About Me

I am a Senior Network Programmer currently working at Codemasters in the Racing Studio responsible for the Colin McRae & Race Driver series of games. I studied for four years at the University of Teesside and was awarded with a 2:1 BSc (Hons) in Computer Games Programming. Shortly after graduating, I took up a position at Codemasters as a programmer for the Racing Studio.

I am currently working on an unannounced Racing Studio title as a member of the Network group leading development of our server based game features. I have recently been promoted to a senior programmer in recognition of my outstanding work during DiRT 3 on the development of Egonet, the technology that powers server based community features in Codemasters titles.

The Egonet library has been the focus of my work at Codemasters for the last two years. It has been developed in association with the Codemasters Online team and in its most basic form provides a quick and simple interface for C++ code to call C# code running on a Codemasters Online hosted web server. The technology is built on top of standard HTTP and the servers themselves run IIS with a Microsoft Sql Server backend. I was responsible for writing the bulk of the C++ code required as well as the game specific C# code and the SQL tables & stored procedures that make up the backend while Codemasters Online developed the core C# library and took responsibility for setting up and managing the servers themselves.

In addition to powering game features in Codemasters titles (Currently DiRT 3, F1 2011 and three as yet unannounced Codemasters Titles), I used the same technology to create a development only feature codenamed the Debug Server. This technology allows us to capture a range of data during the development and QA process, and has proven to be an invaluable asset. I am exceptionally proud of this as the entire concept, design and initial implementation was my own. By the end of DiRT 3, we were using the debug server to track player actions (such as starting a race), record every string sent to the game logs (roughly 20kb of data every 30 seconds) and keep a record of presence events (e.g. signing in/out of Xbox Live).

Before starting development of the Egonet library, I was responsible for implementing the same kind of game features using a third party library called RendezVous from Quazal (now owned by Ubisoft). F1 2010 and DiRT 2 both shipped with Quazal powered features written by me. The experience I picked up working with the RendezVous library was exceptionally useful when it came to writing our own library to replace it.

For the first year I was at Codemasters, I worked as a member of the Front End team developing the award winning 3D Front End for Race Driver: GRID. As well as working closely with the Art and Design teams to ensure a high quality finished project, I was heavily involved in the flow of the game including the minimising of apparent load times.

Since starting at university, I have had over eight years experience creating games in C++ across a wide range of platforms including the X360, PS3, PC and GP2X. I am also experienced in creating tools in C# and Python as well as websites in ASP.NET C# MVC. During my time at Codemasters I have also picked up a good level of assembly based debugging.

I'm regarded as a hard working, dependable and trustworthy person both by my work colleagues and friends. I have a passion for learning, which is why I love working in an industry that is always pushing technology forwards. I can be independent when needed although I prefer to work as a member of a team with like minded people.

I enjoy playing computer games as well as making them. I spent a lot of my time playing the latest PC games, although I also own an X360 and a Wii (some games just work better with a pad). When I'm not playing computer games, I like to read a range of books from technical science and programming books to fiction and novels. I go walking on a regular basis with my Wife in the surrounding countryside, and enjoy the fresh air and relaxing atmosphere away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.