Freak Disasters: An Innovative And Informative Application To Help You Prepare For The Unexpected
By the 03 Musketeers!
We made a text-based choose-your-own-adventure disaster survival training game with physical controllers to play with. Our group is made up of 1 CIT major, 1 Computer Science major, and 2 Computer Engineers. So we decided to integrate our specialties in by using both low-level and high-level programming languages in the same project!
At first I designed the controllers to be connected.
After realizing this would make it hard to play with two players, I changed it to be two separate controllers.
Here we have the PCB design, the Rendered PCB design, and the diagram for our circuit.
This is me hi!
Our inspiration was "choose your own adventure" story games. We combined this with the idea of disaster survival readiness because it fits our theme of Innovation and Strength well.
The program is designed to educate and engage trainees by simulating the experience of natural disasters. Its primary function is to provide an interactive and immersive learning environment where participants can better understand various natural hazards, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. The program not only aims to teach the science behind these disasters but also to illustrate the potential impact if you choose to leave. Through a combination of realistic simulations and gamified elements, the program encourages active participation and makes the learning process enjoyable while highlighting the seriousness of disaster preparedness and response. By experiencing these scenarios in a controlled setting, trainees can better appreciate the importance of disaster management and develop practical skills to handle real-world emergencies.
We used the Nucleo board as our microcontroller to operate the controllers used in-game. We used serial communication between our computer, running Python, and our microcontroller, running C. We used the library serial_asynchio to make this cross-communication possible.
The only programming challenge we encountered was a minor miscommunication about formatting the story before integrating it into the main program. Once we clarified that, we were able to move forward smoothly.
Another significant challenge was connecting the software to the hardware. This took some troubleshooting, but we managed to get everything working in the end.
After eight hours of intense work, fatigue started to set in. Some of us finally called it a night around 2:30 AM and got a few hours of rest, waking up at seven to continue.
Our C/Circuit Master, Leslie Jury, knew the ins and outs of KiCAD's diagram maker, but was less acquainted with the PCB creation part of the application. During this project she learned more about that aspect of KiCAD.Â
We learned the importance of communication and the skill of endurance. We had some miscommunication when it came to how we would format the program, so after those problems we learned how to communicate better, as it is vital to working well as a team. We also learned the skill of endurance, which goes well with the second half of our theme: Strength! We worked long and hard and we made sure to do well the whole way through.
- Team: team-03-musketeers
- Joe Olsen: Software Architect
- Alton S. White V: Scenario Writer/Sub-Programmer
- Case Montgomery: Cross Language Communication Specialist
- Leslie Jury: C/Circuit Master and Video Director