Study-Chan Discord Bot

Inspiration

With an online semester where we can no longer study and lose brain cells with our friends, Discord has become an essential tool in staying connected. It was fun to play around with various bots such as TacoShack and EPIC rpg. Not only did we feel closer, but our Discord server felt more like a virtual lounge. After days of distracting ourselves from studying with these bots, we decided it was finally time to encourage ourselves to study by creating our very own study bot: study-chan

What Does it Do?

Although it’s a very simple bot, its main function is intact. Study-chan has a clock-in system when users can log their daily study times, and watch as their daily streak grows every time they check-in. Some other bonuses to the bot include a nifty 8ball, where users can ask yes/no questions and see what the future holds for them. The motivate command provides some hilarious, millennial comedy that encourages users to study harder (see for yourself what happens if you ask for motivation).

How we Built it

We first began by formulating an idea of what we think would be cool to make. After talking about how a Discord bot would be fun to use within our friend group, we looked for resources that would help us. First we had to create a bot through the Discord Developer Portal then pick up the coding portion after looking over some basic python concepts.

Challenges we ran into

A big issue we ran into was getting ahead of ourselves. There were way too many features we were looking forward to implementing, but were out of our reach in terms of knowledge and time. Thankfully, we did not underestimate our abilities, but we also did not overestimate them. We outlined what we wanted to accomplish in our code that was feasible within the time limits of hackathon and achieved way more than we expected.

An Accomplishment We’re Proud Of

Our biggest accomplishment was being able to turn an idea that we honestly had no clue how to execute into something functional. We’re both completely new to python and Discord bots, but we were able to learn and use a wide variety of foreign tools.

What We Learned

We learned the basics of coding in python using the Discord.py API to connect to a Discord Server. We learned how to communicate with each other and really flesh out our ideas to create the bot of our imaginations.

What's next for study-chan

Don’t worry. Our Discord bot, study-chan, doesn’t see the end of its life today. We are looking to implement more features to the bot including a leveling system, study-time tracking system, and leaderboards where users can compete on who lost more brain cells.