High-Level Project Summary
Astronauts is a web videogame based on a manned trip to Mars and back. Our goal was to put educational information through playtime. The game challenges the player to keep alive and healthy a tripulation of three astronauts during a trip from Earth to Mars and back. Astronauts confront several risks on their travels, do you know them? Can you imagine how it feels to be hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from home? Maybe not. It was important to us to expand the information about the different circumstances that astronauts experience, and for us, a game is an excellent way for people to learn about thoses risks and how scientist are dealing with them.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
How we Addressed This Challenge
In "The Trail to Mars: Can You Keep Your Crew Alive?", our challenge was to develop a game in which players, specifically, middle schoolers, focus on keeping an avatar alive and healthy during a space travel from Earth to Mars and back. The NASA gave us several resources for us to learn about the potential risks astronauts could face in such a long voyage, and how scientists are working to countermeasure them.
We are a group of people passionate about videogames, therefore, we know that gamers could be intererested about the space exploration, but maybe not as much to investigate about the real implications of those travels. Our main goal with this project was to develop a game people could play and learn without getting bored.
We used the data provided by the NASA, specially the information of the Human Research Program of the NASA about The 5 Hazards of Human Spaceflight, to think about how these hazards could be implemented as interesting game mechanics. From there, we imagined a settle and complementary mechanics that in sum, resulted in this game that we named: "Astronauts".
How Does It Work?
Players of Astronauts can play online using any browser. First, they will encounter a main menu in which they can choose to play a tutorial to learn the controls, motivations and challenges of the game, or to go directly to the adventure. The option of Credits is also available for anyone who want to know us.
Once the players begin the adventure, they will find a spaceship with a tripulation of three astronauts. The player can select any astronaut at any moment clicking with its mouse, and control the character using the arrow keys. Each astronaut has its own statistics: Hunger, Sleep, Medicine, Bathroom, Exercise and Mental Health. These statistics represent the needs that an astronaut could have in a long space travel.
The player's goal is to keep the tripulation alive and healthy. Astronauts statistics decrease with the time depending of theirs conditions. Therefore, the spaceship have a set of stations that characters can use to increase their statistics: a gym for the exercise, a toilet for the bathroom and so on. If any member of the tripulation get any statistic to get zero, it is Game Over. If the player can keep the tripulation alive during all the travel to Mars and back (represented in the top right corner of the UI), then it is a successful round. You can play our game here.
Tools and Technologies
The project is a web video game, we use HTML, CSS and JavaScript to make it happen. As for JavaScript, we use a programming library called Kaboom.js. This allowed us to build the game through the HTML canvas. Some tools at the Software level that we use was Replit. This is an IDE in the browser that allowed us to code together in real time. For the sprites (images of the characters, objects, the ship, the backgrounds, etc.) we used 2, Aseprite and Pixilart. The entire team had the same tools, taking advantage of the fact that almost, if not all, are free, we were able to carry out the project successfully.
Benefits, Goals, and Future
The main benefit of this game is that this is a playful and interesting way in which middle schoolers can learn about the space exploration and its implications, risks, and how scientists are working to deal with them. Our goal with this project is that people, not only middle schoolers, play our game and find it enjoyable and informative at the same time.
We had to omit some of our ideas for the game due to the short time, but we think we have a great base to grow from, and integrate more features in the future, such as: customization, rolls for every member of the tripulation, more stations, events, and many more.
Space Agency Data
One of the files provided by the space agency with which we worked and based many things on our project, was that of '5 Hazards of Human Spaceflight'. Thanks to this, all the team participants had a very clear vision of what we wanted to expose to the people that the video game is intended for. Even in our video game, we include a small dynamic regarding solar radiation and hostile enviroments. On the other hand, we also use information from the article 'GLDS-345: Mouse femur LC-MSMS upon weightlessness' , in this we find very interesting aspects regarding bone loss and immune dysregulation. With this, we decided to include dynamics related to keeping the crew healthy with exercise, food and medications.
Hackathon Journey
For each member of our team it was a unique experience. We all learned new things and we had a very close approach to information that we did not know, but wanted to learn. The concept of developing a video game for educational purposes, using such valuable information from NASA inspired us to participate in the challenge. Our objective in this project was to spread the experiences that an astronaut lives in space and motivate scientific curiosity.
All the team participants were in complete communication throughout the challenge, that helped us to spot the problems and propose a solution all together.
The people of the team are very grateful to each other, because we realized all the hard work that each one of us did. Also a thank you to a community of our university called "Bisontech", because thanks to them we approach this event and spread the development of scientific curiosity. Also to our families, because they supported and motivated us psychologically to complete the challenge and not give up.
Last but not least, to NASA and the organizers of this event, for the incredible opportunity to participate and provide us with a space in this great adventure.
References
Some files provided by the space agency:
- https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/hazards
- https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/bodyinspace
- https://genelab-data.ndc.nasa.gov/genelab/accession/GLDS-345/
Some other other references that help us for the information within the project:
- https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/overview/
- https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/stem-on-station/ditl_sleeping
Some of the Software used:
Tags
#art #game #videogame #mars #kaboom #replit
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.