Alexander Skakov's Portfolio

AI-first no-code drag-and-drop 3D game creation software. Games can be played on Windows and Android. Software runs on Windows and macOS.

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My involvement & technologies used:

• UI design (Photoshop/Illustrator);
• Most of UI implementation (Qt/QML/C++);
• AI interaction API (JSON interface for internal structure).

Project page:

https://buildbox.com

No-code drag-and-drop 3D and 2D game creation software. Games can be played on Windows, Android, iOS, Buildbox World (app for instant game preview on any mobile device). Software runs on Windows and macOS.

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My involvement & technologies used:

• I’ve come up with a unique technology that allows combining modern (QML) and legacy (Qt Widgets) UI in a single window without performance penalty (no rendering to framebuffer). It uses OS window composition for overlaying QML window on top of Qt Widgets window with a system of placeholder items in QML scene that are mapped to Qt Widgets underneath and custom event propagation;
• Large portion of UI implementation (Qt Widgets/QML/C++);
• Transition to package manager for build dependencies (Conan), including writing custom package recipes.

Project page:

https://signup.buildbox.com/product/bb3

No-code drag-and-drop 2D game creation software. Games can be played on Windows, Android, iOS, Steam, macOS, Buildbox World (app for instant game preview on any mobile device). Software runs on Windows and macOS.

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My involvement & technologies used:

• Large portion of UI implementation (Qt Widgets/QML/C++). I’ve suggested to start transition to QML for UI, and eventually, all the major parts of the software were using QML which significantly sped up the development process;
• I’ve suggested and implemented transition to fast and storage-efficient MessagePack for game data format instead of XML that was used before. This gave 5x speed-up to game loading;
• Implemented a single style (QStyle-based) for the whole app, so developer can use basic Qt widgets like QPushButton or QLineEdit and get stylized controls;
• Implemented support for HiDPI screens and multiple monitors, SVG-based vector graphics for UI. At the time, there was no solid support for HiDPI screens in Qt so I came up with custom implementation for both Qt Widgets and QML that supported Windows and macOS (WinAPI/macOS API);
• I’ve suggested and implemented transition to native Windows build toolset (MSVC instead of MinGW that was used before) and implemented CI (TeamCity) build scripts that could be shared across platforms (Python instead of Bash).

Project page:

https://signup.buildbox.com/product/bb2

Easy to use, drag-and-drop application for creating music and effects for games.

My involvement & technologies used:

• Nearly all UI implementation (Qt Widgets/C++);
• Real-time sound mixer;
• Waveform, sound effects, and volume;
• Scene manipulations;
• Support for multiple lossy and lossless input and output formats (ffmpeg/libavcodec);

Project page:

https://signup.buildbox.com/product/soundbox

Easy to use, drag-and-drop application for creating 2D skeletal character animations.

My involvement & technologies used:

• Part of UI implementation (Qt Widgets/C++), HIDPI support;
• Selected object manipulator;
• Skeleton manipulation logic.

Project page:

https://www.buildbox.com/introducing-animationbox-2

Easy to use, drag-and-drop application for creating games graphics design. You can quickly create different user interfaces, app icons, 2D art, and much more.

My involvement & technologies used:

• UI implementation (Qt Widgets/C++), HiDPI support;
• Selected object manipulator, support for selecting multiple objects and simultaneous transformations like scaling and rotation;
• Scene manipulation.

Project page:

https://www.buildbox.com/pixelbox-walkthrough

Easy to use, drag-and-drop application for creating 3D game objects, voxels and more.

My involvement & technologies used:

• Part of UI implementation (Qt Widgets/C++), HIDPI support;
• Asset library;
• Compiling complex dependencies (Cycles, OpenImageIO).

Project page:

https://www.buildbox.com/voxelbox-walkthrough

Text/voice/video chat and conferencing app based on Linphone SDK for Windows and Linux. Touch-oriented client application in C++/Qt/QML optimized for tablets.

My involvement & technologies used:

• Full UI implementation (Qt/QML/C++);
• Backend integration using Linphone SDK.

Startup project for remote file access from all types of devices. Client software for desktop and mobile platforms (Windows, Linux, Android) in C++/Qt/QML

My involvement & technologies used:

• Desktop UI implementation for Linux (Qt/QML/C++);
• Network interaction (C++/Boost).

Application store client for ROSA Linux distribution.

My involvement & technologies used:

• UI implementation (Qt/QML/C++);
• Package manager interaction for app retrieval and installation (urmpi).

Main application launcher for ROSA Linux distribution.

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My involvement & technologies used:

• UI implementation (Qt/QML/C++);
• Custom QML controls for multi-page grid view, with keyboard and mouse navigation;
• Integration into OS as a launcher app.

Project page:

https://github.com/Zoinen/RosaLauncher

Web platform for holding programming contests for schoolchildren and students according to the ICPC rules.

My involvement & technologies used:

• Mostly my own project (with the help from another developer who made solutions checker);
• This system was used for 10 years for holding programming contests in Penza State University and other universities locally;
• Backend uses Django/Python, Django ORM, SQLite, Celery;
• Frontend is in pure HTML/CSS/JS;
• Improvements to automated solution checker to support multiple programming languages: C++, C#, Java, Python, Delphi, PascalABC.NET, Free Pascal, Qbasic, Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic.NET, Borland C++;

Modern two-panel-based file manager written in C++ with modular architecture. The goal is to combine best ideas from Far Manager, Total Commander, Krusader and Frigate.

My involvement & technologies used:

• Started this project to create an open-source and cross-platform alternative for Far Manager. A few other developers joined me later and implemented some plugins;
• Core functionality, modular system (plugins), panel plugin, file system plugins (Windows and cross-platform), image viewer, tabs.

Project page:

https://github.com/Zoinen/KamiCmd

Terminal emulator for Windows.

My involvement & technologies used:

• Started this project back in 2006 and in 2008 when I stopped the development I’ve opened sources and others picked up the developed. Now it is a feature-rich terminal emulator that was one of the leaders in it’s niche before the introduction of Windows Terminal by Microsoft.
• Added mouse support, window resizing, colors and fonts customization, settings, etc.

Project page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConEmu

Compact, fast, and portable audio player for Windows. It features convenient playlist, support for a wide variety of audio formats (including disc images with .cue sheets)

My involvement & technologies used:

• Developed as a personal project with a custom GUI library for the UI;
• Uses homegrown GUI library for UI and controls (implemented in pure WinAPI);
• Supports plugins for audio formats (FMOD/Bass libraries for audio playback);
• Cue format support.