Offering to help

[Captain Murphy]

I'd like to assist in the herculean effort that is Hearts of Oak!

My background is varied in that I am a professional developer that has many different languages under my belt from C, C++, JavaScript, Java, VB (old school), VB.NET(and a dabbling of C#), and even COBOL (yes, I actually program in COBOL about 40% of my time to this day).

I have been a sailor since my dad taught me on a 14ft Sunfish when I was about 7. He owned a slew of boats (including a few he built himself) of which I learned to sail them all. My other background is as a US Merchant Marine officer. I started as a deckhand on dive boats when I was 16, later transitioned to the US Navy (where I never actually worked on a ship), came back to crew boats in the Gulf of Mexico as a deckhand, became an unlicensed engineer, worked in the side time to get my Captain's License, then became a Mate and worked as a couple years until my first command of a 145ft supply boat. I worked as a 1st Captain from them until I got tired of the 276 days a year offshore about 6 years later. My last command was 166ft long Dynamic Positioned methanol supply vessel. All in the mean time I went sailing on a 35ft Irwin every time I was back from work.

I was looking at what I could do for the effort, and I am not a game developer or modder, but I am a software project manager and standard coder. I do that every day for my job and actually like what I do. My free time ranges from none at all some weeks to 30+ hours on others depending on job load. I have worked on everything from bank transaction processing (where exact accuracy matters) to basic web front ends (where everything can be subjective) so I am flexible in that regard. I am not much of a 3d modeler or texture person, I leave that to the real artists, but I am not afraid of calculations, formulas, or algorithms!

 

[Hylie Pistof]

mate!

Pieter and you should have quite a bit to chat about.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Programming AND actual seafaring? That IS a rare combination!
I think there's only me like that, though I have no formal programming education and have only been doing it for modding here.
In real life, I'm "just" a seafarer.

We've got a fair few modelers, but can definitely use more programmers. So welcome to the forum, mate!

 

[Captain Armstrong]

Welcome! Some of our programmers should be able to figure out where you'd best be able to help out based on your experience

 

[Captain Murphy]

Programming AND actual seafaring? That IS a rare combination!
I think there's only me like that, though I have no formal programming education and have only been doing it for modding here.
In real life, I'm "just" a seafarer.

We've got a fair few modelers, but can definitely use more programmers. So welcome to the forum, mate!

No one is 'just' a seafarer!

My 'formal' education is OTJ experience and taking every 3 day seminar and course I could get time to attend. I was one of the few that signed up for the Dynamic Position course when they offered it for our class of vessels so I got to work with the developers that wrote the formulas that kept our boat in position. After that I knew I wanted to work with programming and spent the next few years learning to do it in my 'off time' aboard and whenever my paperwork was done and we were sitting at the dock.


I have loved the mods put out by the PA community and have played nearly all of them (actually just downloaded the latest PotC mod again). I dust off these games about once every other year and play them for a good 6-8 months. I was actually just sitting down and reading about the Unity engine and how easy it was for using it with the OculusVR system and thinking of a modern version of the Sea Dogs franchise and lo and behold, here is one! My hope would be to one day be able to actually 'command' my ship from the deck wearing one of those VR units or its successor. I played many an hour giving voice commands to the AI in Silent Hunter (pretty much own them all) and would love to see something like that system in HoO. Other than the smell of sulfur in the air and tar on the wood I imagine it would be pretty close to being part of the genre.

 

[Armada]

Greetings Captain Murphy, thanks for offering to help! I've added you to the Programmers group.
Have a look at the most recent threads in the Game World Mechanics sub-forum to see what's currently going on with the game code.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

No one is 'just' a seafarer!

Well, I wasn't being entirely serious on that one.
I'm an officer on Holland America Line cruiseships at the moment, but that is only because I wanted to do that. For some reason.

My 'formal' education is OTJ experience and taking every 3 day seminar and course I could get time to attend. I was one of the few that signed up for the Dynamic Position course when they offered it for our class of vessels so I got to work with the developers that wrote the formulas that kept our boat in position. After that I knew I wanted to work with programming and spent the next few years learning to do it in my 'off time' aboard and whenever my paperwork was done and we were sitting at the dock.

Interesting. So going from a seafarer to a programmer isn't actually unheard of then!?!

I've actually been considering doing something similar myself. I definitely like the idea of working at sea.
Too bad that the reality can be a bit.... shall we say.... useless....?
As in: Actually doing your job is made really quite difficult by all sorts of.... random crap....?

 

[Captain Murphy]

One of my mates went on to get his 'Big Blue' Unlimited license and went to work on cruise ships (can't recall what company now). About 2 years later I saw him running one of the larger class of boats that I was running. He just didn't like the work and came back to the 'oil patch', as we call it.

I got lucky and found a pretty decent job as a tech support guy for a local company and worked for them as a phone monkey for a couple months and when they realized that I could pinpoint bugs in code through iterations of choices and inputs they put me on the development team part time to learn how to code in COBOL (which is still used in a lot of programs, BTW). Working 12 hour shifts allotted me around 3-4 hours of study time a day and that can add up fast!

It was a planned move for me. I was known for carrying bags of books and CD's with me to work to study from (mostly VB and C++, the occasional system administration bible). When I was back ashore I would go take the tests and get my certifications in different disciplines of coding or system administration. It took time and effort but it paid off and now I get to work from home! Not that sea life is 'bad', per se, but toward the end I was spending 4 hours of my day pushing papers around instead of actually running the boat. It got to the point of ridiculousness through increased regulation from the government that we were filling out 18 pages of paperwork just to take on fuel at the fuel dock. There is only so much of that that I can take. I miss it some days, but I keep my license valid through testing with the US Coast Guard and if I ever decide to do it again, I can. I just hope it will be a ways off!