Paper Plane

"life sucks, doesn't it?"

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Inspiration

life, to put it shortly, can suck. this past year or so has probably been the hardest for most people. this year, next year, and all future years may all be their own unique flavors of terrible.

in pe class one day, my teacher called her friend one day for the sole reason to tell her how appreciative she was of her. it was such a wholesome and positive experience, and it made me learn something: that things don't have to be terrible, not if we acknowledge the not-so-terrible things. of course, that's obvious. so how do we actively take steps towards acknowledging all the not-so-terrible things? here's my take on a journaling app that attempts to do this: paper plane!

What it does

your character spends their days on the roof of their apartment complex, sitting idly and writing letters to their dear friend—Tan. the player can do the following:

  1. track what they are appreciative of by "sending letters" to Tan
  2. view all their recorded gratitudes in a journal (w/ dates)
  3. receive letters from Tan

How we built it

i have lots of experience with javascript and am proficient in p5.js, so i wanted to see what i could do with the tools i have. there was also a fair bit of html and css involved. i drew all the assets and sprites in procreate. at the time of writing this, i have a bit of Firebase added into my code, but it's not usable for retrieving user data and saving it at the moment.

Challenges we ran into

  • there were many times when i felt that i could make my code way more streamlined, but had to move on to implementing to the next feature.
  • getting the paper airplane to fly on screen was difficult because i wasn't quite sure how to clone the html element and seamlessly work it into my js, which had already selected those html elements and made them into p5 elements.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • the journal works and it works great!! (has next/back buttons and everything)
  • i was able to add the ability to receive letters in a pretty short amount of time
  • i was really focused and basically worked the entire time :DD
  • gosh, just about everything

What we learned

  • css is weird and not fun
  • sometimes it's best to put down a bug or issue and work on something else, then come back with a fresh mind and motivation
  • although it's risky, sometimes it pays off to try things you usually don't during hackathons

What's next for Paper Plane

  • implementing possible machine learning/AI for Tan's responses
  • cleaning the code up and making it far faster/efficient
  • fully add Firebase and have users save their data
  • finish adding the gift system i ran out of time for
  • refining the ui and adding more animations

thank you to all the people who made gunnhacks possible! this was my first hackathon, and it was a great experience. i'll go sleep now.

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