Stimwalt

My game development journey began on the Shards of Britannia project in the fall of 2017, as the third member of a very small dream team. The early days of the project were very challenging, but my passion and vision for this project kept me here. In 2019, after nearly two years of development, Shards of Britannia achieved parity with UO source code in a new engine, which is where most UO Private Shards begin their development. We also started work in earnest on the UO map in the Unity engine. Considering that this project is developed by unpaid volunteers who contribute to the project in their free time, our progress was slower than that of any typical business, but we marched on nevertheless with player support! I'm happy to say that I'm the second longest serving member of the Shards of Britannia team today, behind only Gorgan himself. It's a wonderful and exciting time for the Shards of Britannia project. Perhaps by the time you read this, the game will have released? If so, welcome Avatar! There is a world for you to discover. One that you will remember well, but also one that you have never seen.

My UO story began when my older brother bought an "online game" with a cool dragon on the CD, and played it one night on our new Pentium II PC over our 56k modem internet connection. I watched as my brother "Siegfried" walked inside the Orc Fort near Cove where he was ambushed and murdered by four hidden red players casting fireballs. This totally floored me, as UO was nothing like any game in the world at the time, and I started my character in Minoc immediately to seek vengeance. During my dread lord glory days, I was a fearsome PK with a Heavy XBow and no horse. An era later, I was a Halberd Mage PVPer on horseback. Throughout the height of popularity on the Chesapeake shard, I played against, and alongside, a long list of PVP legends. Guilds like KoC, OiN, IC!, -Z-, S, and DJ! can be seen in the above screenshot. These times were truly the wild west of Ultima Online, and my love for coding started with UO too, as scripting became very useful. To this day, no game has ever replicated the feeling one had playing UO in the old school era, except.. one game. Shards of Britannia.

My personal story is your typical nerdy 80's kid with glasses story. Growing up I played a lot of Nintendo games and eventually built my first computer, a Pentium II Celeron processor. I dove into games like Warcraft, Diablo, Doom, and anything my parents would let me play. Eventually I found UO, and that triggered my love of computing and programming, and I later earned my degree in computer science. I have been in Development for my whole career and I'm an Information Security Manager at a large organization. I'm happily married and have a daughter who is definitely the boss of me, and outside of being a huge nerd, I enjoy traveling overseas, home automation, video production, car repair/maintenance, and general DIY stuff. Thanks for reading more about me!