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Howdy, my name's Ryan. I've been building websites for nearly 30 years now, which still sounds a little ridiculous to say. I started messing around with websites when I was around 12 and pretty much never stopped. The web has changed a lot since then, but I'm still doing the same basic thing I've always done: coming up with ideas, building stuff, learning whatever I need to learn along the way, and occasionally breaking things until I figure out how they work.
I originally got into programming because of RuneScape. I was completely hooked on the game and wanted to make games myself, but making an actual MMORPG at 12 years old was obviously a little out of reach. Making a website seemed doable, though, so I decided I'd make a RuneScape guide site instead.
That's how I started teaching myself HTML and CSS, followed pretty quickly by JavaScript. Eventually, just making websites wasn't enough and I decided I wanted to try making a game. I started building a browser RPG inspired by RuneScape, which I very creatively named RuneScape Battle.
It started out really simple, but I kept adding things to it. At first, player progress was stored in cookies, which worked fine until you realized anybody who knew what they were doing could just edit the cookies and give themselves whatever stats they wanted. I don't think most of the people playing it knew that at the time, thankfully.
Trying to fix that problem is what pushed me into learning PHP and MySQL. Once player accounts and game data were being handled on the server, I could suddenly do a whole lot more. I added chat, trading, proper saving of characters, and a bunch of other multiplayer systems. What started as me screwing around and trying to learn programming slowly turned into an actual online game.
At its peak, more than 110,000 accounts were created. Looking back, that's still pretty crazy considering I was just a teenager building the thing from home. A couple of years later, Jagex sent me a cease-and-desist over the name, so RuneScape Battle became RsBattle. Fair enough.
That project is probably the biggest reason I'm still doing this today. It taught me PHP, databases, backend development, servers, and a whole lot of other things I probably never would have bothered learning otherwise. More importantly, it showed me how much I enjoyed making things that other people actually used.
These days, I'm a self-employed web developer and a father of five, one daughter and four sons. My wife works during the day, so most of my days are spent in stay-at-home dad mode with the younger kids. There's usually some combination of cleaning, meals, laundry, kids fighting over something completely ridiculous, taking care of the house, and trying to squeeze a little work in whenever I get the chance.
Gaming and programming usually get squeezed into those same gaps too. Sometimes I get a decent stretch of time to work on something, and sometimes I get interrupted fourteen times in twenty minutes. That's just how life is right now.
It can be hectic, and I'd definitely get a lot more work done if I had eight uninterrupted hours every day, but I also know the kids aren't going to be this little forever. Eventually they'll all be in school and I'll probably have more time than I know what to do with. At least that's what I tell myself.
We live in Michigan and have a pretty nice backyard that we've slowly turned into a good space for the kids. Ironically, we probably don't spend as much time back there as you'd expect, but the kids have plenty to do when we do. We've still got more we want to do with it too. At some point in the next few years, I'd really like to build a proper deck back there and finish the whole thing off.
I'm also a big fan of eBikes. I've got a RadRover that I love taking around town and out on wooded mountain bike trails whenever I get the chance. My oldest son is starting to get into riding more now too, and the three younger boys absolutely love going for rides in the various tow-along trailers and attachments we've accumulated over the years.
Gaming has always been a huge part of my life. I don't get nearly as much time to play anymore, but there was a time when I took it pretty seriously. In RuneScape, I was the first player to reach 99 Prayer at 15 combat on my skiller Teh Unseen. I also spent a lot of time playing World of Warcraft, where I ranked as high as #2 or #3 in the world for Hunters on several boss fights. At the height of my streaming career, though, Diablo III was my main game. I streamed it pretty hardcore for years and, for a while, was one of the top Barbarian players in the world. I was also one of the first players to reach Paragon level 100 on my spin-to-win Barbarian.
Someone recorded this video of me playing Teh Unseen back in 2007.
Gaming also ended up opening a lot of doors for me over the years. I built official fansites for several games, and some of those eventually led to developers flying me out to press events and gaming conventions. I got to meet developers, see games behind the scenes, and hang out with a bunch of other people who were just as obsessed with games as I was.
For a while, I was also a full-time Twitch streamer. I became a Twitch Partner and was one of the bigger streamers for a few of the games I played at the time. I don't stream anymore, but it was a pretty big part of my life for a while and introduced me to a lot of people I never would have met otherwise.
These days, most of my spare development time goes into Scapelikes, a website I built and run for games inspired by RuneScape and that same style of long-term progression, skilling, grinding, exploration, and character building. I'm also helping grow the community around it alongside a couple of other guys. It's the kind of game I've always been obsessed with, so naturally I ended up building a website around that too.
Outside of that, I'm constantly coming up with random projects and ideas. Some are useful, some are probably stupid, and some never make it very far. I've learned that I'm usually happiest when I can get an idea built quickly while I'm still excited about it. If I spend too long on something, there's a pretty good chance I'll get bored and my brain will already be trying to convince me to build the next thing instead.
I'd still love to make my own scapelike someday. A proper 3D game with a world to explore, skills to train, things to collect, and all the systems I've spent way too many years thinking about. The problem is that making the game I actually want to make is a massive amount of work (especially when you're a developer and not much of an artist or 3D modeler).
Maybe once the boys are a little older and I can disappear into those 40+ hour coding binges regularly again…
Welp, that's pretty much me. I build websites, play games, raise kids, come up with too many ideas, and try to find enough hours in the day to work on whichever one I'm currently obsessed with.
This site is mostly a place for me to write about that stuff. Web development, games, projects I'm working on, things I've learned, random ideas, and whatever else I feel like putting here.
TL;DR
I'm Ryan, a self-employed web developer, lifelong gamer, and father of five. I got into programming around age 12 because I was obsessed with RuneScape, which eventually led to me building RuneScape Battle, an online browser RPG that grew to more than 110,000 accounts and pretty much set the course for everything I've done since. I've spent nearly 30 years building websites and random projects, and I also had a pretty serious gaming and streaming phase, including becoming a Twitch Partner, ranking among the top Hunters in the world in World of Warcraft, and being one of the top Barbarian players in Diablo III. These days, most of my time is spent raising my kids, taking care of the house, working on Scapelikes, and building whatever random idea I'm currently obsessed with. Someday I'd still love to finally make the proper 3D scapelike I've had bouncing around in my head for years.