Sandbox Articles

We’re curious people by nature. And we love to teach others what we’ve learned. So explore our blog to gain fresh insights from our expertise in areas ranging from culture to AI.

SEP Selected as a Nominee for TechPoint’s Innovation Mira Award

TechPoint has announced the nominees for its 25th annual Mira Awards, highlighting the most innovative companies, universities, and organizations in Indiana’s tech sector. The awards celebrate achievements across various categories, including the Innovation Partner of the Year. Nominees in this…
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The Pico-8 logo

Exploring Game Development with Pico-8

Today, I will walk you through a few steps to start learning game development with Pico-8. Video games are all around us. They connect to our TVs, occupy our computers, and ride along with us in our pockets. Our experiences with them ranging from a quick, fun diversions to immersive multi-hour sagas. Many of us […]
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SEP team listening at hackathon share-out

Unleashing Creativity: Hackathons & The Magic of Innovation

Imagine a place where makers come together—full of excitement, energy, and snacks—to build whatever their hearts desire. Solutions that address pesky functions or non-existent tools to improve our work and personal lives. It could be anything, from video game upgrades to new business ideas to figuring out how to more efficiently and securely share internal […]
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Software developer in SEP t-shirt examines code on computer screen

2023 Winter Hackathon Recap + 3 Reasons We ♥ Hackathons at SEP

SEP’s bi-annual hackathon was a full weekend of fun projects and exciting learnings. Read on to learn more about the importance of hackathons to SEP’s culture and for a recap of what projects we tackled during our Winter 2023 Hackathon session. Three Reasons We ❤ Hackathons at SEP Besides the obvious things like the fact […]
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2022 Summer Game Jam: the First Iteration

Since the success of the first Game Jam, I have eagerly awaited the next one. It is a chance to improve our processes, attract more people, and of course make another game. Judah and I had a retro and came up with some ideas to improve the jam. We didn’t pose them as formally as […]
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SEP's First Game Jam 2022

What We Learned from SEP’s First Game Jam

Earlier this year, SEP put on its first-ever game jam. For those unfamiliar, a game jam is an event where teams create video games within a limited amount of time. While the time span can vary wildly, there is usually a theme to provide direction. Most game jams also tend to declare a winner. Why […]
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SEP Hackathon Pitch Session

2022 Summer Hackathon Recap

We were thrilled to have our SEP Summer 2022 Hackathon in our new building and to be back in person for the event! Our hackathon is an internal event where we invite SEP makers to participate for the weekend – anyone with an interest within our walls can join the fun. We see a mix […]
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man reading book - Flow

This one’s for you, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi fans

If you’ve read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, or even if you’ve just seen a diagram like this one and it inspired you to figure out which activities put you in flow… boy, do I have a blog post for you ???? I have to admit I never read the book, […]
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Sector Director – An Exploration into Classic Graphics Programming

This is the third post in my series on the value of personal projects. Check out the first and second posts for context. Sector Director Sector Director is an on-going (as of writing) project to create my own 3D renderer for the 1993 game Doom. There is nothing terribly novel about this – tons of […]
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Tiledriver – Making Wolfenstein 3D Levels with Machine Learning

This is the second post in my series on the value of personal projects. See the first one for more context. Marrying the Old with the New Tiledriver was an attempt to create levels for the classic 1992 game Wolfenstein 3D using machine learning. I thought this would be a fun challenge since I didn’t […]
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