infrastructure
Network & hardware
Our own ASN with always-on DDoS filtering at the edge. Owned hardware, Ryzen 9 9950X / 9950X3D and Core Ultra 9 285K, in Louisville, Chicago and Dallas.
Louisville, KY/xaze
Michael Payne
I build hosting platforms and game worlds, and keep them running.
AS400860 SDF · CHI · DFW Path.net DDoS filtering Ryzen 9 9950X · Core Ultra 9 285K
~6 yrsat Louisville Geek, from Tier 2 engineer to department manager
470+organizations supported
11,800+hours of client and team work logged
2022founded Nexus Hosting, now serving hundreds of customers
AS400860our own network across three regions
01 / Nexus Hosting
Nexus Hosting
A hosting company I founded in 2022 and still run. It started as a custom game-panel theme and grew into a full provider: game servers, VPS, web, bot and database hosting on our own network and our own hardware, serving hundreds of customers.
2022founded, run under Nexuscore, LLC
Hundredsof customers hosted
AS400860our own network and IP space
3regions: Louisville, Chicago, Dallas
13+games, plus VPS, web, bot and database hosting
- 2022
Started with a custom Pterodactyl panel theme and the first game servers.
- 2023
Became a business under Nexuscore, LLC, with billing, support and a growing game catalog.
- 2024
Moved onto our own network, AS400860, with always-on Path.net DDoS filtering and a new website.
- 2025
Overhauled the game panel and rebuilt the storefront and customer portal on Next.js.
- 2026
Moved the game panel inside the portal, opened Dallas, added bot and database hosting and a partner program, and launched Louisville Hosting.
products
Everything a community needs
Game servers for 13+ titles, VPS, web hosting, Discord bot and app hosting, database servers, dedicated servers and colocation.
platform
Software we own
The storefront and customer portal are ours, in front of WHMCS billing, VirtFusion VPS and our own fork of the Pterodactyl panel. Customers manage everything in one place.
growth
Partners & demand
A creator and partner program with nx.gg links, an ads engine that ties spend to real orders, and managed hosting for an AI-agent platform.
sister brandlouisvillehosting.com ↗
Louisville Hosting
The same company, with a local face: web hosting, VPS, dedicated servers and colocation for Louisville businesses, with real people answering the phone.
- Its own site and customer portal, with Stripe billing, automatic provisioning, quotes, tickets and a staff admin we built ourselves.
- One price catalog feeds both the website and checkout, so they can never disagree.
- Astro
- Laravel
- Stripe
- cPanel / WHM
- VirtFusion
client workthrough Nexuscore
Builds for clients
Nexuscore also takes on custom builds. One example is an online 3D configurator for a foodservice equipment maker: customers pick a model, mounts, finishes and dimensions, then see it rendered.
- Per-model options and imagery, built around the client's own product names.
- Delivered in rounds of client feedback, each one staged before review.
- Laravel
- PHP
- Vite
- Forge
02 / Synergy
Synergy
A large Clone Wars roleplay community on Garry's Mod that I've owned and developed for years. Behind it are custom game modes, AI, tooling, art and a full in-game interface, all built to hold up during live events with a full server.
160 v 160AI battles in the performance lab
−39%server CPU with the native droid brain
221UIs moved onto one design system
7canon campaigns, 36 planets rendered
19trainings moved from a spreadsheet into the game
game mode
Conquest
Large battles against AI droids. A director runs pincers, overwatch and objective guards. There are Breakthrough and Defense modes, and four objective types: destroy, rescue, defend and hack.
campaign
Galactic war
A war map where planets change hands over days. Built with a galaxy editor, a story script and a story generator, and it ships with a library of seven canon campaigns.
spectacle
Cinematic layer
Gunship strafing runs, climax reinforcements at the last point, a death cam with a redeploy drop, battlefield scars, music and callouts.
ai
Map intelligence
Reads a map's BSP offline and builds a walkable mesh with cover, sightline and chokepoint layers, plus generated navmeshes. A locked-down VPS service processes new Workshop maps on demand.
performance
Perf lab
A profiler and bot driver that can mirror and replay real players. It runs 100 bots against 160 droids, and every fix is measured before and after.
interface
Command Rail
One menu for Tab, F4 and Esc. All 221 UI surfaces were audited and moved onto it, with a radial C menu, a drag-to-move HUD and color-blind options.
progression
Trainings & certs
19 battalion trainings now live in the game: a badge wall, a trainer desk, minigame drills and soft-lock alerts. New recruits get a course from an ARC instructor whose voice was synthesized.
art
Asset pipeline
Remastered battalion models with 29% fewer triangles, plus LODs and nine skins each. Store guns, pets and weapon skins come from a Blender and StudioMDL pipeline run with agents.
A C++ module moves droid thinking off the main thread while their bodies stay on it. The server holds 33 tick through the fight.
Client FPS · lab battle · radar HUD rewrite
Measured on a real player PC. The target is 60 FPS in the biggest battles, and the work continues one measured fix at a time.
How a feature ships
- Mock upTwo or three concepts, often as real in-game screenshots.
- PickI choose one. Nothing gets built before that.
- Dev roundBuilt and logged as a numbered round on the dev server.
- PlaytestStaff test it, and bugs come back as a fix batch.
- Prod in minutesThe package is pre-built and dry-run, so a push during a live event takes minutes.
