about me

ArenaEngine – can I do it alone?

Posted by Bartosz Ptaszynski on Jul 18, 2011 in about me, ArenaEngine | 0 comments

Last year an idea was born – ArenaEngine. It came to being after a pivotal change in my plans to develop yet unnamed Sci-Fi MMO. After going through some scenarios with Alexander Casassovici he suggested to focus on what I do best and have most experience in – servers/middleware.

It took several months of bashing out ideas, prototypes, demos to iron out a plan and architecture for ArenaEngine. I’ve stopped freelancing and downsized my company in January ’11 to concentrate on ArenaEngine only. One thing was certain –  this project needs sales and someone with overall experience in structuring company for scalability and I’m not fitting this requirements as I’m a techie.
Fortunately there are organizations in Ireland that are made especially for people like myself. That’s how I’ve got onto the Genesis which is a startup accelerator programme run and funded by Cork Institute of Technology and Enterprise Ireland.

After two months so far (out of twelve) this course is proving to be exactly what I need. That said driving a concept for a company such as this sucking a lot of energy from me. I don’t mind developing the software and whole platform for the product – it comes easy to me, but the marketing, financial analysis and predictions, structuring company etc. are not something I may say I am most proficient at. Never less Genesis works like school sometime – you have no choice but to comply.

So, can I do it alone? I must for now, unfortunately I had to let go one developer who worked with me on the prototyping stage as simply I’m running out of savings from last contracts. ArenaEngine is completely self funded so far and until either version 1.0 hits the online shelf or I manage to secure investment I can’t afford to hire anyone.

In future posts, which will be a mixture of technical heavy posts and business related posts I’ll leave a trail of progress being made. As mentioned above a lot had been done so far and the next few posts will summarize that.

About Me or Getting Things Done with Rocket Launcher

Posted by Bartosz Ptaszynski on Jan 16, 2009 in about me | 0 comments

Something came over me today after I woke up. Perhaps it was a lack of caffeine and savage hour for me to wake up and I’ve decided to write this post with lil bit info about me and my attitude at solving things.
My recent conversation with Sabrina Dent was a trigger for that I guess, when she said I have tendency to approaching things with a rocket launcher, but it works.

When it comes to programming, it’s not just a piece of code I’m writing. Most of the time I’m approaching it quite personally. I like my code to be ‘clean’, easy to read and modify. It’s like I’m creating art.

I like playing guitar and piano. I’ve never spent time learning how to play so I can’t really play much beside few songs. I used to sketch and paint, but again I’ve never gave it enough time to become good at it. Never less I liked it (I still like to doodle — it’s stronger than me  )

This inner passion to art got transferred somehow to my career as a programmer. I like nice things.
I’ve also been a fan of assumption that programming is by all means a modern magic. After all you can make things work, do some things with just words you type, and 99% of Earth’s population can’t do it or even fully grasp it. So it seems like you could at some level compare programming to a fantasy magic :)

When I play RPG games I like to choose characters that give me most freedom of expression. No wonder that most of the time I play mages, wizards and such.

Some time ago I’ve played Never Winter Nights 2 over LAN with a ‘fireball-happy’ attitude mage. This lead to many funny situations (at least for me ) like
“Why did you kill this guy?!!” — friend asks
“Well, he attacked us first.” — I answer
“But he wanted to surrender! And we needed him for new quest!!”
“So? I had already two fireballs flying in his direction”

So how does it portray me? I guess I’m kind of code casting passionate artist :)

No wonder that when I approach a project I like to solve the problems in ‘best’ way possibly.
Picking fireball to open locked doors and crates happened a lot in mentioned above NWN2 session :)

My enthusiasm to designing and tendency to over engineering leads my customers to wonder sometimes if things will get done on time. I do get things done in time… most of the time
It’s not because I’m blasting my way through problems with crude solutions, it’s because I tend to see a clear way and I know tools that I can use effectively.

Multi-tasking is not my thing. I doubt it’s any man’s thing. That’s what women are good at. When I concentrate on one thing it gets 120% of my attention. Nothing around me exists any more. Dog can bark, radio can play some bad tunes, roadwork in progress and my girlfriend calling for dinner — all gone. It’s me and the task before me. And that’s why I can solve things well.

Last year taught me that when I plan to do 2-3 projects over the same period of time it’s my max capacity to mullti-task and still get things done as I tend to underestimate the overhead from switching between the tasks.

I have lots of great ideas, just not enough time to implement them and I hope to increase my time for them in 2009.