Run Escape
13 Dec 2019What do you think of when you hear the words “Run” and “Escape”? For most people, they’re probably thinking of escaping from the real world and entering a fantasy world whether it’d be from a source of video games, movies, television, reading, or by meditation. For me, it was video games.
History
Founded in Nottingham, England, Andrew Gower, Paul Gower, Ian Gower and Constant Tedder formed Jagex (Java Gaming Experts) and created the original Runescape Classic. The beta was in January 2001 as a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) and featured a mixture of 2D and 3D graphics. It was developed in Java-based code called Runescript. The coding platform Runescript was developed by Andrew Gower specifically for Runescape so that future employees of Jagex could make additions to the game without having the knowledge of Java. In 2004, Runescape 2 was created, using Runescript as well. The entire game engine was rewritten and included 3D graphics, character animations and emotes, complex quest-lines, better player-NPC interaction, and many more enhancements. In 2013, Runescape 3 was released, originally to use an HTML5 client but was later replaced by a C++ coded client in 2016.
Background
“Run”, “Escape” was actually an anagram for the popular MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). Ironically that is what I did everyday back in the days of my childhood. After school, I would “run” home to log in my computer and play Runescape to “escape”. All kidding aside, this was the first game that ever made me open my eyes on the possibilities of becoming a developer. I remembered back in high school, there was a career fair and we had a guest speaker. He was a game developer. Since I liked to play video games, I asked him how to get into the video game industry and he advised me to study in the field of Computer Science. That is how I ended up in this field and hope one day to make it into the video game industry as a developer.