SafeWorld MUN

Inspiration

From childhood, we vividly remember how some of the most meaningful learning comes from roleplaying games. What if that excitement could be channeled into peaceful conflict-resolution through diplomatic negotiation and civil debate? SafeWorld MUN brings Roblox’s educational spirit to life by immersing players in the daily role of a UN delegate: drafting treaties, crafting legislation, and sharpening their persuasive skills while tackling the civic challenges today’s youth face. It's crucial in the modern world that children learn to navigate the internet safely, grasp cybersecurity basics, and recognize that online personas can be deceptive—lessons woven into every scenario.

What it does

Our game features two arenas: a mock UN headquarters and a grassy "peace" arena. Once a quorum is reached, the session kicks off: players are randomly chosen to debate a topic, the group votes, and points are awarded. Debaters then teleport to a battlefield which had been outfitted with nothing but Cupid’s arrows and hugs to promote safe, positive interaction, which provides a break between rounds of debate. After each rounds, a new topic is drawn from the bank, so that children can learn about many important safety-related topics in minutes.

How we built it

This was our first dive into Lua and the Roblox ecosystem. We started with no prior experience in Roblox Studio, other than building rudimentary games as kids with free models. We developed a state machine to keep track of game states, each of which triggers different changes in the game. We used RemoteEvents to transmit information from the client -> server and vice versa. We implemented two different GUIs, one for selecting a flag at the beginning and the other for voting. Overall, we created a complex game that switches from debate to battle for as long as there are prompts to debate. We were pleasantly surprised with how easy Roblox's API was to build with.

Challenges we ran into

Because it was our first time in the ecosystem, nearly everything presented a challenge for us. We had to learn quickly, spending precious minutes on issues that experts in the API would solve in a matter of seconds, like relying on print() debugging to trace problems with our RemoteEvents. Also, balancing dreaming big and adding features and also finishing by the deadline was something that we struggled with.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a fully featured game under a very limited time constraint, that has serious potential to create positive impact on millions of children's lives. Reinforcing civics lessons in a dynamic, story-driven format. Players sharpen their persuasive skills and craft real-world solutions in a risk-free environment. Empowering tomorrow’s leaders to communicate with empathy and think critically, skills that will always be in demand.

What we learned

During this hackathon, we learned the Roblox API and Lua, both of which were very easy to use for first-timers with previous programming knowledge. We learned about the client-server communication and using game states for easy game handling logic. We also learned about delegating tasks while under time pressure so that we could accomplish something that neither of us could have completed alone.

What's next for SafeWorld MUN

We want to expand the topic bank to cover a wide range of topics related to youth safety, so that users can play for hours without boring of debating the same topics over and over again. We also want to implement an AI chat agent that can warn the user of potential logical fallacies, which would be useful in teaching these children effective argument skills. We also want to add more features to the battlefield, such as hugging or high fiving, or a secondary way to generate points.