Concept
For my midterm project, I wanted to create something that is 1) funny and 2) inspired by our campus. I thought hard and long, and eventually came up with an idea to create a game based on an “incident” that happened to me at the Palms. I love sitting under the palm trees outside C2 when the weather is nice, and one day I was joyfully sitting on one of the tables doing work on my laptop when suddenly I heard a quick popping sound and felt something splatter in front of me – a bird had pooped on my laptop.
At a loss for words as to why, out of all the open space around me, it chose to land right on me, I questioned my luck and intensely cleaned around. Ever since then, whenever I go to the palms, I am reminded of that day, laugh at how “lucky” I was, and glance up from time to time to check for birds above me.
Design
The idea of the game is to dodge bird 
falling from the sky while at the same time trying to finish your homework. The user needs to protect the computer using the left and right arrow keys without getting hit from what is falling from above. To complete the homework, the user needs to repeatedly press the space bar until the progress bar fills up. If the user stops pressing the space, the space bar will decrease. The goal is to finish the homework as fast as possible without getting hit. The shortest time will be recorded for the user to see.
Challenging Parts
- Creating the progress bar and incorporating decay so that the progress decreases upon inactivity
- Checking for collision between the computer and bird poop
- Making bird poop fall randomly from the sky (from random columns at random times with perhaps random speeds)
- Showing time elapsed and keeping track of minimum time
- Creating a visually appealing game interface
I tried creating a simple progress bar that fills up on the pressing of the space bar. It works by drawing a rectangle where the width is based on the progress variable, and this variable is incremented when the space bar is pressed and decremented slightly every time to add to the challenge.