ImageTag

Inspiration

ImageTag is based on a former google application which was used to help improve search results. We wanted to create a fun game where players could team up with anonymous opponents and think alike to create a tag for the given photo.

What it does

When you hit play, ImageTag pairs you up with a random opponent for each round of the game. For demonstration purposes, an image is generated using Flickr, though any photo source could be used. Once the timer starts, you have 15 seconds to both describe the given image with the same tag. If you both enter the same phrase, you are each awarded 10 points, and move onto the next picture. You are given a total of 2 minutes to score as many points as possible! At the end of the game, you are shown all of the images you viewed, along with all of the tags submitted. You are also given the option to add your name to the Top Scores page.

How I built it

We split our team into two parts- front end and back end development. The front end worked with CSS to create a presentable webpage for the game, including the Play Page, Help Page, and Top Scores. The back end, using C#, relies on SignalR to connect users to our web server.

Challenges I ran into

Initially, we ran into several issues in the back end. The local IIS authentication to the SQL server proved too challenging to master in this short period of time, so databases did not end up working out for us.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud that we were able to create a working, fun end product. This is the first time that any of us had participated in a Hackathon, and it was great to see what we could collectively accomplish in 36 hours. We are proud that we were able to utilize Signal R/web sockets for client communication. Being able to get all of this functional in a short period of time was frustrating, but very worthwhile.

What I learned

We learned a lot about how to use web sockets in a practical way. Some of us were also introduced to bootstrap and making the front end of a website practical and visually appealing. Overall, we each learned a different skill that helped us to work together to come up with a successful end product.

What's next for ImageTag

Ideally, we would like to improve some of the features of this web application. If we were to scale the project to reach a greater audience, some of the features would need to be made more efficient as well.