I'm currently in the stages of applying for a scholarship that requires any (typically but not always math based) research project. I know very little basic and no ASM, C, or Python, and am thinking about applying to the scholarship with my TI-84 CE in mind, but I'm worried about the idea of developing a game as I learn to code because the scholarship is very official. What else could I make besides a game that's fun and useful but also isn't incredibly dull to code?


(I know this isn't exactly calculator help per se, but I wasn't sure where else to ask this)

Anything that would be useful to a calculator user. For example, I my calculator was once stolen from my locker by a freshman who clearly had a gaping void between is ears. He started playing chess, but since it's an assembly program, he didn't know that he had to exit the game to turn it off, which is how I found out that someone had taken it. (I thought I knew who had done it, and when I confronted him, he lied to my face. Wow.) Long story short, I used Celtic CE to create a shell for all of my assembly games that requires the user to enter a PIN in order to access them. If you input the wrong PIN, it locks the program and archives the PIN entered, the time, and the date. Total overkill, but it was a fun project, and I now have all of my games in the same place, which is nice. Maybe you can make a calculator home screen, with options like set date & time, calculate, and play games in a menu?

Are there any focus areas the scholarship encourages? I could bring you into the lwIP project and find some way to derive research from it for you. Does it have to be something you do solo? What are the requirements? If we knew specifics it might be easier to help you out.

Besides games, you could make software starter projects, maybe try to solve a few of these on calc? https://adventofcode.com/

It's literally just anything math based, which is sort of a given for a calculator

Has this been published anywhere? I've been playing with CelticCE and this actually sounds really awesome

If this is for a formal scholarship, it's important not to draw assumptions about what is required. "just anything math based, which is sort of a given for a calculator" is an assumption, and I'd argue a faulty one at that.

If this is a research project, making a game is NOT a research project unless there is a research component. A research project is something where you study or investigate something and report on data you find in a context you wish to present.

An example would be a report titled "efficient game design strategies on a graphing calculator" which delves into--for example--how games are typically put together, the constraints on development for the calculator, strategies to resolve those, and then as the icing on the cake (and for some fun) design your own game using those strategies and document how you used these strategies to effect in your game, point out speed increases, optimizations, and the effect they had.

You could also do something involving security as well using Cars and Ice Cream's PIN lock suggestion, the number of password protection utilities, my lwIP/TLS or CryptX project or anything else, but you'd need to pick a topic for analysis, research it within some context, and then build something of your own to demonstrate what you learned.

These are by no means the only options, but just some examples of what a real research project would entail. Maybe I'm wrong, but something as simple as "code something" seems way too simple for what I'd think they'd expect.

I haven't published my game shell anywhere since it executes the games I have on my calculator specifically. As for the calculator home screen, I don't know of any programs quite like that, but I haven't looked. Let me know what you decide, and if you need an help, send me a message and I'll see what I can do 🙂

Thanks for the ideas, this is super helpful, but also I misspoke. It's not a research project looking for publication, it's a small organization of only a few people who aren't looking at official documentation or anything, it really is just 50 hours towards anything that has at least some scientific subject matter. Having it be math based is tailored more towards the people running the scholarship but peers have done everything from medical research to growing algae. From what I've already talked to them about, it seems like I could mostly use the time just learning Python or ASM or something, but I think it'd be more interesting and easier to make a report on if I had an actual project to build towards. It just seems like a game would be too casual for this project specifically, and I still may try a game if it seems like it might go well after all. Mostly, I'm asking for how to present the idea to the organization and what I could make other than games that are easy-ish and engaging projects, with maybe the added bonus of being able to post it to Cemetech if it's something useful. Thanks for the tips, I'll definitely be writing some of this down for when I apply with a project pitch.

That makes a bit more sense. Can you tell us who the organization is? Do they have a website or some public profile?


Do you personally have any specific areas of interest amongst some of the suggestions given in the thread so far?
My specialty is cybersecurity/encryption; if you did something in that area, I'd be happy to support how I can.


I would first research the organization. Find out their mission statement. Fashion your project pitch to appeal to that organization's mission and specialty. Decide on an objective for your project that aligns with that mission. Something more substantial than "make a mario level" for example. Something like "discover how partial redraw can help make a popular game feasible on a graphing calculator". Frame your pitch as an experiment in which you are trying to learn something, and go about your development process for the game in that way. Maybe even keep notes of your development process--difficulties, how you overcame them, things that came easy, what you learned, etc.

For privacy reasons I'm not keen on sharing the specific organization but essentially it's founded by one mathematician who is mostly just looking to get people to do more math in the community. He takes from early high school all the way through college students and runs stuff like local tests and competitions, tutoring and training for competitions held at local colleges, that type of thing. It's more personal than I'm making it sound, but the mission statement is more or less to get kids of most ages interacting with education and math in general, which is why the subject matter of the project really doesn't matter a whole lot as long as it has an actual research base. I know that personally they prefer math based projects and will try to integrate some form of math regardless of what the project is, but it's essentially whatever can be pitched and sound and be somewhat professional sounding. Again, it may literally just be "learn some python," but I also love playing with my calculator and i feel like i would get more out of the project if it was done by TI-84.

Edit: I know I'm yapping about other questions but also this is already some great advice, I wasn't kidding about taking notes and reading over them when I apply