GOTcha

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Inspiration

In this project we were inspired by the early 2000's toy called "Skannerz" that utilized barcode technology in a interactive battle experience. We wanted to find an innovate way to use barcode technology in our project. As we were trying to come up with possible ideas we though about these popular mobile games that are best described as gacha games. With that in mind, we decided to combine a gacha game with barcode technology. Thus, GOTcha was came to be.

What it does

This app is a gacha-like game that replicates some of the functionality present in "Skannerz" toys while bringing the fun to mobile devices. Additionally, there is a battle mode that features unique gameplay. Hopefully, we can take this project and move on to develop a fully-featured gacha game in the future.

How we built it

The frontend was done with react-native (via Expo) and the react-native-elements component toolkit. The API was done with Node/TypeScript/Sequelize, and utilized Docker to host a PostgreSQL database.

Challenges we ran into

The API took a tremendously-long amount of time. Also, we were all novice developers with React Native. This took some time to learn proficiently and use well in this app. CSS also presented some trouble. Furthermore, programming a unique game was incredibly involved. Surprisingly enough, incorporating the barcode functionality was one of the easier tasks in this project! I had more difficulties wiring it to the API and the database than I did setting it up in the frontend.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We learned this tech stack on the fly, and had to put up with some issues caused by expo across our devices. I'm very proud of the overall result that we're presenting, and I am excited for all the features that made it into our final project, and I'm looking forward to the ones that are forthcoming in the future.

What we learned

I learned how to develop for mobile, how to make an API work on mobile, and how to work with CSS better.

What's next for GOTcha

We hope to finish implementing the core features of the app and start accepting payments with Stripe, then rolling this out as a fully-featured app. For the game, combining the scanner feature to earn card packs would help every functional piece of the app interact.

Built With

Submitted to

TAMUhack 2021

Created by

I created both the social and purchase pages. This was my first time to ever use react native it was quite a learning experience. I definitely want to keep learning React.

Private user
I created the game mechanics for this project. This includes the card and deck system, the attack system, and the formatting for the battle screen.
Creating a game using react-native proved to be a fun challenge, increasing my understanding of the framework greatly.

Joshua Waterman
I did the API, the database configuration, the initial project skeleton, the barcode scanning feature, the login, code formatting, and documentation. This was my first time creating a full application with react-native, and I learned a significant amount of new skills and ideas that I can take back with me to other programming jobs, challenges, and hackathons. This was a blast and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Sam Stegall