A while back before I ran a summer camp where students started the week off with no experience and by the final day had a playable video game. I did a quick game jam to prep. The result was Bibliotheca Bounce and I think it’s pretty neat.
Check it out: https://colinisok.itch.io/bibliotheca-bounce
Yesterday I got the opportunity to make a program for my work. We needed an .exe that would force a fullscreen to hide background tasks, have text display that can be configured via a .txt file, and would at least look ‘Professional’.
I opened up Unity:
I created a script to set the starting parameters to force the program to go fullscreen and then loop every 30 seconds to ensure it stays ontop of any other programs opening up.
Searched for a way to create a .txt file and then pull the text from said file. This is so the user can configure different lines of dialog depending on the situation (Example: Computer is being configured, please do not turn off machine).
Grabbed our organizations logo and had it rotate in the center to show some kind of movement. Also added the logo to the corner about x5 as big, dropped the opacity so it was very faded, and had it rotate at 1/8th the speed. It added a nice aesthetic to a pretty bare program.
Made a system clock at the bottom to display the time.
It was a lot of fun getting to open up Unity again and it all came back pretty quick. I’m definitly missing working on computer projects which is why I came back to the website to add a blog post and change how the site looks. My home has taken priority since we purchased it and I’m just not getting back to my projects.
Last weekend I participated in a game jam. It was the first game jam where I was only a participant and not a teacher. The Jam had a theme and a limitation. The theme was “Doodle” and the limitation was the game had to take place in 1 room.
I had 72 hours starting Thursday night at 9pm, going until Sunday night at 9pm. I had to work Friday so I was already a good 8 hours behind.
Thursday night I wrote down an idea for an asteroids like game where you navigated a space ship from point a to point b and shot asteroids.
Friday night I started making the game and thought of a fun idea to add, then another fun idea, then another. Soon I had a list of need to, and want to. Over the next 48 Hours I tried to get the need to done and succeeded but alas… it still had bugs and it wasn’t even close to what I actually wanted.
It had a menu, a score, a death screen, and a high score saving system. It also does not crash (as far as I know). So the game was ‘done’ and I had 30 minutes to submit it before the deadline.
Sweating while attempting to produce a working HTML5 export I just barely made the submission in time with only 10 minutes to go. I felt a rush of comedic joy, part of me was actually proud I finished a project and had something to show for it and the other part of me was embarrassed at how awful it was.
That embarrassment though was turned into comedy and that comedy turned into a happy memory. Had a lot of fun doing the Game Jam and will forever give myself a pat on the back for finally doing one.
If you would like to play the game submission go to: