about

Hello! I'm Nick Hirzel, a.k.a. "kwask" online.

This website is just a place to dump anything I do. Feel free to reach out if something I did interests you!

projects

Escape! from Zarquon-5

Final project for my Game Programming course

Aug. 2020

You're a space pirate who's just crazy enough to go after the legendary bounty of Zarquon-5, but not quite smart enough to remember the way out. After greedily plundering deep inside the fortress, you've found you've gone and gotten yourself lost! Find a way back outside with the booty (and your ship) intact!

Orbital Mechanics Simulator

An orbital mechanics simulator written in Rust

Jul. 2019 - Aug. 2019

This was an orbital mechanics simulator that I wrote over a summer to try implementing an ECS and to strengthen my Rust skills. In its current state it simulates a scale model of the solar system including all major planets and moons and the dwarf planet Pluto. One cool feature of the simulation is watching the orbital resonance of the Galilean moons of Jupiter. It also gives some sense of the vast scales of space.

Sealab

A prototype game engine written in C++

Feb. 2018 - May. 2018

Sealab was to be heavily inspired by Apollo Station and Sealab 2021 and was planned to be a top-down multiplayer base-builder where you construct and operate a research laboratory on the seafloor of an alien ocean. In its current state it has systems for world chunking, entity-components, serialization / deserialization, rendering, importing models from Blender, and player movement.

Gotalk

VoIP platform written in Go

Feb. 2017 - May. 2017

Gotalk was a VoIP platform that I developed in collaboration with a friend as a way of learning golang. Uses a client-server model which support full utf-8 encoded text chat and rudimentary voice chat.

Apollo Station

An open-source fork of Space Station 13

Jan. 2015 - Sep. 2016

Apollo Station was a top-down multiplayer role-playing game and was my first experience with developing and managing a game for a community of hundreds of players. Players took a role on-board a dystopian corporate research space station alongside a cast of varied and outlandish characters. It was your job to keep the station running while pirate clowns, space bears, and rival corporate agents tried their best to blow it all up.

No Space for Error

My 48-hour game dev entry for Ludum Dare 31

Dec. 2014

You're on the run from some space-baddies. The ship is taking hits and it's just your luck that your trusty toolbelt broke and now your tools are bouncing around the engine compartment. Juggle using the four different tools to keep the ship from falling apart before the warp drive charges!