About Us

At the moment, "us" is really just me, though my wife Maria is intensely supportive of my efforts.  My name is Matthew Amoroso and I want to make video games.  These games are mostly for me, as a creative endeavor and I hope to make games that I actually want to play.  This is the story of how I got here:

• It started in the early 1980's with the Atari 2600, my first game system.  Next, in 1985, came the Adam Computer on which I wrote my very first simple programs.

• I was lucky enough to go to a middle school that won a grant that allowed us to have a computer lab, long before just about anyone else around.  King's Quest, Microsoft Paint, and a class that taught me how to type; a skill that has been with me ever since.

• I bought my first PC when I was 16 and had already been playing Dungeon's and Dragons for a few years.  Gaming, both electronic and with dice and paper, as well as other sorts of storytelling became a great passion for me.  The pursuit of story, reading, writing, or telling, is the main way that I seek meaning in my life and the world around me.

• Eventually, after I got married, I went back to college with some prodding by my amazing partner.  I got a degree in physics and was able to study some Computational Physics along the way, eventually being included on a paper that was published in the American Journal of Physics for a program that I wrote tracking the Brownian Motion of particles under a microscope.  The program, LabView, was my first experience using visual programming languages that wired elements together.  Modern Visual Shaders look a lot like that program.

• For the last 20 years I've been teaching high school Physics and Calculus, and until a few months ago it had been 25 years since I had written a computer program.  I've been running Table Top RPG's non-stop and certainly playing hundreds of video games myself.  So what changed?

• As has happened to many unsuspecting folks, I was browsing YouTube shorts and found Pirate Software.  Confronted with Jason Thor Hall telling me to "Make Games".  Let the rest of us who have chosen to heed the call, we're doing it because we can.  At least, we beleive Thor when he tells us that we can.  It was his website that let me to the Godot Engine and I've been learning and building with that and PyCharm (for my Discord Bot) ever since.

• So I've been training online with GameDev.tv and DataCamp (for the AI and Data Analysis elements that my first big game hopes to include.).   I would especially like to thank Bramwell Williams for his excellent series and videos.  In my 20 years of teaching I don't think I've ever had an instructor so clear and complete in his explanations.  Special thanks to Godotneers' and Tutemic's YouTube tutorials!

• Blender has been a big addition to the skills and tools we are utilizing, though there are still some bugs trying to import shaders and animations without bugs.

• For our Neural Network lessons, we need to thank; 3 Blue 1 Brown (who's videos inpired the premise of our first game: We Gel!) and Michael Nielsen's online text.

• I'm still a full time high school Physics and Calculus teacher, but evenings, weekends, and most importantly summers are going to be my chance to build something fun and meaningful to share with you all.