Banana Market

Title Screen

Inspiration

Have you ever lost hundreds or thousands of dollars to the stock market? Well, unfortunately we have. Our group has spent countless dollars, hoping, and sadly failing in crypto currencies and stocks. It would have been nice to receive some simple easy way to experiment with them before delving in. This is where the banana market comes into play... Since everyone is either on a computer or phone these days we have developed our application for both. We hope this simple application serves as a tool to teach young children and teenagers (or anyone just starting out) of the dangers or beauty of the market.

What it does

The game starts off on Sunday, day one. It provides 1 week, Sunday to Saturday, for a user to gain as much money as they can through buying and selling bananas. Each day, the value of the bananas may suddenly rise or fall, just like how the stock market is sometimes very un-predictable. On the Java version, different scenarios may occur causing the price of the Bananas to change. At the start of every game, you are given $10 to start and a random amount of bananas already in possession (those old stocks your grandparents may have given to you when you were younger). You must use proper judgement to know when to buy, sell, or hold your bananas. Good Luck!

How we built it

We created one application in Eclipse using Java. Using JFrames and JApplets we have the user play our game. Starting out with the title screen after hitting enter, instructions pop up, then the user may play the game. A random value is assigned to the bananas to start. The user must select using a drop down menu or slider, the amount of bananas they want to sell or buy. They start out with $10 and can only buy or sell using the amount they have in their wallet. A random amount of bananas is assigned to start too. Our second version of the game is made in XCode for IOS, capable of running on an IOS device. It is a simpler version of the game that lasts longer, going 60 days, to really test a the user's abilities.

Challenges we ran into

Our first challenge was picking an idea and sticking with it. We had multiple great ideas this weekend but kept getting stuck and realizing we were delving into unknown areas. We hoped to combine our best skills with something new. Java w IOS was the perfect combo. In Java, we had trouble refreshing the JPanel. Since we did a calendar week, 7 days, each day we needed to refresh the JPanel with new information after the user had finished each day. We also struggled with minor logical errors, selling more bananas then owned or not enough funds to purchase intended bananas. We had never actually made an app on IOS before either. We spent many hours figuring out how to setup an app on XCode and get it running.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

We were very proud just to finish the original game in Eclipse. The Java version took a while to finish and to remake the whole game with only using the logic in IOS was a great challenge. At first, we had hoped to put this on a web domain and allow anyone on the web to play our game. We realized it would be more fun and different to make an app. So after finishing the first version of the game and receiving some feedback we decided to make an app version geared more for the competitive side and higher end users. It wasn't easy re-making the whole game again (but at least we had all of the logic already figured out). This was our first major hackathon and we struggled with many ideas. We are so proud, happy, and tired (pulling an all nighter is always taxing), but amazed and what we accomplished.

What we learned

We learned that persistence and patience is key and always update your applications before arriving because you never know how fast the wifi may be. Throughout, our progress we learned how to create an IOS app in XCode and delve deeper into Java JPanels.

What's next for our Banana Market

The java version of the game is great for kids and can be used as a great teaching tool. The IOS version we hope to actually publish. It needs to be spruced up a little bit and needs some funds for Apple's Costs but it can definitely be put on the store. Since this is our first ever app we hope to see it there soon.