Duck debuggers - Space Apps Challenge

Duck debuggers| Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History

Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History

NASA’s activities in space have brought new knowledge of the Earth, inspiring new ways of thinking about humanity and the planet. However, many people aren’t aware that NASA studies the Earth in addition to other planets. Your challenge is to tell stories of NASA’s Earth science enterprise using interactive digital tools. This will test your technical skills and your ability to think like a historian or educator.

Back to Earth

Summary

Our team takes an exceptional approach of informing the public about NASA's discoveries in the field of Earth Science through 'Back to Earth', a sensational and vigorous space mission game. There is an increasing trend of people preferring to digest information through digital visualization contexts rather than reading articles, news, and books, and we have capitalised on this to bring an old-school way of broadening science in an exciting manner.

How We Addressed This Challenge

What did you develop?

an RPG game, Back to Earth , where players will undergo the experience of being an astronaut in a spaceship. Waking up alone and having amnesia, the player needs to find a way to go back to earth as the spacecraft is having a malfunction. Oxygen is depleting and the clock is ticking, the player needs to solve challenging missions and puzzles relating to earth science, discovering who he is, what is happening, and what has happened to earth?

Main Objective of the game is to survive throughout the plot, and remove any obstacle or threat along the way. Which means as their understanding of Earth Science progresses, their survival rate increases. How so?

In our game setting, players are required to find clues to either escape threats or complete objectives based on the story plot. For example, They would require clues to get a passcode for unlocking the emergency door for escape in tight situations such as oxygen or food deprivation.

These clues are all based on given resources of information and data from space agencies which will be scattered around the spaceship as many different forms(such as paper, photo etc) , and the player is required to collect them and make inference to solve the mystery and survive. These resources are useful to help the player have a deeper understanding in Earth Science and learn about the stories of NASA’s involvement in Earth Science.

What do you hope to achieve?

Through this, players who may not be interested in Earth Science knowledge may also spike interest in it as if they want to know more about the story plot, they need to solve the mystery with the knowledge of Earth Science.

Our project, Back to Earth, aims to deliver historical narratives and developments of NASA’s Earth Science programs through this interactive game. Globalization has centered the lives of many around technology, and our ambition is to increase public awareness of how Earth Science is an essential field of study to planet Earth in hopes of painting a big picture of NASA's Earth Science history with the help of technological platforms such as videos or mobile games.

How We Developed This Project

What was your approach to developing this project?

With the gaming industry growing exponentially, alongside the significant global investment from companies such as Google and Microsoft, we are motivated to leverage the gaming platform to further educate players with the knowledge of Earth Science and NASA's history within it.

The development of our project has spurred us to search for research on Earth Science from different space agencies to increase our understanding on the topic. This is in tandem with research on game development in order to make our project more interesting. Following this, we have decided to base our game on the RPG genre, titling it Back to Earth, where players will undergo the experience of being an astronaut in a designated spacecraft. To increase suspense for the player, the player will wake up alone with amnesia onboard a malfunctioning space station, and the player needs to find a way back to earth. With oxygen depleting and the clock ticking, the stakes of the game are raised, adding intensity, and the player is required to solve challenging missions and puzzles related to Earth Science. This will lead him to discover who he is, what is happening, and what has happened to Earth.

The main objective of the game is to survive throughout the story, and remove any obstacles or threats along the way. With education being one of our primary goals, the completion of all the objectives as well as the story is sure to bring new knowledge of Earth Science to the player.

What tools, coding languages, hardware, software did you use to develop your project?

As we participate in Ideathon and game development takes more time, we have created 7 slides. We incorporate what kind of atmosphere and approach we want the users to experience. Also, what kind of information from NASA resources will be incorporated in the game.

Also a game trailer is made with software Blender.

What problems and achievements did your team have?

Throughout the event, our team is proud that we have succeeded in proposing a unique and adventurous idea as our solution. This is coupled by the trailer we have crafted for our game, Back to Earth. This trailer aims to grab the attention of the audience and pique their interest. However, due to time constraints, we were not able to include the details of the puzzles for our game.

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

Nasa has uncovered a lot of vital and valuable facts and the science behind it of our planet Earth. But unfortunately, a lot of people do not seem to be aware of this. Therefore, our goal for this project, Back to Earth, is to educate players about NASA involvement in the study of Earth Science and increase their awareness of it. All the consideration of creating Back to Earth has been made to let players have maximum experience while gaining knowledge along the way. Our target audience for Back to Earth is also for all ranges of ages where they will learn while playing. In our game setting, we include resources with information and data from space agencies which are scattered around the spaceship, and the player is required to read the resources and find clues. We believe this approach will be effective to encourage people’s curiosity in the field of Earth Science and increase awareness of Earth Science history and the development problem of our planet, Earth.

We have used data from NASA to incorporate quizzes and puzzles for the player to solve, such as LANDSAT 9 which will be launched on mid-2021, it is a beneficial invention to mankind.

We planned to incorporate history dates and maybe general overview information of LANDSAT9 as part of the quizzes or puzzles that is needed to be solved in the game.

For example, players would need to read through the article compiled by my team which are all based on resources from NASA personally to figure out either passcode for gateway or emergency door.

There are other information of space data, we included in our idea as well.

how space-based technologies and activities have changed what we know about Earth
What have been the major factors pushing Earth Science forward?
the role of Earth Science in NASA’s history
Different events across history :SEASAT mission where we can understand our ocean better,
also ongoing ones such as the launch of LANDSAT9