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https://youtu.be/0pt24_hZ55I?si=WeauSWhEdDuUttLb We identified a common issues within students just like us of losing focus during long study sessions and wanted to develop a simple idea: What if the whole team's success depends on everyone staying focused? Shared Accountability, but with a bomb.
Controlled Charge is a 2–5 player focus game. A bomb sits in the middle of the session, counting down for all players. The website takes in each player's webcam and runs a ML model for tracking head pose and eye state. In the case where anyone looks away from their screen for too long, the timer accelerates toward detonation signaling to all players. Stay focused as a team and the timer is at a stand still or recovers health. Rooms support team creation via a join code, and results feed a live leaderboard tracking survival time across runs which add a competitive aspect to the game
The core is a Node.js/Express server running Socket.io, managing room state, per-player focus flags, and a tick loop that drives the shared bomb timer in real time across all clients. Focus detection runs entirely client-side using a browser ML model. The front end is built on java script and react.
Keeping the ML detection lightweight enough to run smoothly in-browser while staying accurate across different webcam angles and lighting was a huge issue. Along with syncing up a shared timer relaying back to the server and each client. We had to balance the timer's decay and regen rates making sure the game was not too punishing but also not too lenient.
We are prod of setting up a fully working real-time multiplayer loop along with room creation, live focus tracking and synced up countdown along with building a ML model that was light weight enough to run entirely client sided while still being responsive.
As a team we learned how to build and design as a small team and planned through a workflow of designing real-time systems in parallel. Along with that we learned how to handle server infrastructure and real time ML face tracking.
Updates in the future: Mobile development Peer to Peer Camera sharing Daily leaderboard and Global Leaderboard Track tabbed out or minimizing the app or website Skins and themes for achieving longer focus levels Increase Team sizes Team vs Team game modes
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