Ryan C. Gordon - Biography

Biography

Ryan grew up just outside of Philadelphia, going to college in Charlotte, North Carolina where he currently resides. In the summer of 1999 Loki Software ran a contest called "Loki Hack" at the Atlanta Linux Showcase, with the goal of improving the Linux port of Civilization: Call To Power. Ryan decided to give it a try, driving the four hour trip from his home to Atlanta. Loki was impressed with his work and decided to offer him a job. Ryan quickly rose to prominence at Loki, working as a developer on the game ports of Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Quake III Arena, and Eric's Ultimate Solitaire, as well as being the lead developer for Descent 3 and Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.². In 2000 he also wrote several articles for the online Linux news and information website Linux.com. Around this time he founded icculus.org, made to provide hosting for various free and open source projects, and would later be used to support and continue some of Loki's free software projects and tools.

The upcoming closure of Loki forced him to seek outside employment. A friend offered him a job at his cybercafe, and he was forced to move in with his parents. Desperate to escape working a cash register for a living, he found the e-mail address of an artist working for the developer Croteam. They had recently released the first of their highly successful Serious Sam series, and Ryan asked if they would be interested in him building a Linux port. They agreed, and the ports first beta was released on December 5, 2002. From there he gained other contracts such as being hired to port Devastation and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for Linux and America's Army for Linux and Mac OS X. He was also contracted by Epic Games to port their Unreal Tournament 2003 title to Linux and Mac OS X, with the port being included with the packaged Windows version. This business relationship continued with the release of Unreal Tournament 2004.

Upon learning about the release of Postal 2 in 2003, Ryan decided to contact the developer behind it wondering if they would be interested in him making a port of the game to Linux and Mac OS X. Loki had previously ported the original Postal to Linux, and he was interested in keeping the franchise compatible. Running With Scissors agreed, and the finished port was shipped on February 14, 2005, with Linux Game Publishing initially handling the publishing of the Linux version. Soon after he was contracted to make a Linux port for the Wolfire Games title Lugaru, a business relationship that would later prove fruitful for Gordon. Around this time he was also contracted to build a Linux client for the online virtual world Second Life. Google also utilized his services, with him being contracted to make a native Linux port of their Google Earth application, with Linux functionality finally becoming available starting with the release of the version 4 beta on June 12, 2006.

In 2007 he was once again contracted by Epic Games to port their new Unreal Tournament 3 title to both Linux and Mac OS X. The Linux game server was released on December 18, 2007, but work was eventually abandoned on the Linux and Mac OS X clients for reasons which remain undisclosed. In October 2008 he made a surprise announcement that he had been working on a Linux client for the first-person shooter game Prey, after previously porting the game's Linux server in 2006. Although there had been some speculation about a potential Linux release, it had been denied by the developer of the title in the past. The finished port was released on December 7, 2008. On October 23, 2009 he announced his plans to make a universal binary system similar to the one used on Mac OS X for Linux systems called FatELF. The project generated considerable controversy, with several Linux Kernel developers decrying the effort. Ryan announced that the project was on hold in early November, later stating that he would be willing to work on it again if he receives help from an interested party.

Around this time he also started to port Aquaria to Linux for Bit Blot. On January 3, 2010 he became engaged to his girlfriend Carrie and were married later that year. On May 11, 2010 he and Wolfire Games released the source code of his code branch of Lugaru under the GNU General Public License. He was also involved with the source code release of Aquaria; both having been shipped as part of the first Humble Indie Bundle. He was then contracted to port Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 to Mac OS X, stating that he could potentially port it to Linux if Steam ever releases a Linux client. Ryan also generated some controversy that summer for his talk at the 2010 SouthEast LinuxFest titled "Anatomy of a Failure", where he criticized some aspects of the Kernel development process. He then ported Braid to both Linux and Mac OS X to allow it to be part of the second Humble Indie Bundle, as well as porting the games Cogs and Hammerfight for later bundles. As part of this he ported the "Haaf's Game Engine" to Linux and Mac OS X, and released his port under a free software license.

He also ported Frozen Synapse to Linux to be included as the primary part of the Frozen Synapse Bundle, as well as Super Meat Boy and Shank for Humble Indie Bundle 4. On January 31, 2012 his wife gave birth to their first child, Olive Finch Gordon. During the rest of 2012 Gordon would work on several more ports for the Humble Bundles, including Avadon: The Black Fortress, Space Pirates and Zombies, and Psychonauts. He would also be involved in updating old releases as well as porting new titles to Linux as part of Valve Software's Steam Linux launch, including creating new Linux ports of the games Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 and Killing Floor for Tripwire Interactive. As part of the Humble Indie Bundle 7 promotion Gordon ported the title Dungeon Defenders to Linux, making it the first Linux native title to utilize Unreal Engine 3, the engine that debuted with the release of Unreal Tournament 3 back in 2007 which Gordon had unsuccessfully tried to port to the platform.

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