Starcatcher Gamer

Inspiration

Our team loves playing games, and spreading passion for science and engineering. Most of us also had experience working and teaching young kids before, so we decided to create a game that would excite young kids about space exploration. Starcatcher is less centered towards telling kids exact space facts about the planets, and more aimed at introducing the infinite possibilities of cool space technologies such as lunar bases and Dyson spheres, and the infinite vastness of the Final Frontier.

What it does

Starcatcher is a simple clicker based game that's easy to learn and even easier to play. Click a button to earn points, and use those points to purchase upgrades that lets you earn points faster. As you accumulate more points, you'll eventually reach checkpoints that will describe different celestial bodies and planets. The goal of the game is to

How we built it

We programmed this game almost entirely from scratch, using Python as our programming language and taking advantage of pygames to create our actual games. Everything from our classes to our art assets were produced and created ourselves. We used a divide-and-conquer approach, allowing each person to work on specialized tasks based on the available skillset of the team, and used GitHub and various Google Suite services to collaborate with one another.

Challenges we ran into

Some of the challenges that we ran into included understanding pygames: this Python module offered relatively little help and documentation in terms of creating a clicker game, as it is generally better suited towards creating 2-D scrollers or 2-D shooter games. In addition, we initially had trouble with the concept of the main action loop where all the gameplay occurs, as we were confused as to when to redraw the canvas, leading to several messy overwritten screens in the coding process.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're extremely proud of every single thing that our team has accomplished so far -- from creating every single individual art asset to creating fully functioning buttons and interactive switches by hand, to jury rigging our own makeshift text boxes. We're proud of the massive improvements we as a team have made over the course of this hackathon, whether it's in the form of art skills, to efficiency of coding, to debugging sense, or just synergy as a team to reinvigorate public interest and investment in space exploration.

What we learned

We've learned a large amount as both individuals and as a team. This was everyone's first time participating in a CS hackathon, and was therefore the first time that anyone needed to complete and be able to ship a project in such a short amount of time. Beyond learning Python and pygames, the team learned many skills that cannot be taught in the classroom such as time management, project scope, and creative problem solving skills.

What's next for Starcatcher Game

This current iteration of Starcatcher is essentially only a proof of concept; the team worked extremely hard to bring it into its current form, but as it is, Starcatcher is still far from the game we initially recognized it could be. We still plan to add many new functions to the game, such as multiple types of resources, adding a new technology tree path, and a meta-progression system that would save a player's progress between runs, producing a greater feel of satisfaction and that playing the game actually produces permanent progress. As Starcatcher continues to proceed through development, it will continuously be polished through methods like improving the elegance and performance of the code, updating visual effects, and adding new and exciting content for players to explore.