Hi, I'm Lucas

I'm a Java and Web developer

I enjoy learning new things about programming and have a passion for making useful and visually interesting things with a computer.

Contact Me
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About Me

I am a 29 year old Gamer from Central Pennsylvania with a passion for creating things using a computer. Whether that be with programming, using an image editor like GIMP to make icons or infographics, or things like setting up a community discord with roles, icons, and images. In general, I have a good eye for what looks good when it comes to things like layout and organization and I can come up with some creative ideas and solutions. I've used these skills a lot for my primary hobby, which is a video game called Oldschool Runescape and being an Online Community Manager for a group in the game for roughly the last 8 years. This is a community of roughly 350 people that over the years I've helped grow to be what it is today. I can't list all of my duties here, but it involved just about every aspect of running a community from making and running special events to simply moderating the in game and discord chat. As a whole, this opportunity is something I'm extremely passionate about and I could write for hours about my experiences, but I'll leave it at this. I'm more than happy to share more about this and the types of things I've created for it if requested.
As I said previously, my primary hobby is Oldschool Runescape and the community I'm a part of within it. However, there are plenty of other video games I enjoy just as much if not more. My favorite game of all time would have to be Borderlands 2, followed closely by Bioshock 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion to name just a few. Other than video games, I also have various other interests including cars, tattoos, music, and the tech industry in general. My favorite type of cars would primarily be modified street cars, like a Honda Civic or Mitsubishi Lancer, with my absolute favorite being the Subaru WRX. I also have a few tattoos, one being from my favorite game, and the other two from two of my favorite bands: Blink-182 and A Day to Remember. My favorite music genre would probably be described as punk rock or alt metal.
I have worked in retail for Target for about 8 years. In tandem with my work as a Community Manager, this has offered me immense growth as a person and I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for these opportunities. I've learned how to be part of a team, take criticism, to be accepting of all types of people, and perhaps most importantly who I am and what I stand for. With this, I also generally hold myself to a high moral standard, priding myself on treating people how I'd like to be treated and in general treating people with respect and kindness. I have also been fortunate enough to meet my soulmate, and now fiancé, while working at Target, so I suppose I may owe some gratitude for that as well. So with all that said, I think I've gotten what I can out of the role I play at Target and would like to move on to do something I truly love, that can better support my fiancé and I, as well as our future family. In hopes of making this happen I've gotten more serious about learning programming and have already picked up a couple of certifications, and have plans to earn more and continue improving and learning new things about programming. My dream is to not only do this as a hobby, but to find a place where I can make a living doing what I love and to be given a chance to create great things.

Skills

Programming

Java

Python

JavaScript

HTML

CSS

SQL

/Programming

Computer

GitHub

Google Sheets

GIMP

Discord

Visual Studio Code

Hardware

/Computer

Other

Agile

Scrum

Logic

Critical Thinking

Problem Solving

Time Management

Decision Making

Communication

Organization

/Other

Certifications

Java Programming

Wilmington University - Online

December 2022

Teaches basic through intermediate Java concepts and also included courses on the software development life cycle as well as system analysis and SQL.

Responsive Web Design

freeCodeCamp.org

March 2024

Teaches the basics of HTML and CSS, including things such as grid, flexbox, animations, and accessibility.

JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures

freeCodeCamp.org

IN PROGRESS

Teaches JavaScript fundamentals like variables, arrays, objects, etc. as well as how to work with local storage and fetch data from an API.

Projects

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Minecraft Mods

Minecraft is a popular video game for just about every platform, but Minecraft Java Edition in particular is very popular for the ability to easily add mods to it, meaning nearly infinite replayability. I've made three mods in total, which as of 5/24/24 have a combined 7K downloads from CurseForge.com, which is one of the most popular mod sharing sites. I'll only be focusing on my primary mod, End Game Enhanced, here.
My goal with this project was to practice my Java skills and try to create things in the game that I wish were included in the base version of the game. This required many hours of reading through and utilizing the source code of Minecraft to make these new items work the way I wanted. I put a lot of time and effort into every aspect of this project, from creating the item's abilities, textures, and especially balancing when it came to damage, usefullness, or even how you obtained the item. I even went as far as to make a GitHub wiki for my main mod, which has 189 pages in it detailing just about every aspect of each item.

Mods - A link to my projects on CurseForge.com, which on each mods page includes extensive information for each mod, as well as links to the GitHub repository and the wiki for that mod.

OldSchool Runescape Equipment Stats

Written in Python, this project web scrapes the Oldshool Runescape wiki for info on gear and imports it into a json file to be viewed from a gui. To limit requests to the website, the item is only imported if it's not already found in the json. New items can be added directly from the gui by entering the name of, or a name close to, the item. Once you've imported all of the items you'd like to see you can Equip them using the drop down menus. All of the combined stats will be shown at the bottom of the gui, as well as the name of the special attack for the weapon, if applicable.
The goal of this project was to learn more about the Python syntax, inheritance, web scraping, and reading and writing to json. Overall I learned a lot from this project, and while I may return to it to improve it eventually, it currently gets the job done and I'm pretty happy with it.
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Penn State Campus Game

Written in Java 18, this was the final project for IST240 at Penn State University. This was the second Java course I had taken, and we had learned about classes, inheritance, and other basic Java fundamentals, and this is what really got me interested in programming as a whole. This was a group project and the prompt was fairly simple: Make a game where you select different campuses to go to and each one has a unique mini game you have to play. Once you've played five of the six mini games the game is over, and you're taken to a score screen. There were other requirements as well, like a character select, theme select, and reading and writing high scores in an external file and showing them on the score screen. I did this project solo and the professor was very impressed, if not surprised with how in depth it was. Unfortunately I somehow lost the finished project I turned in, so I had to rebuild about 25% of it, but it looks and operates the same as it would have. On the GitHub page there is a download for an executable .jar file that can be run as an application. This may require a Windows environment and having Java 18 installed.

OldSchool Runescape Clan Rankup Sheet

This is a spreadsheet I created for a group in the game Oldschool Runescape. The groups name is WeNeverTrade and the idea is that players achieve certain things in the game to rank up within the group, or a Clan as it's called in the game. While a lot of the requirements require images to be submitted, there is a decent amount going on in the background to import stats from the hiscores on the Oldschool website. The sheet fetches the players stats and displays them, among other information. There are several different gamemodes you can play, and there are different requirements for each, requiring a good amount of backend logic to properly display everything on the main sheet. As long as the player is or has been an Ironman player of some kind their stats can be imported to this sheet.

Test - A sheet that can be editted by anyone; try entering different ironman account names (Ex: Iron Hyger, Dr Robster, D awson) in G2 and you'll see the stats be imported. You can also change the gamemode drop down to see how the requirements change for different gamemodes.
Blank - This is the sheet people make a copy of and then submit for rank.
Filled - This is my personal submission sheet filled out.
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Contact Me

I'm currently looking for new opportunities in the tech and, more specifically, programming industry. So if you need a logical thinker with a passion for creative solutions, let's create something together. I'd also be happy to hear from you about your thoughts on my projects and this portfolio; good or bad. Feel free to contact me using the form below, or any of the options in the footer. I look forward to hearing from you!