The Midgardians

The Midgardians| 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.

Summary

It is a video game intended to inform children of age +5 about NASA space missions related to Various beneficial research areas including weather, health,and many others. It aims to show how those missions have influenced human life. Each level will be about one of NASA’s research centers and the most significant missions related to this center. During the game, the children will complete a set of tasks to finish a level through which they will hopefully learn some information about different satellites, objectives of some missions, and more information about the impact of avoiding those disastrous natural phenomena.

How We Addressed This Challenge

We tried to introduce an interactive and engaging bridge between NASA and the people who are outside the scientific community in order to raise awareness about the critical role of it in our daily life activities. For the sake of achieving this goal,we developed a 2D game using Unity Game Engine.

The main aim of this game is to take the player through a small journey to some of NASA’s research centers to discover the objectives of their missions in outer space. Besides,the player will get some basic knowledge about the functions of the used component.

When the player opens the game, (s)he will select a character to play with (a scientist or an engineer). There are some missions assigned to each character which are designed specifically to simulate the working environment of them. This will help the player acquire some knowledge about the nature of their work activities.
A map with NASA’s research centers will be displayed and the player will choose one of them to discover.
Afterwards, a brief summary of the research center’s history will be displayed.
A timeline with the most remarkable missions of the selected research centers will be displayed and proceeding through this timeline is level-dependent.
For example,in Goddard research center the first level (TRMM):

It starts with a short video narrating a fictional story that illustrates the severe consequences of the Fifi-Orlene hurricane. This video acts as a motivation for the player to picture the impact of finding a solution for this disastrous phenomena throughout this game level.
(s)he will be taken to a room-like LAB in which the real components of the TRMM satellite are hidden inside some dispersed boxes distributed around the room.
A set of clues will be listed on one side of the screen through which the player will get some hints about the components which (s)he is required to search for.
The player is supposed to look inside the boxes, where some hints about the component’s function will pop up, and accordingly (s)he will select the suitable components matching the given clues.
Then, (s)he will be taken to another screen where (s)he will solve a puzzle of the real satellite picture.
Finally, a video of the actual satellite launching will be displayed.

How We Developed This Project

Little or no attention from the public is drawn towards the numerous fields of space exploration. Hence, we thought of casting lights over “space exploration” by creating a software that is meant to present pieces of information regarding the satellites, space missions, and the importance of space expeditions etc. to the young children, hoping that by conceiving this game, the curiosity of the child is provoked towards space exploration.

We used Photoshop software to edit the characters, backgrounds and different components, and Unity software to construct the scenes and add functionality and interactivity to the game. The coding part was written using C# and we used different photos to do the animation of the characters to make it visible that the character is moving,crouching,jumping ….etc.

Problems:

We didn't have the essential knowledge to build up a fully developed scenario which took much of our time.Even though we had the information we needed we could not manipulate it to build up an attractive game.

Achievements:

During the process of developing the game, although we hadn’t had enough experience to even start, we managed to acquire the sufficient technical skills to build it up. Those technical skills were used in both developing the game on unity software and developing different characters, backgrounds, etc using photoshop programs.
We managed to describe our progress in a detailed and organized manner in which we documented each step we took starting from brainstorming and ending with the description of the game. His documentation made it easier for us to fulfill the requirements of the challenge.

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

We used them in the following:

Getting information about NASA’s research centers, their history and their achievements.
Getting information about missions that were included in each research center. For example, We used data from NASA and JAXA agencies about TRMM satellite.
Getting the pictures that were used throughout the illustrations made in the game.
Personally, we got the chance to explore some of the applications mentioned in all challenges, not only in the challenge we chose. For example, the greenhouse gases calculator that was mentioned in the carbon footprint challenge.