Between Us

Inspiration

The inspiration behind Between Us came from a love of the highly popular game Among Us and a desire to increase awareness on social distancing and public health.

What it does

The main player can move left and right by dragging the mouse and must dodge people who may potentially be infected by COVID-19. The main player has 3 masks, representing its health bar and for each time the player hits an obstacle with a mask, the player has half a mask subtracted from their total. If they hit an obstacle without a mask, the player has a full mask subtracted from their total number of masks. As the player survives longer and longer, the track will speed up, calculating the player's score based on how long they live. Once the player runs out of masks, the game ends.

How we built it

The game was built by using Java and Java's GUI.

Challenges we ran into

While extremely exciting, this remote experience was very new to us. At times it was difficult to keep the line of communication flowing and figuring out how to divide tasks. Additionally being very ambitious at first, we learned how to balance what was feasible for the time span allotted and what could be implemented in the future. Eventually we were able to find a way that worked best for us and was ultimately able to learn, design, code and debug together to create a project that we hope spreads awareness on social distancing.

What we learned

For many of us it was the first time designing and coding a full game. We had a fun and challenging time learning how to use Java's graphical user interface and the different functions and capabilities it holds. We learned how to communicate effectively to ensure all tasks were done on time and how to collaborate together as a team as well as using git to pull and push our code.

What's next for Between Us

This version of Between Us is just a starting point and there are many improvements that we hope to implement in the future. One idea we had was to create boosts in the game that the players could collect. These boots would give the user special powers to help increase their scores and become a safer player. For example, the quarantine boost would allow the player immunity for 10 seconds. The N95 boost would give the player immunity for one collision with a non mask wearer, and the vaccine boost would grant the player full mask health!

Built With

• java