulation. It is not a game per se, but rather is a demonstration of how to perform 3D vector/matrix operations, collision logic, camera logic, terrain following, ground clamping, and more. I use Renderware behind the scenes. I coded most of this game myself, and used some code from another developer as a basis for the game.
Tetherbomb
Tetherbomb is an independent open-source 2D Action/Puzzle Game. It was a team effort, and I was the producer and lead programmer. My responsibility was to architect the game using OO and UML, code the particle engine, code the game skeleton framework, and code the bosses. I also educated the team on software engineering best practices, such as how to use source control, and setup a coding standard.
Gauntlet
Gauntlet is an independent open-source PC clone of the arcade classic. I wrote this game myself. It accurately reproduces the Gauntlet game, and demonstrates 2D gaming concepts such as using DirectX, and writing a tile engine.
Summary
That catches you up to date about my history. Thank you again for visiting my site. Feel free to call or email me at the address listed at the top of this page if you are interested in discussing working together. I look forward to hearing from you.