Jacob Givhan | Software Developer & IT Professional

Selected Work

Projects

Featured · Full-Stack Game

Blood & Burden

A browser-based medieval fantasy RPG with tabletop-style life-path character creation, permanent death, and tactical turn-based combat. Players build a character through fourteen distinct careers before ever setting foot on a battlefield — every stat, skill, connection, and enemy comes from choices made during that life, not a character sheet filled out in advance.

345+ commits
~39,000 lines of PHP
128 backend modules
Built in ~6 weeks

PHP MySQL JavaScript Game Design Solo Dev

Play the Game

Full source is private — quest content, world data, and combat balance are the game itself. These files are a curated architecture sample (secrets redacted). See all & why →

Origin Story

From Console Prototype to Blood & Burden

C++ Prototype → tiny-rpg (Python CLI) → Blood & Burden (PHP, live)

Blood & Burden didn't start as a web app. The first attempt was a rough C++ console prototype with hand-rolled combat and colored console text. tiny-rpg picked up from there in Python: a full data-driven CLI RPG with monsters, dungeons, quests, and items loaded from JSON, turn-based combat with momentum and critical hits, a spellbook, dialogue options mid-battle (taunt, intimidate, negotiate), a shop and training grounds, and save/load. Its combat pacing and quest system carried straight over into Blood & Burden's design.

Python JSON-Driven Content Turn-Based Combat C++

Personal Project

Credit Payoff Planner

A command-line planner for paying down multiple credit cards. It validates each card's balance, limit, APR and minimum payment, then simulates payoff month by month under four scenarios: minimum payments only (the baseline), avalanche (highest APR first), snowball (smallest balance first) and highest balance first. A fixed monthly pool rolls every cleared card's payment into the next target. The result is a side-by-side report of months, interest, total paid and interest saved, with a payoff timeline, saved to a text file. Assumes no new charges.

Python Simulation Dataclasses Personal Finance

Coursework · CS317

Blackjack Casino Engine

A console blackjack game with a real betting loop: wager validation, a card dealer with proper ace scoring, dealer AI that plays to house rules, and a win/loss/push resolver. Every hand is logged to a persistent file so players can review their session history. Currently being rebuilt into a larger Casino Simulator Engine.

C++ File I/O Game Logic

Coursework · CS317

Movie Theater Reservation System

A ticketing and seat-map system for a two-screen theater. Handles matinee/evening pricing, an interactive seat grid across four showings, and an admin panel with running sales and profit reports read back from disk. Includes a seat-blocking pass that marks isolated single seats as unavailable so parties don't get split up.

C++ 2D Arrays File I/O

Coursework · ITE450

Sudoku Puzzle Generator

Two approaches to procedural Sudoku generation: a recursive backtracking solver that fills and validates a full N×N grid before removing a controlled number of digits, and a faster block-shuffle generator purpose-built for 4×4 boards with timing instrumentation to compare performance.

C++ Backtracking Algorithms

Personal Tooling

Python Utilities & Algorithms

A collection of Python utilities covering common systems administration and IT security tasks: sorting a messy folder by file type, parsing a web server log for top IPs and status codes, checking password strength against composition rules, scanning a host or subnet for open common ports, and an educational Merkle-Hellman knapsack cipher that generates its own keys and verifies every encrypt/decrypt round trip.

Python Automation Networking Security Cryptography

About

Background

I'm an Information Technology student with hands-on experience in software development, systems administration, and IT infrastructure. I build practical software using C++, Python, JavaScript, PHP, and SQL, with a focus on application architecture, automation, and solving real-world problems. I'm completing my bachelor's degree at Athens State University while continuing to build and modernize software projects across web, systems, simulation, and game development.

C++ Python JavaScript SQL PHP Git Systems Administration

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