Project Details

Awards & Nominations

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

Global Nominee

The Challenge | Build a Planet

Your challenge is to create a game that will allow players to customize the characteristics of a star and design planets that could reasonably exist in that star system. Ensure that this game provides an educational experience for players!

Space crafters

It is a game that allows the player to discover their own solar system while creating their own, and unique, systems with planets, stars and other celestial bodies.

Space crafters

Seccion 1: Background

We already have a whole universe of knowledge, most of people only know a small part of it. Do we know how our solar system behaves? Do the people around us know that they are such thing as “the exoplanets”? Do they know what planets and stars are made of?

These are some of the questions that we ask ourselves when we were deciding what challenge we were going to do. We wanted to develop something that can help people reach new knowledge in an easy, interactive and entertainment way, no matter the age.

We were inspired by sharing knowledge with all the humankind, in every single point at the planet. Everybody can fall in love with the universe and its beauty and secrets.

They only need a little push to get into this awesome experience! We believe that our game can be that little push.


Seccion 2: The Solution

What it does

The challenge was to create a game that will allow players to customize the characteristics of a star and design planets that could reasonably exist in that star system. So we think about creating a video game with two “modes”.

  1. The first and main mode is called “create your universe” in which at the first level players can create stars and planets, we pretend to update the game so that in the next levels the player can add comets, asteroids, moons and even black holes!
  2. The second mode is called “explore your universe”, when you click on the universe of the screen the solar system gets opened, when you click on one of the planets or the sun it shows you information as its chemical composition, size and atmosphere.
We implemented 3 levels of difficulty:
  • “Observer of the universe” is the first of all three, also is the one that is currently developed, at this level, the player can modify the diameter and temperature of their main star. The diameter, moons and rings, gas or rocky, star distance and atmosphere of the planets that they create.This level is called this way because playing it is practically observing the behavior and relationship of its first own created system.
  • “Amateur astronomer”, at this level the planet functions such as: the mass, size of satellites and their relationship with other celestial bodies, the creation of comets and asteroids are unlocked. The name of this level is because at this point there is already passion, but a little more knowledge is missing.
  • "Astrophysicist”, in this third level the player would be able to make changes in the mass of the star, the planet functions like modification of the planet’s chemistry, the creation of black holes are unlocked. This level has this name because, at this point the knowledge of space must be quite advanced.

Science background

Science background

The following are some of the resources that we used to answer certain questions that we planted ourselves as we developed the video game.

Within these doubts there are questions such as:

  • What is a planet?

The most recent definition of planet was adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 2006. It says that a planet must do three things:

  1. You must orbit a star (in our cosmic neighborhood, the Sun).
  2. It must be large enough to have enough gravity to force it into a spherical shape.
  3. It must be large enough for its gravity to eliminate any other object of a similar size near its orbit around the Sun.
  4. The discussion, and the debate, will continue as our vision of the cosmos continues to expand.
  • Minimum size for a planet to be habitable?

The researchers found that the critical size is approximately 2.7 percent of the Earth's mass. If an object is smaller than 2.7 percent of the Earth's mass, its atmosphere will escape before it has a chance to develop surface liquid water

  • What conditions exist for a planet to be habitable?

Planetary habitability is a measure of the potential of an astronomical body to sustain life. It can be applied to both the planets and the natural satellites of the planets. The only absolute requirement for life is a source of energy. For this reason, it is interesting to determine the habitability zone of different stars, but the notion of planetary habitability implies the fulfillment of many other geophysical, geochemical and astrophysical criteria so that an astronomical body is capable of sustaining life.

  • What is a planetary system and habitability zone?

The habitability zone depending on the distance to the central star and its mass (and with approximate spectral types). By comparison, the innermost planets of the Solar System and the four discovered orbiting the star GJ 581 are included.

The habitability zone around a star is defined as the range of orbital distances where a planet could contain liquid water. This phenomenon implies that it is assumed that water is indispensable for the appearance of life, which does not have to be rigorously true.

  • What is an asteroid?

Asteroids are small, rocky objects that orbit the sun. Although asteroids orbit the sun like planets, they are much smaller than planets.

  • What is the sun?

