Orbital Eccentrics

Alexandria | On the Way to the Sun

Awards & Nominations

Orbital Eccentrics has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

Orbital Eccentrics

High-Level Project Summary

A multiplayer game where players roleplay as astronauts inside Parker Solar Probe. They’re randomly divided into crewmates and spies. Crewmates are assigned to do missions/minigames, to ensure that the probe reaches the sun, and they win. Spies are assigned fake tasks and should try to blend in, sabotage the mission, and get rid of all crewmates to win. Throughout the game’s missions, players receive information about Parker Probe’s design and journey. The game’s designed to use the players’ desire to win as their motivation is to know more about the Probe. Together, the players discover the inspiring struggle between Parker Probe, the limits of its technology, and cosmic phenomena.

Link to Final Project

https://github.com/MariamGad127/Orbital-Eccentrics

Link to Project "Demo"

https://youtu.be/qgEt17zI3HQ

Detailed Project Description

What exactly does it do? How does it work?

Icarus’ dream is an online multiplayer game. The premise of the game is simple; players are given a randomized role of either a Crewmate or a Spy. Once the player joins the game, he/she is on board the parker solar probe trying to reach the sun. Crewmates and spies are given a list of missions shown as mini-games to complete and get ready for the flyby of the Sun.

To win the game Crewmates must complete all the given missions or find the suspicious players guessing whether it is the spy, and subsequently reach the sun’s upper atmosphere (Corona). The game is time-constrained by five rounds that simulate the five Venus gravity assists done by the probe. Some mini-games such as ‘Obstacle Dodging game’ are relatively quick to complete, while others such as ‘Probe Puzzle’ require multiple steps and a level of concentration. However, the game has at least one spy who is trying to sabotage the Probe and kill the crew.

These are some of the missions crewmates are required to complete:

Parker Puzzle

While completing this 16-piece puzzle, the player will learn more about the Parker Solar Probe by trying to remember the components and each function of them. The player tries to recollect the labeled picture of the probe. Moreover, they learn about the functions of each labeled part.

Space Dust Games (Dodging and Shooting)

Whether it is in the dodging or shooting game, the player learns about space dust and how it can affect the safety of the probe when the relative speed of these particles exceeds a certain limit. He/she tries to avoid colliding with cosmic space dust by dodging obstacles or shooting them.

Collecting plasma

Throughout the game, the player tries to mimic what the probe is doing in real life using the probe cup by collecting plasma and charged particles ejected from the sun. A set of instructions and interesting facts about the probe cup pop up before starting the game.

What benefits does it have?

The game has many benefits, the most important of which is making children joy playing with each other, besides learning a lot about space and its nature. We propose a game that provides young audiences with pieces of information about the first space flight that touched the sun and the dangers encountered by the Parker Solar Probe.

What do you hope to achieve?

We hope that the game achieves many goals, including making the young audience more interested in astronomy, identifying strange phenomena that they did not have the opportunity to know, and conveying complex information to them in the easiest possible way. Therefore, the multiplayer and mysterious features seemed to be a crucial component to allow us to get their attention.

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

We developed our video game prototype using Unity as our game engine along with Visual Studio as an IDE to develop the game’s logic. The majority of the code is written in C#. We got some of the source code of our game from GitHub and edited it to fit our idea. Then, we downloaded and imported our assets from Unity Assets Store. Also, we designed some of the imported assets in Adobe Photoshop.

Space Agency Data

NASA resources played a key role in providing us with the information we needed for our project. The data offered by NASA about the Parker Solar Probe touching the sun, the heat shield, why it will not melt and the challenges it encounters along its flyby the sun. The data we used is represented to young audiences in a simple way as is demonstrated in our game. Throughout the whole game, players will receive the information shown in a popup window, so that they will not get bored or pressured by too much information to read.

We used these given data based on information from NASA resources to represent it in our minigames in an interesting way for players. For instance, the minigame “Plasma Collector” reflects information about the probe cup and why it will not melt. One more example is the “Parker Puzzle” minigame, after the players solve the puzzle, it will get them to know more about what it is mainly made of. Then, a popup window with interesting facts about the probe components will also be shown. Another representation of this is the “Dodge” game as the samples from comets and asteroids are included in the cosmic dust grains. This is reflected in the game in the form of obstacles facing the probe.

Finally, we used data from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory for more detailed information about the probe components for the “Parker Puzzle” minigame. For example, the cooling system was made fully operational, and how it is responsible for powering the spacecraft and protecting it from the intense heat of the Sun.

Hackathon Journey

Over the past few days, we became increasingly aware of the challenges that our earth faces, learned a lot about the sun's impacts, and how Parker Solar Probe will tremendously help us in understanding so many mysteries about the sun. As we further researched how it will not melt, the challenges it faces along its flyby the sun, and other interesting facts.

The first day of the hackathon was dedicated to working with our group and applying our solution, while the next day featured the judging process. No doubt sometimes we faced hardships, but we could find a way to understand and get along with each other. We realized that the NASA Space Apps challenge is a truly worthwhile experience. It pushed us to attempt questions to which the answers have yet to be discovered and exposed us to ideologies and events unfamiliar to most. It has given us a space to interact with like-minded teammates and learn about topics that interest us. Through our discussions and interactions, we have learned to consider a diverse array of points of view in everything we do. NASA Space Apps challenge has inspired us to initiate actionable change in our community and we are very excited to use our experience to support others in developing their passions as well as to give back to our community. As we are working together to build a more conscious society who are mindful enough of the new discoveries and how they can be a part of the change.

We are very excited about the future of our game, and the potential it has to help inform young audiences in a way that is simple, interesting, and entertaining of all about Parker Solar Probe. In the end, we can all agree that the NASA Space Apps challenge this year is one of the most life-changing events we will ever experience.