Hi I am Andrew Tomczak, here is a short autobiography followed by a brief explanation of what I hope will be a good video game, and fun for people of all age groups, and locations.

Who is Andrew Tomczak?

Andrew J. Tomczak (born 1963) is an American computer programmer and video game producer. He recently founded the video game company AJ Surf Co. The company has a single video game, so far, called Aurora Realms.

Early life

Mr. Tomczak was born in Poughkipsee New York, to the son of Electronics Engineer, James Tomczak, And Kay (McMillan) Tomczak. The Family moved to Burlington Vermont, after 2 years. James Tomczak was intermental in the development of the IBM X86 PC program. Tomczak was in to engines an dirt bikes for hobbies.

Personal life

During High School, Tomczak joined the VT Army National Guard (The Green Mountain Boys) under split training program, where go to boot camp in the summer of his junior year, and complete his mechanic training after after High School. It was a 6 year program, and Tomczak did not re-enlist. During that time Tomczak took on various odd jobs, such as loading trucks, and construction. Tomczak experimented with writing a simple video game on a Texas Instruments TI-99 computer and a television screen using Extended Basic. That was the last time Tomczak used a computer until 1994. In the late 1980’s and early 1990s Tomczak, took on Windsurfing as a hobby/sport/lifestyle. Windsurfing was in its pioneering hayday, and was in a phase of rapid performance enhancement. Andrew Tomczak
is maried to Argira Glama, who has 2 children Violeta Imana, and Nunru Imana. He has 2 biological children Kyleigh and Anthony. Anthony would go on to make the draft to the Seattle Mariners Baseball program. In October 2019 Tomczak was struck with Transverse Myelitis, rendering him paraplegic. He currently spends a good part of each day working on a Physical Therapy program, in order to regain function of his lower body

Computer Education

Along with being a mechanic, in the 1990s Tomczak started to experiment with the X86 IBM PC clones. Starting with the a 286, modified to become a 386 with a co-processor and extended ram card, and using Winows 3.1. Making the choice to go to college, Tomczak started off strong with math and computer programming. So it was off to the 486, which was quickly not enough for the experimenting with newly released SuSE Linux 32 Bit OS. So Tomczak started building Pentium processor clone PCs using Cyrix, processors, from mail order parts, which would handle the rigors of software dev education. By the time Tomczak graduated from the University of Vermont with a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, the computer hardware had advanced enough to have compact laptop computers.

Career

During college, Tomczak participated in a work/study program in which he handled hardware and software, upgrades and maintenance, of the Deans Office computers. Also, Tomczak worked at a Days Inn
hotel where he was doing night audit, along with consulting on computer upgrades, computer training for the staff, and the installation of the guest WIFI Internet connection system.

After graduation, Tomczak worked briefly for the rapidly growing company bear-code.com, and would move on to a 4 year contract with the State of Vermont to develop the Rivers Management Program DMS software in using Microsoft .Net Software.

From there, the he moved to Boca Raton Florida where, Anthony would go through the rigors of training to become a professional baseball player. Tomczak worked for debtwire.com, again through its rappid growth, until its aquistion by ION group 10 years later. Tomczak was part of the development countless software products (mostly Web Services) as Debwire transitioned from being based mainly in Microsoft .Net, into Open Source Micro-services architecture.

After leaving Debtwire.com, Andrew was laid up in bed for many months from an attack of Transverse Myelitis. It was then that he started to experimenting with writing video games again. After, researching the modern Game Engines and Software Languages, it was settled. Godot was to be the way of the future, and AJ Surf Co would be the new company name.

AJ Surf Co, Game Development (first person narrative)

Starting off experimenting with YouTube tutorials, in order to get familiar with the Godot Game engine, it was off to reboot the Video game Stargate (Defender II) which was done a few times, but never to my satisfaction. I then stumbled on to what is commonly referred to as Space Rocks. Formerly Space Wars! Computer Space, and then most famously Asteroids. Seeing how we are now past the year 2020, I was never satisfied with any Asteroid ROMs, and the Space Rocks clones. Space Wars! was obviously the first draft. So I set out to bring a modern look and feel to the Space Wars! evolution.

Aurora Realms was finally settled on for a title, no matter how clunky a title it is. Heavily influenced by the Quake III fast action multiplayer aspect, and menu system. I set out to build the base of the game. Next was the look and feel. I did not want pixelated graphics, but I wanted nostalgic game pieces, so the standard Kenney space art fit the bill. But what about the backgrounds? Influenced by the Marvel Franchise, the Hubble Space Telescope images where chosen for the backgrounds. But what about sounds and weapons. Influenced by The Expanse Amazon Streaming Series the weapons and sounds where born. Of course the Matrix uses the Construct, the influence for the Sim game play. From there it was a mater of putting all the pieces together and building an infrastructure. So here we are, AJ Surf Co’s Aurora Reams.