MINECRAFT MASTER: Incoming PHS freshman honing his skills as a software programming wiz

PALMER — Strike up a conversation about Minecraft with most kids between the ages of 8 and 14 and you would probably get an earful on what worlds they’ve built or what they have “survived” with the video game.

Strike up a Minecraft conversation with Tobin Hushower, 13, and you’ll probably earn some software programming college credit.

The lines were long and the wait was 45 minutes or more at the counter of Rent-A-Geek during the Colony Days festivities in Palmer last month. The computer service and IT consulting business is owned by Tobin’s parents, Jamie and Carol Hushower. The line was long and the wait longer because of a popular Minecraft competition the business hosts during Colony Christmas and Colony Days events.

And at the center of the action — literally — was Tobin, who designs customized Minecraft worlds for the event, many with Palmer-centric features like a water tower, mountains and vegetables. In June, those worlds were a parkour block-jumping game and a scavenger hunt.

“We set up five or six computers so players can play separately and run through the course,” Hushower said. “We run our own Minecraft server and connect all the players remotely. I build the map and set up the server.”

The recent eighth-grade graduate from Palmer Junior-Middle School has already shown that the technology apple hasn’t fallen far from the proverbial tree.

“In seventh grade I was in advanced math, and finished that early, so I took a JavaScripting course and used that to come up with ideas to code my own Minecraft world,” he said. “So it will do certain stuff when somebody does something.”

Along with his academic accomplishments — he completed high school geometry on independent study last year — Hushower also received the Kiwanis’ Citizenship Award.

“He goes out of his way to support his school and community with his considerable talents and he’s only a ninth-grade student,” said Elizabeth Crowley, Hushower’s leadership teacher at PJMS last year.

During the Colony Days event, Hushower ran the competition from his laptop, refereeing the 15-minute rounds, tallying scores and doling out prizes to the winners.

“He had parents cracking up because he runs the contest a lot like a cooking show with a ‘hands off your keyboards!’ command at the end of a round,” Carol Hushower said. “He runs a tight ship.”

Tobin said he uses Eclipse and JavaScript software, with most of the programming done on his Microsoft Surface Pro. To build and test the game takes around 40 hours, he said.

“When my mom and dad decide they want to do another Minecraft event, we usually talk and come up with a theme and I will work on it here (at the shop) or at home,” Tobin said.

“I’d say the building is more like 30 hours. For the scavenger hunt, I had to build a certain size of item so that it didn’t go outside of the boundaries,” he said.

Then comes the testing.

“I will have my little brother, or my parents or the others in the office run through the course to see how long it’s going to take or how they are going to do on it,” he said

Carol said that runs the gamut, from the little brother that can zip through the course quickly to the mom who is “good at bumping into walls.”

“I get to do something for my parents and help their business out, and it’s fun to build it and great to see all the kids come in and try it out,” Tobin said.

And is usually the case with any product, there is always room for feedback and improvement.

“In the first parkour game (in December) people were able to interact with each other and some of the younger players maybe felt like they weren’t getting a good deal with the older kids,” Carol said. So Tobin built “biodomes” in the new game so that each contestant could play their own game even though they were in the same world.

“But they could see each other in the main area,” Tobin said. “It was a good way to solve the problem.”

Tobin turns 14 in August, and said he’s looking forward to starting classes at Palmer High School, where he plans to enroll in the International Baccalaureate program. He added that a future IT career didn’t look too bad.

“I like working with and on computers, and so far what I have seen of my dad, he fixes and builds computers.

“That’s cool.”

Contact reporter Steven Merritt at 352-2269 or steven.merritt@frontiersman.com