Martians

https://youtu.be/hYbcb2Zcc3I

https://github.com/AdhamElasfar/Martians

It is a 2D videogame based on Unity. The player is asked to lead a grand mission to make Mars a habitable place for humans. The player would do so through overcoming some checkpoints such as creating an atmosphere for Mars, providing a reliable source of water and energy, curing Mars’ soil to grow crops, finding a solution to Mars’ minute gravity, and much more. Each obstacle is provided with several paths for the player to choose between, with each path teaching the player more about Mars and astronauts’ problems through graphical illustrations and explanations.

We believe that the videogame is a great tool to make people more aware of NASA’s future endeavors and bridge the gap between the people and the astronauts. It also presents a platform to spark creativity and encourage learning through an interactive and interesting method.

We hope through our game to share our enthusiasm about space with our community and present a platform to teach people about space, hoping that it could help people come up with ideas that could help humanity with living on Mars. Project Home 2.0 was designed using Unity. We made use of some vector designs available on FreePic and used Discord to communicate with each other. 

Although the primary purpose of the "Space Quest: The Game?" challenge is to display a high-level demonstration of the futuristic challenges with Mars that astronauts will face, a scientific, cutting-edge story was vital for our team to immerse the player in the game. The game's story is about a botanist who will investigate the possibility of growing crops on Mars's soil. This story was inspired by the NASA "Mars to Moon" website, mainly Farming in Martian gardens. Despite the massiveness of NASA's other intended mission in space, the investigation of growing crops on Mars will be the first step towards MARS colonization. Hence, the team was enthusiastic about giving the players an insight into the nature of some of the most illuminating and significant future missions to Mars. The challenges accompanied included but were not limited to, atmosphere, gravity, communication, energy, and water.

The first challenge the player will face is the communication challenge. As mentioned in the previous answers, the player will encounter different situations where he will choose the best communication method to send the research results. To satisfy the educational part of the game, one of the options provided will be Radio, X-ray, or Gamma rays. As a result, the player will build the foundation of the deep space communication field and what part of the electromagnetic spectrum is used for communication. All the information provided in this stage is directly from NASA's "Share the science" website. The information includes the exact wavelength and frequency of used communication radio waves and why they are appropriate for communication, rather than Gamma Rays or X-rays.

Through the site-to-site communication stage, the game will provide a highly-level animated video of the radio waves path and the deep space network on Earth. The player will learn that the astronauts do not necessarily send the data to one single specific point on the Earth. The animation video displayed will be based on NASA's videos demonstration and an article named" What is the deep space network" in the space communication section.

Using articles and Data from the Mars Exploration program website, the game will display the solar conjunction phenomena and how could the sun disrupt and damage the data sent, in case the player chooses the wrong choice. Through the inspiring Curiosity rover website, the game will show the player another level of communication complexity, where he will have to choose a relaying satellite orbiting around Mars, Odyssey, and reconnaissance satellites specifically. The speed and shape of the orbit are taken from each satellite's website.

Although being complex, the communication challenge is not the only aspect of gamification our team decides to implement, other issues like energy are also included. Many options are there to help the player investigate the possibility of the colonization of Mars, either choose to generate his energy from a form of radioactive elements or use large mirrors to focus the light rays. All these options are available to the player, but he must choose the most suitable one to save the other form for more urgent scenarios. The energy challenge and its accompanied solutions are genuinely created by our team, along with NASA prior deep space flights, especially Voyager that uses nuclear energy to function for very long distances.

Another vital problem the player must face is the weather. Inspired by the government of Canada deep space exploration section, CSA, the team get to know extensively the weather of Mars and how it is a real hindrance to the colonization of Mars. However, the team always has solutions. Using NASA trek, the team monitored Mars trek and extracted information of paramount importance to resolve, even little, the issue of weather. First, because there is not enough water or carbon on Mars, the team spotted the carbonate minerals and the carbon dioxide frost in the poles of Mars on Mars trek and exploiting those, the player has the choice to melt these resources to provide sufficient sources of planting on the Mars soil.

Indeed, although the majority of the data collected is not numerical as expected from most space games, the information provided will give all the players, despite their ages, the base for deep space exploration on Mars and the probable challenges the astronauts will face have when settling on Mars.

If we were to describe our NASA Space Apps experience in one word, it would be fruitful. We have learned a lot about ourselves and each other throughout the hackathon. Each member helped his teammates get the most out of them. Watching Neil Armstrong step on mars inspired us to discover the solar system. We wanted to share our enthusiasm about Mars with everyone and we thought ‘Space Quest: The Game’ is a great challenge to share with everyone the problems that astronauts face while working on the next giant leap for humanity: terraforming Mars.

To showcase the challenges stopping us from living on Mars, we designed a simple 2D videogame using Unity. In the game, the player is the manager of NASA’s project designed to terraform Mars in the year 3020. The player has many problems to work on during the gaming including, but not limited to, atmosphere, soil, water, energy, UV rays from the sun, and communication. The game explains the problems through graphical illustrations designed to give information in an attractive way to ensure the players get an idea of the problems without being bored. The player is offered different paths to come up with a solution to each challenge. Throughout these paths, the player learns more about each challenge specifically and the pros and cons of each solution.

Designing the game came with its fair share of setbacks. We had issues with overheating when rendering some scenes on our laptops. In addition, working online was difficult due to the bad internet connection in Egypt. We overcame the obstacles through a plentiful of steps. First, we decided to meet in a co-working space. Through this place, we could get rid of the internet problem and work in a quiet, colder environment since the place had a great air conditioning system. We also purchased a laptop fan, which helped slightly with the temperatures. We also disabled all applications running in the background so that the whole laptop power would be allotted to rendering the game’s scenes. These solutions helped a bit with the heating problem although we had to render some scenes on a more powerful computer instead due to crashing.

In the end, we would like to thank Neil deGrasse Tyson for his interesting videos which encouraged us to learn and discover more about space. We would also like to thank Neil Armstrong for inspiring us through his amazing accomplishment and hope that our little game would help spread knowledge and encourage learning and bridge the gap between NASA and the whole community.

Software Programs

• Microsoft Office (Word & PowerPoint)
• Discord
• Unity

Hardware

• Laptops

Resources

• Heiney, A. (2016, September 28). Farming in 'Martian Gardens'. Retrieved September 29, 2020, from https://www.nasa.gov/feature/farming-in-martian-gardens
• Discover the themes | Canadian Space Agency. (2021, November 31). Retrieved from Canadian Space Agency: https://bit.ly/2YooZFx
• NASA. (2021, October 1). Mars Trek. Retrieved from Space Trek: https://go.nasa.gov/3mpPCC5
• Good, A. (2019, August 23). What's Mars Solar Conjunction, and Why Does It Matter? Retrieved September 30, 2020, from https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7485
• NASA, (2019, August 08). Communications with Earth. Retrieved September 30, 2020, from https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communications/

#Mars, #Terraforming, #NASA, #Unity

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.