Wahoo Wars

Inspiration

Before the Hackathon began, we set up a meeting to brainstorm on ideas for what our project ideas could be. We met each other through the meeting, discussed if we have done a hackathon before, and got to work on brainstorming. We created a list of project ideas that either won previous Hackathons or had a foundation in social networking that would later inspire what project we would begin making on the first morning. However, as we kept going through with the design and implementation, we faced a challenge concerning the viability of an app called HooHub that consisted of many different features. We also found our next idea on the list, Dorm Dash, to lack innovation as we compared it to DoorDash. We would continue looking for ideas and eventually we settled on gamification to be our foundation. Ultimately, we decided a game about gathering people to solve trivia questions about grounds would help people get more involved and establish community. Our name for this would be Wahoo Wars.

What it does

Wahoo Wars is an app that produces trivia questions for players to compete for points on grounds. A trivia question pops up in intervals among different locations around grounds on a map. Where these questions pop up is random, but the locations are all stored locations that people can go to for questions, so it will not generate a question on the street. Once a player is in proximity, they will likely find other players there that are there to compete to answer the question and receive points. Points that are won are displayed on a leaderboard that all players on grounds can fight to get on.

How we built it

We built this app by dividing the work into frontend and backend development. Those that worked on the backend used Supabase to create a database to implement the account management and question generation. The frontend created the home display which shows the map where the questions generate and pop up for you to solve once you get in proximity, and then there is the leaderboard tab which shows your ranking among the leaderboard, as well as statistics for previous winners. There is also a profile tab that allows you to implement your name and other information, as well as show statistics on the number of questions you get right or wrong and more. We built this using echo and react native so the app would have iOS capability to work on mobile devices.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into were finding out what exactly we should make for an idea. We would switch between ideas for a couple hours until we could finally decide on Wahoo Wars to stick to. Another challenge was that periodically a team member would have to leave for a couple hours, limiting the work that could be done. We also ran into technical issues when creating a mobile virtual environment, and this would waste time having to download the software to test what the app would look like on a mobile device.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the fact that for many this was our first Hackathon. We were able to work on a project for a consistent amount of time without any interruptions and by conversing with each other on how to move forward. We were also proud of the idea we stuck to because all that gamification was good to do for an idea.

What we learned

Some of us have not worked on frontend or backend to a degree. Learning frontend was a task, but we found our designs to be on par to what we believed to be acceptable.