Pasi Laaksonen



Hi! I'm male, living in Helsinki, Finland. History short: School, high school, military service, university, work :-)   I love animals, especially big cats like tigers and snow leopards. Since I also like photographing, it isn't surprising that I have quite amount of big cat photos. Some of them are even ended up to books and magazines. I have pet cat, I've wrote Fin own page for it. That page is written in finnish but there's also some photos of my cat if you just want to see it.

I do lot of weird computer related projects on my spare time. I like thinking, reading science magazines, programming (mostly Java/C#), Amiga, Donald Ducks by Don Rosa, Calvin & Hobbes, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, dragons and bats. Just to mention some random things. And I like all the people who are passionate about something, whetever it is!


Studies

I've studied in University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science.

I wrote my bachelor's thesis entitled "Pathfinding in multi-agent environments and games". PDF version is here but it is written in Finnish: Polunetsintä usean agentin ympäristössä ja peleissä (Fin)


Work

I'm currently game programmer at Namida. Mostly using Java, C# and Unity. I have whole page about my current and past work.


Computers

My personal "computer-age" began at year 1985 with Commodore 64 and my programming hobby just about a year later. After that I have used quite many computers and programming/scripting-languages. Here's most of them (bolded those which I have used a lot):

General: Java, C#, Perl, Prolog, Lisp
Web-related: HTML, PHP, JavaScript
PC: TrueBasic, Pascal, C, C++
TI-85: Basic (I even made some games with this, using TI-85's internal editor :-)
Amiga 1200: Amos Professional (I made lots of freeware and shareware games with this, see my Amiga-page)
Amiga 500: Amiga Basic, Amos+Amos 3D
Commodore 64: Basic, Simons' Basic
Others: Unity, (My)SQL, XML (including DTD and XSL), LaTeX+BibTeX, Povray (meaning description-language of Povray's DOS-version, see my Povray-page)


Games

Playing computer games is fun! It is a bit sad, that some genres are quite dead.

Like old-fashion 2D adventure games. Monkey Island I and II were probably funniest adventure-games ever made. Quest for Glory I, II and III were brilliant. QfG IV felt good also, but was full of bugs :-(   Perhaps I liked Quest for Glory so much because there was so much all kind of feline animals in those games. Kattas and Liontaurs, I really liked those characters :-)   And Day of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion II) was good too, great idea to make things done in past to affect future directly.

Some of my old favorites are also Dungeon Master I and II. Especially Amiga-version of DM II was something great! Graphics and musics were ruined in PC-version. I just loved that dark atmosphere, intelligent creatures and those magical minions. But when talking about first person role-playing games, I can not forget Ultima Underworld I and II, best role-playing games at that time. Lands of Lore was also in my Top 10 games for a long time.

Other good games I could mention are Master of Orion I, simple and easy to learn but still so diversified that I couldn't help myself to not start new game immediately after one was finished. I guess I have played MoO I to the end more than hundred times. Lemmings II is one of the funniest problem solving game. And Star Control II is perhaps best adventure game I have ever played, I liked it how things were happening without player having control over them.

Baldur's Gate I and II were quite good, but somehow they just don't have that same feeling like Dungeon Masters or Ultima Underworlds. I think that is mostly because BG is using third person view. It creates feeling that player is just some kind of outsider who tell little mans on screen what they should do. I like first person view in role-playing games much more better.

Luckily, there's still The Elder Scrolls! I played Morrowind more than a year :-)   Not 24/7 of course, but a lot anyway. Best game of all Elder Scroll games. Previous part, Daggerfall, was also good ten years ago. And good was also Oblivion, at least after dozen of add-ons. Like the one that disabled all enemies to get better while your own character got better. It ruins the game. One of the greatest things in games like this is exactly that in beginning you get you butt kicked by almost any enemies, but when you get better, you are the one who is doing all the kicking. It gives feeling of progress in game. But this serie is exactly what kind of games I like. Totally new life to live, game doesn't put any (or almost any) restrictions on what you can do in game. Do whatever you want and live your virtual life as you see proper.


Contact

You can send me mail using this form.




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