Afterparty Digital 🌌

Immersive Stepped Cavern Descent & Gamified Hackathon Networking Built for the Name.com Domain Roulette Challenge (Domain: afterparty.digital)

Afterparty Digital (afterparty.digital) is a production-ready, gamified event networking and project-launch platform designed to breathe life into hackathon afterparties. Rather than staring at dry list directories or generic event maps, developers descend step-by-step through a deep amethyst cavern shaft.

Hackers explore candidate galleries, engage at a real-time campfire chat board, mine crystals in a clicker mini-game, coordinate Stack requirements in the Alliance Forge, spin random idea prompts, and browse sponsor bounties in an immersive, math-driven visual experience.

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🎭 Key Features & Realms

1. Launch Room (Realm 1): Deploy custom event caverns with capacity limits via dynamic WebSocket form submissions, instantly syncing to active status dashboards and printable check-in QR codes without page reloads.
2. Amethyst Networking Mine (Realm 2): A developer gallery displaying live profiles. Hackers can select their specific developer roles (AI Engineer, Full Stack Dev, UX Designer, etc.) during check-in, search profiles, and trigger instant matches.
3. Crystal Campfire & Upgrades Shop (Realm 3): A social arena containing:
   • A flickering CSS campfire (with a stable nested hidden amethyst crystal easter egg).
   • A real-time chat feed.
   • An Amethyst Mining clicker game linked to a Secure Upgrades Shop. Click currency is validated server-side to prevent console click hacks, allowing users to buy Steel Pickaxes or hire Goose Miners.
   • A Live Photo Wall feed with a vertically contained scroll layout so that live uploads never break the viewport height.
4. Alliance Forge (Realm 4): Coordinate project teams in real time. Teams publish stack details and vacancy roles. Attendees submit join inquiries that persist in the database, allowing team creators to review, accept, or decline applications to build their rosters.
5. Oracle of Ideas (Realm 5): A production-grade 3-dial slot machine. Staggered physical reel animations (built using dynamic CSS translations and ease-out cubic-bezier curves) spin through technologies, industry sectors, and product goals. A custom-designed rule engine dynamically synthesizes a cohesive, professional-grade 3-sentence project prompt, calculates a realistic estimated feasibility percentage, and computes a complexity rating (from Low to Very High) color-coded by badge.
6. Sponsor Bounty Board (Realm 6): A showcase of developer challenges (OpenAI, MongoDB, Vercel) alongside API rules and awards.

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🛠️ Architecture & Stack

The system is built as a highly optimized production app to provide zero-latency updates and reliable persistence:

• Frontend: Highly polished, responsive Vanilla HTML5 & CSS3 with Tailwind. Employs a custom ES6 modular structure (js/) separating state, rendering, socket listeners, and gameplay.
• Backend: Node.js, Express, and Socket.io deployed on AWS Elastic Beanstalk behind a secure HTTPS CloudFront proxy.
• Database: MongoDB Atlas persisting all cavern instances, active users, chat history, teams, and liked moment uploads.
• Stepped Scroll Physics: Converts standard mouse scroll events into segmented translations—sliding vertically down (10vh) to inspect the current realm fully, before sliding diagonally to the next.
• Viewport-Fixed Glider: A custom-positioned minecart progress overlay (crystal_goose.png) that glides horizontally across the screen as you descend.

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📦 Running Locally

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18+
• MongoDB Atlas connection string (already configured in our EB environment settings)

1. Launch the Backend Server

Navigate to the backend directory, install dependencies, and run:

cd backend-mongo
npm install
npm start

This spins up the backend server locally at http://localhost:3000.

2. Launch the Frontend

Serve the root directory using any local web server. For example:

python -m http.server 5500

Open http://localhost:5500 in your browser. The frontend automatically detects localhost and establishes a websocket connection.

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🚀 Deployment

• Frontend: Directly deployable to Vercel. Pushing to the main branch automatically triggers Vercel static build deploys based on the vercel.json config.
• Backend: Deployed to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. The deploy_eb.py Python utility automatically packages, uploads, and deploys updates to the environment using the AWS CLI.