Carbon Commuter

• 

  Title page

Inspiration

We had all played the game Mini Metro, which is a fun little game but there's not much to it. We took experience from the (lack of) urban planning in Toronto and decided to create a game to showcase the difficulty of making efficient transportation systems, with a focus on the environmental side of things.

What it does

Stations spawn periodically, with passengers that want to get from one specific station to another. The goal is to link the stations with three types of lines (Bus, Subway, and Bike) to create the most efficient system with the least possible CO₂ emissions. Each type has its own emission cost, and also its own conditions (e.g. a rider is more likely to take the bike line over a short distance).

How we built it

The game was made using the Godot engine, with GDScript. We were able to collaborate on the project using Git.

Challenges we ran into

Near the beginning, setting up Git was a challenge, as some of us had not used it before. There were also numerous bugs, including during the pathfinding algorithm implementation, some random disconnections between seeds, and adding the carbon counter. Despite this we worked through it all and we're really proud of each other.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The pathfinding algorithm for a rider, set up with A*, was something that we are especially proud of. To this we have Deon to thank, he was in charge of this part of the code and its implementation was crucial to the project's success. Aside from that, for some of us this was the first project ever done, as well as our first time using Godot, and for that we are proud too.

What we learned

We learned that coding as a group is almost harder than coding on your own! But we also learned the value of having teammates to help or be helped by, and that morale plays a huge role. The atmosphere for our group was very chill, and I think that reflected in the quality of the code.

What's next for Carbon Commuter

Of course, real-life transit systems do not take into account emissions as its only variable. There are a lot of other factors, and adding them would make the game more complete as well as realistic. Adding these factors would also increase the capability of the game being used to understand the complexity of transportation systems in big cities, and how they should be managed.

Built With

• gdscript
• godot