The sun is a star, a hot ball of glowing gases at the heart of our solar system. Its influence extends far beyond the orbits of distant Neptune and Pluto. Without the sun's intense energy and heat, there would be no life on Earth. And though it is special to us, there are billions of stars like our sun scattered across the Milky Way galaxy.

  • What is a dwarf planet?

Dwarf planets are round in shape and orbit the Sun just like the eight major planets. But unlike planets, dwarf planets are not able to clear their orbital path so there are no similar objects at roughly the same distance from the Sun. A dwarf planet is much smaller than a planet (smaller even than Earth's moon), but it is not a moon. The first five recognized dwarf planets are Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea and they are all uniquely mysterious.

  • What is a comet?

Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock and dust roughly the size of a small town. When a comet's orbit brings it close to the sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets. The dust and gases form a tail that stretches away from the sun for millions of kilometers. Comets may not be able to support life themselves, but they may have brought water and organic compounds -- the building blocks of life -- through collisions with Earth and other bodies in our solar system.

  • What can escape from a black hole?

A black hole has a gravitational pull that is so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape it once inside a certain region, called the event horizon.

Development process

We began to investigate about the universe, its composition, creation, elements and every part of what composes it, we learned everything we could in a few hours.

Before we start planning the game, we review the resources offered by NASA. We extract the important parts to give the environment and parameters as real as possible.

After that, we started planning what our game would look like and what things it would have. In addition to the platform on which we would develop it: unity. Then we started looking for resources that you can use in unity since it was the first time we used it.

When we set out to start programming we realize that we have to program in C#, a language that no one of us know, so we check online basic programming of C#.

We made the parts of the game in the order the user was seeing them, that's why we begin by creating the space in which one would work, "the background", then we made the background of the program rotate to make it look more real. And then we started to create the menus. This was made by using a lot of buttons.

After that we made the logos and the main images in Photoshop so we can made that prettier to look at. We made an intro for the game.


Then we start to do the really difficult programming, the game itself. The animation of the main menu, the customization of the planets, the sun, and the solar system explore. By the end we tried to get all the things together.

Challenges

Not knowing how to use unity was one of our biggest challenges, since it limited us from having to learn the functions and then put them into practice.

At first, our lack of communication made us lose valuable hours..

Achievements

We learned how to use new tools such as Photoshop and unity.

We were able to improve our ability to work in a team and resilience.

We create something which can result in an entertaining experience in which adults and children enjoy the wonders of space.


Seccion 3: Value Proposition

For customers

With this game you can learn everything about your home: space. Your challenge is simple, create your own solar system and make life flourish in it.

It is educational and will teach you a lot about the celestial bodies that exist in our universe, while you are having fun!

For NASA

With a little artificial intelligence, dedication and multiple players around the world you can create data of a lot possible combinations for the creation of the planets.


Seccion 4: Future plans

We want to continue improving our game, we believe it has a lot of potential in education. We want to do this upgrades:

  • Save session
  • Develop the level two and three
  • Explore exoplanets
  • To be able to create the necessary parameters for life to arise.
  • Learn about artificial intelligence to give a better and more realistic user experience.
  • We plan to make some mini games where as a reward you will receive items or unlock new parameters
  • Be able to spread its use in schools to teach children about astronomy

Seccion 5: Resources

Nasa resources

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/space-place-in-a-snap-the-solar-systems-formation/

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/overview/

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/how-many-moons/sp/

Other resources

http://www.astroyciencia.com/2012/06/14/condicione...

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/overview/

https://www.europapress.es/ciencia/astronomia/noticia-cual-tamano-minimo-planeta-pueda-ser-habitable-20190911143452.html

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planeta_enano#Tama%C3%B1o_y_masa_de_los_planetas_enanos

https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/ciencia/fisica/sistemas-planetarios-y-la-zona-de-habitabilidad/

Tool used

We use unity to make the game, C# to program and photoshop to make the images.

Open code

https://github.com/pedronaranjo09/NASA

Seccion 6: Try it

You can also enjoy ower game here https://github.com/pedronaranjo09/NASA


Tags

#Game, #SolarSystem, #Planets, #Universe, #Unity, #C#, #science, #moon, #satellite, #exoplanet, #create, #build, #SpaceCrafters #SeeYouInNASA