Personal Projects
On my first trip to Japan we stopped in Hakone when traveling between Tokyo & Kyoto.
While walking along Lake Ashi we found this beautiful view of Mount Fuji, to which one can stare for hours, sadly it was only a short stop.
One of my goals is to go back one day to climb this marvelous rock.
- Visit UniverseView
The Project:
UniverseView is a browser add-on for OGame*, available for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. The add-on integrates in the game its interface and adds some nice and handy features.
The main idea behind UniverseView is to get a better view of the universe, where the different players have their planets. It adds features to easily search for players, including alliances, their planets and to make the locations available via different shortcuts.
* OGame is a browser-based, space-war themed, MMO game. In short, the game allows you to mine resources yourself and steal them from other players their planets, with the necessary buildings, research, ships and defence.
The Statistics:
23,583 users in May 2021 (and 255,274 users in the year 2020)
637,798 sessions in May 2021 (and 9,417,432 sessions in the year 2020)
The History:
Back in 2012 there was another OGame add-on for Chrome called COGame, it stopped working after a big update for OGame.
It had one feature that was so convenient that I couldn't miss it. So I decided to build my own extension containing a feature like that. And once I got the hang of it, I started experimenting and adding other features which made UniverseView to what it is now.
This project is my first big international project. I couldn't imagine that it'd be used so widely over the world, with users from 110+ countries. Aside that I still see it as my little baby.
- Visit TrashSim
The Project:
TrashSim is a external web application for OGame*. As the name might disclose, it's a simulator. The "trash" part is a synonym for debris, which in OGame is the result of destroyed ships and can be recycled to make profit.
Using the OGame API, TrashSim retrieves the data from espionage reports. These reports contain information about resources, ships, defence, research and buildings on another player his planet. To steal those resources one first needs to go past the planet its fleet and defence.
The main goal is to level up and to expand, preferably with the lowest cost and maximum profit. This is where TrashSim helps the players to simulate their fleet against the fleet of another player to maximize the profit they'll get out of an attack.
* OGame is a browser-based, space-war themed, MMO game. In short, the game allows you to mine resources yourself and steal them from other players their planets, with the necessary buildings, research, ships and defence.
The Statistics:
323,784 visits in May 2021 (and 5,124,343 visits in the year 2020)
2,570,179 combat simulations in May 2021 (and 45,652,626 simulations in the year 2020)
The History:
In 2014 OGame released a new major update containing an API to retrieve espionage report data. As the result of this, and knowing that I also made OGotcha using an API, players started asking me to create a simulator. After finishing some feature updates for OGotcha, mid 2015, I was ready for a new project, so I accepted their request.
Somewhere at the end of 2015 I fully released the simulator, what now appears to be my biggest project ever. Used in 140+ countries, with 8-9k users every day simulating over 6 million battles in 1 month.
- Visit OGotcha
The Project:
OGotcha is a external web application for OGame*. It's a combat report converter. As OGame is a war game, it generates combat reports after you've attacked another player.
These reports are only available to you personally ingame. Their format doesn't make it easy to share them with the world. This is where OGotcha makes the difference. Using the latest OGame API, OGotcha allows to convert the report in a format that's readable for the different OGame fora and also has the option to save the report on the website itself and share it via social media.
* OGame is a browser-based, space-war themed, MMO game. In short, the game allows you to mine resources yourself and steal them from other players their planets, with the necessary buildings, research, ships and defence.
The Statistics:
58,470 visits in May 2021 (and 685,902 visits in the year 2020)
46,232 combat reports in May 2021 (and 599,390 combat reports in the year 2020)
The History:
Almost 10 years ago when I started playing OGame, the dutch community had a simple combat report converter, named kokx. Some time later the founder of that project stopped, I took over development and changed the name to OGotcha.
In 2014 OGame released a new major update containing an API to retrieve combat report data. The perfect opportunity to start a new project, so I started building OGotcha from scratch. At that time, OGotcha together with some other community projects were pilot projects, as they were almost simultaneously released with the new API to promote it.