Inspiration
Our inspiration comes from the concern of misinformation surrounding COVID-19 Vaccines in these challenging times. As students, not only do we love to learn, but we also yearn to share the gifts of our knowledge and creativity with the world. We recognize that a fun and interactive way to learn crucial information related to STEM and current events is rare. Therefore we aim to give anyone this opportunity using the product we have developed.
What it does
In the past 24 hours, we have developed a pixel art RPG game. In this game, the user becomes a scientist who has experienced the tragedies of COVID-19 and is determined to find a solution. Become the Hero of the Pandemic through overcoming the challenging puzzles that give you a general understanding of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine's development process, myths, and side effects.
Immerse yourself in the original artwork and touching story-line. At the end, complete a short feedback survey and get an immediate analysis of your responses through our Machine Learning Model and receive additional learning resources tailored to your experience to further your knowledge and curiosity about COVID-19.
Team A.S.K. hopes that through this game, you become further educated by the knowledge you attain and inspired by your potential for growth when challenged.
How I built it
We built this game primarily using the Godot Game Engine, a cross-platform open-source game engine that provides the design tools and interfaces to create games. This engine uses mostly GDScript, a python-like dynamically typed language designed explicitly for design in the Godot Engine. We chose Godot to ease cross-platform support using the OpenGL API and GDScript, a relatively more programmer-friendly language.
We started off using Figma to plan out and identify a theme based on type and colour. Afterwards, we separated components into groupings that maintain similar characteristics such as label outlining and movable objects with no outlines. Finally, as we discussed new designs, we added them to our pre-made categories to create a consistent user-experience-driven UI.
Our Machine Learning model is a content-based recommendation system built with Scikit-learn, which works with data that users provide implicitly through a brief feedback survey at the end of the game. Additionally, we made a server using the Flask framework to serve our model.
Challenges I ran into
Our first significant challenge was navigating through the plethora of game features possible with GDScript and continually referring to the documentation. Although Godot is heavily documented, as an open-source engine, there exist frequent bugs with rendering, layering, event handling, and more that we creatively overcame
A prevalent design challenge was learning and creating pixel art with the time constraint in mind. To accomplish this, we methodically used as many shortcuts and tools as possible to copy/paste or select repetitive sections.
Additionally, incorporating Machine Learning in our project was a challenge in itself. Also, sending requests, display JSON, and making the recommendations selectable were considerable challenges using Godot and GDScript.
Finally, the biggest challenge of game development for our team was UX-driven considerations to find a balance between a fun, challenging puzzle game and an educational experience that leaves some form of an impact on the player. Brainstorming and continuously modifying the story-line while implementing the animations using Godot required a lot of adaptability and creativity.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We are incredibly proud of our ability to bring our past experiences gaming into the development process and incorporating modifications of our favourite gaming memories. The development process was exhilarating and brought the team down the path of nostalgia which dramatically increased our motivation.
We are also impressed by our teamwork and team chemistry, which allowed us to divide tasks efficiently and incorporate all the original artwork designs into the game with only a few hiccups.
We accomplished so much more within the time constraint than we thought, such as training our machine learning model (although with limited data), getting a server running up and quickly, and designing an entirely original pixel art concept for the game.
What I learned
As a team, we learned the benefit of incorporating software development processes such as Agile Software Development Cycle. We solely focused on specific software development stages chronologically while returning and adapting to changes as they come along. The Agile Process allowed us to maximize our efficiency and organization while minimizing forgotten tasks or leftover bugs.
Also, we learned to use entirely new software, languages, and skills such as Godot, GDScript, pixel art, and design and evaluation measurements for a serious game.
Finally, by implementing a Machine Learning model to analyze and provide tailored suggestions to users, we learned the importance of a great dataset. Following Scikit-learn model selection graph or using any cross-validation techniques are ineffective without the data set as a foundation. The structure of data is equally important to manipulate the datasets based on task requirements to increase the model's score.
What's next for Pandemic Hero
We hope to continue developing Pandemic Hero to become an educational game that supports various age ranges and is worthy of distribution among school districts. Our goal is to teach as many people about the already-coming COVID-19 vaccine and inspire students everywhere to interpret STEM in a fun and intuitive manner. We aim to find support from mentors along the way, who can help us understand better game development and education practices that will propel the game into a deployment-ready product.
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