Building Bridges

Inspiration

After learning more about the gender gap in computing, our team decided to create a game that introduces coding concepts through a collaborative puzzle-platformer. This is based on research that found women make up a larger player base in these two genres of video games. Additionally, we found that most computing events are very competitive, and very few focus on the type of collaborative coding that creates a positive coding community. link

What it does

The goal of our game is the traverse from the starting platform to the ending platform as quickly as possible. The game is based on the idea that you need to collaborate to succeed. This involves placing blocks, by using code, in real-time across multiple devices. Each command has a cooldown timer, so players need to work together to achieve the lowest time. Users have the ability to place blocks individually, but also to use more advanced looping structures to make bridges all at once.

How we built it

The landing page is built in HTML and JavaScript. We used the Python web framework, Flask, to make the game for local multiplayer. We embedded a code editor into the page beside the game.

Challenges we ran into

Firstly, we are all first-timers when it comes to hackathons, and none of us have significant experience using HTML or JavaScript. This led to difficulties in coming up with an idea, and especially in getting that idea off the ground. Our team members spent the first ~6 hours of the event doing background research and searching for ways to make our ideas a reality. The learning curve was steep, leading to little sleep between the three of us over the course of the entire event. Additionally, we encountered challenges when it came to integrating the JS back-end and Python front-end.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

On the first day, we really didn't think we were going to be able to pull our idea off, but we really put our heads together and were able to make something we're truly proud of. Since none of us were familiar with multiplayer games, the task at hand proved to be quite difficult. In the end, however, all of our team members worked vigorously to produce our final result.

What we learned

All of our team members learned a lot about HTML, JavaScript, Flask, and Python. Additionally, we learned how to host a web app so that it is usable in a multiplayer setting.