MineMarsCraft Interactive Space Journey

THE CHALLENGE: Open World Generation using NASA Mars and Vesta Data

Solar System

Create a custom world map generator module using a gaming framework or engine of your choice that leverages altimeter, terrain and imagery data to render realistic worlds. This will involve the use of a World Map Tile Service client to leverage over 1 TB of Mars and Vesta data for use in world generation.

Explanation

Our team, ChanMaliChan from KL, Malaysia aims to solve the #SolarSystem: #OpenWorldGeneration challenge, where we will take Mars altimeter & terrain data from NASA Mars & Vesta Data to generate a Minecraft Mod for the Mars surface and allow gamers to build a #SpaceRoute66 under the #Journey2Mars.

Gamers targeted are kids from <6 (beginner), 6+ (intermediate) and 12+ (advance) years of age, where they will be able to launch a space shuttle from earth's spaceport to the NASA space station, then occupy Mars with a Mars space port! All in the name of STEAM! We would like to use Minecraft as it has a user base of 33 million players and 10 million pocket edition gamers in a real life edutainment mod for Minecraft.

Our world map generation backend will be able to scale from an offline Vesta dataset to a live dataset (RESTful API) over the course of this project. Our vision is to create more astronauts, aerospace engineers and put a goat in space!

Resources Used

This will involve the use of a World Map Tile Service client to leverage over 1 TB of Mars and Vesta data for use in world generation. Altimeter, Terrain and Imagery Data used.

Trek API: https://api.nasa.gov/mars-wmts/catalog/