FlightDash Game

FlightDash is a text-based adventure game exploring the stresses in getting to your flight on-time when you wake up late.

Comment

About the Team

FlightDash was made by two-player team Aimee Knight and Katrina Knight, affectionately referred to as 'Team Michigan'. Katrina is an experienced developer and this year was her 3rd RGUHack. Aimee is new to developing and Hackathons, this RGUHack is her first event.

Katrina's home is in Aberdeen, and Aimee's home is in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the United States.

Inspiration

Both of us fly fairly frequently between Aberdeen and Grand Rapids, and although we always get to the airport with plenty of time, the anxiety of "What if" is always there. We wanted to capture the stress of missing your alarm have having to Dash to catch your flight, tackling all the obstacles that come with it; Getting to the Airport, TSA, etc.

What it does

FlightDash is a simple text-only adventure game with the objective being time-based, not score-based. Very simply, you must make it to your flight on time. Miss it - you lose. Make it - you win.

How we built it

For the development we focused on the types of coding that we're used to. For Aimee that meant working on the Website and getting the icons and marketing sorted. Katrina specialised on the game itself.

Aimee used HTML5UP's Landed design as a base, and then progressively customised it as needed. Including getting relevant image assets, making sure the website was easily navigable and compatible with mobile devices.

Katrina used C# for the game itself. Building the game the more traditional way by starting from scratch rather than using an engine. This gives us greater control over finer-details.

Challenges we ran into

At the beginning of the hack, Aimee's laptop wouldn't connect to any network and wouldn't load any applications! We were scrambling around trying to get anything to work for the first hour! Once we got that sorted, the challenge that faced us the most was writing the storyline for the game, writing code is one thing, but we needed to be able to present the environment to the player in an enticing way and not let them get bored.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Kat is incredibly proud she was able to code the game from scratch rather than use a library, Aimee is proud she was able to actually get something presentable!

What we learned

Aimee learned a lot, this is her first Hackathon, and she was incredibly anxious going into, not feeling confident she was going to be any use. She's really got to grips with web design, and feels more confident using HTML and CSS to make nice-looking websites herself rather than using WordPress or Wix.

Kat learned more about text adventure parsers, she discovered they were a lot simpler than she thought, especially when using a limited command set!

What's next for FlightDash Game

We've got plans for a number of updates in the future, including;

  • Support for Linux native apps
  • Using the Transportation Security Administration API to get real TSA Wait Times to shape the game
  • Introducing graphics in-game
  • A pocket edition for iOS and Android
  • and more! We definitely don't want to leave FlightDash to have an Emergency Landing!
Share this project:

Updates