About Me
I am a husband, father, and dog dad based in Utah. My family means everything to me and I love spending as much time as I can with them. I love mountain biking, hiking, and playing video games. I have strong cultural ties to my Mexican and Salvadoran heritage and I enjoy cooking for visitors when I can. You'll often hear me finding the most random Lord of the Rings quotes to put into a conversation even when they don't fit at all.
Favorite Games
My two favorite games of all time are Dark Souls III and Final Fantasy VII. These two games have had such a massive impact on me and they are what inspired me to get into game development in the first place. The dark fantasy and chaotic world of Lordran always draws me in and I can't help but fall in love with the game everytime I boot it up again. Final Fantasy VII is the first game that has ever made me cry and really ignigted my love for strong storytelling and character development in games. I can only hope that I can create something that will have such a strong impact on someone else one day.
I also love The Legend of Zelda. I determined to beat every single game in the series and it has been such a fun journey to see the technological advancements of the games. It's really interesting to question how game developers were able to stick something so massive into the limitations of the Ninendo Entertainment System's cartridge storage. I sometimes wonder if developers today are given such hardward limitations if the AAA game industry would be in a much better shape than it is today.
The Atlas Imager
My wife is studying to obtain her PhD in neuroscience and works with rats investigating pain. I have had to watch her struggle with taking images of migroglia cells and trying to line them up against an atlas of the rat brain to see where they are located. I wanted to help her out and so I decided to create the Atlas Imager for her. I originally built it as a desktop application using C++, Qt, OpenCV, and OpenGL. I then decided for a fun challenge to port it to the web using WebAssembly and WebGL. This will make it easier for her to use and allow me to share it with other researchers who might be interested in using it for their own work. You can check out the project on the Atlas Imager page.
Contact
Reach me at rlramirez12@gmail.com.