First Contact

Main Menu
Whiteboard
A New World
Awaiting a response
Responding yourself

Inspiration

One of the greatest challenges that you might encounter upon discovering a new world is being able to communicate with the locals!

What it does

Our aliens use whiteboards to communicate with each other, sending data between laptops/phones using the webcam. One tries to learn about the other's world, and forms their prediction in real time, while the other draws simple images on a whiteboard to communicate.

How we built it

We used Tauri to make the web app feel native on MacOS and Linux. In order to give the aliens sufficient intelligence, we use the Anthropic API to send prompts to a Large Language Model.

Challenges we ran into

Our team consists of two MacOS users and one Linux user, meaning cross-compatibility had to be achieved. As the scope of the project was very open, we had to spend a while deliberating the best course to follow, which we (hopefully!) managed after some prototyping.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are all happy with the feeling of wonder that our program creates, and the ability to draw on your own board and see what an alien thinks your world looks like turned out to be incredibly fun!

What we learned

Design is an incredibly important step of any project. Before we found a direction, our team was rather split and not working efficiently, but as soon as we landed on the same page our production sped up hugely and we reached the best project that our cumulative ideas could achieve.

What's next for First Contact

We would love to extend the software to achieve full compatibility with all devices. Perhaps an application could be launched instead of using a web app.