Northeastern CEO

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Inspiration

NORTHEASTERN-CEO is a reimagining of the classic web browser game Cookie Clicker. Whether some of us would like to admit it or not, we've all spent countless hours during school playing this game in the back of the room. Some would call it a mindless game, others a strategic masterpiece. Whatever your opinion, we can all agree that we spent way too much time playing it. That's where we're coming from and where we're going is by baking that classic schooltime game with a sprinkling of Northeastern University Manifesting Destinying.

What it does

So what does NORTHEASTERN-CEO actually do? Well we're glad you asked (at least I hope you asked that, otherwise I'd be rather disappointed after poring over this at 5am). At its core, NORTHEASTERN-CEO works on a basic progression system of clicking a button for a small amount of money, using that money to attract new students, then having each student be a revenue source, and gradually scaling up and up until purchasing (MANIFEST DESTINY) a rival university. It also features a Reputation meter that can fluctuate depending on your actions in-game, with a lower reputation value resulting in a decreased revenue stream. Beyond that, there are also toggles to help automate certain features (such as bribing children!).

Challenges we ran into

Many of the challenges that we ran into came from just not knowing how many of these technologies worked. Many of us had never programmed in these languages, much less created an entire website. Even tasks as simple as creating a button or setting up our environments were challenges to overcome.

And once we did, new challenges appeared. Uplifting our code with CSS proved to be a challenge as all of us conveniently forgot to add a single class name to any of our elements, rendering it impossible to stylize said elements. Moving data between components were a major challenge for us: we didn't know how to move data between components, and we were forced to all work in the same file for the first few hours, which inevitably created a host of issues with merge conflicts.

While we were all pulling our hair out at what some people might call mere bumps in the road, we eventually come out on the other side proud of what we had accomplished.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Learning and using the tools that are part of the React framework is something that our team is proud of. We all came into this event barely knowing a thing, and we can definitely all say that we're walking out of this event having learned something new.

Managing to create this web game and have it in a working state, with mechanics that enhance each other and decent (static) graphics is something we're proud of, especially given the time constraints. What we're even more proud of is the way we worked together like a team. We were all dedicate to finishing this project and put our heads together whenever an problem proved too difficult for any one of us to solve individually.

And as said before, learning and using all of these new tools are what we are most proud of.

What we learned

First off, the React framework. But anyways, while creating a button that can change a value somewhere else in the code is likely to be something completely mundane to the average programmer, it was a breakthrough moment for us. After that we can now confidently (maybe not too confidently) say we're able to create buttons. (And CSS styling, and UI design.)

And beyond the coding elements of our project, we learned how to work together, how to write code meant to be read and implemented by a team, and how to resolve conflicts (mostly just merge conflicts) when they arose.

What's next for Northeastern CEO

While we're proud of what we have accomplished this weekend, our project has left much to be desired. There are still an immense wealth of features we can implement, from purchasing ISEC 3 through 100 to adding custom campuses to purchase (some in Boston, some in the Sahara desert), to deeper levels of customization. And to help with the user experience, a method to save a game at its current state is something that would be at the top of our priority list if we were to return to this project.