The Hitchhacker's Guide to the Galaxy

Team Scones Squad

Inspiration

We believe in the effectiveness of visualizations to convey complex scientific ideas in a simple, time-efficient manner. We are all also interested in astrophysics and fascinated by the theory of relativity. We wanted to build something educational, and creating an interactive game would allow us to bring the vastness of space and the mind-bending nature of time dilation to a general audience.

What it does

You are an explorer about to embark on a journey across the galaxy! This highly interactive game allows the user to explore five different star systems (as well as Earth) at a customizable fraction of the speed of light. The game inform about how much time would pass for them as well as how much time passes back home on Earth. There is also an interactive visualization of relativity and how it affects perceived speed.

How we built it

We used the pygame Python module. We brainstormed the game mechanics together before diving tasks and building its individual elements. Perhaps the most important aspect of this project--one built from intricate and individual parts--was our ability to collaborate and coordinate code and time to not only work as efficiently as possible, but also have fun doing it.

Challenges we ran into

We were not familiar with pygame before the hackathon. We also faced issues with merging files and initially collaborating with each other. Furthermore, we were not familiar with pygame before the hackathon. We also faced issues with merging files and collaborating with each other. However, by working with each other and enabling each other to use our best skillsets where they would be optimally used allowed us to effectively tackle these problems.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We learned how to use pycharm in less than 24 hours! We’re also proud of our idea and think it has the potential to become a widespread education tool. We wanted to create a project that we could continue to expand even after this hackathon, with limitless possibilities, and that is exactly what we accomplished in these last 19 hours. The Hitchhacker's Guide to the Galaxy run won't end here.

What we learned

We learned how to conceptualize a complex idea, simplify it into what was reasonable and viable for the short time period we had, break down and designate tasks, and smoothly incorporate our work. We also gained more experience working freely with Python, and especially with pygame (which was something none of us had worked with before). We also learned to collaborate within Github more than we had in the past.

What's next for The Hitchhacker's Guide to the Galaxy

• More visualizations and explanations for various concepts relevant to “space,” such as relativity, time dilation, etc.
• Add more info about various systems
• Streamline + make the framework scalable for more star systems
• More user interaction (choose speed, fuel gauges)
• More tracking (total distance, fuel, time, etc.)

Built With

• pycharm
• pygame
• python
• vscode