The Gamers Hub

The one stop hub for all gamers to interact and build a community!

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🌐 Domain Name: https://the-gamers-hub.tech/

☁️ Inspiration

Numerous gamers want to connect with others and get good at a game. On the other hand, gamers want to host events to bring the community together and gain connections. We, as gamers ourselves, wanted to create a platform where all gamers could connect with each other in a safe environment. Also, gamers who wanted to quickly stream but didn't want to set everything up can use our plugin to connect their Minecraft client with twitch.

🚧 What It Does

Our app is consisted of 2 parts:

  • The Actual App which is a community for gamers to get to know each other through events. Using firebase's easy login with google, we implement a user authentication system. We have a homepage of events which users can browse through and be invited to. Gamers can join each others events and get various information such as location, time, and the description.
  • Minecraft+Twitch: Currently, twitch requires you to download a native app and do numerous steps to setup your stream. We reduce all these steps into one step. The gamer just installs our plugin, and they can easily start streaming with one command. Chat messages are also streamed both ways.

👨🏾‍💻 How We Built It

  • Google Cloud: With firebase, we were easily able to create a full fledged authentication system. It saved us the hassle of manually managing provides and users. We also used firestore, which allowed us to easily and securely store our user's data. Firestore's easy to use API enabled us to implement more features into our application because of it's extensibility. Finally, we used the cloud VM feature to test our code and make sure streams and sign ups were working on another machine, imitating an actual user coming to our website.
  • Deso: Deso played a big role in our application. It helped us secure our app against cyber threats using blockchain technology. It's smart contracts allowed us to implement a partially working payment system, though we didn't have time to finish it. We used Deso to store all images, whether of an event or user. There were many providers out there, but Deso had the strongest security so we went with Deso.
  • Cohere: Any community must be safe from bullying. We wanted to make sure no one felt harmed in our community, so we used Cohere to create a barrier against hate. In every place possible, we implemented Cohere's sentimental analysis to block off negativity. This helped us broaden our audience and make sure everyone felt included.
  • Github: Maintaining source code is very hard when you're on a time crunch. Everyone has different versions, and not having a control system is hard. Fortunately, Github saved us with it's easy to use command line interface. On top of having a very good commit system, Github also has pull requests and issues, which my team used a lot to not forget about bugs and remind each other about tasks. Languages wise, we used python and flask for the server. We used Replit for hosting and domain.com for the domain. For the Minecraft plugin, we used java and websockets to stream game play.

👷 Challenges We Ran Into

We ran into numerous challenges while building the application. Firstly, none of us had ever used machine learning, so we had to learn Cohere's API in order to implement a sentimental analysis detector. It was not easy, but we got a well working model. It was also hard to use web 3. The Deso API made it easy, but we did outside research to learn about what web3 and the blockchain was. On the coding side, implementing so many services was difficult. We had to think about each and every aspect of the app to make sure we had a very polished end application.

On the frontend, it was also very challenging. It was our first time using Mantine CSS so we had to learn a lot about it. We also did not know much about SSR (Server-Side Rendering) so trying it out for fetching was a challenge. We also received UI Bugs with CSS styles clashing.

🎉 Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

We actually finish the application...yay! We are very proud for learned so much in this hackathon, and persevering through all the challenges we faced along the way. We are exceptionally proud for building a fully polished app. Please refer to the sections above for more context.

📙 What We Learned

We learned numerous technologies in this hackathon. Firstly, we learned how to use Google Cloud, Deso, and Cohere. We felt this was a huge accomplishment as all of them covered various coding topics, from authentication to machine learning to web3, but we learned all of them. We even did outside research to aid our knowledge. For domain.com, we learned how to buy a domain and how to manage DNS records. On the backend, we learned how to integrate so many technologies together .

On the frontend, we learned a lot more about CSS libraries and how they interact with a framework renderer like NextJS. We also learned about how to write less boilerplate code by using GitHub templates and previous repositories which are equally if not better written.

🔜 What's Next For The Gamers Hub

  • Better UI Styles
  • Comments, Likes, Etc On Posts
  • More Secure Authentication System
  • Information on how to reduce strain while gaming

🌎 How This App Changes The World

  • Best Accessibility Hack by Fidelity: There are many ways our app is accessible. First, we made a web app, so anyone with an internet connection, even a small one, can use our app. Secondly, to make sure everyone fits in and no hate is there, we used Cohere to block any negativity using sentimental analysis. Finally, we used Deso to secure our application so no one can hack our application.
  • Best Sustainability by Avanade: Gaming is an essential part of our everyday lives. Even a casual game of chess is considered gaming. Our app is supports sustainability as it helps anyone get into gaming and allows people to host events so people can create meaningful connections.
  • Best Social Good by Blackrock: As stated above, our app contributes to the welfare of all people by helping creating a safe, non-hateful community where anyone can host events and meetup with people. Our app is aimed at increasing the social good in the world through gaming. It is our goal to connect people through gaming and create lifelong friendships, one game at a time!

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