Chapter Meeting #5, Frankfurt a.M. - 23-11-05

General Info | Content | Schedule | Speakers

1. Lecture: Christoph Birkhold

Position: Software Engineer
Company: Spellbound Studios
Main Area: Technology
Subject: Technology Engineering your Game Prototype

Christoph Birkhold studied computer science in media and graphical interactive systems. He recently graduated from the University of Media Stuttgart, Germany. Chris has been teasing compilers for over 10 years. Code of his is running in kernel space, user space and most recently in outer space. Chris has embarked on projects ranging from general applications to short films to interactive art to computer games. Chris has worked with the Filmakademie, ZKM, Porsche and Curious Labs. Right now Chris is defying gravity on a regular basis at Spellbound Studios.

2. Lecture: Prof. Dr. Martin Riedmiller

Position: Head of the Neuroinformatics Group
Company: University of Osnabrueck
Main Area: Technology
Subject: Double Feature: Learning skills and team cooperation in automomous agents

Martin Riedmiller is head of the Neuroinformatics Group at the University of Osnabrueck, Germany. His research group consists of 4 PhD students, one postdoc, and several master and bachelor students. Main research areas are Machine Learning, Neural networks, Multi Agent Systems and Robotics.Since 1998 he is developping the Brainstormers - a team of autonomous soccer playing robots, based on advanced Machine Learning techniques. In 2005, the Brainstormers won the World Championship in the RoboCup simulation league. Martin Riedmiller studied Computer Science at the TH Karlsruhe from 1986 to 1992 where he also finished his PhD in 1996. In 2002 he became Professor for Computational Intelligence at the University of Dortmund. In 2003 he joined the University of Osnabrück.

3. Lecture: Dr. Stefan Blanck

Position:Game Designer / Managing Director
Company: Chromatrix GmbH
Main Area: Game Design
Subject: Erwecken von Emotionen - Fallstudie Dialogsysteme

Dr. Stefan Blanck arbeitet seit über 20 Jahren als Game Designer, Programmierer und Agent für Spielelizenzen. Er war als Producer und Game Designer für mehrere international erfolgreich veröffentlichte Produktreihen zuständig und arbeitet momentan auf PC und für mobile Plattformen.

3. Lecture: Daniel Dumont (Postponed)

Position: Game Designer / Project Lead
Company: Ascaron Entertainment GmbH
Main Area: Game Design
Subject: Postponed

The Lecutre of Daniel Dumont about Game Design Documents has to be postponed to one of the following IGDA Chapter meetings (due to unforseable reasons).

4. Lecture: Alex Horst

Position: 3D Artist
Company: yello! AG
Main Area: Art
Subject: Max 8.0 als Tool für Spieleentwickler? (title subject to change)

Alex Horst arbeitet seit fünf Jahren professionell auf verschiedenen 3D-Plattformen im Bereich Design, Industrie und Games. Schwerpunktmäßig beschäftigt er sich mit Echtzeitvisualisierungen und der umfassenden Beobachtung aller in Entwicklung befindlichen 3D-Software-Pakete und der daraus resultierenden Vor- und Nachteile für den Anwender.

5. Lecture: Christian Halten

Position: Composer
Company: SKYLIFE
Main Area: Music and Sound
Subject: Using Film Music tricks for Games

Christian Halten works as a composer and sound designer for film, television and games. He studied Film Scoring and Sound Design at the German Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg and he completed the Filmmaking Masterclass at the University of California in Los Angeles. Christian has a long experience as a conceptual artist in the fields of music composing, surround sound and sound creation. He was involved as a composer and sound designer in the Hollywood movies “Catwoman” (Music: Klaus Badelt) and “The Ring Two” (Music: Hans Zimmer, Henning Lohner, Martin Tillman). His music label and studio SKYLIFE was nominated at the Surround Music Awards in Los Angeles for the DVD-Audio production “OFF SPACE”. Christian worked for companies like IBM, Steinberg, Musik-Media, Waldorf, Wizoo, Hartmann and Applied Acoustics. One of his recent works is the development of the automatic sampling software “SampleRobot”.