DEV Community: Signal Kinetics

Hashnode Elearning Platform - AWS Amplify 2021 Challenge

Arbuckle — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 07:04:25 +0000

Something my team and I have been wanting to add to our software suite for a while is an elearning platform. We've all used one, whether it's to learn new skills for work or maybe to get help on a side project that you're hoping could sprout into something bigger.

Having said that, we feel that there are a number of flaws with existing platforms, including high price barriers for [school] students, a gap in the market for intranet/extranet usage, and poor user engagement/retention userflows. With this in mind, we decided to start working on an elearning platform at some point in 2021.

The Amplify Hackathon was something that was perfect for this. We often have trouble getting started with entirely new projects, so I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to get back to messing around with hackathons and be able to have something tangible by the end of it, something I could then take back to my team after the hackathon finished and keep working on it.

Just to reiterate: this was an entirely new project.

I decided that the backend would be created using Flask and I experimented around with React, Vue and Shoelace.style trying to decide which would be the best solution. I spent so much time trying to make pages from scratch that before I knew it, my home city was back in lock down, it was February 15th and I hadn't started creating anything with Flask either. It got to the point where I just had to rush everything, so I started designing things in figma and then exporting them to plain html & css. Unfortunately, amina didn't do a very good job with the Javascript and I wasted valuable time messing around with that. This was a massive project for me and with everything else that was going on I just wasn't able to get anywhere close to finishing. However, I'm excited with the groundwork I laid during this hackathon as it means I'm that much closer to adding another eventually finished product to my team's suite.

Tools, front-end and libraries
The app was design using Figma and the front-end in Microsoft Studio Code (unfortunately just the login screen for now). The first choice was to customise elements from the sholace.style library. Shoelace is very light and works smoothly across any web application and it is likely that we will be trying to bring this library into SK’s eLearning platform to cut development time.

Another library used for illustrations, that I highly recommend is Undraw.co . There are some very useful illustrations and all of them are in vector format, which allow us to edit each layer of the illustration.

User flow

There is not much about to say about the user flow. It is very intuitive, simple and not different than other eLearning platforms or even social media. The idea is to make the platform easy to use and manage, accessible to every level of familiarity with webapps and the internet. The user can create a new account by defining a user account (no email necessary) or login into an existing account. Also, users can be invited by content creators to the platform via email or by a shared link.

The first screen that the user see is a dashboard to monitor progress and access the courses enrolled. Relevant information such as percentual of courses completed and access to the latest courses, displayed at the beginning of the list. For content creators, or teachers, the courses created by them will be available on the dashboard. Information about each course will be presented, such as the number of students enrolled, engagement and if the course is published - available for search in the platform. Users can also explore other courses by accessing the tab Explore, giving it more opportunities develop new skills.

Courses have no limit in the number of chapters or individual lessons. Chapters can contain videos, quizzes, tests, text or zip files to be downloaded by the user – resources for instance. Each course can also have deadlines by chapters or the whole course. The course structure is very flexible, accommodating any type of subject.

Visual identity (the fun part!)

The general visual identity of the application reflects what is trending in the web/app development, making it friendly and visually pleasant to any type of user. In order to make the application easy to navigate, many design principles are applied. For instance, most elements, including typography, present elements with smooth edges, following a principle called contour bias. This principle states that element with round edges can be perceived as friendly, and therefore, can make the user more comfortable using the application.

Back to typography, the main font used is an open-source Sans-Serif from Google Fonts with smooth edges called Open Sans. To create contrast, another Google Font with serif, creating balance and a visual balance among elements that represent different level of information.

A light pastel colour scheme also features the platform, avoiding eyes strain and reinforcing the friendly image of the application. These colours are also presented in gradients, a recent trend in the market. This also complement the idea of fun and friendly represented in other elements in the composition.

I personally had never used AWS Amplify before, however I had used Robomaker & Sagemaker on a previous machine learning hackathon, from NASA with my team in 2019-20.

A flask full of Pythons
I haven’t really been able to get much of the flask backend working yet, but here’s the eventual plan for the flask-sqlalchemy-based database:

User - Username (Done) Password (Done) - hash function with werkzeug Email Address Local time (Done - automated) User ID (Done - Primary Key) All this user’s posts (Done - linkes to “user who posted” from Post class) Enrolled courses (as a student) - linkes to “Course ID”/”Enrolled Students” in Courses class Posts (like status updates) - Title Body (Done) Time of post (Done) User who posted (Done - Foreign Key) Post ID (Done - Primary Key) Courses (One user can have many courses) Title Description (like Body in Post(s) class) Teacher/Instructor - user foreign key Enrolled students - user foreign key Course ID (Primary Key) Video ID (Foreign Key) Any extra content…. Videos (One course can have many videos) Title Desc Course ID (Foreign Key) Video ID (Primary Key) Extra files/content

We hope to save the watch state of a user/their progress through the course so that on their student dashboard they’re able to jump straight back in.

User bookmarks could possibly be implemented with a form and then a db.commit().

Resources
Documentation & Files

Elearning platform

Arbuckle — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 07:33:24 +0000

https://findcollabs.com/project/elearning-platform-UoJJdzbbtUSNXdfszZo5

My team, Signal Kinetics, is working on an open-source ELearning platform that is designed to be a one-size-fits-all solution. Companies will be able to upload content to a private intra/extranet for their clients/team to learn new skills, while teachers or instructors can create and distribute courses freely with minimal effort.

I originally came up with this idea as I'm doing freelance work for a consulting company that wants to have an onine portal for clients to browse content, and I thought that it would be great to create an open-source platform for anyone to create courses and learn new skills. I'm planning to build it using Flask and in the last week we've made a little bit of progress with it.

We're always looking for new teammembers and we'll take anyone!

Stay safe,
-L

Taking a new design approach and welcoming two new members

Arbuckle — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 03:34:00 +0000

Over the last two weeks, I've been meeting and interviewing several Perth-based programmers and designers looking to join the team at Signal Kinetics. I'm excited to be announcing two new teammembers, but first a lot has been going on at Signal kinetics so Iguess we'd better talk about that.

Like we've been planning to do for a while we intend to make our venture not only fun and innovating but also profitable. Immediately profitable. Due to this we've been expanding so that we can contine participating in our hackathous and creating our games as well as going into the commercial side of things. This includes freelancing and setting up an indie game development branch at Signal Kinetics. We've started the process of moving into a new studio and are still continuing with all of our old open-source projects, but now we have the capacity to make money as well, helping us support ourselves.

I've started learning different design techniques to be able to go from idea to fleshed-out concept much quicker than usual. usually I imagine in my head what I want to create and I just start coding. Oh, of course I look around for site inspiration on platforms like Envato, but I never use things like Adobe XD. At least, not until now. I've started the process of redesigning Our team's dashboard to have less reliance on external tools and Adobe XD is a major part of that design process.

In other news at Signal Kinetics, we've started preparations on a kickstarter to fund our opensource game engine. We've also opened up contact with satellite company Ambasat and the looks to be a fruitful venture.

Finally, I'm excited to announce our team's latest, and most promising recruit: Arthur Passos.

@everyone, please welcome our newest members:
@arthur Passos, our CIO (Chief Informations Officer) working with us (locally, Perth) on web apps, freelancing and a little bit of gaming. @elijah Gardi, our new CMO (Chief Media/Marketing Officer) working with us (locally, Perth) on game desgin and content creation. Eli's been working with us for a few months, while Arthur comes highly recommended from the beautiful facebook jobs database.

Arthur's joined as us our new Chief Informations Officer, where he'll be working alongside myself and the rest of the development team including Eli, Rishabh, and Edwin. Our first step is to move into our new studio and start attracting more clients.

stay safe, and we'll have more updates coming soon

--L

A Django games library

Arbuckle — Tue, 05 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

After purchasing a Zenva Academy Membership, I’ve been starting to follow the Space Invaders Tutorial. I’ll be logging my progress here. Currently I’ve completed the firing and cooldown mechanics. I also sent through a thread on tribe.acord.software, however this thread will be kept up to date.

One of my main projects at the moment is a games library that will be incoporated into the Stellarios software suite. The idea behind this games library is that, like other sites like agame.com & friv.com, there will be a selection of games that users can play, however we’re taking it one step - or rather, a few steps further than that.

One of the single biggest projects in the suite is our game Star Sailors (development name Manacaster), based on a novella series I’ve been writing on and off over the past few years. One of the reasons for its importance to us is the large amount of citizen science integration that will be inserted into SS. But it’s also big for another reason.

