O(tones)

Mexico City | Learning Through the Looking Glass

Saving James

High-Level Project Summary

Saving James is a videogame in which the user has to protect the James Webb telescopes from a meteor shower by shooting these meteros. Every 10 points, a random fun fact about the JWST is displayed. The game is designed for children from 8 years old onwards.It solves the challenge by divulging information about the JWST to young audiences, who will be therefore interested in learning more about the telescope in their future.

Link to Final Project

https://github.com/laullaurado/spaceapps2022

Link to Project "Demo"

https://www.canva.com/design/DAFN6P5JB6E/Xo4y8ItU5XJamfBncluEag/view?utm_content=DAFN6P5JB6E&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink

Detailed Project Description

What exactly does it do?

As a team, we implemented and developed a videogame demo. A spaceship game was created in which the 5 James Webb telescopes must be protected from a meteor shower. On the other side, every 10 points, a message with a "Did you know?" text will be shown on the screen; this will contain relevant information about the telescope.

How does it works?

The game is intuitive for all the public, (+8 years old). The operation is based on the use of the keys <- ->, to move left or right; the space bar will help us to make the spaceship shoot lasers to destroy the falling rocks, this in order to achieve the highest score or break a personal record.

In addition , there will be a menu where you will have the option to read the instructions on how to play.

What benefits does it have?

The benefit of this game is to divulge information about the James Webb Telescope, encouraging children, young people and even adults to learn more about what NASA is implementing today, and demonstrating this through a game is a good start to get them interested in what this challenge is all about.

What do you hope to achieve?

We hope to make a game that can be a challenge for the user, by making them try to break previous records. The interesting thing is that new information about the telescope is unlocked as the game goes on and it is something that can make the user to have an approach to this topic or information related to it.

Making interactivity fun and scientific at the same time is one of the things that can attract the attention of new generations.

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

The tools used for this project was the programming language Python, which was implemented with the "Pygame" library, as it was a teamwork, different IDEs such as Visual Studio Code, Thonny and Spyder were used.

We decided to use Python because it is an interpreted language, as well as being a flexible language when it comes to programming.

For the imaging of the telescope, the spaceship, the laser and the rocks, the PixelArt tool was used.

Space Agency Data

For this project, we used information from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), specifically from the James Webb Space Telescope website and gallery. We also used the News section to look for the fun facts about the JWST.

Hackathon Journey

For most of our team members, this was the first time we participated in a hackathon, so we were very excited and nervous, but with a very good attitude and eager to work. The members of the team are university students in Mexico, we are in our third semester of Computer Science, so we have knowledge of some languages, such as Python, Matlab, Mathematica, C++, R, etc. This prompted us to choose the challenge of developing a videogame to help people to know the amazing capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Honestly, we had never made a videogame and therefore we had never used a program to develop it, but we had knowledge of the programs that existed to make the game. We had two options to carry out its development, Unity and Pygame, but in the end we opted for Pygame because all team members already mastered the Phyton language and it was more feasible for us to do it there.

Fortunately, we had almost no setbacks, although we consider that the time to make the game was limited; we started the challenge on Saturday morning and that same day we finished the functional game, for Sunday morning we only made some adjustments that were pending, and we managed to finish successfully in the time indicated.

We are very happy because we believe that we finished the challenge in a good way, the work was totally collaborative, and for being our first videogame and our first time using Pygame we were able to finish the challenge satisfactorily, always keeping in mind the goal which was to divulge information about this great telescope.

During the development we learned how the James Webb Space Telescope works and why it is so important for the NASA and for the scientific world.

Finally, we want to thank our parents, for always being with us and supporting us at all times, our family and friends, but especially the team responsible NASA International Space Apps Challenge for giving us the opportunity to participate. We consider that it was a very good experience and no doubt we will participate again next year with great desire to be among the finalists.