Inspiration
Our team realized that so many New Year's resolutions have already been lost, and we aren't even a month into the year. But, keeping track of these goals is so boring. Imagine if you had the chance to not only become a better person and reach for the stars, but you could have fun while doing so.
What it does
Our mobile application's main purpose is to provide any user with the opportunity to stay on top of their goals while also being to able to compete against their friends. This isn't your typical to-do list app; no, in this app, you are your own character. You are able to customize your personal avatar, and keep track of points against your friends! As you finish more of your goals, you get more and more points, allowing you to increase the amount of items you unlock and the ability to upgrade your avatar.
How we built it
The front end of the application was built using React Native, which we thought was important so that both Android and iPhone would be able to enjoy the app. We decided to go the mobile app route because it made more sense to be able to keep this app close to you as you complete your goals, rather than always searching for a computer. The backend was built using Python, specifically Flask, and MongoDB to store our information and be able to call data back and forth for our many users to enjoy a personalized experience.
Challenges we ran into
For all of us, mobile development was very new, especially using React Native. While we had a good idea of what we wanted, some aspects were hard to implement since we were concurrently learning how to develop in this new framework. Additionally, while the database and the backend worked great separately, we had difficulties connecting them together since they relied on cloud storage, and given that we are broke college students, we couldn't improve their servers. In general, the time constraint of a hackathon always poses a great challenge, especially as we were all learning different tools we didn't have much prior experience in.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that even though the project didn't get done exactly how we envisioned it, learning a new framework, databases, and cloud storage were all cool things we learned. Coming to a hackathon is a great way to learn new technology, which we definitely did.
What we learned
As mentioned above, the following topics were all new technologies that we learned: React Native, MongoDB, and Flask. Mobile development was also very new to us, so that was a good learning experience as well. We had to make pixel art sprites for the game aspect of our app as well, so some people got a learning experience in that as well.
What's next for Kaster
There were some stretch goals that we had that we unfortunately did not have time to cover. For example, if we were to continue this project, we wanted to implement a currency system alongside the levels so that you can purchase new clothing for your avatar as you like. Additionally, we would implement global challenges, which are tasks that the community would collectively try to achieve.
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