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Making your project

So, you've gone through the tutorials and have mastered Verilog? Awesome. It's time to start creating your own project!

You have two routes:

• • Follow along with one of our custom tutorials to make a game, then add your spin and touch of creativity to it. Submit this, and get your FPGA!
• • If you already have experience with FPGAs and Verilog, awesome! Then you can create any project you want, as long as it follows the below rules.

Flappy bird tutorial

If this seems like something you would want to do, click here to load the tutorial!

Once you're ready to submit your project, you can do so right here!

Rules

General rules

• • Must be written in Verilog HDL.
• • Include a VGA output (640x480 resolution).
• • Must synthesize and simulate successfully.
• • Must be original work (no direct copies).
• • Must have spent 15 hours working on the project. (You can learn more about hour tracking later on this page).
• • Must be developed and experiencable in the Bitstream editor.
• • No fully AI-developed projects. Although we do allow the use of AI for debugging and assitance, any project that is made with mostly or fully AI will be rejected.

Flappy bird route

• • Your game must have an additional three unique features past the ones in the tutorial. You need to put your own unique twist on it! Valid features include:
  • • Score counter
  • • An auto-flapper
  • • Coins
  • • Multiplayer
  • • Gradual speeding increase
  • • Variable height gaps
  • • Background animations
  • • Custom bird skins
• • Variations of flappy bird will also be accepted as your three unique features. Variations include
  • • Vertical flappy bird
  • • A basic platformer
  • • The classic "T-rex" game

Custom project route

• • Your project must have a user-experiencable component. The classic example is a game, but other projects that would work include:
  • • Complex animations
  • • A calculator
  • • A simple terminal

Note: If you think your project may not meet the requirements, please ask in the #bitstream channel of the Hack Club Slack for guidance.

Second note: Hack Club reserves the right to reject or request modifications of any project that explicitly does not follow the above stated rules.

Time tracking

We require 15 hours of work to be logged during the creation of your project. You log your time in the Bitstream editor using the log.md file. The below information is copy and pasted from the log.md file found when creating a new project in the editor.

How To Use

Every hour you work on your project, you need to log it! A log should include the date, time started and time finished, what you added or changed, an image of your current game, and any other relevant information to prove you worked for an hour during that time. In addition, you need to commit every hour after writing your log.

Why Do This

We need you to log your work to verify that you worked on your project for an x amount of time! We will be reviewing your log and and your project. If we find that your hours seem inflated, you seem to be doing fraud, or you didn't log your hours correctly, we reserve the right to reject some hours from your log or all hours. Please make sure you're corectly logging your hours.

Example Log

Hour 1

Date: 8/18/2025 (mm/dd/yyyy)

Time range: 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

Description: Today, I worked on adding the (insert feature). I first tried to do (insert technical description). However, that didn't work, so I tried (insert technical description #2) instead. I got it working by (insert explanation of how it works). This feature allows the user to (insert explanation of what the feature does). You can see the feature I added here: