Project Questor

PROJECT QUESTOR
In Game Map View
In Game Quest Accept
Backend Diagram

Inspiration

The inspiration for our project was the recent development in the gaming industry. With the release of Pokemon Go a few years ago a new type of game has captured the interest of many users young and old alike. This was recently continued with the release of Jurassic World Alike, which had been written in Unity just as our project is. We were very interested in the inner workings of these new game mechanics. That is why we decided that we wanted to create our own treasure hunt application with the aspiration to give our users more freedom over the content than with say Pokemon Go or Jurassic World Alive.

What it does

Currently the application allows to read the players location from a Location Data Provider. This Provider can either be mocked by Unity as seen in our presentation or return real life data when used on a mobile device. In both cases a small figure, representing the player, moves about a real map filled with Game Markers. These Game Markers mark the start of a unique treasure hunt that a user will be able to take part in. In the future the User will be able to solve Quizzes in the treasure hunt to really complete it fully. Also the users will be able to create their own Treasure hunts, which will be hosted on our server. That way they can share their treasure hunts with their friends.

How we built it

We used the Unity Framework for our frontend application. It has many advantages being a strong game engine and also being able to create Android and iOS applications alike, thus saving a lot of development time compared to writing individual applications for each platform. For the backend we used the Spring Boot framework coupled with a MySQL Database. This had the huge advantage that we had already worked with Spring Boot previously so that we did not need to get familiar with the technology. Also Spring Boot allows for a quick and easy Database Setup that might not be very scalable but in the setting of a Hackathon we decided that speed was a central aspect for the decision of a framework.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge we ran into was getting to know Unity on the fly while also having to make progress. We especially had big problems getting the map to work and fill it with the data from our backend. Another big problem was the Git versioning control in combination with Unity since halfway through the programming process parts of our code seemed to vanish on a commit which led to a permanent loss of some vital features that had to be restored in meticulous detective work.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

We certainly see now that the task we had set ourselves was very big and hard to accomplish within the time limit of 24 hours. However although we had many problems we came very far with our project accomplishing more than we had hoped for during the implementation process. We are especially happy that we actually have vital game mechanics that we can show off in a presentation.

What we learned

In a setting where time is of the essence it is advisable to use technologies that you are skilled in instead of fancy, powerful technology. However sometimes taking up a challenge and sticking with it might net you a better experience and a new skillset that might be useful in a long run. I think all group members will agree that we have a way bigger understanding of Unity and game development now than we had before the project.

What's next for Project Questor

We will certainly keep working on the project, probably replacing the backend with a more robust and enduring one and adjusting the overall structure to make it more effective. Finally we want to add more functionalities, as described in the chapter "What it does" in the second paragraph, so that we can release it on the App Stores of Android and iOS one day. We certainly put so much work, blood, sweat and tears into this project that we will continue working on it until we are completely happy with the outcome.