Introduction

The Awesome Vote app was created to provide a unique and useful way to upload and vote on pitch ideas from one's own mobile device. Loosely based on awesome-vote (2016), the former Mean.js-based application.

With the recent death of the awesome-vote project of 2016, a desire for a new way to connect with 5Across participants has come about. Thus the idea for the 5Across voting game app was developed. The idea of the game is to allow users to "bet" points on the 5 ideas being pitched. If they bet correctly, they will generate more points, allowing them to bet even more at the next event. This will generate excitement for the vent and motivate attendees to come back again.

Possible features include uploading data about current pitches, voting on ideas, accumulating points, and a leaderboard of users with the most points.

This app uses Google's Flutter app development API, along with Cloud Firestore and Authentication of Firebase as its backend database. This allows for the data stored by the app to eventually be ported to a supplementary website/app if wanted, along with allowing users from all OS's to play nicely together.

Author: Mark Hisle ([email protected])

Current features:

• Login page and transition backend with basic UI/styling
• Registration with some error handling
  • new users receive a set number of points/money to start with
  • emails cannot be repeated
  • linked to Firebase Auth database (more below)
  • kinda sorta handles invalid registrations, could be fleshed out
• loading screen of app (textless 5across logo), might not work on iOS
• home page containing user data and 5 pitches pulled from Firebase
  • user data is in the user_data collection in the firebase, holding a firebase ID, username retrieved by said ID, and points allocated to each user
  • pitch data is held in pitch_ideas, allowing admins to easily change data by logging into the firebase
  • firebase can be accessed through [email protected] account
• a few images for styling

TODO:

• description page/hero animations for pitches
• BUG: error handling/invalid login or registration processing
• betting process
• reset password
• leaderboard?
• clean up page transition process, backend (bugs) and frontend (animations)
• ios
• documentation

Getting Started

Note: Currently not fully implemented for iOS, more configuring will need to be set up on a different environment.

For help getting started with Flutter, view their documentation and follow the general guide below.

1. Install Flutter through download or git. This will vary depending upon your OS. It is highly recommended to have git installed and set up on your device before using Flutter.
2. Add the flutter bin (INSTALL_DIRECTORY/flutter/bin) to your PATH variable. Flutter commands will not work in your respective console without setting this.
3. Once you have confirmed that you can run flutter commands (run "flutter" in the console), run the command "flutter doctor". This command will aid you with the rest of the setup.
4. If you are missing any necessary SDK's or libraries, flutter doctor will direct you to where these libraries can be downloaded and set up.
5. Ensure that the necessary IDE's are installed. It is recommended but not required that you have VS Code installed, as it is platform independent. You can also alternatively use Android Studio for Android or XCode for iOS development- however, these are specific to the devices that they are designed towards.
6. It is strongly recommended that you set up some form of software preview device by either downloading and setting up an emulator or running flutter doctor with a compatible device plugged in to your computer. If you do not have a mobile device or do not have compatibility between your phone and laptop (e.x.- a Windows PC and an iPhone), you can setup a free Android emulator with the Android Studio IDE. To do this, start Android Studio, select "Configure", then "AVD Manager", then "Create Device". NOTE: the emulator can take a very long time to download and initially st itself up
7. If you ever run into any issues with Flutter, SDK setup, or emulators/simulators, rerun the flutter doctor command. This will often locate any issue for you and direct you to solutions. It is often very difficult to narrow down errors in installment without using this command.