Inspiration

  • Games like satisfactory and Minedustry were major inspirations for their games focused on industrial systems
  • Wanted to create an experience that runs entirely on frontend using JavaScript
  • Combines our team’s interests in Game Design and Web Development into one project

What our game does

  • Cipherdustrial is a browser-based building and defense game
  • Focused on developing industry environments, through factories and resources, and having to defend those at night
  • No backend required as there is no data that gets saved or processed in the game
  • Includes a home page embedding the game via <iframe>, a vibe code log, and a README page

How we built it

  • Built using HTML/CSS styling, Python scripts, JS assets, and a Makefile heavily modified from the original repository
  • Hosted on Github Pages using Jekyll (incorporates some of “Minima” theme) and Fastpages
  • Based on the “pages” repository by Open Coding Society, which we heavily modified by:
    • Removing unnecessary notebooks, SCSS, and assets
    • Rebuilding the site’s styling and structure from scratch
    • Integrating part of our game through an imported file
  • Tools: VSCode, Git, GitHub, WSL, Ubuntu 24.04

Challenges we ran into

  • Time constraints, especially balancing website setup with game development
  • Scheduling conflicts between team members
  • Debugging site deployment and JS rendering issues
  • Optimizing game performance for browser play (which Shaurya worked on)

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

  • Created a playable web-based game without a game engine
  • Built custom JavaScript APIs to handle game logic
  • Cleaned and restructured a large open-source repository template
  • Deployed successfully on GitHub pages

What we learned

  • Sometimes project ideas are too ambitious for a 2 day period
  • Managing the scope of the game and creating realistic goals is much more important (eg. having smaller, step-by-step goals within smaller time frames)
  • Although we finished a part of the game where the character moves around, collects resources, and builds items using resources, we could not finish the main part of the game (where we build our factories and defend them at night)
  • AI tools can assist us but we need to have control over ourselves when using them (don’t use them too much)

What’s next for Cipherdustrial

  • Finishing many of the key features in the project rather than having a project that is partly done
  • Adding styling in the site to make text and media appear more professional and presentable
  • Adding more features such as, but not limited to:
    • Pop-ups with guides and instructions
    • Accessibility between different parts of the game
    • Attributes for the character, such as health, energy, and levels
    • Adding levels to the game, as well as save functionality, for long-term play