Finding MArly

Just keep swimming to save the fish.

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Inspiration

According to the World Economic Forum, 60% of the world's fish species at risk of extinction due to climate change. If average global temperatures rise by five degrees Celsius, that could mean almost two-thirds of global fish species could be eradicated by 2100. How do we raise awareness of this issue and realize that climate change does not just endanger animals on land. Finding MARly is a mobile game to learn more about these different species while in their habitat or while at the aquarium.

What it does

Finding MARly is a game for people to play on vacation to locate different fish species. Based on the location of where the gamer checks in, the different types of species the gamer is encouraged to collect. Discover all the different types of ecosystems as you check into different locations all over the globe. Not going on holiday anytime soon? That's okay, we have special games for aquariums and zoos for you to take a special staycation.

If you really love our game, want to help support what we are doing or want to help protect the fish, we have some special premium games as well!! A portion of each sale goes to the World Wildlife Foundation to help with their conservation efforts.

But wait there is more!! Gamers are encouraged to share their anonymized location and images captured with us. This data is shared with the citizen scientists at https://www.zooniverse.org/ to help discover new locations of endangered species and track the migration patterns of the different schools of fish.

How we built it

We used Figma for the designs. Our prototype uses AR JS, a highly compressed GLTF model entity from Google Poly, and Firebase for hosting.

Challenges we ran into

Time was not our friend!! Also when building the prototype, we had some issues rendering the AR model over LTE. So we had to compress things a lot which isn't a great experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting this proof of concept done.

What we learned

The different capabilities of 5G and how this opens up a whole area of gaming. Since 5G is able to extend to remote locations while still maintaining high speed, we can create this game without completely relying on AI models on the device or low resolution AR to create an amazing experience.

What's next for Finding MARly

Finish building our app and then create some real games starting with the Shedd Aquarium and Lake Michigan. Shedd Aquarium was chosen because I have worked with them before with their citizen science program in the past. Then work on creating more games for different locations all over the world and begin to share this anonymous data with researchers. Finally work on creating games for other animals such as for birdwatchers.

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