Women in Stem

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Inspiration

Our goal was to encourage more girls to code and go into STEM fields Gaming opens doors as a gateway to coding, the fastest-growing career field today Computer science is a key skill for the video game industry, used in game design, game programming, and more. Through video games, girls can have fun while receiving informational messages that encourage them to code and pursue STEM careers

What it does

The game we build is a user-controlled character that allows the player to run and jump over an obstacle that comes from the right side of the screen. If the player hits or touches this object, “You died” is outputted as well as a sort-of fun-fact based around women in STEM statistics we found.

How we built it

We started from a replit 2D video game template that gave us the backdrop and sprite movements. To make it an actual game, we added an object called "barrier" and made it move in a loop so the player has to constantly jump over it.

Challenges we ran into

Neither of us have ever tried developing a video game before so we had to watch many videos and tutorials to prepare, before even attempting to code. We wanted to incorporate a sound effect when the character dies, but unfortunately no sound was generated and we ran out of time

Also trying to upload different image files for the text and obstacles proved to be challenging when trying to rescale and play through the running code.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

getting the template down and making the sprite move, coding the barrier and making it move, we cheered when when we finally got the barrier to appear, having the text appear when the player dies, timing everything right (player dies, screen freezes, text appears, there is a 5 second delay, then the game restarts and the player and barrier go to their initial position), we were very excited when the randomized text image worked (appearing above the player upon death)

What we learned

how to use pygame ; what class(), blit(), self(), and background and surfaces are; how to code a video game; how to incorporate image files and make them show up on screen; how to reposition the sprite and barrier; what a game loop is;

What's next for Women in Stem

Improve STEM education and support for girls starting in early education and through K-12, Address implicit and systemic biases to raise awareness about girls’ math abilities, Create inclusive and safe environments for women on college campuses and workplaces by fully enforcing Title IX and making the entire academic community responsible for reducing and preventing sexual harassment.