Creator of the Storm Framework

What do you do when you're not doing this?

Hanging out with the love of my life, cooking, playing video games, and hanging out with our dog (He is in my Discord profile picture)

Did you have any of these skills before Zomboid, or did you learn through developing mods/frameworks?

I always wanted to code and didn't start my career in coding. I made the switch moving from manual tester to software engineer. It is never too late to make the switch if that is something you are interested in. Since then I have worked over 10 years in software engineering mainly doing backend work in Java and a bunch of other languages. I didn't learn to code from modding but it always pushed me to pursue it. I was modding Halo CE back in the day with all the available tools that I could find that didn't require code.

How long have you been at it, and what was the first thing you shipped that actually worked for Zomboid?

At the end of B41 I really wanted to mix a live set of music in Zomboid, but it didn't have the capabilities for this. I started investigating how to make it work with a modding framework. I demoed a video of in After The Fall's discord and it was enough to captivate the team there. I tried to port a few abandoned b41 mods to b42 as a start. Eventually I upgraded the Storm modding framework project to b42 and create a version of extra-logging to log as much info as possible to help with running ATF. It wasn't exactly flashy but it helped the server I play on run better so I had fun creating it

What made you go from "I play this game" to "I'm going to make something for this game"?

I get really annoyed with things. If something is annoying me and doesn't work right I want to fix it. For Zomboid, there are plenty of opportunities for fixing annoying broken things.

Do you remember the moment you realized people were actually using your work?

Zone-marker was pretty cool, it allowed admins to mark important zones on the map and players would be able to see those updates live. There was a constant "where is this?" that no longer is asked now. It was cool to hear players open the map and say oh this is cool these areas are important, and I know where to go now.

Walk me through your setup. What tools/software/process do you use?

I started modding Zomboid by hand, but software engineering has changed a lot in the past 6 months. Code is architected by me and written by Claude. The tools I use are all built by me and allow me to run automated tests against a real Zomboid server that include the updates from the code I have written. I have given AI the ability to run code within the client and server Java and Lua which allows me to debug issues that otherwise would be extremely difficult to debug. Giving AI access to ALL available information including decompiled code allows me to be extremely successful and precise with my changes while being able to speed up my development with the use of agents.

Where does an idea start for you? A new potential game mechanic, a bug, a screenshot in your head? Just wanting to do something cool?

Usually its more of an issue that I want to solve starts most of my ideas, and sometimes it is a fun idea. I will be playing and run into an issue or think of something that I would like to be doing in addition to what I am already doing in the game and that drives a lot of my ideas.

Was there ever a time you spent weeks working on something just to throw it out?

I worked on a mod to be able to control cars with your mouse cursor and tested it quite a bit. It never really worked well and I could never get it to work quite right. Anther one was creating functional signs that you could type stuff onto in multiplayer. To work it used the 'halo' code to create hovering text but I could never get it to stick on the signs right so it would always be floating weirdly away from it.

What does burnout look like for you, and what are the things that contribute to burnout the most?

If you aren't having fun what is the point?

What's the part of your work nobody notices but you're proudest of?

The work I have done on the storm modding framework is more than just a modding framework. It fixed and cleans up the performance of multiplayer server and actually allows them to work correctly with lots of people on it. I believe this is a huge reason that multiplayer has had a resurgence because people can play a multiplayer server that doesn't constantly shit the bed. Many of the top multiplayer now use storm to run their server because of the performance and bug fixes it provides. Even though very few actually use it for its modding capabilities.

What's the most useful thing a player or the community has ever done for you?

Getting a sponsor from ATF to continue storm development has been a very huge help and makes me feel good about my contributions to the PZ multiplayer community

What's the most damaging or discouraging thing a player or the community has ever done to you?

Slap their name on top of my work and call it their own. Complaining about mod updates, someone has put in the effort and time from their lives to update their mod to make your experience and game more fun.

What tool or resource is missing that someone should build?

Someone should build an automated bug report tool that posts directly to the TIS forums every time someone's game or a server breaks :)

Anything else you want people to know

I also make a really cool Sims mod that I have been working on for a few years that integrates AI into the Sims 4. I have just recently pushed a lot of updates that allows the Sims to speak. Check it out at https://www.sentientsimulations.com !