Who am I?

My name is Bram ten Haken and I am a Creative Media and Game Technologies student striving to become an engineer. I want to put creative stuff into the world and I am trying to learn how to do that with my aptitude and passion for programming. But I also like to experiment with other creative media.

My mission

In the game industry, I want to become an engine/physics programmer. This is the field that really clicks for me, I really enjoy designing complex systems and my background as a Mechatronics engineering student taught me a lot about physics, and I really like working in C++.

My story

I was born in 1998 in the Netherlands, ever since I was a kid I loved science and technology and my parents eagerly gave me the chance to explore that. When I got a bit older I took to Lego and after a while, I learned there was such a thing as programmable Lego called "Mindstorms" this is when I fell in love with programming.

In High-school I started a group that would compete with these Mindstorms in a competition called the FIRST Lego League where I worked in groups to make our Lego robots overcome specific challenges.

Because of my interest in science and Robotics and My passion for programming, I started studying Mechatronics (Also known as Robotics) at Saxion Applied University, I absolutely loved the first year, learning electronics, mechanics, and (embedded) programming (mostly C++) and working in groups to make cool robots.

Sadly, in the second year, I realized that seemingly no one in the field cared about creativity or creative solutions, only efficiency and math. Because of this I got really demotivated and realized that it would be best for me to switch to a different study.

In comes Creative Media and Game Technologies! I started in 2020 and I have now been studying there for 3 and a half years, I love programming, I am good at it and most of all I just love making my team's ideas come to life through my code.

My favorite part of the study is that I can focus on the stuff I like without being punished for it. Because of my previous experience in C++, I quickly gravitated towards engine programming and I realized that engine programming is my favorite part of game programming and I got to focus a good part of my time on it.

I hope to make Game Programming my career but I will have to see what the future holds...

What is with the Crocodile? /L-L<

When I was a kid, my friend tried to make an account on an online Pokémon game, he asked for a password, and I whispered "Pokemon" in his ear, he understood "Krokoman".

A couple of years later I wanted a cool username, I remembered the name "Krokoman" and liked it! I doodled the little /L-L< creature even later and liked it so much I drew it on anything of mine, and it became my personal tag/logo and called it "Krokso" (because it looks like a Crocodile, but only so so).

Why games

I love stories, stories are the best, books, movies, series, and games. But there is just something special about games the way they make the world come alive the way they make you feel it is just storytelling on another level.

Portal 2 is my absolute favorite game, there is probably a healthy dose of nostalgia in that reasoning but I stand by how amazing it is. The portal mechanics are awesome, the story and dialogue are unforgettable and the whole game is just a masterclass in Level Design.

My favorite genre is CRPGs, I have always been interested in branching stories, mainly because I was fascinated by all the different things the developers put in a game but when I played Tyranny it opened up a whole new world for me the amount of freedom and different stories just blew me away and its classless system was amazing to me.

But then came the best one; Divinity: Original Sin, which took almost everything I liked from Tyranny and turned it up to 11, the story is awesome but what I really loved was the amount of love and work there must have been behind the scenes, I could not stop thinking about all the amazing things the developers put in and how I would do it.

DOS2 is what got me into game programming because it shows how the mechanics and love put into programming different paths/scenarios and letting the player explore those can be the best part of a game.

I also enjoy games that suck you in and let you create your own systems/base. Games like: (Modded) Minecraft, Factorio, and Rimworld. Designing and building complex systems really resonates with me as a Programmer.

Of course the perfect system cannot exist, but just like how a programming problem can keep me awake at night, so can designing the perfect system to supply my machines. Striving for perfection is fun and I love it.