Social networking

One of our key selling points is our emphasis on community and connections. While social networking sites, like Facebook, have had privacy issues, we believe at ACORD that the invention of these networks has been not only one of the greatest innovations in recent history, it has helped forge connections, friendships, and collaboration. Some of the biggest philanthrophic projects have been organised through social media platforms, the Egyptian coup in 2011 was akin to the collapse of the Romanian communist party (what TV and radio did in the 20th century, internet is doing repeatedly in the 21st century) and was largely organised by members of one of the most popular social networks in existence, Twitter.

The introduction of Github has also seen open-source projects (like ours) thrive, with millions of developers and enthusiasts alike banding together to collaborate on projects and software, to improve and to innovate, not just invent. The social networking features of Github (which are only going to improve with the introduction of Github Discussions, which is something that we’ll be incoporating into our forums) have certainly helped with this, with both users of software and developers around the world being able to describe issues that they’re having, and anyone can help them out.

Having seen the impact that these platforms have had, we’ve had an ambition to develop our own social networking service ourselves. But ours is, and will be, much more ambitious than any other social website. Because it won’t just be connecting you with other developers at AC0/RD, and users of our software; it will also be connecting with your other social media profiles (Disqus, Github, Reddit, Facebook, etc) to create a truly unique experience, that works for you and connects you with each of our services (including our games, citizen science, etc).

Your user profile will connect you with others based on your interests, like on popular social networking platforms. But one of the advantages (similar to https://walls.io) is that you can connect it directly to your other accounts, with posts being able to be shared across every platform with just the click of a button.

Websites that have numerous games embedded on them are nothing new. However, what we’re doing is “gamifying” our entire network, and this games library that we’re creating with Django, Python & Unity is at the core of it. Easily earn credits by playing our games, and unlock more games, features and enjoyment. Everything is 100% free, and open-source, and we’re also recreating classic arcade games with our own unique Pixel Art.

Project Arcadia

Project Arcadia, a major project by AC0/RD and a part of AC0/RD, is a collection of retro arcade games that have been remastered and remade using 21st century assets, scripts and hardware.

Each game in Arcadia is carefully designed by our well-made robots to be faithful to the original game, but also to up the fun level. The joys of mashing the physical buttons and manipulating the joystick at an arcade may be (mostly) a thing of the past, but the aim of Arcadia is to give the ability for anyone to play these games again.

Most of the games that are planned to be part of the initial run (Space Invaders, Pacman, Pinball, etc) will feature newly designed, completely original graphics, soundtracks and gameplay that will still pay homage to the original, and much-loved games.

The Games

When someone mentions classic games, what do you think of?

Pacman
Space Invaders
Super Mario
Donkey KongWe’ll be remaking all these games, and more, in Project Arcadia. What’s more, we’ll be adding new features, new levels and new art into our remakes. Even new lore - while our games will pay homage to the original games, they are (in effect) part of the Star Sailors universe. Monkeys will become “Apexes” (imagine apes crossed with highly-evolved humans), the ships seen in the Star Sailors novels will become the ships that you have to fight with, and against, in Space Invaders. Our goal is a fully unified universe. You can view the lore here.

Integration into Stellarios

When we first came up with the idea of creating a Star Sailors game, we envisioned a collection of applets, each with a different game that would be connected to the others. While you’d still have the open-world sandbox MMORPG to play in, trade and conquer, there would be a series of “mini-games”, which would be snippets of the Star Sailors universe. Playing these minigames would not only unlock more of them, but earn rewards for your player in the main Star Sailors game.

To accomplish this, while you will have the option to play Arcadia games without creating an account, it is highly recommended that you do. By creating an account, you not only get access to the full games library (initially created with Django), you get access to the main Star Sailors game, the community forums and the source code (through authenticiation with Github).

Credits

Thanks to Zenva Academy for the initial “skeleton” of a lot of the Arcadia games, and for helping us to learn how to build these projects.

We hope you enjoy it

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Links:

Forum post: https://forums.acord.software/d/3-space-invaders-game-in-unity

Contributing code through discussion: https://blog.acord.software/post/612260427615928320/contributing-code-through-discussion

AC0/RD Network Digest: https://blog.acord.software/post/611947364722360320/ac0rd-digest-our-network-ambitions

HTML Dashboards: https://blog.acord.software/post/611809431430283264/html-dashboards-for-administration

Project Arcadia: https://forums.acord.software/d/3-space-invaders-game-in-unity/7