Pacific Guardian

Inspiration

I'm an Honors student at Purdue and I'm currently taking a class where we are looking at different disasters around the world and how they impact populations. Something we spoke about was how the term 'natural disaster' is not accurate. Events in natural that cause damage are better termed 'hazards', as the only time they become disasters is when they intersect with humans. Additionally, we discovered in our research that a massive underlying cause of the hazard-to-disaster pipeline was vulnerability. Many populations are vulnerable in that they do not have the knowledge in how to protect themselves or prepare for disasters in their area. This was specifically designed to educate people on some potential actions they can take to protect themselves and their homes from disaster while encouraging them to look further.

What it does

You live in a hut on the sea in the Pacific Ocean and you earn money (or shells) by fishing! You use the fish to upgrade your humble abode. Every so often, a disaster comes through.

How I built it

I utilized class definitions and C++ to construct this terminal-situated text-based game.

Challenges I ran into

I had trouble with having an eternal loop of #includes, as header files were calling each other. That was solved by removing unimportant header files. I also had trouble with eating whitespace when taking in input from the terminal, but I ended up just removing those commands and everything solved itself.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

36 hours ago, I knew nothing about C++. Now, I proudly present a program of my own creation and hard work, and walk away with a pretty good understanding in the basics of C++.

What I learned

I learned C++. I also learned that if I get a bunch of errors, and then try to solve it myself and struggle to solve it myself for the next hour, that's when I should stop and ask for help. I also learned that sometimes, instead of pushing forward, it's better to completely abandon an idea and just move on - I saved time and energy just moving on after struggling with GUI components for a few hours.

What's next for Pacific Guardian

I hope to transfer Pacific Guardian into a web based or app based design so that it is actually accessible to those who would benefit most - namely vulnerable population and young children who don't really know much about climate change. I would also hope to potentially add a leveling system, more items, and definitely more intricacies about disasters.

Built With

• c++
• vscode