UB Tycoon

School’s a game. Victor’s your guide.

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Inspiration

Our inspiration came from how overwhelming a semester can feel when every class has its own long syllabus and endless deadlines. We wanted to turn that stress into something fun, so we treated school like a game where every assignment becomes a move on a board. Victor was born from the idea that students don’t always need a strict boss - they just need a smart guide who quietly points to the next best step. UB Tycoon is our way of making staying on top of school feel less like panic and more like playing to win.

What it does

Our web-app turns a boring semester into an interesting board game where every assignment, quiz, and exam becomes a "move" on the map. As the student uploads your syllabus and logs the score and the game progresses, Victor E. Bull quietly analyzes everything in the background to guide on the next task to focus on to win this "Semester Game".

How we built it

We used the MERN Stack. The syllabus is parsed using Gemini AI and PDF parsing techniques to convert the syllabus into a roadmap. Authentication is done using Auth0. The client and the board game are developed using ReactJS.

Challenges we ran into

We were faced with 2 major challenges:

  • 3D modelling Victor E. Bull in Blender - Getting the character to look like real life. Victor took a lot of trial and error.
  • Working in a 24-hour time limit made it tough to split the tasks, work together with partial ideas, and spend hours fixing bugs to see a fully functional game become more than what we initially expected.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud of how clean and intuitive the layout and UI turned out. Even though different parts were built independently with different levels of expertise, everything came out together and integrated so seamlessly and flawlessly. We are also really proud of getting Auth0 working for login in such a simple and efficient way, such that it is secure to store the personal information in the actual login user's database. This also further boosted the efficiency in building the project by keeping the authentication process minimal.

What we learned

  • We learned how to take a messy and half-hatched idea-grade game and an AI, and start implementing it and watch it turn into an integrated system.
  • We learned how to use tight time, broken ideas, and last-minute bugs as constraints that forced us to design smarter and not just work harder.

What's next for UB Tycoon

  • We want to make Victor E. Bull smart so that he can handle more classes and give better advice that is more tailored towards the overall well-being.
  • Expand the game with multiplayer features like leaderboards and new board skin unlocks for particular milestones reached.
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