Coronavirus Simulator 2020

Title screen
Setting Policies
Breaking news!
Data and statistics

Contributors

Alex Price
James Zhou
Tony Fang
Chris Fang

Inspiration

In light of recent events, we were inspired to create a simulation of the pandemic, and experimented with the idea of running a country by implementing policies.

What it does

Coronavirus Simulator 2020 is a game that emulates the spread of the Coronavirus for a country run by the player. The game includes many factors including citizen satisfaction and economic stability which makes the game an engaging challenge to manage and control the spread of the disease. Players are able to control their policies to handle the virus, and are able to see the impact of their decisions with the in-game visualizations. Random events will also keep players on their toes, being forced to handle unexpected situations while keeping the population happy and the virus under control.

How we built it

We built our game using the Slick2D and LWJGL libraries for Java. These libraries provided a solid basis for the project but did require all UI elements and game mechanics to be coded from scratch. All game visuals were drawn by the team members for this project, with some scenes receiving complete overhauls during the development process.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges our team encountered was the development of a clear and concise user interface that was also visually appealing. This resulted in multiple iterations of our interface before coming up with a design that we were comfortable with. As well, our video editing software crashed nearing the end of editing, losing a fair amount of work. Despite this setback, we were able to complete our project on time and are proud of its final result.

What we learned

Creating this game was a great learning experience. Without the flexibility and functionality of a game engine, we were forced out of our comfort zone to experiment with game libraries instead. This project also was a new venture into pixel art and the visual styles associated with it, which we found to be very successful and hope to use the art style in future projects.