StoryEchoes

Creating an immersive experience for readers and gamers alike!

Comment 1

Inspiration

As someone who enjoys music when I read, I found myself coming across a very common problem. A lot of the time advertisements or mismatched music would pull me out of the story I was enjoying! To try and remedy this problem I started to outline the idea of "StoryEchoes." StoryEchoes allows for readers and gamers to quickly find playlists that fit their books or games. It creates an immersive environment and helps take a user deeper into the world of their game or any other type of story. The idea of using it for games came from the idea that much of the music can be repetitive or a song you might really enjoy will only play once, so pulling the playlist gives more variety.

What it does

StoryEchoes is an easy to use web application that allows for the user to type in a title/genre which will produce a playlist, or "soundtrack." The goal is that this playlist will allow the user to combat that disconnection that many users face with fictional worlds or different time periods. Music has been shown to be able to provide a significant effect on our emotional states, so having music that follows the story can help us to feel the way the characters may feel or at least feel like we are in their world. This could also be used in a business because of the lack of nsfw music without advertisements.

How I Built It

Utilizing html, css, and Javascript (Jquery), I focused more on front end than back end. I also created a youtube video to use as the background for the website that is comprised of photos that are "jump into" photos. I also utilized Youtube's api and focused on being able to fetch the most viewed and most popular playlists to get the best chance of the playlist fitting the title the user would submit. By pulling playlists the music tends to follow a flow that seems to fit most books/movies. This flow and change in music at appropriate times is what I was going for.

Challenges I ran into

I came into this hackathon knowing nothing about coding. I had to learn Javascript along with html and css in a fairly short amount of time which was quite difficult. Since I was using Javascript along with html and css, there was quite a lot of nesting that I had to do to be able to make the application work the way I wanted. The youtube video background did not end up working, but that is something I will work on in future plans. Overall, I was a single person team and this is my very first hack, so it took me longer to work out some basic bugs. Still, I am EXTREMELY proud of the project and the challenges that I ran into because without challenges there is no learning.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

This was my very first hack and I am extremely proud to have completed it to my satisfaction. A lot of the small details with design and aesthetics were hard to convey, but I am happy at how it looks and how the application acts. It also looks and works well on mobile (not just on the computer).

What I learned

For all the first time hackers out there, never ever give up on yourself. For a long time I was extremely hesitant in even trying to hack, but after completing this project I am proud to say I am excited to continue to develop it and to see what else I could do!

What's next for

I would love to eventually have a larger database of music to pull from that would stay advertisement free. I would also like to see a larger user interface that would allow more individual input into playlists. Integrating my application with the Amazon Echo was the next big step I was looking to take. Using the echo and its wonderful speaker system would allow for a surround sound level of music which would contribute even more to the experience of using StoryEchoes. Even an integration with audible would allow for a complete listening experience.

I have many more plans for this application and will continue to develop and use it after SpartaHack2016!

Share this project:

Updates