2 Guys 2 Balls

Small intro

Tired of the same old stuff? Wanna try something really new and mind-blowing? We reinvented an outdoor game... making it indoor. 404teamnotfound presents the brand new game that you've never seen before - basketball.

Inspiration

A lot of people enjoy playing basketball. But plenty of them don't have the opportunity to play. Probably it is always heavily raining outside, they don't have time to go to a proper court, or they can't manage it because of physical issues. Maybe they're just to lazy to meet with friends in real world. For these people in mind we created a multiplayer indoor basketball suite.

What it does

You can play basketball without leaving you room. An application on your android phone that you must place inside the basket tracks (using NFC tags) if you score. You can create games with anyone having the same setup, no matter where they are. Everything will be handled with our web app, the only things you need are a NFC compatible phone, a basket and an internet connection.

How we built it

We divided our app in three parts: Android app, the server and the web app. The Android app (built with Xamarin C#) allows a player to register their name and balls with our system, tracks when the ball is inside the basket (reading the unique string shared between the NFC tags attached to the ball) and sends this data to the server. The server keeps track of users, their balls, scores and games they created, handling requests from the mobile app and the web app. The backend is written on Node.JS (with the help of express framework). Microsoft Azure was used as a hosting. The web app allows players to create games (from 1 to 12 players!) and is used as a score table. The front end is done basically with Jade, JS (with some bit of jQuery) and Bootstrap framework.

Challenges we ran into

Working with NFC tags on Android proved not to be as easy as we thought before.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have managed to create a new way of distant social interaction, solving some of the particular problems mentioned before, using cheap, easy to obtain equipment.

What we learned

All of us learned a lot of new stuff, because all of us took the part of work that we do not usually do. Cris: usually works on the frontend; this time implemented the Node.JS backend. Mikhail: usually works on backend and game logic; this time took upon the frontend (Jade, Bootstrap). Daymon: usually works on desktop apps; this time built the NFC reading Android app.

What's next for 2 Guys 2 Balls

Some more ball games that are usually played outdoors, using similar concepts.

Built With

• css
• jade
• javascript
• jquery
• node.js
• xamarin-c#-(android)