I’m the original member and lead programmer for OTS.  I fell in love with programming when I was at university when I saw that I could automate considerable portions of the production spiral in SPI’s War in the East.  If you are a certain age you will know what I mean.   Besides subverting notable amounts of mainframe time back in the late 70s I also learned to program in a variety of now dead languages.

Fast forwarding, I write software for various professionals in my day job – HR, legal, engineering and medical office.  The employers change from time to time but the work is pretty much the same underneath and it is satisfying work.  Oddly, my hobby is programming as well and the big attraction with these games is that they are projects that I *want* to do and fall into the labor of love category perfect for all those pesky evening and weekend hours.  Game development requires so many different skills that no matter mood I am in there is something useful that I am in the mood for.  I’m grateful too that I have partners now that can do all the things that I don’t exactly shine at – hello map artwork!

It doesn’t seem that long ago when I spent all my summer savings ($200 back when that was real money) on a lifetime subscription to Strategy & Tactics magazine.  Since my teenage years I have been a wargamer, a collector of wargames, and from time to time a designer of wargames.  I have hundreds of games on the shelf and still actively buy books for my Kindle on game design and AI techniques.  I don’t play like I used to but I still work on game programming in some way every single day and it has been the constant in my life for the last 36 years or so.  It is a tremendous creative outlet.  I have had immeasurable fun over the years and look forward to plenty more.