SpaceFord

Dushanbe | Turning STEM into STEAM

Awards & Nominations

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

Global Nominee

I-Space: Learn more about Planets by playing game

High-Level Project Summary

I-Space is a computer game that helps people of all ages to learn about the characteristics of the planets, orbits, origin, temperature, structures, atmosphere, distance from the sun, of each planet, and space as a whole, while traveling long distances in the space and visiting all 8 planets. Travelers (players) will learn and have fun while driving the spaceship, visiting the planets, opening the boxes, and passing the tests. I-Space is an application of gamification that applies educational approach and conveys real information in attractive designs and colors that can motivate curiosity in people - especially children - about space and the Solar System.

Link to Final Project

https://turquoisehero.itch.io/i-space

Link to Project "Demo"

https://youtu.be/ZvY6GWV1BcU

Detailed Project Description

WHAT EXACTLY DOES IT DO?

I-Space is a computer game, in which a player drives a spaceship through space and navigates the Solar System, while driving the player finds boxes with questions about space or the planet being visited, if the player gives the right answer he, she can go on to the following box and discover more about the space and planets, if the answer is wrong the space ship is getting self distructed. Eventually the game is encouraging some research and self study since this is the trend in international education, besides increasing the awareness of using STEAM in conveying useful and important information in an attractive way.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

First, the user appears near the Earth planet, all 7 other planets have their boxes around their orbits, and the user aims to open these boxes and collect the disks that contain information about space and bring disks back to the Earth, however, to open boxes user needs to pass a test. The difficulty of which depends on which planet the user is visiting. By collecting disks a user can get points, which helps them to boost their spaceship. It enables them: to increase speed, increase space for disks, increase volume for fuel, and buy new skins. So the purpose of the game is to collect all disks and learn about space along the way.

WHAT BENEFIT DOES IT HAVE?

Our users potentially can get the next benefits:

Enhance the players' knowledge about space.
Enjoy their time while playing.
Observe the Solar System, and learn the order of the planets.
Transfer the knowledge to other people by the same approach of STEAM.
Help science teachers in attracting kids to the lesson of Solar System.
Art teachers can use it in crafting lessons.
Language teachers can use it in "Story Telling" lessons to achieve interdesiplinary approach between Science and Language.
We potentially could get financial benefits if we would add ads in the game but we will not.

WHAT DO WE HOPE TO ACHIEVE?

We hope that we can bring helpful information to the general public in an accessible way. Most importantly, we hope that this game will encourage people, especially young children to enjoy studying space and extend their knowledge about this field.

TOOLS:

GameMaker 2
Canva - Design the images we need in game
NASA data service- To get all the data we need to be displayed in the game
Git and Github - Version control

CODING LANGUAGES:

GML
GLSL

SOURCE CODE:

Space Agency Data

We used the data that NASA offers information about Solar System, how the planets move around each other, what properties they have, also what makes them special, and other information.

Data obtained from NASA provided us with valuable information that it presented understandably. We used this information to show it in the game in the boxes that appear in space while the player is traveling among the planets. So that the player would not feel that information is difficult, and players won't get bored while playing, we designed it so that it gradually becomes harder, which is all based on official NASA website data.

For example, we provided tests about Earth in the little boxes that appear in the orbit of the Earth ploanet.

https://www.nasa.gov/sun/

https://www.nasa.gov/content/stars-and-galaxies/

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-juno-will-perform-close-flyby-of-jupiter-s-icy-moon-europa/

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/The_Sun_as_you_ve_never_seen_it_before/

Hackathon Journey

If we described Space Apps experience in 3 words, we would say: "Productive, Overwhelming, and Funny" :)

Even though we were friends, during these 2 days, we became more close to each other and enhanced our friendships. We faced a lot of obstacles and problems along the way but still our curiosity and desire to win helped us to cointinue working and finish the project. We learned a lot about space and about the Solar System as our project is related to that sphere.

We thank orginizers, American Space Dushanbe and NASA to be precise for helping us during this challenge providing us with neccessary information and designs for our game.