Steampunk Cat-Culus

Inspiration

We seek to make the learning process of mathematics and other subjects more interactive and interesting. Hand gesture technology, along with a world of steampunk, combines to create a game, whisking players away for an adventure. The concept of saving this endearing cat from ghostly enemies adds a little urgency and fun while making the task of answering math problems engaging.

What it does

Steampunk Cat-culus is a math adventure in which the player takes control with hand gestures to ward off ghostly foes. This game focuses on a cute cat in steampunk, caught in an evil attack of spectral enemies carrying math questions and a ticking countdown. As the ghosts begin to close in, one has to come up with the right answer through quick display with fingers and use them as gestures for advancing phantoms. Every correct answer by the player saves the cat from certain death, while every instance of hesitation brings ghosts closer and closer, raising the degree of difficulty and adding tension to the game.

How we built it

• Python and Pygame for the game environment. They are in charge of managing visuals and animations for the steampunk aesthetic.
• Mediapipe and OpenCV for hand gesture detection, enabling the game to interpret finger numbers in real time and use these as answers.
• Cloudflare for potential scalability and AI question generation to make this experience smooth and challenging at the same time. We implemented steampunk assets and animations, bringing in pixel art and a retro-futuristic vibe to the game.

Challenges we ran into

All the individual components—Pygame, the hand detector, the AI server, and our custom class objects—were functioning smoothly on their own. However, when we attempted to integrate everything into Pygame, we encountered numerous challenges. This was also our first time trying to develop a game using Pygame, which added to the complexity of the process and required us to overcome a steep learning curve. Another challenge we had was trying to find a balance in the ghost approach speeds and making the timers fair yet challenging; for smooth gameplay to come together with timed interactions, code, and design adjustments were needed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We succeeded in achieving our aim of an operational hand gesture-based educational game. Doing a great job with the integration of hand detection and game mechanics while enabling fun and education stood as a big plus for us. We're proud of the steampunk design, which gives this game a very particular visual identity.

What we learned

Working on this project taught us invaluable lessons about system integration and debugging complex, multi-component applications. We learned how to optimize performance and handle real-time data processing, and we gained insights into how different technologies can work together. Additionally, we developed a deeper understanding of Pygame's limitations and strengths, improved our problem-solving skills, and realized the importance of planning for potential integration issues in advance. This experience also highlighted the value of collaboration and continuous iteration.

The project allowed us to dive deeper into the realm of computer vision, gesture detection, and the development of games using Python and Pygame. It also made us become much more familiar with the difficulties involved in the creation of intuitive real-time interactions and challenge-level balancing to keep the players' attention.

What's next for Steampunk Cat-Culus

In the future, we would like to add more subjects, such as science and history, along with questions about each subject in Cat-culus. In addition to that, we need more animations regarding the cat character and different enemies. Other future works can include multiplayer modes of friendly competition or a longer storyline for more extended gameplay.

Built With

• cloudflare
• gemini
• github
• mediapi
• opencv
• pygames
• python