Zotbuddy

Inspiration

Our biggest inspiration was Tamagotchi pets. These once popular toys were being lost to time and irrelevance but their overall concept allowed us to pivot into the theme of "RPGs" pretty easily since sprite work and RPGs are almost synonymous because of the long history of the game development and constraints when creating assets that were not overcome until recent times. On top of this cute animals have been proven to relieve stress within humans because of our subconscious association of cute things and happy feelings. With a cute anteater to accompany the users and assist them in remembering their commitments they are bound to experience a mood improvement.

What it does

Our web-extension serves as a to-do list with a cute little anteater pal to remind you to keep pushing towards completing commitments you made. From personal experience as students we understand how difficult it is to manage time and find the motivation to stick to previously made commitments when taking care of homework, attending classes, trying to catch up on sleep and more. With our extension we hope to motivate as many students as possible to adopt healthier time management and organization habits as well as increasing focus on academics.

How we built it

We developed a Sqlalchemy database to store all of the todo list information for each user after then setting up a website connection using chrome extensions written in the python framework - Django - as a base structure. Our front-end team drafted the models and assets before applying the spritework into react.js and typescript. As for the front work we split between one person working on the sprites and asset creation while the other did the coding writing all of the HTML, JS and CSS files on VSCode. We slowly incorporated the sprites as they were ready into the scripts and were constantly bouncing ideas off of each other engaging in the design process. Prior to actually building the game was a lot of writing and fleshing out ideas. We took to Pinterest and used Canva jam board to create a cooperative mood board full of creativity. Once we had fleshed out a wire frame and content for each of the pages of the project we were building, we got to work chipping away at different parts. At the very end the four of us came together to share our work and begin the integration process of front end and back end which was seamless due to our teams constant communication throughout the entire project. Everyone played a huge role in making our project come to life!

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was a weak start. Our original idea was knocked down after so much deliberation and the unexpected realization of the impossibility of the scale of our vision given the time constraints. We came across a decent amount of smaller hurdles that didn't discourage us like animations getting stuck in the wrong loops as well as our backend coming across problems with database implementation due to unfamiliarity with Sqlalchemy, however our teams strong collaboration skills pulled through and we filled in for each others shortcomings

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're most proud of our spritework in working on our ZotBuddy. A couple of backwards animations and a lot of off centered pages later we came up with a character that we were satisfied with and perfectly fit the theme of the competition. Another huge accomplishment we made was incorporating Sqlalchemy with Django framework to have live database updates for the users of our extension.

What we learned

Our key take aways from this hackathon was learning new aspects of python. Despite how much python is talked down on in the professional field due to how slow it is, the language itself is so extremely versatile allowing for server hosting, database constructing, and seamless backend implementation by using a framework or a library. We also got a taste of true fullstack development and what it entails. Most of the time the term "Fullstack development" is thrown around and a little romanticized from those in the field however attempting to do fullstack while only specializing in either backend or frontend was a hard pivot since the other half of fullstack is usually out of a programmer's comfort zone. As for the front end developers, we had little to no experience with the technologies we used to develop the project. There is a very high likelihood that there were easier approaches or libraries out there that we could have used to make the process easier. This made the learning curve quite intimidating but we plunged ourselves into the deep end and took every chance we had to learn. Everything from collaboration, brainstorming to the development pipeline was pretty new as it was some of our first time participating in a hackathon and we all definitely took a lot away from attending IrvineHacks.

What's next for Zot buddy

Our next steps for our little Zot buddy is implementing more features that will improve user retention such as implementing an event calendar where users can access their social events and have a clearer vision of activities planned for the future that aren't just listed down in a row. We also wanted to give Zot buddy more life and include fun animations and text bubbles with words of encouragement and motivation. We would love to bring to the student body a more complete Zot buddy as he is a cute companion for your screen and is here to improve student life.