ABOUT

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Somebody usually asks who made a thing and why. This is that page.

Fifteen Years

I have wanted to make a game for fifteen years.

Twelve of those years I was in the Army. Between being a father, and a business I started from nothing in 2010 and ran until I sold it, there was never a stretch of time that belonged to me. That is the reason I never learned to code. There was no year where sitting down for six months with a programming language was a thing I could actually do.

I am a disabled veteran now, and the business is sold. What I have is time, and one idea I have been carrying around since I was a kid.

The business repaired and replaced things for a living. Years of pulling apart what was broken and working out what was worth keeping and what got thrown out. I did not notice how much that had shaped this game until it was mostly built.

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How It Gets Built

AI coding tools are the reason this exists instead of staying an idea. I would rather say that myself than have somebody find it.

I will be specific about it, because vague is worse than honest. The code got written with AI tools. The sound effects are a licensed library from Ocular Sounds, chosen and cut and tuned by me to fit. The music was generated with Suno and produced for the game.

Here is the part that is mine. Every system in this game. The flight model, the economy, the fold drive, the docking sequence, the way a turret trades tracking speed for damage, the decision that nothing instant should be worth anything. All of it came out of my head and got argued with until it worked. The design document is nineteen chapters long and I wrote every word of it.

What I did not have was the ability to type the code or the years to learn to. That is the gap the tools close. If you want to see how much design is actually in here, the build log walks through every system and why it works the way it does.

The 713th

I served with the 713th Engineer Company. Route clearance, Kandahar. We found bombs in roads so that everybody behind us did not have to.

All three starter hulls are named for route clearance trucks. GT523 is the gun truck. BUFFALO is the one with the arm that reached into the ground ahead of everybody. HUSKY MKIII is the truck I drove. They are named for the trucks, and for the men who were in them.

IN MEMORY. 713th ENGINEER COMPANY, INDIANA NATIONAL GUARD.
Staff Sergeant Jonathan M. Metzger
Specialist Robert J. Tauteris Jr.
Specialist Christopher A. Patterson
Sergeant Brian J. Leonhardt
6 JANUARY 2012
Specialist Nicholas A. Taylor Jr.
Specialist Sergio E. Perez Jr.
16 JULY 2012
Six shadow boxes mounted on the armory wall of the 713th Engineer Company beneath a wooden plaque reading THOSE WHO HAVE FALLEN. Each box holds a folded flag, medals, unit coins and a photograph of the soldier.
Those who have fallen. The shadow boxes at the armory.

Their names are on the frame panels in the game. GT523 was a real truck.

Credits

Everything in SALVOR ADRIFT is original to the project unless it is credited. Third party work gets credited whether the licence asks for it or not, and so do the people who flew it early and told me what was wrong with it.

All of it lives on the crew page — the manifest, the work orders, and the full credits for the score, the sound, the art and the code.

Contact

Press, streamers, whoever. salvoradrift@gmail.com

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