Ultima Online - Grey Shard

  • Category: Game Design, Game Programming
  • Client: Volunteer work
  • Project date: 2005-2012
  • Project URL: Wayback Machine

My programming career started when I was still an adolescent, when I still knew nothing about making games. It was summer 2007 and I was playing Ultima Online on VenuS, one of the biggest shards in Italy, with more than 400 players online on average. I am quite sure now it wasn’t strictly legal, but i was young and naive, and I just played with friends. Willing to help the staff, I became an apprentice GameMaster, and among other duties such as answering pages and creating quests, I learned how to code to make my own quests. We had a lead scripter who desperately needed a hand, and with a bit of patience I got to the point where I could write my own stuff. I spent many years working on that game, learning that weird (but in hindsight innovative) language that the POL95 was using, and I helped the shard move forward in time.

Like all good things, even our Shard came to an end at some point around 2015, but it was a great experience, and it helped me understand how much I loved making games!