EverQuest
Associate Programmer -> Senior Software Engineer I
- Code for end-to-end game play systems including client and server development
- Work collaboratively with engineers, designers, and artist teams to ensure systems meet all requirements
- Coordinate with Game Tech team to ensure smooth integration of related systems
- Anticipate and resolve development roadblocks in new product development
- Collaborate with design/art for small tweaks to try out different possible functionalities in order to create a system that is both functional and fun
- Major game system changes
- GameFace
- Learned the necessary skills to assist with transitioning to GameFace for the in-game UI
- Implemented code standards for various new programming languages
- Jenkins
- Converted our existing build system to use Jenkins
- Gradually improved upon existing scripts/processes, cutting ~1 hour from all builds
- CS Tools
- Created new tools from scratch for Customer Service
- Alternate Personas
- Tradeskill Depot / Dragon’s Hoard
- Merchant window revamp
- Unified the many types of merchant windows down to a single, easy to understand window
- Learned how to communicate and work with another programmer effectively without stomping each other’s changes
- Attached reward sets to items
- Discovered that while a system may theoretically be simple, the actual implementation can be very complicated
- Mapped out the entire system visually to ensure all potential paths through the system would be accounted for and handled properly
- Worked with design to verify the data necessary would both work for the code and be accessible and easy to maintain for design
- Implemented the luck stat
- Unique stat that gives a player bonuses to 20+ existing systems
- Also introduced the first stat that can be changed on an item which required special handling to ensure the value saved/loaded properly consistently
- Mapped out the systems involved, data necessary, UI changes, and the actual system for the stat itself to keep the implementation clean and simple
- Learned that no matter how amusing a function name can be, it does not mean it should be, and made an effort to ensure all functions, variables, and comments conformed to existing code standards
- Server related accomplishments
- Wrote, tested, and refined SQL needed for performing server merges (Vulak -> Fippy)
- Put in hardware requests, set up necessary configurations, and was on-site for launching new server (Agnarr)
- Large build/team tasks
- Handled the actual launch (did builds, verified those builds, and was on-site to troubleshoot any issues) of our 25th expansion
- Migrated the entire team (design and code) from one task tracking system to JIRA
