Markus Hendrik Overmars (; born 29 September 1958 in
Zeist
Zeist () is the capital and largest town of the municipality of Zeist. The town is located in the Utrecht province of the Netherlands, east of the city of Utrecht.
History
The town of "Seist" was first mentioned in a charter in the year 83 ...
,
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
) is a Dutch
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...
and teacher of game programming known for his game development application
GameMaker
GameMaker (originally Animo, Game Maker ''(until 2011)'' and GameMaker Studio) is a series of cross-platform game engines created by Mark Overmars in 1999 and developed by YoYo Games since 2007. The latest iteration of ''GameMaker'' released ...
. GameMaker lets people create computer games using a drag-and-drop interface. He is the former head of the ''Center for Geometry, Imaging, and Virtual Environments'' at
Utrecht University
Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...
, in the
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
. This research center concentrates on
computational geometry
Computational geometry is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms which can be stated in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and such problems ar ...
and its application in areas like
computer graphics
Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great de ...
,
robotics
Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...
,
geographic information system
A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing Geographic data and information, geographic data (that is, descriptions of phenomena for which location is relevant), combined with Geographic information system software, sof ...
s, imaging,
multimedia
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradition ...
, virtual environments, and games.
Overmars received his Ph.D. in 1983 from Utrecht University under the supervision of
Jan van Leeuwen
Jan van Leeuwen (born December 17, 1946, in Waddinxveen) is a Dutch computer scientist and Emeritus professor of computer science at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University. , and continued to be a member of the faculty of the same university until September 2013. Overmars has published over 100 journal papers, largely on
computational geometry
Computational geometry is a branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms which can be stated in terms of geometry. Some purely geometrical problems arise out of the study of computational geometric algorithms, and such problems ar ...
, and is the co-author of several books including a widely used computational geometry text.
Overmars has also worked in robotics. He was the first to develop the
probabilistic roadmap method in 1992, which was later independently discovered by
Kavraki and
Latombe in 1994. Their joint paper, ''Probabilistic roadmaps for path planning in high-dimensional configuration spaces'',
is considered one of the most influential studies in
motion planning
Motion planning, also path planning (also known as the navigation problem or the piano mover's problem) is a computational problem to find a sequence of valid configurations that moves the object from the source to destination. The term is used ...
, and has been widely cited (more than 2500 times as of 2014 according to
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...
).
In 2011, Overmars and game designer Jochem Schut developed a
snake video game called ''Super Snake HD'' as a mobile app; it was published by
YoYo Games
YoYo Games is a British software development company based in Dundee, Scotland. From February 2015 to January 2021, the company was owned by Playtech, it was then sold to Opera Software to launch its new gaming division.
History
YoYo Games wa ...
.
[App stores for Super Snake HD'':
*
*
*
]
Overmars founded and was CTO of Tingly Games from 2012 until it was acquired by CoolGames in 2016. Tingly focused on HTML5 games and e-cards / casual games, the latter of which is called "greeting games".
He founded Quarterfall in June 2020 together with Arjan Egges. Quarterfall is a teaching product that helps teachers use formative assessment to improve the learning processes their students, compared to just assessing their performance.
He is also the original author of the
XForms toolkit.
Books
*
* 2nd ed., 2000; 3rd ed., 2008.
[.]
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Overmars, Mark H.
1958 births
Living people
Researchers in geometric algorithms
Dutch computer scientists
Dutch computer programmers
Roboticists
People from Zeist
Utrecht University alumni
Utrecht University faculty
Software engineers