Cryptic Studios
980 University Ave, Los Gatos CA, 95032
408-399-1969
7/12 - 7/14
Publisher: Perfect World Entertainment
Release Date: February 2 2010
System: PC
My Role: Core Programmer
Game Summary: In Star Trek Online, the Star Trek universe appears for the first time on a truly massive scale. Begin your career as a Captain fresh out of Starfleet Academy and explore the stars, or aspire to become a Klingon Warlord and expand the Empire to the reaches of the galaxy. Visit iconic locations from the TV series and movies or reach out to unexplored star systems and make contact with new alien species. With Episode Missions, every moment you're playing Star Trek Online will feel like you're living a moment of a new Star Trek episode in which you're the star. Immerse yourself in the future of the Trek universe as it moves into the 25th century: a time of shifting alliances and new discoveries.
Specifics: The game is a space themed MMO. Being an MMO, the designers need to create a large quantity of content to fill the world. My role was primarily to handle the game's tools. All code has bugs, and the high use of the tools exposed plenty of them, allowing me to fix what I could. In addition to bug fixes, optimizations were often necessary, as you want to minimize the time spent by designers on waiting for their machines to complete tasks. The game has been out for longer than I've been at Cryptic, but there's been a consistent stream of new content, which has meant not only that the designers find bugs in the tools that need fixing, but also that new features are added. Of course, new features in the game means new features in the editor to allow the designers to use these features as well.
Another role of mine was to maintain and optimize the code for the pathfinding related precalculation servers. I can't say more, but the various optimizations, both to the pathfinding related calculations and within the game's editors, were among the more enjoyable highlights of my work.