The Couch Potatoes

Inspiration

The coronavirus has separated us more than one could ever imagine. It has forced us from being social butterflies going to school and seeing our friends daily to being couch potatoes. We miss the connections that school brought us, but since it is unsafe to go to school what is the solution? That's where our software comes in. We offer users the ability to "walk-around" school and interact with their fellow classmates creating a bond that we haven't had in over a year.

What it does

It connects students virtually in a way that we have not seen before. If two students enter the same room their videos/microphones will turn on and they will be able to communicate with each other. This allows students an experience they could not get with Zoom.

How we built it

We used Unity and C# to create a windows application that fulfilled our wishes. We also used agor.io SDK to connect video and audio.

Challenges we ran into

Collision detection would not work. We spent many hours trying to figure this out but it evaded us. If we had figured it out we would have been able to implement proximity chat so that you could talk to your friend next to you privately.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to learn the basics of Unity and networking in such a short amount of time. We were also able to create a map that I am very proud of.

What we learned

That sometimes the part you think will be the quickest ends up taking the longest. You have to adapt to your ever-changing environment. The most important thing we learned though is to have fun and not take it too seriously :).

What's next for The Couch Potatoes

We really liked the idea that we came up with and we want to continue the development of it. The next step is locking in collision detection. Once we lock this in we will be able to add the other features we wish to add which include speaker mode for a teacher giving a presentation or proximity chat so that you could whisper to a student next to you.

Conclusion

Since this year was all about connections we wanted to focus on what we felt was most important to us. The missing link that we have with our fellow classmates. With our product, we hope to be able to make the school experience safer and more fun during this pandemic.