Inspiration: Dartmouth invented Pong, and all was good. Without Dartmouth, the world would be in a dark, dark place. This family friendly game has allowed many around the world to bond over the shared love of Dartmouth goodness. I for one, have enjoyed playing pong (strictly water, of course) over the last few weeks I have spent here. I have learned techniques and finesse far beyond the scope of my age, and attained wisdom I would not have achieved if not for pong. For one, I have realized that inner peace really pays off. I guess what I am trying to say is that I hope this app fosters lifelong friendships, teaches ageless lessons, and promotes healthy competition.
What it does: Our app provides a competitive ranking system for pong players. Our app enables users to rank themselves and set up games with other players to improve their ranking.
How I built it: Our app has two sides: the client and the server. The client consists of a simple Android app that provides the user with personal stats as well as ranking with other players. The client also allows users to challenge each other in games that effect each player’s ranking through an elo system. The azure hosted server side consists of a simple API written in python using the Restful library for http requests. The server also maintains a SQLite database for storing and retrieving player data.
Challenges I ran into:
--Django configuration issues -Realized we only needed Django for HTTP requests and database handling, so we scrapped the entire Django VM -Switched to using Restful and JSON to handle HTTP requests and transmitting data between the app and our Azure based server -Another problem with JSON was that we were limited to sending single large strings at any time -This made it very tedious to parse requests/data sent to the app and server side, much more difficult on the Python side due to ease of modifying strings in Java and relative difficulty on Python
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
-William: Figuring out how to integrate Restful and JSON into the app and server sides to transmit data (this took a VERY long time) -Vibhor: Creating a data structure and complicated string parsing methods in Python using SQLite3, especially since I only learned Python on Codecademy almost exactly one month ago
What I learned
-Data Structures, how they function and how to set them up efficiently -How to use Android-Studio -Json -Data Management -Front-end back-end connectivity -Data transmission -VM Setup -Azure usage -Better grasp of classes
What's next for DPong
-Adding more schools broadening demographics -Adding public/private games -Scalability testing -Build into larger app to replace the inefficient Dartmouth student apps available publicly today
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