About Bobby Anguelov

Um, I always hate these about you sections since they tend to be a bit mundane no matter how hard you try to spice it up. So i’ll just keep it short.

I’m a bulgarian living in South Africa, I moved here when i was 5 and have stayed ever since. I’m interested in most things geeky, mainly video games and computers. I spent most of my childhood finishing every PC game I could get my hands on to. During the later part of it I was heavily involved in competitive gaming playing counter-strike. My favorite games are in no order: fallout 1/2, Baldur’s Gate 1/2, Counter Strike, Max Payne 1 and 2, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Need For Speed: Underground series, Call of Duty Series, Brothers in Arms series. I’m a huge RPG and FPS fan, I like strategy games but I tend to kinda suck at them.

I’ve found myself pretty disillusioned with the current state of games and hope one day to work in the games industry to try and make the game I’ve always wanted to. I’m tired of easy, watered down casual gaming experiences, I want complex in-depth and immersive games. I’d love to see a resurgence of games such as Fallout 1/2 or Baldur’s Gate 1/2. I think it was a better time when games were marketed at a smaller, tech savvy market.

Academically, I completed 3 years of computer engineering before I got bored (kinda realized that there was a lot of electronic engineering and very little computer science) and so swapped my major over to computer science. I then completed a BSc. degree and a then a BSc. Hons. in Computer Science from the  University of Pretoria, in South Africa.

I am currently doing my masters thesis on artificial intelligence (real-time multiagent pathfinding in dynamic environments). Once this is completed which I’m hoping to emigrate to the United States / Canada and try get a job in game development. I’d love to work for either Obsidian Entertainment, Bioware, Infinity Ward or Relic Entertainment. I love those studios and their work to bits, they are probably the only studios that have never truly dissapointed me!

Work wise, I work at the department of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria ( http://www.cs.up.ac.za ) as the web master where I mainly do web development (PHP, AJAX, mySQL). My career in web development started out as a pet project one afternoon, playing around with forms and the like and boom, a decade later its become my specialty. This is a little distressing as I don’t hold web development in high regard. Over the years I’ve written my own template based framework for the rapid development of custom portal sites ( it is in my opinion what CAKE should have been)  in PHP.

I’ve spent massive amount of time in front of my PC and so have a little bit of experience in all things PC related: video editing, music creation, modding, overclocking, graphic design, shell development, etc. I guess you can chalk all that down to a bored childhood.

Oh and before I forget I tend to be a bit of a Microsoft fanboi, I’m a proud and legal (its scary how much piracy there is) user of Microsoft Windows and visual studio!

My interests development wise are game artificial intelligence, game design, game logic and graphics programming. I’ve recently also gotten  involved in the Image Processing and Pattern Recognition field. Once again I find myself starting to specialize in a field that doesn’t really hold my primary interest.

Hobby wise, I’m interested in Martial Arts ( Shotokan Karate – I hold a black belt) and heavy music (Hardcore, Metalcore, Mathcore and Post Hardcore).

I started this blog mainly as a distraction from my work and studies and also as a place where i can put up easy to read, simple tutorials on subjects which are often made to seem more complicated than necessary. I’ve noticed that especially in academia: research papers and text books are written in a dry technical language and so make it inaccesible for most hobbyists and enthusiasts. I hope to get a chance to blog about all aspects of my work and interests over time…