Team:HFUT-China/HP/Silver
Human Practice
Idea
The main idea of our human practice project is to popularize iGEM and synthetic biology to outsiders. Let people who have never stepped into synthetic biology get interested in and know about it.
Initial plan
At first, we planned to develop a virtual laboratory. We have visited USTC team’s laboratory and let them show us some professional equipment. Thanks to the enthusiastic receiving of USTC, we documented the equipment’s detailed appearance and its usage in order to build the virtual model in the VR lab.
Change of plan
Although we have come up with an excellent plan of the virtual lab, it wonders away from our initial idea. Few people but biologists know about how to operate in the virtual lab. As for those who has never touched synthetic biology, it is too difficult to play around in the virtual lab. Thus we would fail to generalize synthetic biology to the non-professionals if we had kept the VR lab. Finally, we decided to change the plan and to develop a VR game.
Gene War Game
The name of this game is VR Shooting - Gene War. Players are supposed to control a BioBrick container in their hands to store gene chains and shoot bullets to attack the enemy in front of them. In the meantime players should avoid being shot by bullets from enemies. There are a variety of enemies, whose blood volume, flying speed of bullets, movement patterns and scores are different. In the fifth section, there is a “Final BOSS” which is quite hard to deal with. A tool aiming at supplying blood for players is set in this game. A large number of BioBricks are randomly generated around the player. When the BioBricks are touched by the handle, a system which provides skills to players will start. The system will automatically select a suitable gene chain according to the gene blocks being touched. To start the game and acquire special skills, player must touch the virtual promoter and terminator, respectively. If players touch the wrong gene, the gene chains will be overloaded, which means they are cleared and regenerated. Players are provided with four special skills: explosion (reduce the blood volume of all enemies), blood supplement (return to full-blood status), no-enemy status and shooting speed acceleration.
After players complete the game, their duration time and scores acquired will be ranked on the leaderboard in the main UI interface. What’s more, to make the game more interesting, there is also a rewarding mechanism. A searching “magnifier” is randomly generated in the game, and by touching it, the gene chains will be instantly filled and players can release the current skills.
