BOMBAY!

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  This is the title screen of our game.

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  Excited cat!

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  Naming your cat.

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  Getting to know your cat.

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  Sad cat...

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  Fat cat!

Inspiration

Tracks/sponsor prizes: Rising Tech Hack, Best Far Out Hack, Best Impact Hack Every Halloween, the topic of black cats arises. Most of the time, black cats are portrayed as evil symbolism. These false perceptions are dangerous to black cats, especially during Halloween. Some shelters don’t allow people to adopt black cats during Halloween, due to the sad reality that some people take these false perceptions too far. Even after Halloween, many black cats are overlooked in shelters. We created this interactive simulator to destigmatize cats, by using a cute and friendly approach. Furthermore, in difficult times as now, we wanted to bring joy though our silly game, hoping it will bring a smile to our audience. Our title was inspired by Bombay cat's, which happen to be a breed of black cats.

What it does

Bombay is an interactive simulator that allows the user to play and speak to their user named cat. The cat’s mood is tracked by a karma counter, and reacts to how you respond to it. The app’s purpose is to educate and inform the user about black cats plague of misinformation that surrounds them.

How I built it

Using Java, our coders implemented JOptionPane to build an interactive experience for the user. We looped the dialogues in one while loop, while storing the option dialogue components into several arrays, and putting them through a method that displays it as it loops. We also created a method that keeps track of the karmaCount, and adds or subtracts it based on the index of the choices.

Challenges I ran into

Despite having some prior Java knowledge, our coders ran into some problems when brainstorming how to alter the visual display, and an easy way of minimizing our code in a productive way. Also since this was our team’s first hackathon, time management was a challenge at the beginning. However, we were able to evenly divide the work amongst us and would help each other out when needed.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We’re proud to make a working project in just twelve hours! Everything is functional in the way that we intended, and the art is absolutely adorable.

What I learned

As a team, we have all learned the importance of communication and time management. Our graphic designer, Penelope, learned about the creation of brushes, vectors and how much she prefers working with Adobe Illustrator rather than Adobe Photoshop. Our coders, Afshana and Jacinda, were able to incorporate their previous knowledge of JOptionPane and expand it for a smoother user experience. Jacinda, our front-end developer, specifically learned how to use JPanel and JLabel with images and texts, and adjust the coloring of a JOptionPane panel. Afshana, our back-end developer, learned how to incorporate methods, arrays, and while loops to repeat the function of a dialogue screen occurring, but with the specific dialogue or questions to progress the story.

What's next for Bombay!

We know that we have so much more room for improvement. We would love to make the GUI more aesthetically pleasing, as well as having more options. Maybe we could have 2D graphics? Our options are endless, and after our first hackathon, we're feeling very ambitious!

Built With

• adobe-illustrator
• java