High-Level Project Summary
Utilizing Unity’s 2D game engine, we built a fun and educational video game to teach players space exploration and its challenges. Players explore space by jumping on platforms and trying their best not to fall. As they advance, they reach farther celestial destinations, starting from the ISS to the Moon to the rest of the solar system and beyond. At each celestial object the player visits, info on the object and challenges astronauts might face during exploration (i.e., lack of navigational aids and delayed communications) will be displayed. Our project is important as it can be enjoyed by all age groups, but it’s essential for educating generations about space travel and its challenges.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Inspired by our most beloved childhood game, Icy Tower, we developed an exciting 2D plat-former game. As players jump from platform to platform, they reach higher elevations and are able to view far-fetched celestial bodied, where they can explore these objects, learn about their origins, and understand the potential hazards and challenges awaiting our future astronauts during space travel.
Players are also able to collect space debris as they rise through the platforms, which is turned into in-game currency depending on how much debris they collected. This in-game currency can be used to buy upgrades, cosmetics, or mystery destination cards—cards that teleport the user to mystery celestial bodies like asteroids, Trans Neptunian Objects, and even further out in the Oort cloud and exoplanets.
Since space exploration is quite an uncommon concept for most people, we hoped to educate people about it through an immersive, fun, and educational video game. To create the game, we used Unity’s game engine for its availability and accessibility, with the main coding language being C#. Additionally, Adobe illustrator was used to create of the in-game designs (background, characters, platforms, etc.).
Space Agency Data
NASA’s organized resources greatly helped us in the process of data collection. Our data collection has been all written based on factual data released by NASA. The data provided by the Space Agency allowed us to give orbiting satellites in our game accurate locations and names. Using Unity Game engine, we were able to accurately name some of these Satellites. This influenced us to plan and hopefully include data regarding these satellites if hit by the player. Furthermore, as the players reach further destination in the space, they will find stellar phenomenon explained sufficiently appear on the screen; for example, as players reach level one, they will find the moon with a click button to show information about it: its history, hazards, and dangers faced people tried to land on it.
Moreover, as the levels increase and the players reach higher ranks, the player will see info about more advanced celestial beings and the challenges astronauts might face during exploration of Space (i.e., lack of navigational aids and delayed communications). Also, included in our game is an info section were players can learn more about space debris and their harmful effect on space exploration. This info was also collected through multiples websites (including NASA’s website) and can help inform people of the serious debris problem. Because the players will comprehend the space debris problem as demonstrated at NASA Space Agency’s website, this section also encourages players to think of creative ways to solve this problem.
Hackathon Journey
The Space Apps experience wasn’t only mind-stretching, but also long lasting development in our minds; it led us to always want to think outside the box and go far with our imagination. We are now aware that space is not a small room, but a vast universe of celestial beings and curiosities. It’s also our job to explore it and to share our findings with the world in the most outreaching way.
The journey of the Hackathon was enriching: getting to collect a lot of data about planets, every planet’s moons, debris of satellites and planets and past explorations of the space was mind-blowing for us. It helped us learn what we are now set to present to the world. We believe that the players will enjoy finding out about space as much as we did through a game. Moreover, integrating all of this data in a 2D entertaining gaming experience can’t be described as an easy-task, but if I were a gamer, I would play it 24/7!
Indeed, Apollo 18 in its core is a family; a family that is bonded over the love of space exploration and the fun that arises in between. So, we instantly had our eyes sparkling when we stumbled upon “Space Quest: the game”. That’s why we dug deeper to find previously applied solutions and brainstormed until we came up with Debris Hunters although we knew that it would be quite challenging. As cliché as it may seem, the greatest challenge we had was just the “start”; we were quite puzzled because we didn’t have a tight grip of which platform, IDE, programming languages..etc. we shall use in this project, but once we wrapped our skills up we uninterruptedly set the work off. Throughout developing the game, we gained insights on tactful thinking skills, time management, and properly sharing music on discord and constructive ideas.
Lastly, we would acknowledge NASA’s great help in providing the opportunity of the hackathon, the data on the space agency, and the support to explore the mysterious starry space. We are also super grateful for Abdulrahman Khater, a school colleague of ours, for designing such a creative presentation in no time.
References
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/our-solar-system/overview/
https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/5-hazards-of-human-spaceflight
https://www.esa.int/Safety_Security/Space_Debris/Space_debris_by_the_numbers
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/kuiper-belt/overview/
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/satellite-database
https://github.com/WorldWindLabs/SpaceBirds
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/satellite-database
Vlachopoulos, D., & Makri, A. (2017). The effect of games and simulations on higher education: a systematic literature review. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 14(1). doi:10.1186/s41239-017-0062-1
Tags
#Space_Exploration #2D_Game #Entertainment #Factual_Education #Unity #Debris #Solar_System #Egypt #Alexandria
Global Judging
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