Dev Bio: Todd Berkebile
Related topics: Turbine Developers#Todd Berkebile
Original Link (now dead) - http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?page_id=319
Dev Bio: Todd Berkebile
Who are you?
Hello boys and girls, my name is Todd Berkebile. I'm the glint of fear in Ibn's eyes. I'm a house broken code monkey who bangs on the keyboard all day and all night until the compiler churns out a working game. I've been at Turbine for about three and a half years now. For the first, oh, year and a half I was on the AC Live Team where I did a little bit of everything, from bandwidth improvements and server stability work to wield requirements, slayer weapons, and the Olthoi Arcade. After dealing with some particularly horrific database problems and other headaches I was ready to work on some other titles, so I moved into our core technology team where I got to work on brand new systems for our latest generation game engine. After a few Boston winters I was ready to get out of town. When we decided to do an Asheron's Call expansion and we decided to do it in sunny LA I knew the time had come for me to return to the West Coast. And I must say things are certainly pleasant on AC now; maybe it's just the weather.
What do you actually do?
I write code. That's basically it. I focus on the core technology aspects of the game which basically means that most of the code I write goes largely unnoticed by the average player. I work mainly on things like getting the new UI system to work, handling input, improving network communications, performance improvements, server systems, and many other things that cannot be described using normal English.
How did you end up here?
Well, in a way it's all Richard Garriott's fault. Ever since I first played Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness (I played the re-released PC version in 1986, not the Apple II version in 1980) I have dreamed of creating massive virtual worlds where thousands of players could romp and explore. I actually taught myself C++ because the Ultima clone I had written in Basic (not Visual Basic, not even GWBasic, just plain Basic) was too limited. For years I waited in vain for this seemingly obvious evolution of the RPG. Then one day Ultima Online was announced; I signed up for the beta the first day they accepted applications. But alas, the game never worked on my computer. Years later I discovered that the game would only use the first network adapter in your machine, but my machine had two network cards and the first adapter was for my internal network.
At the time, however, I was busy working as a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft on the Windows team. Lacking the time to bother with a beta that wouldn't run on my machine, I continued working on products like Windows 98, Internet Explorer 4.0, Windows Millennium, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. Despite what you might hear from cute little penguins the programmers at Microsoft are an amazingly talented and dedicated group. I learned more from 4 years working at Microsoft than I had learned in the previous 17 years I'd spent coding on my own. I still think fondly of those years but eventually another longing started to pull me away. It all began one day in the Microsoft company store. Employees can buy Microsoft products at cost, which at the time meant any game that Microsoft published could be purchased for $10. Well needless to say I basically bought them all. One day there was this ugly brown box which I hadn't noticed before. It said "Asheron's Call" on the front and I'd never heard of it before.
Perhaps it's a telemarketing simulator or something? I thought. Sounds horrid, but hey it's only $10 so what the heck.
Needless to say by the time the first event, "A Sudden Season," went live I was completely hooked. A game that could change so significantly on a monthly basis hardly seemed possible and yet here it was. Not only did the game itself fascinate me but the technology that would make it possible truly tantalized me. As some of you no doubt remember I started a website called "Todd's Hacking Zone" which was dedicated to reverse engineering the game. I created forums to bring together those interested in learning more about how the game worked, I expanded on the work of David Simpson to create tools like PortalCracker, BmpSwap, and ACCOM, and I decoded much of the client-server network communication. Asheron's Call was exactly the sort of technology that I had always wanted to work on.
It wasn't an easy decision to leave a company like Microsoft to go work for a small game company that had an unclear future, but I couldn't overcome the desires that Richard Garriott had firmly embedded into my mind when I was but a young child. Perhaps if not for a single networking bug I would be a former UO2 or Ultima X: Odyssey team member, but fate has treated me kindly. I work at Turbine.
What is your favorite quest in Asheron's Call and why?
I'd have to say Aerlinthe before the three hour timer. It was a challenging and involved quest which you'd have to do many times before it was your turn to get the big reward. I was low enough level that I would most certainly die from a single mistake. I was normally 30 to 60 levels lower than the other people in the group which, back then, meant we couldn't use a fellowship. The typical result was that the mages vuln'd everything in sight and my archer got all the XP, not a bad arrangement when you can manage it without upsetting the other people on the quest. That made it all the more rewarding when my level 1 mule got to wear the black robe.
What is your least favorite monster and why?
I hate all elementals. Anyone who played during the elemental invasion understands why.
Where did you get your nickname?