Inspiration

I was in Spanish class one day, and we were playing Gimkit. For those who are unaware, Gimkit is an online social learning game, similar to Kahoot, where students compete by answering questions as correctly and as quickly as possible. We were playing one of the newer games, Capture the Flag, a class would be divided into two teams, and they could control avatars to capture the opposing teams flag. Walking/Running would consume energy, and the only way to gain energy was by answering questions correctly. This was some of the most fun that I've had in a long time learning. I wished I study like this more often, and that's when it hit me. This energy system could be implemented by a separate app, and you could study in ANY game, website or app. This would allow you to passively study while relaxing at the same time, allowing students to avoid burnout and stress by attaching studying to whatever they want.

What it does

Using

Studi Samurai runs as a console python application. When you launch it, it will give you an allowance of energy, draining every second. Eventually, when you run out of energy, you can regain it by answering questions, and you can keep answering questions until you feel like you want to get back to doing whatever you were doing before. When your run out of energy, the program will simulate you pressing escape (to pause any video game), space (to pause YouTube videos) and Alt Tab (to swap the current focused window).

Setup

The "cards.txt" file allows you to set up your questions and answers. You can have as many as you want, but if you have less than 4, the program wont work. You can also edit your starting energy amount, the amount drained every second, and the amount gained when answering a question correctly.

How I built it

I started by drafting my idea on a piece of paper and creating an exact outline of what I wanted to do. I than went into Visual Studio Code and spent a bit of time just learning how to use Python, because I might have gotten a 5 on the AP Comp Sci test, but that only pertains to Java, and Python has many differences that make it easier and harder at the same time. I then spent the rest of the day alternating between working, resting and helping my parents with yardwork. I then finished by writing "I started by drafting my idea on a piece of pap" break

phew, almost had infinite recursion there.

Challenges I ran into

The aforementioned complete inexperience in Python was a huge roadblock, and I also have never worked on an application that involved reading from an external file. These two problems were daunting, but enough googling can end any programing crisis. (Thank you, lord and savior, [link] https://www.w3schools.com/)

Accomplishments that I am proud of

Learning a new application from scratch, using GitHub for the first time, reading from external files for the first time, and finishing my second ever hackathon!

What I learned

Aside from Python, GitHub and file management, I learned that if you budget your time efficiently, projects like this lose their teeth. You can watch an episode of your favorite show, eat a meal with your family and help around the house and still have time to make a large project.

What's next for Studi Samurai

Hopefully I can turn this into a Steam plugin or a proper application that doesn't run in the terminal, but the concept itself remains solid. If I can make this a Steam app, I could actually sell this, I just have no idea how to do that.

Built With

• python
• visual-studio