Astroploration

Player navigating tile map
Challenge opens!
UFO scene

Inspiration

Sophia: I've previously participated in Private Pilot Ground School and Washington Aerospace Scholars at the Museum of Flight where I experienced an introduction to aerospace through hands-on learning activities like science experiments, solving math problems around real-life scenarios, and writing essays on topics relating to lunar base settlements and robotic rovers among many. Through these experiences, I developed an interest in aerospace and wanted to simulate a learning experience for people to spark an interest in aerospace. Growing up, I played games like Maple Story and Club Penguin which were really fun games and we wanted to provide people an opportunity to learn about aerospace, geology, and about our solar system through this game.

The Problem

Despite growing interest in space, few interactive tools exist that combine fun gameplay with aerospace knowledge, which leads to many students being lacking understanding of what mission design actually involves. Understanding how space missions are planned is essential in a world moving rapidly toward commercial and international space exploration. Many educational tools are abstract; there’s a need for active, collaborative simulations of aerospace missions.

What it does

Astroploration transforms aerospace mission design into an engaging, story-driven game where students learn concepts like spectral analysis and emergency response. We built an educational, fun, and immersive game that enables the player to explore a spaceship as an astronaut and tackle challenges like using a spectrometer to analyze composition of rock samples with the goal of determining their planet of origin. Our goal is to provide a learning experience for people to venture into the world of aerospace and geology to learn more about our planet and the solar system through hands-on challenges.

Background settings:

Due to the deterioration of the Earth's environment, humanity decides to send out squads to try and discover new habitable planets in different galaxies. Because the scope of exploration is large and the number of people is limited, the teams usually consist of three people: astronaut, engineer, and doctor. Each team operates a spaceship and explores their assigned galaxy.

Astronaut Alex, Doctor Aiden, Engineer Tiera is in one of those teams. Unfortunately, their ship was struck by an asteroid and the ship was extensively damaged, losing fuel and leaving little oxygen, food, and water. They must work together to explore nearby planets using the attached small ship to find materials to repair the ship, as well as food and water sources.

How we built it

We built the game using Godot Game Engine and GDScript language. Our development process included following tutorials to familiarize ourselves with the game engine and basic game concepts like sprites, nodes, collision detection, etc. For interactions between the character and objects, we used signals and buttons to detect collision movement and trigger actions. We used online pixel art images and a tile map resource for our gameboard.

Challenges we ran into

It was challenging to implement complex objects in the game. They need to function well by themselves and also need to interact well with other objects. Beyond that, it was difficult to combine our work together which included separate scenes and objects.

Sophia: At first, I used C# to program the logic for collision detection and interaction with objects, however, the collision with objects was not detected and after spending a large amount of time troubleshooting with connection of signals and debugging the script, I switched to GDScript which my teammates Hanaia and Joseph used and recreated the object interaction which eventually worked! :D The most significant challenge I had was connecting the logic for the mission challenge to transition from the spectrometer object to the rock sample.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our inventory and challenge working. We are proud of making the character interact with the environment surrounding it and for building a world that lets the player freely explore! This was our first time developing a large scale functioning game and for some of us, the first time using a game engine.

What we learned

We learned how to use the Godot Game Engine to build a game and the GDScript language built for Godot. We learned how to display artworks through technology. We not only made the game function but also tried our best to make the interface user-friendly and provide a seamless experience! For soft skills, we learned the importance of communicating updates and pair programming as we developed scenes, game objects, and interactions for our game.

What's next for Astroploration

Our future plans are to add a menu bar for the player to reference all tools available, add more characters including a doctor and engineer for multiplayer mode, and add more challenges for each character. We would also like to add a scoring system for gaining points or attaining supplies from the inventory. Our goal is to support young students and aspiring aerospace engineers to better understand mission design and explore aerospace careers. Enabling multiplayer functionality would foster community and collaboration among learners and explorers.

Thank you for joining us on our Astroploration journey! 🚀