WorldWinner
At GSN Games I mainly worked on the WorldWinner mobile App. I started on the client side and eventually worked my way to the back-end, getting my hands on as many systems as I could. The team was structured very well and there was a good branching/code review model in place to ensure the right code made it to production. I worked on games that were in app, the app container itself, features presentable to the user, new APIs, admin tools and server game creation. Also helped adjust and make new build plans in Jenkins.
As a client side software engineer I began working on the World Winner mobile app that was developed in Unity with a Model View Controller design. Worked on games and new features for the users to help with their experience and to help with first time user's experience.
I became a full stack engineer for the team by working in the back-end. The server code is in Perl and there is some Javascript and HTML for the website. I began developing new APIs for the mobile app and continued to learn more systems that included the World Winner website and the admin tools available. Also learned and created the framework for new games and launched new games on both the website and the app. This also included modifying and creating new tables in both our Informix and Mysql databases.
Challenges
My biggest challenge on this team was making the switch to a full stack engineer. This was the first project I worked in multiple platforms and systems. First beginning in the back-end I had to learn Perl (an outdated language), and apply some of that code for writing endpoints to send data back to the client. WorldWinner is also a website with all of the games playable there, so I also began writing code there and for the admin tool that is also web based. Communication with the team was key for my success in these spaces. I took my time and did my best to learn from what was there and what the Internet could help me with, but ultimately the team of engineers was my best resource for becoming a full stack engineer. In the end I became a very valuable software engineer to the team and was able to take on any task in any platform or system.
Another big challenge I faced was revamping the caching system within the Unity client code. The system was custom logic that was not performing well and was very buggy. I completely overhauled the system to perform much better and to properly store only the information we needed on the client. It became more robust and automatic, pulling the information without extra programming needed from future features implemented by engineers.
