High-Level Project Summary
"Houston, PLS!" we designed a game for children(10-13 years old) to teach about the hazard of the interplanetary travel on humans. In the game you are a freshly hired “controller” from the Health Monitor System Department at Houston . From your office, you will have to take critical decision about the wellbeing of the crew during the space travel.The learning process is stimulated by taking critical decisions in a simulated danger situation for the crew. Feedbacks will guide the user to improve his gameplay by acquiring knowledge about human health in space.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
"In Houston, PLS!" the objective is to guide a crew of selected astronauts through their voyage toward Mars. The aim was to teach about the danger on human health during long-distance space travel in a way that is accessible and comprehensible for middle-schooler.
The game could be played multiple times, every run will provide new insights and knowledge to the player giving them the chance to improve their performance in their subsequent run. This process is reinforced thanks to the use of both randomized and custom events which will provide high replay-ability and a feel of improvement for the player which will hopefully keep him engaged and entertained (while learning a lot!).
A single run of this game lasts around 15 minutes and it is divided into two parts. Firstly, the player will have to chose a 4 people crew by selecting the desired characters out of a pool of about 10
The crew must be chosen wisely since remaining experience will be drastically changed from the crew composition. We wanted the player to acknowledge the following problem: "Do I really need this specific job for the mission? Why? Can I rely on the help from Houston if any problem due to the lack of this skill where to happen instead?" Obviously the player will learn about those trade-offs with trial and error.
The second part takes place in the mission control room where now it's time to take action: the ship took off and know you play as Houston and are ready to solve any challenges the crew will have during the mission
In this time-based section your goal is to prevent the ship's and crew's parameter to drop to zero before the time runs out. With a steadily increasing ratio the captain from the ship will reach to you asking for your assistance to solve problems and your answers will have a tremendous impact on the chance of the mission' success. Those problems are prompted in a quiz-like form and as they accumulate you can browse through them with the log on the right part of the screen. After selecting an answer, the status bars will adjust accordingly and you'll be notified by a short feedback from the crew giving the player some clues about their decision.
Once the clock strikes zero, if the crew and the ship are safe and sound you will have successfully completed the run and reached Mars. Congratulation!
Here are some key gameplay design we want to highlight:
- Since it's a children game our aim wasn't to give them an old fashioned lecture about radiation, muscle atrophy or blood pressure but to just make them familiar with the existence of these problem and some way to prevent them. We believe in intrinsic motivation so the game is designed to provide just basic tips and clues for these problem and give the player just a "practical" knowledge. However, as shown by the post-it notes on the right side of the control room (second picture), the player will have the ability to click there and he will be provided a more detailed description of the problem (still middle-schooler level).
- One other think to keep in mind is the importance of the crew selection. The type of problems and their rate will be varying with crew composition. For example: choosing a nutrition expert in the crew will make every problem related to food and diet less frequent but at the same time other problems will increase their rate.
We hope you will enjoy our demo!
REPO: https://bitbucket.org/plasol/houston-pls/src/master/
BUILD: https://bitbucket.org/plasol/houston-pls-build/src/master/
Rolling Folks - 10/03/21
Space Agency Data
Health parameter analysis:
- Heart, blood coagulation: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/station-science-101/cardiovascular-health-in-microgravity/#:~:text=In%20microgravity%20the%20heart%20changes,control%20blood%20flow%20as%20well. and https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/cciss_feature.html
- Kidneys: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/renal.html
- Psychological health: https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY16/IG-16-003.pdf
- Radiation effects: https://www.nasa.gov/analogs/nsrl/why-space-radiation-matters, https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Lessons_online/Radiation_and_life, https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/space_radiation_ebook.pdf f
- Musculoskeletal strength, atrophy, bone density: https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/64249main_ffs_factsheets_hbp_atrophy.pdf , https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/station-science-101/bone-muscle-loss-in-microgravity/ , https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10336885/ , https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2015/05/Muscle_Atrophy , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4XXP73kuAU
- Eyesight: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-01-potential-vision-deterioration-space.html , https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/iss-20-evolution-of-vision-research/
Coordination and self perception: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/human_senses_in_space/ , https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/scie
"The use of data in this project- an infographic"
READ ME FOR FURTHER INFORMATION :
Hackathon Journey
We chose this challenge because of our shared interests with games, science and education. This was a first for many of us and definitely challenged our resolve and confidence with our ideas.
This in definitely going to let us a positive impact, especially in the future when we'll be able to look back and see what just a couple of days and (too much) coffee could achieve. We laughed we argued and we got to know new people and we'll cherish this forever. We learned that organization is really important but also sheer will and focus did a lot of the work, we also found out that 6 people is barely enough and cooperation will be always the real triumph card.
We wish to tank everyone involved in this project, both from the organization side and from our group. Thanks to the random people that gave us feedback and thanks to our families and friends that supported us through this week.
Rolling Folks - 10/03/21
References
TOOLS:
- Google drive : "cloud base "for the project .
- Procreate: drawing application used for the illustrations
- Adobe Premiere: videomaking
- Unity: game development
- Github: code sharing
RESOURCES:
- (music & sounds) FreeSound.org
- (youtube , general information on human health in interplanetary space travel ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-9Avd__dQ4&ab_channel=TEDxTalks
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.