03 / Louisville Geek
Louisville Geek
Nearly six years at a Louisville managed IT provider. I started as a Tier 2 engineer, worked my way up to Tier 3, and now run the web and software development department.
Tier 2 Engineer→Tier 3 Engineer→Software Development Manager
Jan 2021started, on the help desk
11,800+hours logged
2,950+tickets worked
470+organizations supported
128client projects
- 2021
Help desk and engineering. User support, onsite installs, SQL Server, virtual machines, firewalls and Intune, with scripting and web work on the side.
- 2022
Cloud migrations. Microsoft 365 tenants, SharePoint and Azure AD moves, server-to-cloud migrations and Azure environment upgrades.
- 2023
Web, hosting and apps. Site builds, web server migrations, client databases and applications, Azure hosting, and my first projects as project manager.
- 2024
Running the department. Leading the web and software team: assigning and reviewing work, client releases, hosting moves and internal tools.
- Now
Technical lead. Client IT reviews, cloud and API migrations, application retainers, disaster-recovery planning and fleet automation.
Custom software
- appCertificate database for a safety-training company, developed over several phases.
- appPayment-schedule features for an insurance alliance's member portal.
- appA fraud-case application and its databases for a regional bank.
- appOnline lettering and custom-vinyl design apps for a sign maker.
- appA manuscript database for a historical society, maintained quarterly.
- aiLive speech-to-text captioning for a university athletics department.
Cloud & migrations
- m365Tenant, SharePoint and Azure AD migrations for clients in healthcare, construction, insurance and manufacturing.
- azureAzure environment upgrades, cloud moves and Azure hosting builds.
- azureAn API migrated from AWS to Azure, plus ongoing development for that client.
- mdmDevice management moved to Intune, and fleet onboarding.
- auditAzure tenant audits turned into gap reports, and SSL automation across dozens of VMs.
Web & hosting operations
- fleet21 servers and about 660 client domains, indexed and searchable in one place.
- webWebsite builds and rebuilds, plus a recurring maintenance program for client sites.
- irIncident response: hacked-site cleanup, containment and credential rotation.
- toolsInternal tools, including a Web Team Portal and GeekWatch, our own uptime monitor.
- psaTicket and time automation in ConnectWise for the team.
Healthcare · behavioral health · nonprofits · banking · insurance · construction · pharmacy · manufacturing · energy · museums & archives
04 / Lab
Experiments and side builds
Agent First Hammer++
An agent-first level editor for Source maps. Agents lay out a map on a Mac, then a Windows build node compiles it, bakes cubemaps, captures it in game and sends the evidence back.
Source SDK · VBSP / VVIS / VRAD · cross-machine agents
Polybot
A prediction-market trading bot for Kalshi and Polymarket: market making, LLM probability estimates using retrieved context, quarter-Kelly sizing, and a 15% drawdown breaker.
Python · 7,680-combo backtest sweep · 66 tests
SlopForge
An AI short-form video SaaS. You give it a script, PDF or batch, and it returns split-screen gameplay with voiceover and auto-captions.
Next.js 16 · Prisma · Clerk · Stripe · ElevenLabs · FFmpeg
Voxel sandbox
A browser voxel world with worker-based terrain generation, greedy meshing, a procedural texture atlas and IndexedDB saves.
TypeScript · WebGL2 · Web Workers · 64 tests
S&box port
Synergy rebuilt in a new engine: a custom player motor with rollback history, data-driven factions, and networked weapons.
C# · S&box · Razor UI
05 / Method
How I work
I work AI-first. I set direction and make the calls, a lead model plans and reviews, and agents handle the repetitive work in their own worktrees. These are the rules that keep that safe.
- 01
Own the panels
Customer-facing systems are ours. No off-the-shelf admin panel that gets hacked every year.
- 02
Staging first, prod on an OK
Everything goes through staging and a QA pass. Production changes wait for an explicit go-ahead, and an urgent push still has to take minutes.
- 03
Every claim must be true
If nothing backs a marketing line, it comes off the site, even if competitors say the same thing.
- 04
Never auto-cancel a customer
Billing jobs hold and flag a problem. A person makes the call.
- 05
Mock it, pick it, build it
New looks start as two or three concrete mockups, often real in-game screenshots. The owner picks one, then it gets built.
- 06
Contain first, report after
A compromise gets quarantined and its credentials rotated right away. Deletions and DNS changes stay with a person.
06 / Stack
Tools I reach for
- Languages
- TypeScript, PHP, Lua, Python, C#, C++, Go, SQL
- Frameworks
- Next.js, React, Laravel, Astro, Helix, S&box
- Hosting
- Pterodactyl / Wings, WHMCS, VirtFusion, cPanel / WHM, CloudLinux, LiteSpeed, Forge, Coolify, Docker
- Cloud
- Azure, AWS, Microsoft 365 / Entra, Cloudflare, Path.net
- Payments
- Stripe, Cashier, PayPal
- AI
- Claude Code, Codex agents, MCP servers, T3 Code
07 / Now
In flight, November 2026
- Louisville Hosting went live on its own domain.
- GeekWatch deployed, with a client portal and signed alerts flowing into ticket automation.
- Every Synergy battalion moved to v2 models, with compression next.
- Nexus Hosting launch week: payment audit, webhook hardening, account sign-up.
- A managed WordPress platform and the game panel portal going to production.
08 / Contact