## An Overview

Care-ma is a stress-reliever app that uses the natural good of humanity to help those who might need it.

## Our Inspiration

After a long day of stress and work, we were walking back from our last classes when we came across a little box filled with heartfelt messages. On the box, a note, saying take what you need, and leave what you can. After reading only 17.5 notes, we felt better. A little bit of our stress went away, and we got a little bit more happy.

In our attempt to give what we can, we thought of our skills, and a week later, this hackathon. It’s given us an amazing opportunity to give back. The lives of students and really anyone nowadays are so filled with stress that it can be hard at times to see the light. Our app allows anyone to add meaningful messages for anyone who might need them.

## What it does

Our app has two main components: getting inspired and inspiring others. Anyone with the app can hop on and see a procedurally generated word cloud composed of some of the most popular words with positive connotations. After a simple click, they’re taken to a page with a random message that a stranger has created. All this doesn’t require a login so that anyone anywhere can take the edge off when they need it.

The next part of our app is about creating someone’s path to a better day. There are several ways to customize each message, but not too many that they become over complicated. The messages are uploaded to a server and accessible anywhere.

This app is built around human kindness, and their desire to help others when they can. But this is not always true, no matter how sad that may be. To help counteract this, we briefly scan messages for any extremely malevolent intentions, however we’re lenient so that anyone who’s just trying to help can do so uninterrupted.

## Challenges we ran into

Our team consists of two hackathon beginners, an in-person hackathon beginner, and a mentally damaged hackathon veteran. This caused much confusion throughout the hackathon, mostly concentrated at the start. When we got our groove, however, and started on our project, we realized none of us had any backend experience. We assigned two people to learn to use CockroachDB and Google Cloud. Several hours and concussions later, we ran into an issue no one could solve. Mentor after mentor fell waste to it, and had no idea what to do. Even the mighty google solutions engineer stood no chance. That used up so… so much of our time. And we were not able to get everything done.

Another challenge was Zepp. We wanted to use their API so that anyone could look at their watch and instantly feel a little bit better. But that proved difficult when their servers crashed and they ended up leaving early (before 2am). This changed our plans, and we did need to work around it.

We also only had one front end developer. He had, in the past, worked in a team, but this was his first solo mobile app mission.

Worst of all, there were no chips or soda to be seen. Working through the night proved to be exceptionally more difficult than we had anticipated due to lack of something to munch on. We hungy.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

Even through all our challenges, we were able to create a final product that we’re all proud of. Not only this, but we used several new API’s brought to us by our lovely, beautiful, radiant sponsors. We learned a lot, accomplished a lot, and worked through many adversities, and for all those reasons, we’re proud of everything we did.

## What we learned

## What's next for Care-ma

Care-ma is amazing, but due to limited knowledge and time, we were unable to complete everything we would’ve liked to. We would like to make the app more customizable, without losing its simplistic feel. This would include a watch app and a desktop app, but also several features. Push notifications to routinely lift your spirits. Allowing community photos to be used in the app, as well as anonymous thank you’s.
## Inspiration

Several presentations at our school about raising awareness of mental health encouraged us to create this project.

## What it does

Through entertaining and encouraging messages delivered utilizing a visual short story, our project raises awareness about mental health, particularly depression.

## How we built it

First we brainstormed ideas on how the style of the visual short story will look like. After deciding on a minimalistic/cartoon art style, we began designing the story. We wanted an engaging and meaningful message while keeping the story short. After creating the outline of the story, we began adding dialogue and appropriate music to the game. But in order to make a really strong point, we also incorporated an emotive poem by Alex Elle that was relevant to our message at the conclusion of the game.
We initially designed this story using java but we ran into many problems, specifically packaging executables, so we decided to switch to unity; a software that, although we had no clue how to utilize, was effective for creating games. We split up into parts to create parts of the game, ex: someone worked on the main menu, while someone writes code for the game or creates the images for the character. We used paint.net to create the characters and C# as the programming language.

## Challenges we ran into

During these chaotic 36 hours, we had to overcome a number of challenges. Learning new pieces of software and languages, and working together to learn while viewing several tutorials was our biggest obstacle. We had never used C#, Paint.NET, or unity before, but we were determined to push ourselves and do something fantastic. Another problem we had was writing the story since we wanted to capture the player's attention and convey a meaningful message in a short period. The game is a lot shorter than we wanted it to be and that is mainly due to time constraints in addition to technical issues.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of finishing the game considering we had no prior experience in all the resources we used. We are also pleased that we were able to create something that can help others and make an impact in people's lives.

## What we learned

We learned something very important during this hackathon. In order to make the most of our time, we learnt how to acquire new things quickly and then share that knowledge with one another. This hackathon especially helped us gauge how much we can realistically complete in a short timespan.

## What's next for Talk To Me

Talk to Me will continue to spread awareness and educate people about the serious dangers of depression and mental health. We advocate individuals to ask for assistance when necessary and check in on loved ones. Given the framework we created for ourselves. Adding more content to the game would be incredibly easy, which means it is very possible we could expand this to a full proper game.
## Inspiration

Jay, one of the members of our team, has volunteered for the Suicide Helpline in Calgary for 5 years. He is personally very attached and committed to this field and is really passionate about it. The rest of the team has all been affected directly and/or indirectly by depression and suicide.

## What it does

Provide activities, motivational quotes, cute cat and dog pictures, and even provides a hot link to a suicide helpline to help individuals when they need it the most.

## How we built it

Using Android Studio and thus coding in Java.

## Challenges we ran into

Too many to list. This is our first time making an Android application, so even basics of setting up Android Studio (which took 3 hours!!) was challenging. But ultimately, we fought through it with no sleep and got a good project done!

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

Finishing our first Android Studio project!! :)

## What we learned

How to use Android Studio and work as a team.

## What's next for Smile4Real

Continue to improve the product and help tons of people if possible!