Saturday, September 5, 2015

Welcome to the Dev Blog!

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Specter Industries Development blog!  I'm very excited to start this blog and to share with you all the exciting, technical, and frustrating moments I encounter
while on my journey from being "just a guy" to an indie game developer.

First, some background information.  My real name is Joel Kolodziej, and as a professional I am a manufacturing engineer for an international company.  I'm the son of a computer and systems engineer, so I've always had an affinity for pc software, hardware, and other nerdy things.  I took a few computer programming classes in high school way back in 1998 (c++, and visual basic), but otherwise, I've had no formal training in programming in any of the languages I find myself coding in today.  I went through a rebellious streak after high school and determined that I wouldn't go into computers professionally like my father did.  So I went to the University of South Carolina for a degree in mechanical engineering. I've always kept my eye and interests in building computers, and have always been curious about how games are made.  One day, about 2 years ago, I decided that, in my spare time, I'd find out.

Specter Industries is the soon to be umbrella corporation that will cover a wide range of activities.  The first activity under the Specter Industries banner is Specter Gaming, my Let's Play channel, that is slowly morphing more into a PC hardware channel.  My most recent series is on building my very own SteamBox, and before that a personal home media server.  Check it out if that's your thing, but this blog almost certainly won't be about PC building, or playing video games on youtube.

This blog is about Making Games.

The game I'm currently building is a Super Monkey Ball style game for mobile platforms I'm tentatively calling Eruptoid.  On a remote tropical island there is a super-volcano that is about to explode destroying the entire island.  What the scientists observing don't understand is that the volcano is actually alive, the living mother of the island.  In order to save herself and her creation, she is sending you, the Eruptoid, to gather mythic super-cooled artifacts to become a super-cooled pyroclastic flow who will ultimately fall back into the volcano's mouth, calming the building inferno threatening to destroy everything.

Gameplay is very monkeyball like.  Levels are relatively simple and geometric, with a starting place, 3 super-cooled cubes to collect each level (optional, but required for the "good" ending), and a bubbling crater you must roll into in order to complete each level.

Eruptoid is built using the Unity 5, with level design done using Blender for meshing and UV unwrapping, and Substance Painter for texturing.  This blog will touch on the hurdles and challenges I've encountered and overcome in all of them.  I won't be doing tutorials unless heavily requested.  I may live stream some of my dev work on the afore mentioned youtube channel.  I'll let you guys know about new posts and if I go live through my google+ page.

Please follow this blog and my google+ page.  Help spread the word about Eruptoid and help me make it yet another indie success story!

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