the best project

Inspiration

 We looked at how people study for math as is and were disappointed. Either they study in boring and repetitive ways that make it hard to study for longer than ten minutes, or they study in ways so relaxed that it's not representative of a test environment. Our product is a solution to this dilemma and offers both a fun and high-pressure study tool.

What it does

 Our product is a game in which the player is armed with a gun (calculator loaded) to fend off against the zombie horde. Every time the player wants to reload or get a health pick, they must correctly solve a math equation. Currently, we implemented calculus questions into our game but are planning to add more types of problems.

How we built it

 The game was primarily made with the Unity game engine. The majority of the models were made with Blender completely in-house. The remaining were online models that were modified with Blender. The game logic covers things like player movement, enemy movement, enemy pathfinding, player health, ammo, etc. were done with C# with Unity API. The expression generator and computer algebra system (CAS) were made in C#. They both use object-oriented programming to store a variety of differentiable equations as different objects depending on how to differentiate them (i.e. power rule vs trig). This allows each object to have its own method to differentiate itself.

Challenges we ran into

We faced quite a few challenges. For example, the algorithm was originally coded in java, but we needed to conver it to C#. We were unable to import one of the libraries that we needed, which messed up how we had to answer the in game question. Additionally, we faced some problems while interracting with the objects in the world.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

 We were proud to finish the hackathon with a working product. We found a creative and unique idea and were able to implement it in a short time frame. The game's visuals look appealing considering its one-day development time. We were also able to apply what we learned in class in a real-use case.

What we learned

 We learned how to manage the timeline of a project. We also learned how to distribute tasks such that our skills complement each other to the highest degree. Many members learned something new and were taught by a member more experienced in that area. For example, Nithya learned Blender and Hrishi learned C#.

What's next for the best project

 We plan to add more types of math problems to this game. We are also planning to add a website where users can play our game. Then we could make more math-based games and add them to this website.