Philly Trash Buster

About Our Project

Inspiration

Our original vision for this game was to create a fighting RPG where players take on the role of a representative from the City of Philadelphia’s Clean and Green Initiatives. Inspired by games like Pokémon, the player would battle trash monsters and clean up CO2 hotspots around Philly’s most iconic locations. The idea stemmed from our passion for environmental sustainability and our desire to raise awareness about the importance of keeping cities clean in a fun and engaging way.

What We Learned

During development, we learned a lot about the intricacies of game design and the tools needed to bring our idea to life. Initially, we struggled with tools like Spline due to our unfamiliarity with creating 3D interactions from scratch and integrating them with a React application and backend. This experience pushed us to adapt quickly and explore new platforms, ultimately leading us to Roblox Studio. This shift opened up new possibilities, and we learned how to leverage Roblox’s development environment to build our game with more accessible tools and functionality.

How We Built It

We started by planning the core gameplay mechanics, which included WASD movement, battling trash monsters, and using an open-world environment modeled after Philly. Our initial tech stack consisted of JavaScript, Spline for 3D assets, and GitHub for version control. However, after realizing the complexity of integrating everything in time for the hackathon, we pivoted to Roblox Studio. This allowed us to build an open-world trash collection game where players move around cleaning trash and fighting off enemies in real-time.

Challenges We Faced

The biggest challenge was the learning curve for working with Spline and the complexity of managing assets in a 3D environment. We underestimated the time and effort it would take to design 3D assets, code interactions, and make everything work smoothly together. The pivot to Roblox was a major turning point. It streamlined the game’s scope but brought its own challenges, like learning Lua scripting and adapting our gameplay mechanics to fit Roblox’s framework. In addition to this change, we were unable to push our code to Github due to restrictions with Roblox Studio.

In the end, we built a game that met our core objective: to create a fun, engaging way for players to clean up Philly while raising awareness about environmental issues.