Mitchell Augustin Official Website About Me Projects Archives

Archives

On this page, you can read about many of the smaller projects that I worked on when I was younger.

Aurora for Discord (2016 - 2018)

Aurora for Discord was an easy to use Discord bot that utilized an adaptation of the Aurora Interpreter for Discord. With Aurora, users could ask for the current temperature, weather forecasts, or get answers to other questions.

Discord logo


Virtual Passenger (2015)

Virtual Passenger was an Android app that I designed with the intention of limiting users from texting and driving. Distracted driving is a huge issue, and Virtual Passenger was designed to help with it. When a user had virtual passenger installed, it would monitor the phone's speed using its GPS and linear acceleration sensors. As soon as the speed goes above the 30 MPH threshold, the phone would display a system notification which prompted the user to put down their phone if they were driving. Unfortunately, I was unable to interest enough users in this app, so I have since removed it from the Play Store.

Virtual Passenger icon


AVOX/MITCH (2013 - 2014)

Before I made Aurora, I developed an application called AVOX (originally MITCH). AVOX, or the Augustin Voice-Over Control System, was a voice-activated virtual assistant for the desktop. Although it wasn't nearly as sophisticated as Aurora, AVOX could still perform a number of tasks, such as opening certain programs, reading the time, closing programs, locking your computer, and viewing websites.

 


Various 3D game projects (2012-2015)

Although I never published a full game, I became very familiar with two different 3D game engines. When I first decided to start programming, I planned on being a game developer. After I got tired of developing mobile games, I started out by learning how to write my own (extremely basic) game engine for desktops. However, when I realized that I would be better off using an established engine, I began learning about an engine called JMonkey. I went on to create a very minimal game environment in JMonkey, which allowed me to master the fundamental elements of the engine. After realizing the negatives of using a Java-based engine for game development, I went on to learn about Unreal Engine later on.

 


Plunge (2014)

In 2014, I wrote another Android game called Plunge. In Plunge, the player had to tilt their device to avoid crashing into various objects as they fell into a hole.

Plunge icon


Avoider (2013)

The first graphical game I developed was an Android game called Avoider. Avoider was an 8-bit game in which the player had to tap to bounce their green ball past the red obstacles.

Avoider icon


Plecostoman (2010-2012)

The first real program that I ever wrote was called "Plecostoman and the Search for the Mystical Algae Wafer." I wrote the first version of this game in Java, where it amassed roughly 1300 lines of code. (Quite a bit for 10-year-old me.) Plecostoman was a text-based adventure game in the style of old DOS games like Zork, in which you play as a Plecostomus who has to travel the Amazon River in search of the Mystical Algae Wafer. Later on, I ported Plecostoman to Android. This was the first Android app that I made entirely on my own without any help from tutorials. In 2012, I also created a sequel to Plecostoman called "Plecostoman 2: Attack on the cucumbers."

Plecostoman icon


Schweb (2007-2012)

Throughout my time in elementary and middle school, I ran several websites under the name "Schweb." Initially, Schweb started as my own personal review website. It was a place where I could talk about whatever I was into. Schweb ran under the URL schweb.homestead.com until 2010, which is when I decided to change things around and expand into a new area of development. Around this time, I was just beginning to learn how to make games, so I decided that it would be a good idea to showcase them on my website. From this moment on, Schweb had been split into two separate sites - Schweb Reviews and Schweb Games. In 2011, I added a social network to the mix. Schweb Social was my first attempt at creating a social network. Unfortunately, its capabilities were very limited, and it only gained 2 other users in its lifespan, both of which were my best friends. In 2012, I decided to shut down all of Schweb's websites permanently in order to focus more on my other projects.

 


Various viruses and joke programs

I also like to make little "viruses" in my spare time to prank my friends with. None of them do any actual damage to computers, but a few of them can hide themselves pretty well. I've only ever tested them on my computer and my friends' computers (with their permission, of course). I don't have these programs publicly accessible for obvious reasons, but here are a few brief descriptions of some of my favorites.

  1. The Star Trek Shutdown virus, a program that would install itself into the user's startup directory and begin playing the Star Trek red alert siren along with a countdown timer. After five minutes, the computer would shut down and the process would begin on restart. Don't worry, I also wrote a batch file that reverses the effect.
  2. warmitup.exe, a gag program based on this video that displays a moving gif of a tongue and plays sound clips from the video.
  3. Barrel roll, a script that constantly rotates your screen
  4. A program that constantly opens and closes your disk drive
  5. A program that force-closes all of your programs and kills explorer.exe repeatedly (Also blue-screens devices running an OS older than Windows 7)
 


Various incomplete projects

In addition to the projects listed above and on my projects page, I also began working on many other projects that I was never able to finish for various reasons. Some of these projects were:

  1. InfoLens, an Android app that would allow users to get information on objects using their camera (2016)
    1. Aborted due to server limitations & better apps that existed to serve the same purpose
  2. AVOX Iris, a retinal scanner add-on for AVOX that would function as a door lock (2015)
    1. Aborted due to lack of funds and receiving faulty hardware
  3. PlecOS, a Linux distro that I was going to make for fun (2016)
    1. Aborted because I didn't have any practical need for a new OS, and my computer at the time was incapable of supporting the development of an OS.
  4. Humanization mod for Minecraft, a mod that would add various extra living necessities to the game, such as using the bathroom, clothing, temperature requirements, thirst, etc. (2015)
    1. Aborted because I needed to focus more on the development of Aurora for Home Automation
  5. An unnamed social network project that would operate entirely through proxies to circumvent network restrictions
    1. Aborted due to a general lack of interest, and because of the high availability of proxy services.